The English environment of international students is worrying

Before going abroad, many people may naively think that their English will become very good after studying abroad. The fact is not always that. No matter if you have just come abroad or have been staying here for many years, you will soon find that no matter where you are in the world, many places have been “occupied” by Chinese people. Especially when you arrive in Toronto where the Chinese population is dense, you will not need to speak any English to survive. If you need to take the IELTS test, you can find many  strategies for preparing for the IELTS test&nbsponline. But how can we improve our daily English skills?
I often hear that many people go to Canada to study for a few years, and their improvement of Mandarin far exceeds the improvement of their English. The reason is that Chinese people tend to "gather" (whether before graduation or after graduation). In short, even if you go abroad, it does not mean you will get a "good language-learning environment."

Benefits of Improving English for International Students in Canada

It can be said that improving English has always been a common goal for most people studying abroad. Because everyone understands, whether you plan to study abroad for a few years and return to China, or stay abroad after graduation, speaking fluent and authentic English will be of great help to your future development. Below, we have summarized some the following benefits:

  • Learn more in class.The more you understand in class, the easier the homework will be outside of class.
  • In life, communication will be more convenient.Living in Canada requires you to open a bank account, apply for government documents, and handle traffic tickets, or even when you are going out for travel and other scenarios. Fluent English can provide you with great convenience.
  • You will be able to better integrate into the local society,so as to experience the more authentic Canadian culture. Perceptual knowledge of North American culture is an intangible asset.
  • Better establish a social network in Canada.Whether you are staying in Canada or returning home after graduation, network resources are crucial to personal development. Especially if your interests are particularly niche, you can find various interest groups on social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
  • When looking for a job, you will have more choices and room to develop.People living in Toronto and Vancouver, where Chinese are densely populated, know that although there are many job opportunities in Chinese companies, there is usually limited space for promotion. If your English is good, then your career direction will not be limited to Chinese companies.
  • Your personal confidence will also be greatly lifted.It is wrong to think that improving your English is just one aspect of self-development. Speaking fluent English is also very helpful for improving your self-esteem.
  • The best learning tool to improve your professional skills after studying EnglishEnglish is the key that opens doors to more possibilities and opportunities. In simpler terms, you will be able to read and understand many first-hand materials that have not yet been translated, and you will benefit from the access of more valuable resources of information, such asYouTube, Udemy , CourseRA&nbspand many other platforms.
  • English provides an advantage in retrieving information.The main language used on the Internet is English: three quarters of the world’s mail, telegrams and telegrams are in English; more than half of the world’s scientific journals are in English; and English is the medium in which 80% of the world's computers store information. That's why in Google, the information searched in English is definitely more abundant than the data in the Chinese search engine, Baidu. Therefore, Google proves to be more useful, allowing us to find information quickly.

After coming to Canada, I have personally improved my English

When I left China in 2009. Back then, my IELTS score was only 5.5. When I graduated in 2012, I had a conversation with some foreigners who asked me how long I had been abroad. Almost all of them would shockingly stare at me and say, "3 years? Your English is greeeeeeeeat!" The reason for their surprise is because they knew people who have been in Canada for 5 years, or even 10 years, who have not made such a huge breakthrough in English acquisition.

Creating a good English-learning environment for yourself is the key

Above, I have summarized all the methods of learning English I came to Canada, which can be summed up to one strategy: creating a good language environment for yourself. When you have a good English learning environment, improvement happens naturally. However, after going abroad, the vast majority of Chinese people still prefer to stay in their Chinese circles, or prefer to watch Chinese entertainment programs.
How can I break the habits and create a good language environment for myself?

12 ways to create a good English-learning environment for yourself

Here, I will summarize my personal learning experience, and draw on the advice of others on the Internet to put together the following most effective methods.

Choose an English-speaking homestay family

Try to find a host family of native speakers. To a large extent, learning English is about understanding and learning the culture attached to the language. Living with a host family is a great way to experience North American family culture firsthand and quickly improve your English.
During your stay, sending each other small gifts, spending time chatting over meals, and participating in family activities are some of the better ways bond with the host family. Here is a detailed introduction to this topic on the our website,"considerations for staying with host families while studying in Canada".，对这个话题有详细的介绍。

For off-campus accommodation, choose a place with native residents

I still remember my first year in Canada, when I was living with three Chinese people. When the summer vacation came, these three seniors graduated at the same time. I spontaneously contacted my landlord one month in advance, and asked him, “Can I help you find new tenants?” He was beyond excited that I was willing to help him advertise and show the apartment, he was practically grinning from ear to ear. However, my English was not very good, and I did not know how to describe the apartment in English. My idea was to go onto Kijiji and copy what the locals wrote (another great opportunity to learn real English). I edited my advertisement and posted it on Kijiji. I printed out another copy and posted it on the school bulletin board. It took less than two weeks to find three new roommates, Kevin, Robbie and Charlsie (we are still in contact). When school started, I found other roommate, who is also a local.
Here are a few other tips for getting along with locals your age: go out with them more often; cooked dinner and invited them over to eat; watch TV shows they like; listen to the songs they're listening to and so on. That is how I created an excellent English environment for myself in my spare time. If you rent a house or apartment near your school, chances are your roommate will be a local student at a nearby school. Picking a location with more native speakers may take some time, but it's worth it.

