24 April 2021

[Student Life] Things I do to improve my English

As I am preparing to apply for the universities in English-speaking countries, improving English became as important as writing research paper. Although I have already studied for TOEFL exam and have passed it already, now there is something more scary awating next— THE GRE.

My English, hmm, I would say, I feel comfortable to text my friends, I can get the ideas of academic papers when I read them, and I watch videos with casual English (e.g. Americn sitcom-Modern Family, fun Youtube videos and etc.) without subtitle. So I thought I will automatically reach almost the native level by using English often, according to my experience of learning Chinese.

However, when I skimmed over GRE study materials, I doubted if it would be easy for me if they were written in Korean. Especially Verbal Reasoning, it was literally another level of English!! I seemed like I had to devote lots of energy and time to get to pass GRE. And I also realized that it won’t be enough just to study the GRE materials. "Studying" won’t be enough. Or, it will be really exhausting just to memorize all the vocabulary and stuff. So I thought I needed to live in English world. Get exposed to English language as much as I can. And not just the casual English that I am already feeling comfortable with. So what I decided to do are as follows:

1. GRE materials (of course)

Learning GRE study materials became my daily routine.

2. Reading books in English

I believe reading books will be very helpful. Even if there is some terms I don’t understand, I will be able to guess the meaning according to context. Those terms will be more and more familier to me as they will appear again and again.

Another huge advantage of reading books is, however, I can choose to read those original novels of Netflix series I love. And here I am, so happy to receive my Outlander book series by Diana Gabaldon!

3. Subscribed to phyical newspaper - The New York Times

I found that The New York Times are running the internatinal newspaper service in Korea! I subscribed it once I knew about it. It’s been few days of reading the newspapers. So far I feel great about it. They contain a large spectrum of English vocabulary. And I can also learn about things happening around the world.

My goal is to pass GRE within 3 months. I believe I will make it. Good thing is that I enjoy reading English. And improving English will eventually help my research as well.