[推荐]我过英语关 I have no more difficulties with English
摘自<<英语沙龙>>
Q:Who are you?
A:My full name is Tomasz P. Szynalski, but people just call me Tom. I live in Wroclaw, Poland. I study business administration and computer science at the Wroclaw University of Technology. In the past few years, I have worked as an English?Polish translator and as a web designer. Recently, I became webmaster at Antimoon.com.
Q:How did you learn English?
A:I started learning English when I was 6 years old. For 8 years I learned English the way everybody does??by going to English classes. It was awfully ineffective. I did everything that the teachers told me to d the homework assignments, everything. But I didn’t get any results. At least, no impressive results. I mean, I was always one of the best students in class. Still, reading English texts took me a long time, I made lots of mistakes when writing, my pronunciation was bad, and I could only speak English very slowly. Eight years of sacrifices, and these were the results...
It got a little better because of... computer games. When I got my first PC in 1991, I started playing lots of adventure games. I especially loved LucasArts(then called Lucasfilm) games, such as the Indiana Jones and Monkey Island series. Playing these games, I would read a lot of English sentences, and after some time I gained a little “grammar intuition.” When I did well in a local English contest for 14?year olds, I thought that adventure games had taught me more than English classes. You see, I would often “feel” the right answers in grammar tests, while other students had to remember dozens of grammar rules. But my English was still pretty bad.
In 1993, I got into the best high school in Wroclaw. It has a special program with a lot of English classes. I owe a lot to the people I met there, both students and teachers. My first two years in high school were very important for my English. My English teacher, Mr. Janusz Laskosz, gave a lot of good advice, especially on pronunciation and vocabulary. My brilliant friends, Wojtek Dzierzanowski and Michael Ryszard Wojcik (who is my partner at Antimoon now), were both fantastic English learners. I didn’t want to be worse than them, so I studied harder, and my English improved.
Following the advice from Mr. Laskosz and the example of my friends, I made some good decisions during my first year in high school. I learned English phonetics, started using English?English dictionaries, listening to recordings and watching English?language TV, and talking to native speakers every chance I got. The result: I improved my pronunciation, I was no longer afraid to speak English, and I could understand spoken English quite well, too.
During the summer vacation of 1994 I started reading books in English, mostly novels. I would learn a lot of new words from these books, but I had terrible problems memorizing them. I had to look up the same word many times, which was quite annoying. I realized I needed a way to remember all this vocabulary. It was a breakthrough for me. I started noting down words from the books that I read. I would come back from school, and then sit for an hour or two and noted down new words and added them to my collection. In two years, my collection had grown to 3,000 English words.
In late 1995, I got on the Internet, and soon started to write E?mail in English. It was excellent writing practice??something I had lacked before. Around 1997, Michael and I decided to use English to communicate. (We still do.) Another good decision, which improved my ability to speak English.
Today, I think I use English more than my first language. Certainly there is no big difference between using my first language and using English. Over 90％ of my E?mail is written in English. Most of my reading (websites and books) is in English, too. Speaking is no problem. I can go to any English?speaking country and communicate easily.
Q:What has English given you?
A:I am addicted to English. I love the language, and I love using it. I like writing English sentences, speaking English to native speakers, reading books and the Web, watching American movies, and so on. I like the intellectual challenge of using a foreign language. When I learn something new about English, I feel I’m getting better and more powerful.
There are some things I am especially proud of. During my trips to England and America， I was taken for a native speaker a few times. It felt great! In 1998 I took part in a national English competition for high school students. I was 7th in the country. In 2000, I got first place in a similar contest for college students. I have translated two computer books (Using Windows 98 and C Primer Plus) from English into Polish, and have done many smaller translations, too.
