Speaking of learning a new language, most people would ask me the similar questions like "what is the best way of learning a language?" or "What would be the fastest way to learn a new language?" The answer would never be simple. I feel people learn a language in different ways. For example, there are many bloggers suggest learning a new language through watching movies and listening musics would be effective. However, these approaches did not work well on me instead reading and learning from books becomes the best way for me. During the class discussion, my groupmates mentioned that learning a new language too fast might not be good because it may not turn to the real learning. Without practicing and experiencing, it would be hard to turn to be long-term memory. I strongly agree with that. Most Chinese start learning English by memorizing thousands of words, however, after years, if they did not use those words, they could not even have a piece of memory in their minds about the words they used to remember. I would say learning a language is never a short term stuff, it will take time and please do enjoy it. One day, when you look back, you would be surprised about how much progresses you made.
In the class, the discussion about leadership might be affected by leaders' culture raised my attention. After spending many years studying in America, I realized that at school, we were taught how to be successful on academic, however, we, as international students, do not have families taught us how to be successful on social world in an English speaking country. The words we are using and the way we are talking might not fall into the mainstream. That might result in misunderstands during conversations. In addition, I believe that not only international students are suffering about excluding from social life with native English speakers in society, but also any people who are ESOL might face the similar situation due to non-mainstream family cultures. One common phenomenon could prove my idea. When a group of people met each other for the very first time, it might be easy to see white people prefer to first start talking with white, asian faces are willing to stay together to know each other and black might already start joking with other blacks. It is nature to stay with people from the same or similar background.
