Khanh Linh, 23 years old, from Hanoi, became the valedictorian of Oriental Studies after four years of studying at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities and one year of studying at the University of Tokyo (an exchange program between the Vietnam National University, Hanoi and the University of Tokyo) with a GPA of 3.83. In addition to being fluent in English, Japanese, and French, Linh also knows Chinese because she won third prize in the national excellent student competition in Chinese.
Linh shared that to learn a foreign language without getting bored, first you need to find motivation and a reason to learn, then try many methods to see what suits you. Without a fixed study time every day, Linh combines studying with playing, often reading newspapers, books, stories, and watching movies in the language she is learning. When doing housework like washing dishes, Linh turns on the radio, Japanese or French music to listen to, so it kills two birds with one stone, so she rarely feels like she is studying.
During the period of focusing on a certain language, Linh will try to "immerse" herself in that language all day by watching movies, listening to music, turning on the radio, reading books... and switching all applications and electronic devices to the language she is learning. Knowing that to speak well, she must listen well, and to write well, she must read a lot, Linh often prioritizes listening and reading skills before moving on to practicing speaking and writing.
Pham Khanh Linh is fluent in English, French and Japanese. Photo: Provided by the character.
The valedictorian believes that learning a foreign language needs to be linked to the culture of the host country. Knowing all the grammar structures or vocabulary of a language listed in the dictionary will not guarantee that learners will be able to communicate naturally with native speakers without understanding their culture.
For example, Japanese learners must understand the Japanese hierarchy in order to accurately determine whether to use the casual, polite, respectful, or humble form when speaking to the other person. Or in Chinese, when meeting someone, people do not always say "Hello" as they learn in textbooks, but instead ask: "Have you eaten yet?" as a greeting.
Linh learns vocabulary by reading documents on topics that interest her and are appropriate to her level, meaning she understands about 70-80% without using a dictionary, which can be books, newspapers or personal blogs. Linh divides it into two steps, the first step focuses on "quantity", which means reading as much and as smoothly as possible, without stopping in the middle to look up, the goal is to understand the main content of the text.
Step two: Linh focuses on "substance", which means reading to understand the meaning, so she needs to use a dictionary to look it up. For example, when reading a chapter of a book, Linh will skim through it once to get the main idea, mark new words when she comes across them, and then guess the meaning based on the context; then go back and read it a second time, look up the dictionary to confirm the meaning of the word she guessed, write down the new words in a notebook with example sentences, pronunciation, notes (if any)...
Every 3-5 days, Linh will review the new vocabulary notebook once and mark the words she has forgotten to review in 1-2 days (depending on the number of words), and continue this "rolling" learning method.
Linh believes that if you have learned the basics well, reviewing for the certificate exam will not be too tiring. The key point now is to practice a lot to get used to the format, structure of the exam and time pressure. It is necessary to make a daily review schedule and follow it closely.
In addition, when doing the speaking and writing sections, candidates need to outline, use many connecting words between ideas, have specific examples, and ensure that they meet the requirements of the test regarding time and length. For the listening and reading comprehension sections, Linh also uses some strategies such as: reading the questions carefully and guessing the answers before looking at the available answers; eliminating obvious wrong answers; answering easy questions first, and if you get stuck on a question for too long, skip it and come back to it later to save time.
For the reading passage, Linh first skims through the title and topic sentences of each paragraph (usually at the beginning or end of each paragraph), highlights keywords and important connecting words such as "however", "although... but...", "besides", "in addition"..., then starts reading the questions and goes back to carefully review each part of the passage corresponding to the given question. Candidates should spend about 5-7 minutes at the end of the lesson to review the passage.
Knowing four languages and holding three foreign language certificates, Linh shared that she only started learning a new foreign language after she had mastered the previous language (intermediate level or higher). "This is especially important, for example, Chinese and Japanese both use Chinese characters. If you don't master them well or learn both at the same time from zero, you can easily get confused about how to read and how to write," Linh explained.
Linh usually invests an average of 2.5 to 3 years in each language before learning a new one.
Linh currently works as a document translator for Nguyen Van Huong Library, Oriental Development Research Institute. The Hanoi girl plans to apply to study abroad in a field of culture and arts.
According to VNExpress
Author:Nhat Tan
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