Twice a year, CET 4&6 come back again.

Very good luck to all friends sitting for these exams... behind you are not only other examinees but also me daniel.  Always behind you, Fiona, Lydia, Pearl...

Hear my pray !!

Here is a short report (120-140 characters) I did weeks ago to share with those interested in Business english.

This report aims to assess the performance of new products A, B and C, in terms of turnover in department stores, supermarkets and small shops between 2000 and 2002.

Turnover of department stores made ￡50m in 2000, and stayed unchanged at ￡35m over the following two years.

On the other hand, supermarkets showed a general upward trend, with turnover kept rising from ￡65m in 2000,to ￡70m in 2001, reaching ￡80m in 2002.

However, small shops experienced a lower performance. Turnover of ￡30m was made in 2000, then fell to ￡20m in 2001 before a slight recovery of ￡5m in 2002.

Generally speaking, supermarkets rank first in sales over the 3-year-period, following were department stores and then small shops.

Many people are seeking a better way to learn English, some seem to have found and are working on a right track, while some are not so fortunate… which side you are on, maybe what I am talking about here could be a little helpful to you.

1, Don’t translate. As I know many Chinese students have made it a practice to translate what he wanna say into Chinese and then English, frequently translating between these two languages, so that we can easily tell that s/he is speaking Chinglish. But we can change it. The best way to speak real English is firstly to learn to think in English, even using the simplest English sentences. The other day I came across a bilingual German who speaks very good English in a blog community. When I asked her how she did it, she told me that she thinks even dreams in English. Wow, that sounds so reasonable and feasible, isn’t it?

2, Try to imagine. When we are memorizing a new word, try not to memorize how it’s written in Chinese, but to imagine the image the word refers to. We should immediately have an image of the corresponding object, when we see a noun, the image of the action when we see a verb. So that we build up a better relation between words and real life from which we can benefit a lot in expressing our ideas.

3, Chat online. Well, as I mentioned in the article “my experience in chatting groups”, chatting online especially with those English native speakers can be very helpful for us to apply what we have learn into this virtual language environment, to organize a sentence to respond immediately… and by typing into the chatting box we are strengthening the memory of how a word is spelled.  Do remember that’s the only benefits we can get in doing so, we can’t improve our pronunciation and accent, and listening skill.

4, listen more. Why an illiterate can speak? Because he can recognize what a certain pronunciation means. Relatively, without a good language environment, we Chinese tend to read much more than listen. So listening should be the weakest part for us. No one likes to talk with those always asking “ pardon” or “ sorry but could you say it again”. As I can see, most of us focus too much on spelling, not its pronunciation. So my advice is to bear in mind the relation between its pronunciation and meaning. That means when you hear a word “bird”, what crosses your mind is not the word “bird” itself, but its meaning, the image of a bird. When it comes to speaking, even you can’t spell it right, you still can say it right in a face-to-face talk.

The points above are just my personal opinions, flaws are inevitable, well, you don’t have to buy them, just take them for reference, OK? Meanwhile, hope you share your ideas with me, and let’s make it together. ^_^