co: 對於我這樣上班隻是路過美國的就不一樣了！~~

At first, congratulations on your wonderful achievement on English learning. I do admire you a lot. But I also have some reservations on what you’ve talked about language learning 

As you said, as an acute health care provider, you spend eight hours or more with patients and doctors.  You have to do the talking most of day. Your job has a very high demand on your language skills. Sometimes, you may be so damn tired of talking in the middle of day that you hope you could just clam up to simply enjoy a second of quietness. 

But have you ever thought about other Chinese immigrant workers, what are their working environments and how do they attain their language skills on a foreign land? 

Most of Chinese people here are either doing IT related jobs or accountants. They either spend their time sitting in front of a flickering computer screen or behind the desk all day. Their jobs are programming or cranking numbers. They don’t deal with people. They work with machine most of time. Of course they will have one on one with their dear boss, occasionally chitchat with coworkers during 15 minutes coffee breaks, jot down minutes during a conference call or once in a while do a half hour presentation in a meeting. Basically, that’s it. Unlike nurses or salespeople who are dealing with people all day, these IT geeks including myself do most of their communication via emails or online chatting. Of course, I also get my work accomplished, but language wise what I get from my work is very limited because it demands low from me. Dear friend, please tell me what resources I can turn to for help? 

Besides socializing with native speakers as much as possible, no one can deny watching TV is an important way of learning English. Among all those TV programs, I pick sitcoms, talk shows and news as my main watching targets. News let me keep up with what’s going on with this country. Sitcoms help me understand how native speakers joke around, interact with each other and how to express themselves in different situations. Talk shows like Oprah show help me have a glimpse of American mainstream cultures. Once in a while, I catch a movie and write a review. I am trying hard to create a language-learning environment for myself and force myself to join it actively, not just a passive recipient. Taking notes from Friends is one of my proactive learning approaches. And I benefit a lot from it. 

You may still think sitcoms are too informal, too slangy, too not tasty or something. Let me put it another way, in this forum, our dear administrator posts those popular proverbs”學一個詞” every day. I can pin point most of those proverbs in the sitcoms. So it is ok and tasty to learn those proverbs here in the ”學一個詞” posts on the daily basis, but not in the sitcoms where they may be used in a more natural way or a richer context. What is the point? 

Or please allow me to ask you another question? If you randomly pick one of Friends or Seinfeld episode, how much can you understand it? If you only figure out partially what they are talking about. To be frank, I have to say your English may not be as good as a native speaker. (For a native speaker, no matter he/she is a scholar or plumber, he/she should have any problems to understand a sitcom episode.) Well, this case actually doesn’t exist because I believe you can understand those shallow sitcoms very well and do far more beyond that. 

Then here comes my question: 

How can you understand those idioms and slang so well since you never stoop down to watch those empty calorie sitcoms? Then you must have learned those idioms and slang by some other ways, from your working environment, the people you hang out with, or some decent books or whatsoever. Then those idioms or slang may be not so shallow or useless as you’ve claimed. You just get them from different channels. So maybe the fact is that you are not so against these idioms/slang as you thought. You just don’t like watch sitcoms. That’s it period. Then what’s wrong with other people who happen to like watching sitcoms and gain the knowledge from them?  No matter you just run some errands locally or go to Paris for some noble art show, learning to be broadminded and think/reason from multiple perspectives will always be a good starting point, right? 

I think I have make my points very clear here. I don’t want to elaborate more on this topic. I have no intention to force my opinions or my studying ways on others since different people have different background, environment and requirement for the language learning.  

I just show classmates in this forum what I have learned in details and the way I get these details. If people who have similar background can relate to the learning method I introduced here and find it enlightening for their English study, I am glad. Or you can share with people here detailed examples how you’ve achieved so much so high in English learning.  I believe we will benefit a lot from it. I’m just a stone, waiting for the jade. :) 

Sincerely,

Lilac