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In your free time
International students were asked how they developed their English in their free time.
Read
- Read the local newspapers and/or magazines.
- Read books not just text books.
And other tips for the international student or the first year student I think reading the newspaper is really helpful.
The first things I think you learn the culture and you learn what’s going on in Australia because you don’t want to be an outsider so because you’re in Australia you don’t know what’s going on and also reading the news out loud it really helps your pronunciation. Because sometimes I know a lot of like overseas, like Asian countries they have accent like maybe in China or Hong Kong they have Chinese accents or Malaysia they have Malay accent so if you read the news it really helps you to correct or help you to improve your pronunciation and speaking skills.
Another thing is that it is really helps to read the newspapers as well … this is because there is a lot of words in the news that you find all the time … even in text books ..so these words become familiar …also some of the topics in the news are related to some of the work we study … it’s also important to take notes of the key ideas- have a look at the note taking tutorial on the Learning Lab it’s very useful.
Listen
- Watch English language TV, movies and listen to the radio everyday in English.
…and I think that television, the telly, really helped me to improve my English as well. Like the listening or and maybe probably the listening and speaking probably. Because I remembered my home stay mother or my teacher suggest me to look at the news. Because sometimes they have the subtitles, I think when you have like the television you can choose subtitle and you will know what they’re talking about. If you don’t know you check your dictionary this kind of stuff. And yeah the telly really helped. I watched Big Brother because it’s a really fun show. It’s really loco so you understand and you learn the way they speak.
Speak
- Practise speaking aloud in English.
- Repeat new words and phrases.
- Discuss what you watch with friends.
- Make friends with people who do not speak your first language.
- Have a part time job where you speak English.
- Know about opportunities to speak in English on campus.
When I start, when I begin my Uni here I was really scared to speak because I thought that no one understand my English like my speaking, pronunciation this kind of stuff. So, but I think there is a really good way to improve your English like pronunciation this kind of stuff and so…so of all things Umm I got a internship work, and also a part time job here in Australia. So I really recommend people to get a job working part time in Australia.