<You speak English fine and naturally. I detect no errors in your writing.>
I never stopped writing even I was a zero beginner (someone who only knows greetings). During my whole learning process I never stopped writing. I kept writing emails and compositions all the time (perfect or not). On the other hand, I kept reading and listening stuff that held my fancy all the time. Infact, writing helps me a lot to fix my newly-acquired vocabulary and I have some extra time in my hands to go over each sentence if I want to. I read, listen, watch, write but I don't speak that well because I was disillusioned into thinking that speaking skills will emerge from nowhere as long as I could accumulate lots of comprehensible input. So I did not bother to practice. I did not open my mouth. Now I am forced to repeat myself by Americans during conversations. I want to communicate in the language effortlessly, that's the ultimate goal of every learner but you know, I screw it up, I am not good at speaking. My passion for language is flagging and nowadays I am thinking along these lines: "What's the use of learning a language when you can not speak with nativespeakers in real life?" What's the use of wasting a lot of time into learning a language for nothin' when the net result is zero?
Here is my massive input that I have gone through over 5 years period.
1. All seasons of "Friends". I watched them with subtitles.
2. All seasons of "Prison Break".
3. Two seasons of "Sex and City". I watched them twice.
4. Four seasons of "Seinfield". I watched them with subtitles.
5. 150 Hollywood movies.
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. I watched them with subtitles. 11 hours long, can be bought at Amazon, produced by Grenada.
7. Casual listening of Discovery Channel, BBC, CNN and Reality TV.
8. I was a big fan of Jerry Springer. I watched most of his shows on a regular basis. Probably around 25.
9. Unabridged Audiobooks of Crime and Punishment, Ten days in a madhouse, and The Adventures of Sherlockholmes. I completed them with listening-read method(when you listen to a text while reading.)
10. Sports commentaries.
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Reading:
1. I read two short novels of Lucy Mongotmery by Pause and Think method.
2. I am not a fan of reading newspapers because they carry a tone of pessimism and that puts me off big time. As I am an avid watcher of sports, so I was restricted to reading sports related articles.
3. Forums, websites and blogs.
4. Read two short e-books on "speed-reading."
5. Read 3 computer related magazines.
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Reviewed 9,000 English sentences by Supermemo for vocab retention.
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I wrote emails often.
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I spoke only 8-10 times in my whole life. I was forced to repeat myself almost on all occassions.
The final outcome is not very pleasant and I am not sure what to do. Give up language learning and spend the same amount of time on something else.
beneficii, here is a question for you. Was my input massive or not? If it isn't, how would you modulate it?
I never stopped writing even I was a zero beginner (someone who only knows greetings). During my whole learning process I never stopped writing. I kept writing emails and compositions all the time (perfect or not). On the other hand, I kept reading and listening stuff that held my fancy all the time. Infact, writing helps me a lot to fix my newly-acquired vocabulary and I have some extra time in my hands to go over each sentence if I want to. I read, listen, watch, write but I don't speak that well because I was disillusioned into thinking that speaking skills will emerge from nowhere as long as I could accumulate lots of comprehensible input. So I did not bother to practice. I did not open my mouth. Now I am forced to repeat myself by Americans during conversations. I want to communicate in the language effortlessly, that's the ultimate goal of every learner but you know, I screw it up, I am not good at speaking. My passion for language is flagging and nowadays I am thinking along these lines: "What's the use of learning a language when you can not speak with nativespeakers in real life?" What's the use of wasting a lot of time into learning a language for nothin' when the net result is zero?
Here is my massive input that I have gone through over 5 years period.
1. All seasons of "Friends". I watched them with subtitles.
2. All seasons of "Prison Break".
3. Two seasons of "Sex and City". I watched them twice.
4. Four seasons of "Seinfield". I watched them with subtitles.
5. 150 Hollywood movies.
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. I watched them with subtitles. 11 hours long, can be bought at Amazon, produced by Grenada.
7. Casual listening of Discovery Channel, BBC, CNN and Reality TV.
8. I was a big fan of Jerry Springer. I watched most of his shows on a regular basis. Probably around 25.
9. Unabridged Audiobooks of Crime and Punishment, Ten days in a madhouse, and The Adventures of Sherlockholmes. I completed them with listening-read method(when you listen to a text while reading.)
10. Sports commentaries.
=========
Reading:
1. I read two short novels of Lucy Mongotmery by Pause and Think method.
2. I am not a fan of reading newspapers because they carry a tone of pessimism and that puts me off big time. As I am an avid watcher of sports, so I was restricted to reading sports related articles.
3. Forums, websites and blogs.
4. Read two short e-books on "speed-reading."
5. Read 3 computer related magazines.
=======
Reviewed 9,000 English sentences by Supermemo for vocab retention.
=======
I wrote emails often.
=======
I spoke only 8-10 times in my whole life. I was forced to repeat myself almost on all occassions.
The final outcome is not very pleasant and I am not sure what to do. Give up language learning and spend the same amount of time on something else.
beneficii, here is a question for you. Was my input massive or not? If it isn't, how would you modulate it?