Ron's ESL Blogs

Hi! My name is Annie, and I’m here to recommend a great way to learn English. I have lived in Thailand for quite awhile, and I know that English here, as it is in many other countries, is an important language, in that those who have mastered it are more marketable and have more business opportunities than those who have not. While many students here in Thailand have been learning English in school for years, they still have not been able to master English to the extent that they can converse with native English speakers. I have found that one of the best, most efficient ways to learn English, or any language for that matter, is through an immersion program. In the United States, some of the best English teachers, and programs for learning English well and quickly are associated with Uceda Worldwide ESL Schools.

Uceda has a unique teaching methodology that focuses on the needs of each of their students. Each of their teachers is trained in ESL teaching as well as in the Uceda teaching methodology, which focuses on the individual learning needs of each of their students. As part of part of this methodology, Uceda has manufactured it’s own books (which include audio CD’s). These books are an extension of the classroom in that they are designed to help the individual student learn English most effectively.

Uceda schools are also found in some of the most attractive locations in the United States. Some of its more popular schools are found in New York, New Jersey, Florida (Orlando, and West Palm Beach), and Utah.

Some of the programs offered at Uceda Worldwide include; Advantage, Advantage Elite, and Adventure for Youth.

To find out more about Uceda and it’s programs visit their website at http://www.ucedaworldwide.com

Hey yall, I’m a student from UIUC. I just finished a paper about my personal experience on how I learned English for my rhet class, so I want to share this with all non-native speakers.
Feel free to contact me @ wli9@uiuc.edu if you have any questions. Hold you enjoy it and learn something from me! ^_^

I immigrated to the U.S. with my family when I was 17, and that time, I had just graduated from middle school in China. Moving to a different country was a big challenge for me because the culture and the language were totally different from where I used to live. I met with unfamiliar people and learned their way of life. Since my English was limited, I started as a freshman in high school. On the first day I came to my high school I felt isolated from everyone because all of the others spoke English, and I didn’t get a single word about what they talked to me about. Almost all the people in that school were Hispanic and most of the students were immigrants. I was one of only two Chinese students in this school, so it was difficult for me to communicate with the majority of the other students. This made it harder for me to make friends and get them to help me adjust to this new lifestyle. At that moment, I was so frustrated and embarrassed. At last, I gave them a piece of paper to let them write down what they wanted to say to me. Then I looked up in my dictionary and translated what they wrote word by word. However, I couldn’t respond to them because I did not know how to pronounce any word.

I made up my mind to study English diligently. To do so, I needed to take ESL course, which helped non-native English speakers improve their skill in using English. I was the only Chinese student in the class, and most of my classmates were Latino students. The ESL course can not help me learn English directly because the teacher can only explain the class materials in English and Spanish, but not Chinese. So I paid more attention to the teacher’s body language, in order to help me understand what she tried to say. This environment forced me to use the language more often. The more I practiced, the more I understood what the teacher and other students were talking about. That made me big progress in the first step of learning English.

The second year in high school was the hardest year for me. But at the same time, it was also the most fruitful year in my improvement of English. At the beginning of that term, my teacher recommended taking some honor courses. It was a challenge because I was not a native English speaker, but those courses required a high level of reading and writing skills. The reading and writing assignments were difficult because almost half of the vocabulary was unfamiliar for me. To stay in honors I had to become more familiar with the language. Finally, I came up with a strategy. When I encountered some unfamiliar words, I looked them up in my dictionary, and wrote them down on my note cards. I carried those cards everyday and tried to study them whenever I had time.

However, it was more important to know how to use these words in daily life than just knowing the meaning. At the beginning, I was shy and afraid of talking loudly in front of others because I didn’t know whether I used the right word or pronounced the word correctly. I also worried about whether people could understand me and how could they react. I cared about how others react to my English because I was afraid they may laugh at my poor expression or strange accent. So I was trying to escape from speaking in English. But gradually I realized that language was part of my life, and it was a tool to help me connect with this new culture. So I made up my mind to look for a way to improve it. Therefore, I started to use a recording machine and tried to speak loudly at home, and practiced reading a paragraph everyday. Actually, I could now hear how terrible my pronunciation was, but learning by doing, gradually helped me change the way I spoke. Moreover, I screwed up courage to talk with Americans. It was helpful because I could learn from their pronunciation and the way they spoke and at the same time broadening my vocabulary.

