[英语文章转载]"3个月学好英语"的广告背后的真相

夜王神夜

You may have seen a lot of English schools’ advertise something like “You can master English in 3 months/6 months”. Some of them even provide testimonial from the former students to show you some of them actually did it. However, a lot of people don’t believe in this, the reason is simple. Most of English learners, have been learning English for at least 6 years, in school. Some of them still speak bad English. Since most of them can’t make it in 6 years, how is it possible to do it in 3 months.

Today, I am telling you a honest truth about this. Is that true that you can learn English/any other languages in 3 months?

The answer is … yes, you can. However, it is not going to happen to anyone.



Why? Let me share with you 2 stories.

The first story is the story when I learned Cantonese. Before I went to Hong Kong, I speak zero Cantonese. However, when I was in Hong Kong, I forced myself to speak Cantonese to everyone I met. It was because most of the customers I faced are local people, they speak Cantonese everyday and some of the elders don’t know how to speak Mandarin/English. In order to give them good customer service experience, I always tried to speak Cantonese with them. Of course, at first, I practiced Cantonese with my colleague, almost every day. Then I started speaking Cantonese when I was ordering the food, asking for direction, having some casual conversation, and shopping. Of course I made a lot of mistake at first, but people there are nice. They could feel that I tried my best to speak the language that I barely know so they always gave me friendly response. I used to speak Cantonese everyday when I was in Hong Kong, as the result, I can speak basic Cantonese in less than 3 months.

Every time when my friends(those who are in Hong Kong/Guangdong) asked me about how long I learn Cantonese, my answer always surprise them. They can’t believe anyone can learn Cantonese in such a short time.

However, let’s look at this story in a different angle. Most people, when they attend English class, they only have 2 – 5 hours lesson per week. If the lesson happens in classroom, you can only learn reading and writing. You would be lucky if you have 30 minutes speaking time per week. But most of the students, especially when they were in secondary school, don’t even speak for more than 1 hour in their secondary school life. Don’t confuse reading out loud in class with speaking, it is completely 2 different things. When you read, you don’t have think, you don’t have to response. But when you speak, you have to think in English, you have to respond when other speaks to you. That’s why, with the classroom learning method, most students can’t speak proper English, or even other languages, because you don’t have chance to speak.



Well, the first story is about my story, let me share the second story to you.

The second story is a story of my student. When she signed up for the class, her English was so-so. Her grammar in speaking was so-so, her pronunciation was so-so, and her vocabulary was all like textbook academic vocabulary, not very useful in real life. However, her learning desire was so strong. She got scholarship from Monash University(one of the top 8 University in Australia). Her academic result was good, her academic English was okay, however her speaking was not. So she had 3 – 4 times lessons with me, those lessons, we had everyday topic, some recently news, and a lot of story-telling. 2 months later, her English speaking improved dramatically.

The reason why she improved so much was because, she spent more hours in that 2 months compare to others. Let’s count, 4 lessons per week, each lesson is an hour, in 8 weeks. So she spent 30 hours (not 32, because she took only 30 lessons) in 2 months. The lessons were 1-on-1 coaching, so she spoke with teacher every lesson for the entire 1 hour. There are a lot of people out there, who spent 6 years in secondary school and high school, took more English lessons, however when it comes to speaking, they don’t even have 30 hours to speak in 6 years. That’s why the result of one of my students was much better in 2 months, compare with other students in 6 years.

However, I have to put a disclaimed here. This is just a result of one of my students. When she started, her academic English level was good but her speaking was not good(I would say below average). If you take the 30 hours lessons, the result might be different, it is depend on your current English level. But on average, students who spend time more hour a week, would have better result, especially those who spend more time in speaking.



In conclusion, the advertisement like “learn English in 3 months” can be a promising result , but it will not happen to you most of the time. In order to get improvement in such a short time, speaking is the key thing, you must speak most of the time. The students who can benefit the most are those from pre-intermediate level. Learn English in 3 months is difficult for beginner or people with zero English knowledge, for my experience, from people with zero knowledge to beginner needs average 3 months. Good news is, if you are not beginner and you have some knowledge in English, this can be happened, what you need is to spend more time in speaking, trust me, you can see the result. The result will definitely surprise you!

原文转载自：http://learnenglishwitheric.com/ ... nguage-in-3-months/

英语课程推荐：http://www.jbtalks.cc/thread-1742040-1-1.html