LinguistTony's blog

As an old-timer of The Linguist, I should have fully understood all the learning principles at The Linguist, but I surprisingly found that I did not.

I once saved lots of phrases at The Linguist and found it very useful to increase my vocabulary level. However, I stopped saving phrases online through The Linguist, but just highlighted the phrases on the paper contents. I did this since I wanted to create a more efficient way of learning phrases on my own.

After a long time of testing my methods, I eventually found that I was wrong. I've recently gone back to saving phrases online again, and I surprisingly found that I got a better feeling for observing the construction of key phrases. It's quite silly for me to stop saving phrases online just for my curiosity of testing my ideas. However, I guess that it must be the path for me to largely understand how powerful saving phrases is.

This time, I went back to saving my powerful weapons of the language. I have no hesitation for sure!

I am a very organized person. I like everything to be in order and under my control. I usually write down my plans and schedules before I start to do something. This habit helped me to learn English well for the first two years at The Linguist, since I was determined to obey my learning schedule step by step.

However, I found that this good habit of doing something also caused some problems in my English learning and makes it difficult for me to keep making progress. I have many wonderful ideas about learning English and enjoyable learning materials that I've recorded from TV or downloaded from the Internet. I should have enjoyed these great authentic contents for the next step in my English adventure, but I can't.

The reason is that I am too organized and I would seriously rather not do something before I come up with my ideal study plan. The worst thing is that I don't know how to combine my ideas with The Linguist and make it become a complete study plan. I know that perfect plan never exists, but my damn organized personality always pushes me to look for it. It's my poor fate!!!

I already received many caring mail from my Linugist friends these days. They all cared about the earthquake happend two days ago in Taiwan. I am fine since the earthquake mainly caused problems in the southern part of Taiwan.

I got many caring messages from my Japanese friends. I think that it because they can fully relate to how earthquake terrible it is, since the earthquake is also one of nature disasters happen in Japanese very often!!

I haven't post any articles in my blog for a long time since the injuries of my fingers and back. Besides, I have been busy with my school work. 

For me, this long vacation is quite necessary. During this period of time, I did not only take enough rest for my tired body, but also have time to think of my future plans for language learning.

Steve mentions very often that perfection is not the goal for language learning and I agree with him, too. However, achieving a better level in my English is still my non-stop goal that I will keep working hard to make it happend.

I've run the THY discussion group for one year. THY members have come and gone over the past year, but I am glad that I have gotten to know excellent THY members during this period.

In total, there have been a total of seven people who joined the THY discussion group as official members. Two are male, the others are female. Both guys didn't stay at the THY for very long for their own personal reasons. In other words, I always have had female THY members.

The most interesting thing is that all my loyal members come from Japan. I often think that I have many Japanese sisters, and I enjoy talking to them each Friday. Having a weekly discussion with them is not only one of my important activities for English learning, but also some of my most relaxed leisure time.

My THY friends are not just my English learning partners, but very special friends across the board. Although we haven't met with each other in person, I often feel like they are my old friends in another country.

Review for unknown words:

1.      Select one of my old studied contents, and pick up several words for reviewing.

2.      Check the meaning of each word, and then click on “check examples” icon at the Review section in order to know how these words could be used in different contexts.

3.      Read the example sentences out loud.

Review for known words:

1.      Select some active words such as “accept”, “respect” from the 3000 active words lists which are offered by my Longman English- English dictionaries.

2.      Save these active words at The Linguist for the later review.

3.      Check the meaning of each word by my Longman dictionary, and then click on “check examples” icon at the Review section in order to know how these words could be used in different contexts.

4.      Read the example sentences out loud.

I will fun this plan from now on, and I hope that I will achieve another breakthrough in my English. 

One of my cousins, Henry, went to Japan the other day. He is studying at Sophia University(上智大学) in Tokyo, and he will stay there for one year as an exchange student from San Francisco University.

His main major is economics, but he also took Japanese language as his second major since he was interested in Japanese culture. He was so excited to get a chance to study in Japan for one year since he couldn't get to know many Japanese friends when he was in America.

I think that his Japanese is not bad since he has a huge desire to communicate with Japanese people and experience their culture. He is motivated to learn Japanese because he wants to know more things about Japan. He also shared his experiences of learning Japanese when he was in Taiwan before flying to Japan. He really thinks that my advantage of knowing Chinese characters will help my learning a great deal, and I think so, too.

Having said that, he still had trouble understanding local people's speaking since Japanese people assumed Henry was a Japanese young guy. He was nervous when he was at banks or in restaurants since all the people spoke with him very quickly in Japanese!! However, he gradually got used to Japanese spoken at the normal speed. I am sure that he will speak Japanese like a native speaker one year from now.

Why did I choose Tony as my English name?? Well, the story happened many years ago when I was a kid. During the 1980s, there was a famous American comedy called "Who's The Boss" and my family loved this comedy very much. In this drama, Tony is a funny and kind single father who takes care of his daughter very well. Everyone just enjoyed Tony's great performance in this drama so much. To tell you the truth, I was not really able to watch this show since I was too young! However, I really liked this name, Tony!

My mother once gave me several possible English names such as Joe and George. She offered me these English names because the pronunciations of both of them are close to my Chinese name. I don’t like them because their pronunciations sound awful, and are close to another funny word in Taiwanese. I told myself that I would like to use Tony as my English name.

Many years ago, I took a children's English course. Our teacher asked all the students to pick an English name. No doubt, Tony was the first name that I could remember. Therefore, I decided to use Tony as my English name. After then, Tony became my official English name.

However, I didn't like to be called Tony at the beginning since some classmates in the English course liked to make fun of my English name. They thought Tony sounded like another funny word in Taiwanese. Luckily, they didn't keep doing that for too long since they also faced the same situations when made fun of by other students.

When I was a university student, one of my classmates in the English class used to call me John, not Tony. He decided to do that because he thought the pronunciation of John was similar to my Chinese last name. However, I found that John was not a good name since it also means "toilet" in slang.

Actually, before I joined The Linguist, there were no people calling me Tony in my daily life. Tony was just an English name which was less important than my real name. However, lots of Linguist friends called me Tony after I joined The Linguist. I've now really enjoy being Tony in my English world!!

I just finished a great with Tracey and other three Linguist friends (Yukiko, Satomi and Mai) Our topic was “TV shows” We shared each our own favorite TV shows and disliked TV shows.

One of Tracey’s questions was very interesting: “If you could create the world's greatest TV show, what would it be? Who would be the star of the show?”

I would like to create a show called “The Linguist idol show” It’s a singing competition show just like “American Idol.” All the Linguist members and tutors can take part into this show and sing your favorite songs. Since we are Linguist members, we have to show our talent for languages. All the competitors should prepare at least three songs in three languages. One is your native language, the other is English song, another is another foreign language.

Our judge, of course, is Steve Kaufmann since he can understand what we are singing in all kinds of languages.

Do you think that I am crazy for running this idea?? No, I am serious!!  I might run my Linguist karaoke bar with Tracey. It must be fun for me to sing some songs on my Vox blog!! Is anyone interested in this idea and would like to join us??  Singing English songs is a good way of improving your pronunciation naturally!!!  

Come on!! Record your song sample and send  to the judge of The Linguist Idol. They will judge you very carefully and professionally!!!