What I did most of the time was translation. As a non-native English speaker, I always thought in Chinese first, and then translated it into English. I gradually realized this was one of the biggest problems I was hading with learning the language, because these two languages had different ways of thinking. The difference in tense between Chinese and English was a good example. In English, we should change verbs to their past tense when we wanted to express an action or a condition that occurred in or during the past. But in Chinese, we only needed to add some adverbs to describe that. After a while, I tried to think in English, instead of translating word by word.

Knowing how to use language was more important than knowing vocabulary on the flash cards. I had participated in the science fair for three years, since my sophomore year in high school. From the first one, I realized the importance of language more deeply because I needed to explain my project and my idea in front of judges. I still remember the first time when I was trying to explain my project; I shivered because of my poor English. I didn’t know how to present my idea exactly. After I got the comment, “Lack of English�, from the judges, I felt so frustrated. I spent so much hard work on it, but it failed just because of my poor expression. I realized I should try my best in my English, because language was tool to communicate and to express things. So having a good language skill could help me to explain my work to the judge cleanly. Gradually, I started to get some return from my hard work. From the school fair to regional fair, and finally to the city fair in my senior year, I was really proud of myself when I received my award on the stage, not only because I won the competition but also because people confirmed my hard work because they could comprehend my idea from my presentation.

Throughout my experience in learning English, I realized that leaning English helped me connect with the new culture and helped me make new friends in daily life. The better I speak the more confidence I had in front of others. From the hard time in my learning English, I knew how to face with other difficulties in my life. From learning English, my life changed gradually. I comprehend more and more about American culture and paid more attention to the society. And I made many new friends, which broadened my view and brought me much fun. I enjoyed my life more than before. But I know that is not enough for me. I’ll try my best to do it better.

My name is Anita and I came from Armenia. Armenia is a small, but a beautiful country. It has huge mountains, fast rivers, deep forests and wonderful weather. Armenia has an old and tragic history. Furthermore it has more than 5000 years of history. Armenia had many fateful moments in her history and like miracle it survived from abolition. In ancient times kings managed the country. The borders were starting from Caspian Sea to Mediterranean Sea. It was a pretty big country. During the centuries it became smaller and smaller, because the neighbors many times attacked and surrendered most of the land. Now it has 30,000 km length and it is surrounded with Russia, Turkey and Iran.

There are many similarities and differences between Armenian culture and American culture. When it comes to culture and customs there are a lot of things to talk about. I observed in U.S. that family ties are not that strong as in Armenia. In the U.S. I have seen that marriage is not taken seriously and divorces are too common. Therefore, more then 30% of kids grow up with one parent. In my opinion it has strong impact on any child and makes his or her psychology weak.

In the U.S. people are extremely individual and they don’t understand the important role of neighbors. They don’t even know their neighbors’ names and people never trust their neighbors. This relationship is completely different from my native customs. The Armenians are very close to their neighbors. They are always together, no matter in what situations they are, sadness or happiness. There is a saying “It is better to have a good neighbor then a far relative, whom you usually don’t see oftenâ€?.