问：你是谁？
答：我的全名叫托马什·P·希纳尔斯基，但是大家都叫我汤姆。我住在波兰的弗罗茨瓦夫市，在弗罗茨瓦夫理工大学学习工商管理和计算机。在过去的几年中，我从事英语?波兰语的翻译工作，并兼做网页设计。近来，我成了Antimoon.com网络公司的网站管理员。
问：你是如何学英语的？
答：我6岁时开始学英语。此后8年，我用和大家同样的方式学英语——上英语课。这种方式效果极差。老师让我做什么，我就做什么：各种家庭作业，所有要做的事。然而，我并没有多少收获，至少没有太大的收获。我是指： 尽管我总是班上最好的学生，可是我阅读英文课文要花很长时间，写作也要犯很多错误。我的发音也不好，说英语速度很慢。牺牲了8年就换来如此的结果……
后来我的英语有了点长进，那是由于……电脑游戏。1991年，我买了第一台电脑，开始玩许多冒险游戏。我尤其喜欢卢卡斯艺术（当时叫做卢卡斯电影）游戏，如印第安那·琼斯和猴岛系列游戏。在玩这些游戏时，我要读很多英语句子，一段时间后，我找到了一点“语法直觉”。当我在本地的一次14岁年龄组英语竞赛中取得好成绩时，我觉得那些冒险游戏比英语课教给我更多的东西。你知道，我常能“感觉”出语法考试中的正确答案，而别的同学却不得不死背一大堆语法规则。不过我的英语仍很差。
1993年我考入弗罗茨瓦夫最好的高中。这所学校专门设置了许多英语课。在那儿，我遇见了许多对我帮助非常大的同学和老师。高中的头两年对我的英语学习非常重要。我的英语老师亚努什·拉斯科什先生给了我许多好的建议，尤其是在发音和词汇方面。我的好友沃伊泰克·杰扎诺夫斯基和迈克尔·雷沙德·沃伊齐克（现在他是我在Antimoon的搭档）英语学得都很棒。我不愿比他们差，所以学习更刻苦，我的英语大有长进。
听从拉斯科什先生的建议，以我的朋友为榜样，我在高一做出了几个有益的决定。我选修了英语语音学，开始用英英词典，听英语录音，看英语电视节目，利用一切机会与以英语为母语的人交谈。结果是：我改进了我的发音，不再害怕说英语，对英语口语的理解能力也大大提高。
1994年暑假，我开始阅读英语书籍，多数是小说。我想从阅读中学到大量的新词汇，但是记忆生词特别费劲。我不得不多次在词典中查同一个单词，这让我觉得很烦。我意识到，我需要找出一种方法来记忆这些单词。这对我来说是一个突破。我开始从我所阅读的书中摘录生词。放学后我就用一两个小时来摘录生词，扩大我的词库。两年之后， 我收录的词汇已达3000英语单词。
1995 年底，我开始上网，不久便开始用英语写电子邮件。这是非常好的写作练习——是我以前所缺乏的。1997 年前后，我和迈克尔决定用英语交谈（我们现在仍这样做）。这又是一个好决定，提高了我的英语口语能力。
如今，我用英语比用我的母语要多。当然，用英语还是用母语对我而言没有太大区别。我的电子邮件90％以上是用英语写的。我阅读的材料（网站和书籍）大多数也是英语的。讲英语没有问题。我可以去任何讲英语的国家，轻松地用英语同当地人交谈。
问：英语给了你什么？
答：我迷上了英语。我热爱这门语言，喜欢用它。我喜欢用英语写作，喜欢同以英语为母语的人交谈，喜欢阅读英语书籍，浏览英语网站，看美国电影等等。我喜欢运用一门外语所带来的智力挑战。每当我学到关于英语的新知识，我就感到更充实，更有力量。
我有一些特别值得自豪的经历。我在英国和美国期间，好几次都有人把我当成了他们本国人。我的感觉好极了！1998 年，我参加了全国高中生英语竞赛，获得了第7名。2000年，在一次大学生的类似竞赛中， 我获得了第1名。我已把两本英语电脑书籍（《如何使用视窗98》 和《C Primer Plus》）译成波兰语，还做了许多篇幅较小的翻译工作。 |
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