I have been learning English in China since 2005. However, I still don’t have confidence in my English.
I’m now studying at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I am immersed in an English environment now. It is at this place that I have chances to speak directly to native English speakers. I need to use English to listen to others, to talk with others, to read articles and to write messages.
As for the listening and reading, I can generally understand others, except some jokes based on local things.
However, it’s a little hard for me to deliver my message to others. Some sentences confuse my friends. Sometimes it is a grammar problem, I made lots of mistakes on tenses and single/plural. Sometimes it is a vocabulary problem, I misspelled the important words. Well, these are still not the most serious difficulty. It is the phrase, especially the prepositional phrase that causes most misunderstanding.
Most Chinese have the same difficulties as me. I know the reason behind this phenomenon. The education and test method drive students to focus on reading and listening, to receive messages and to understand others. However, they have limited chance to practice expressing themselves.
I have to practice expressing myself more and more. I am also writing blog posts about my daily life and work. I think I can post the content on lang-8 first, and then post it to my blog after reviewing.