In my opinion Armenians, just like Americans, love to celebrate the Holidays. In Armenia, the whole family comes together and they make a big party. Everybody has his own task. The men make barbeques outside of house. Women prepare everything else for dinner. They make those testy desserts, salads, appetizers, cookies and of course cakes and sweets. The ones who don’t have any responsibility are children. They play as much as they want. It is very crowded. I know the Americans also like to celebrate the Holidays but their parties are usually calm and quiet.
In US with this big racial and ethnic diversity of population people live with great harmony. Every one is equal, no matter where you came from and what color is your skin or hair. I like it, because I feel free with my thoughts and opinions. I felt accepted by community from the first day when I came here. I think this is very important for someone, who came from another country, who left his or her family, home, customs.
After living in US for two years I have realized that this country is truly a land of opportunity. This country gave me a chance to educate myself and become what I want to be. In US there are many opportunities to success in your life. As long as you have curiosity and of course you are working hard you can start your carrier any time you want, it doesn’t matter how old are you. This is an extremely huge and new country, with national diversity, contrarily my little, old and one nation Armenia. Even though US is a big country, it is also very organize country with high technology. Here in US the government caring for the people and gives the benefits to the people and makes lives more comfortable.
I love this country and I want to be a part of this big community. I want to build my own home and raise my children here. But there is one think that I will miss that is my homeland; my Armenia. And this feeling will stay with me until I die.

Hello everybody! I have already talked about one of the differences between U.S. and my country Mexico, but this time I’m going to say more about this topic, because I think it is very fun and interesting for us to learn about other cultures and here in U.S. there are too many we can learn about.

First of all, I had never imagined sitting in the classroom and taking some classes with Armenian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, and even other Latin-American people because in Mexico the majority, of course are Mexican people, and is very strange for me to live in a country in which there are so many people from other countries. We all know that every country has its own customs and they are very different from mine.

When I came here I didn’t know how to talk and how to communicate with people from other cultures because you never know if your actions sometimes can offend other person, for example when you make eye-contact to others maybe it is OK with you, but maybe it is not OK with the other person because in my culture like here, is very common to look at someone directly, that means you are being friendly, but in other cultures it may mean you are being aggressive.

Other different custom is that in Mexico you can say “hi!” to anyone else even though you don’t know him/her, or if one of your friends introduces to you other person, you can kiss him/her, obviously, in the cheek, which is very normal. I didn’t know that in other cultures it is not normal because people from other countries don’t do that, they say that it is not usual in their countries.

In Mexico we are very warm people and we are friendly but when you come here from any other country you have to be very careful because of the differences between cultures. Actually, Mexican culture is not too different than American culture but the only big difference is that here it is not just one culture, here are too many.

Another difference between U.S. and Mexico is that in Mexico we are more conservative people. In Mexico we love people who have values and principles. One example is that in Mexico it is not common to live with your boyfriend, because most of our parents would like that we leave home only when we get married. And also, in Mexico it is more common to get married over 25 years old or something like that, because it is supposed to be when you already got your bachelor’s degree and you can already afford yourself and in the future your family. This customs in Mexico are common, but not all Mexican think like that.

At first, it was a little difficult for me. I suppose for all of us, but now I enjoy very much sitting in my class and listening to other languages and also to talk about another customs. In my opinion this is a great opportunity because I don’t have to travel around the world to know a little bit about other countries.

Have you ever driven along the California coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles? If not, you should try, it is worth trying.

Driving along the California coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles is one of the most beautiful trips you can take. The scenery is engaging and there are lots of interesting places to visit along the way.

From San Francisco, get onto Freeway 1 south to Monterrey. From there, take the scenic Seventeen-Mile Drive and get ready for a view you will never forget – to your right the Pacific Ocean, and to your left the Del Monte Forest and the Santa Lucia Mountains.
Freeway 1 south from Carmel is quite narrow in some places, with lots of turns, no place for nervous drivers. But if you just take it nice and slow, you will find the spectacular view of ocean, sky and forest is worth a few anxious moments. A little further south along the coast you will come to one of the most interesting sights in all of California – San Simeon, sometimes called the Hearst Castle. San Simeon was built by newspaperman William Randolph Hearst in the 1920’s as his personal residence. It includes La Casa Grande, an enormous building with 130 rooms – three guest houses, a 104-foot swimming pool, a small airport, and more than fifty miles of private beaches.

Continuing south along the coast, take Route 101 through the beautiful town of Santa Barbara and then head on into Los Angeles, or simply “L.A.� as it’s called by most Americans. Of course, there are countless things to see and do in Los Angeles itself but, if you have time to take the ocean route south along the coast from San Francisco, getting there can truly be half the fun.