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1. Read aloud
“Friends, Romans, students, lend me your ears,” I guess you all heard that before. Well one more time won’t hurt. If you’re just starting out, or a returning English student and want to improve your reading ability, think about volunteering as the designated storyteller in your class or at home. With practice, you will come to appreciate the value of timing, intonation and word stress, and the impact they have on your listeners attention and interest. However, there is a downside, if you get too good at storytelling, fans and family members will quickly anoint you as the “chosen one” and your social life will cease to exist, so be careful.
2. Know your sounds
Make voicing the 44 sounds of the English language your daily mantra. Actively voicing the sounds of English is an easy and proven way to maintain your English pronunciation. Have fun practicing them in the morning or evening with your friends and colleagues. So, when you decide to book that plane ticket to Australia, India or Hawaii this summer, you will be in sound shape to meet the next challenge in your life.
3. Finding a perfect place to study English
Whether it’s a room with romantic lighting, a desk in Vision tower, a metal table outside Dunkin Doughnuts or running in the campus gym with your headphones on, find an place that suits you best to study in.
4. Join a Debate Team
There are many debate teams you can join on campus offering varying levels of discourse concordant with your English skills. Debate teams can improve your active listening skills as well help get you more from classroom exercises and group study sessions.
5. Teach Part-time
One of the best ways to maintain and improve your English level in Korea is to teach. “Professor I cannot teach, I am not an expert, no one will give me a English teaching job in Korea.” On the contrary, there are many assistant jobs that require intermediate level English on campus, Alternatively, you can volunteer at one of the major hagwons in Yatap-dong. Take me for example, I maintain my English level by teaching students for free every Saturday at my local church and it’s a lot of fun.
6. Join an Acting Group
Speaking English like a native is impressive but acting in English requires a skill set above that of a native speaker. For those among you ready to take that next step, Gachon university has an outstanding acting department. So, contact them and sign up for an audition today, and you could be the next Kim Dong-hee. Alternatively, you can download a comedy or a sitcom script from the BBC or ABC websites and role play the star characters in class with your professor. For example, challenge your friends to say the following lines from a 1970s Two Ronnies sketch in less than 4 seconds: Betty Botter bought a bit of butter, but she said this butter’s bitter. If I buy a bit of better butter it will make my bit of bitter butter better. So, she bought a bit of better butter and it made her bit of bitter butter better.
And if that is no problem, click on the link below.
Have fun!
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| ▲ Dept. of Bionanotechnology Prof. John Hulme |
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