Choose a job in an English environment;

Whether you are "rich enough to not have to work" or needing to earn some tuition and living expenses, I personally think:

Your experience studying abroad is incomplete if you don’t have work experience.

Studying abroad is itself the best opportunity to practice your independence. Without parental care, you are forced to rely on yourself and your friends to solve these problems while you are abroad. Part-time work not only allows you to earn money for your living expenses, but also provides you with better language-learning opportunities. From personal experience, even working at a busy place like Tim Hortons allows you to practice the basic "Restaurant English." Some people say that "Restaurant English" is not very practical, and that it is not worth learning. They may be half right. For example:

Volunteer in an English-speaking environment

People who study abroad will realize how popular it is to volunteer for NPOs (non-profit organizations). If you do not know what NPOs there are in your city, try Googling

"NPO + your city/town" or "volunteer jobs + your city/town".

For instance, my friend, Tammy did very well in this aspect. She found volunteer opportunities at the Salvation Army during her summer vacation. Not only did she make a lot of new friends, but also got a very good reference for her resume.

Join ToastMaster

这里我想鼓励大家都去，常见ToastMasteris a non-profit organization that helps people improve their speaking skills. You meet once or twice a week to practice your speaking. The commoners are usually local, and few Chinese have the courage to meet up with them. Find a meeting place near you through this website:

Make friends with Canadians who share common interests

There are two main benefits to maintaining one or two hobbies abroad:

  1. There are many instructional videos in English on YouTube (with subtitles).
  2. With this hobby, it will be easier to make friends with native speakers.

This hobby should be social. Why do we emphasize on the "social" aspect here? Social interests can help to improve English because of people with common interests tend to gather. Natives and Chinese alike, love to hang out with people with the same interests.
As an example, I like playing the guitar very much. Therefore, I found many English guitar-teaching videos online. At first, I encountered a lot of guitar terminology and often could not understand it, but after a month or two of persistence and vocabulary learning, watching these English videos no longer became a problem. Coincidentally, it just so happened that my foreign roommates also liked to play the guitar. So we went from practicing as a duo to playing in a band together. This hobby really helped me integrate into the native speakers community.
There are actually many other social activities, including ToastMasters (which is a non-profit organization that helps people develop their public speaking skills), ball games and sports, yoga classes, MMA classes, school clubs, etc.

Make friends with Native Speakers;

Making friends with the locals is something that many international students have thought about and tried, but it usually doesn't go well.
I have heard about a lot of difficulties such as: "Locals like to drink at parties, but I can't drink"; "They talk so fast that I can't follow"; "There are too many cultural differences between China and the west." In North America, men and women generally drink more. While you need to know that no one forces you to drink at a party, there is no "Chinese drinking culture" here. Therefore, if you are not a drinker, it does not mean that you can’t join a drinking party.
For those of you who think "they're talking too fast," I suggest you politely ask them to speak slowly. The locals know that English is your second language and will be considerate of your feelings.
Another popular way to make friends is to invite people over to your house for a potluck (a potluck is when everyone brings a portion of food they have cooked or bought).

Making friends locally require an occasion and a medium

As mentioned before, we suggested that finding an English-speaking homestay family, getting an English-speaking job, living with English-speaking roommates, and taking up a few hobbies. If you have 5 points as a basis for making friends, the subsequent dating process will be much smoother.

Watch YouTube Videos

Now YouTube has an extra feature that it did not have before:automatic subtitle generation. This function is really a salvation to English learners! Although the subtitles generated by speech recognition are far from perfection, for English learners, this is a treasure trove.
Also, YouTube has a large collection of videos, no matter what your interest is, you can almost find everything you need in English.
As a personal example, I was particularly fond of learning guitar and singing English songs, so I watched a lot of guitar tutorials on YouTube. From this I was able to practice my listening skills very well. I also improved my guitar playing skills and learned a lot of guitar terms, which helped me in discussions of guitar-related topics. The most important thing is that learning something I love makes the whole learning process very pleasant.

Through hobbies and interests, my English improved naturally.

》 Listen to the Audible Books in English.

Audible is an audiobook software by Amazon. Many books on Amazon are equipped with "Audible Editions." If your purpose of improving English is to make your daily life more convenient, and not for academic purposes, then I do not recommend the classics, especially British classics because North American English is very different from British English.
The biggest advantage of audiobooks is that it you can listen to them during any idle time you may have. You can listen to them while doing housework, on the bus, while walking, taking a bath, etc. Another advantage is that it can help you learn the pronunciation of words more easily.
There are many contemporary books worth listening to. The words in these books are more modern and colloquial, which can be inspiring.
Here are a few of my recommendations:

Watch more American dramas (with subtitles!)

