I am in no position to share experience or give advice. To be honest, my boss frowns at my English from time to time. At home, I get teased about my Mandarin – my wife enjoys making fun of my incapability to distinguish the sound ‘n’ from ‘l’. What a wretched life for a non-native speaker to both languages!
Probably the only thing I can say is that I read more than average people. In the first half year of 2011, I’ve finished more than 6 English books.
To compensate my slow reading speed, I love audio books. Through the free audiobook app on iPhone, I have downloaded a few classic novels. Right now, I listen to Jane Eyre during lunch break. I also have some classic essays in the iBook library, from Tagore, Francis Bacon to Ralph Emerson.
At every weekend, I spend hours in public library skimming through some magazines, such as Economist, Business week, Time, GQ, and National Geographic.
If I am pressed to recommend some books, I would say Mitch Albom’s, and Ha Jin’s books are must-read. Mitch Albom delivers powerful messages with simple words, and excellent story-telling skills. Beginners can learn a lot from him. Ha Jin is an acclaimed Chinese-American writer. He has been compared to Balzac and Dickens. I enjoyed one of his novels -- A Free Life. It’s about the journey of a new Chinese immigrant in US. I believe many of us can see our own experience in this book. BTW, Ha Jin graduated from Shangdong University.
If I can offer one more uninvited advice to you, I would say don’t spend too much time in the forum. You can learn better if you spend the same amount of time reading those real masters or professional journalists (oops, there goes my popularity). In my defense, we just saw a person capitalized on people’s perception about his birth certificate, and ran around offering advice. My take on the issue is not about authenticity of his identity. It’s more about integrity. If I did some creative copy-and-paste work, I would admit it. Moreover, I would not gloss over on the questions about my grammar as if those questions were way beneath me... Anyway, good lucks to your study!
