How to learn English from zero?

A few years ago (elder brother 35+), I still ask my father what is "attributive clause", be despised.

My wife learns Japanese, whenever I laugh at her English, she tests my English grammar, then I have to laugh at her excel very rotten.

But this does not affect me to read the English document, also does not affect me to apply for a reputation to also calculate to go to the foreign enterprise PM post, and did not be they found my English is actually very "rotten" and fire me off.

How did you do that? This is a story of how to rely on self-study to master computer English application ability ... Don't want to read the story, jump straight to the end of the answer.

My father is a teacher, teaching college English, this is my first bad English from the primary reason. Cause is the first day when he was bored, check my English learning situation, the word orange I always spell wrong (days AH now also did not spell right), and then was implemented home violence, since then I refused him to check or tutor my English study.

My English teacher surnamed Zhou, so far I still grateful to him, he inspired my interest in learning English, and taught me the core skills to learn English-the IPA, in addition to 26 letters, this is my most solid knowledge of English, which makes me look up the dictionary can know how to read a word.

I always think--the most important thing to learn English is to be able to read out, read wrong also does not matter. It's difficult to read a sentence, start with a word.

Now the electronic dictionaries, online dictionaries have real voice can follow imitation, imitate the time to sum up the pronunciation of the law, in the face of new words when the first guess its pronunciation, and then check the dictionary to verify their own guess.

With this method, long-term accumulation, open reading is not a problem.

The time of the day, changed a beautiful teacher. The reason why I dislike her is that she is boring in class, now think about it is because she did not often praise me, and her lectures are the focus of grammar, teaching methods are repeated, since then left me with a grammar phobia. It is worth mentioning that the math teacher of the first few year also not like me.

A teacher not praised the students are no future, the school curriculum is very boring but I have to go every day, always to find something to do for themselves. Then I got a Casio calculator, the model is fx-3600, it has a lot of buttons so it looks very sharp, and a thin brochure (English + Japanese).

In order to make self-study time not so boring, I decided to read it. For a student to learn English for a year or so, such a "professional literature" is naturally difficult to read, never mind, I have plenty of time.

A stupid method, if it works, is a good idea.

My stupid way is to copy the instructions in English neatly in the math exercise book, and then use an English-Chinese dictionary to check the meaning of each word, and then try to translate it. Do not translate, the Japanese version of the part of the Chinese characters, and then guess. Gradually, the frequency of the dictionary is not so high, because these words have been checked before, gradually all remember, such as calculator, do not need to check.

Vocabulary begins to accumulate.

One months later, I used this calculator to write the first program in life--solve a two-time equation, to deal with math teacher's exercises, and to get the short favor of the beauty deskmate.

I thought the last harvest was the most important, and now I know I fell into the pit of software development.

A few months later, the first computer in life, no tutorials, no internet, no teacher, some only a "MS-DOS 5.0 User's Guide." (It seems to be the name, I don't remember clearly)

Continue to use the stupid way to read it, read do not understand on the machine verification, small six months after basically can not use the dictionary, and DOS operation is quite solid.

Reading these two user's Guide gives me the biggest gain is:

Don't be afraid of English and use it for me, no matter how bad I think my level.

The ability of English can be divided into listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. With the above experience, read (read aloud, read) is not a big problem, translation has a certain experience (letter, elegance, Tatsu concept is originally known).

After a few years, the English level did not improve significantly, barely able to cope with the exam-not afraid to remember words vocabulary is no problem, vocabulary up to read can be basically guessed, choose the question by the sense of language (who let me read a large amount of it), composition mainly rely on the word, cloze ... Let's talk about something else.

Listening to the VOA special Chinese, is a little bit of progress.

At this stage my English application is mainly used to read technical documents and books, and benefited, such as learning C language when Mr. Tan wrote did not read, read a few pages of foreigners to write the tutorial understand. Microsoft MCSE Original Tutorial finished reading also incidentally test a card, discrete math make-up is chewed out an English textbook before, I have to be how boring.

A lot of people have a consensus--in terms of technical learning, reading a foreigner's book is easier to understand. Foreign authors carefully consider how the reader can understand it, I have seen a C-language tutorial tirelessly to teach readers the order of operations, this is our primary school content ah.

Domestic technical textbooks are often written so that the reader can not understand, I often doubt that they have understood, or deliberately let the reader can not understand to appear to their own level of high.

Many people are afraid of English, in fact, is afraid of exams. And the study and use of English itself is not difficult, is not afraid.

No matter how bad you think of English, use "**ck" curse, it must be very strong, it means that you have the ability to use English.

For most programmers who are not working in a foreign company, the ability to read English can barely suffice.

The root of the pain and joy of life is that you are not content with the status quo.

After working in a software company for a few years, a foreign client told me that they need a PM, through the preliminary project contact they think I'm pretty good, ask me if I am interested to go, I said my English is not very good has no relationship, he said it doesn't matter.

This is a pit.

Next he told me that first there was a telephone interview, with the manager of Beijing and the manager of the headquarter working together in English.

The money was twice times more than I was, and it was a pit to jump.

Fortunately, the phone interview is not immediately, but three days later, during which I put the questions they may have asked, I need to answer the answers in advance written, stored in the database, I also deliberately wrote a program search I would say?

I am not nervous during the interview, anyway, the key to introduce their work experience and project experience (prepared beforehand), not too fluent, grammar does not need too standard, not too like back.

Later I went to Beijing after the post, fortunately, most of the colleagues are Chinese, as for the old United States, generally do not deal with me, meet to greet a few words of the ability or some. A few Indians, let's talk to each other by email.

However, the mix is not the past.

I met a challenge, and colleagues chat in Chinese basically enough, but the mail and report to write in E, and write is my short board.

My solution is to go into the company's document library and pull up all of their previous documents, induction, summary, imitate their common sentence patterns, expression methods, and then whined whined to write a document, after writing to his father did not forget to send a copy, let him help me to change the grammar error, a person one hour can write good documents, I can be a big day.

Colleague's evaluation--"Tony, I found that your English is much better than what you said." ”

Isn't that nonsense?

Three months later, the work of English requirements can be met, and do not need to be sent to others to correct, but if you want to use English casual chat, or some difficulties.

Two years later, I left the company, I have to admit, because English is not good enough, will affect my development in foreign enterprises, do some low-level work not too big problem, but to go up, or not realistic.

Later, I went back to Wuhan, I pulled a small stall to do a few years of outsourcing, with the previous experience, American customers can cope with the past. So far my English proficiency has been limited to this, if only as a common programmer's English proficiency requirements, basically enough.

Speaking such a long story, in fact my English proficiency is very weak. My answer is only for "English for Programming".

Now to summarize:

1. Do not fear English, you are afraid of English before because you are afraid of exams, not because of the fear of English itself.

2. To have a protracted war of preparation, vocabulary accumulation, reading ability to improve not overnight can be achieved, adhere to a little bit every day, accumulate over the cumulative. From reading English technical documents, just because you do not understand you need to read it, one day to read a paragraph, is success, is accumulation.

Do you need anything else?