Many people learn English by watching American dramas, but few people pointed out that the most important thing about watching American dramas is that there must be Chinese and English subtitles. There may be a sentence or new word that you do not understand. No matter how many times you listen to it, you still do not understand it. If there were no English subtitles, would you be able to spell it out just by listening to it?
Back when I first came to Canada, how did watching "Friends" help to lay a solid foundation for my spoken English? Many people do not believe that I have watched 236 episodes of "Friends" four times! This is how I "watch" American TV dramas: the first time around, I kept pressing pause to take notes. If I couldn't hear clearly or couldn't understand, I would look up the new words. This turtle speed allows me to go through one or two episodes each night, and a few more episodes on the weekend. I spent more than half a year watching 10 seasons of Friends.

The first time I watched it; I really felt that the show was boring and dull. I did not know what everyone was laughing about. However, when I saw the 10th season, there were many expressions that I had taken notes of from previous seasons. I was able to understand them. This is progress!

The second time around, there was little need to pause the video to take notes. For those new words and phrases I was once unfamiliar with, I started to understand them and I was able to hear and see them being used in real-life situations. I also began to understand the humour in a lot of the scenes.

Watching it the third time really helped me see why I did not find it funny the first time. It was because I did not understand the North American culture at the time, and many English expressions were difficult to understand. I understood 40% without the subtitles the first time, and 80% without the subtitles the second time. By the time I watched it for the third time, I basically understood everything.

Here, we would also like to suggest that when choosing an American drama to watch, it is better to choose ones that are relatable to your daily life.

》 Listen to English Podcasts：

This could be understood as "thematic broadcast stations." No matter what your hobbies are, such as playing guitar, studying English, or computer programming, you can find Podcast radio stations dedicated to different topics.
For example, I enjoy listening to experts discussingsearch engine optimizationtechniques. So, I subscribed to a lot of Podcast radio stations about the topic and listened to these columns during my free time. This not only helped me improve my professional skills, but also helped to improve my English.
For those of you reading this article, I have found some Podcast stations that are great for learning English.

  • Stuff You Should KnowA well-known Podcast series. Each issue introduces a theme, which covers a wide range of topics. The two hosts speak with humour and informality, but there is a lot of useful content that can feed knowledge to your brain.
  • 英语铺子：主持人声音很好听，经常介绍一些英语书籍。
  • 潘吉JENNY告诉你：Openlanguage 的创始人与老美搭档的对话节目，内容涵盖比较广，五花八门，学习美语，了解美国文化，热点，很不错。

If you know any more podcasts suitable for learning English, please share it with everyone in the comments below.

Find a local boyfriend/girlfriend.

This method is also effective. I won't go into details.
It takes courage to fall in love with a foreigner. Here, you have my blessings and support!

Some data about English

English is currently one of the most widely spoken and written languages in the world, with approximately 380 million native speakers.
Through the global influence of native English speakers in movies, music, radio, science and the Internet in the recent decades, English is now the most widely studied second language in the world.
Due to the need to master English in the working environment in many fields and occupations, education departments around the world require English teaching to reach at least a basic level.
There are other facts about English that you may be interested in learning. Here is some data about English in no specific order:

  • English is the most widely spoken language in the world, and it is more widely spoken than any other language.
  • More than 400 million people speak English as their mother tongue, and this number is not based on the distribution of the Chinese population.
  • English is the second language of more than 700 million people.
  • Did you know that of all the world languages (over 2,700), English is arguably the most language with largest vocabulary range? Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words and there are still 500,000 technical and scientific terms not catalogued.
  • Three quarters of the world’s mail, telegrams and telegrams are in English.
  • More than half of the scientific journals in the world are in English
  • English is the medium for 80% of the information stored in computers worldwide
  • English is the language of navigation, aviation and Christianity
  • It is the universal language of the World Council of Churches. It is the language of five largest broadcasters in the world (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC and CBC)
  • The main language used on the World Wide Web is English. The vast majority of the media that make up the Internet comes from the United States, so it is not surprising that the Internet’s native language is English

Four factors determine how well a language is used on the Internet:

  • Number of users in the language
  • Degree of use as official language
  • The economic power of language;
  • The amount of information disseminated in this language.

Today, English is unmatched by other languages in all four aspects.
It is learned as a foreign language all over the world and is used by most Internet users. Among the 163 countries of the United Nations, English is more used as their official language. Perhaps the easiest way to calculate the economic impact of a language is to add up the gross domestic product (GDP) of all countries. Native English speakers account for less than 10% of the world’s population, but have more than 30% of the world ’s economic strength.
Therefore, in terms of the amount of information transmitted, English is the current leader.

(Data Sources:http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/facts/stats/）

Summary: English improvement lies in continuous accumulation

I often hear many foreign students complaining: "After I went abroad, even though I came to Canada, I didn't have as many opportunities to effectively practice my English as I had imagined." Actually, even when going abroad, opportunities need to be created by oneself. The Chinese community is a good "comfort zone." While creating your environment for practicing English, you need to push yourself out of your "comfort zone."
The difficulty in learning English well when studying abroad is with creating a good English-learning environment for yourself (sounds ironic). Once you start trying a new method, you should not be too anxious. The so-called progress is actually through continuous accumulation of new words, sentences, and a few speeches every week. When this accumulation reaches a certain level, others will say, "You have improved your English."

If you have other ways to improve English or useful tools, websites and apps, please share them in the comments below!