Everyday English for Conversational Situations

Author: Meng Zhaoqiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-12-01
Features: Learning a foreign language involves five skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. However, when Chinese people study English, what they are often good at is not any of these five skills, but rather solving exercises. This leads to a strange phenomenon: high school graduates who have studied English for at least six years, as well as most other English learners, are often poor at English speaking. Even top students admitted to Peking University or Tsinghua University rarely communicate fluently with English-speaking people—this phenomenon in foreign language education is vividly referred to as the "silent English" phenomenon. The main reason for this is that, in the process of learning English, we neglect to place the language in real-life contexts, and we know very little about the cultural background, customs, and daily habits of English-speaking countries. The successful bid for the Beijing Olympics and China's entry into the WTO all urgently call for us to step up our efforts in learning foreign languages, especially in learning situational English. In light of this, we have compiled Everyday Situational English and Everyday Conversational English, hoping they will be of benefit to all English enthusiasts.