Motivation
These two days I am hearing some academic talks and presentations on AI in Huawei, Santa Clara. Though it is so good oppotunity for me, a Deep RL beginner, to closely know about the most talented professionals in the field, I am strongly stucked by my poor English listening ability. Surely, one possible reason is that I am not familiar with the content they are talking about since I am a beginner. It still turns out that the English understanding and listening ability is now blocking my way of going deep in my field, both in AI thoery and applications.
I make my determination that I should devote enough effort into building my English listening and speaking ability, which are both related with each other.
A good news is that I am surrounded by English speakers as I am in US. I have chance to hear but I speak too little.
Here I wanna gather some resources and stategies so I can quickly go and make my hand dirty.
Indoor Excrcise
I was dreaming that I could be on the stage one day showing my project and discuss with people interested. That could be true, because I should be.
Listen to and Imitate Good Speakers
Selective Channels
- American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States
有前100佳演讲，奥巴马演讲，电影中的演讲等等，还提供文本和录音，很适合作为英语学习的材料。
- Ted - Ideas worth spreading
- John F. Kennedy's Speeches
Classical Speeches (only list top 5)
Stategies
- 一篇演讲反复听个100遍效果会比100篇演讲只听一遍的效果好。
- 前面只听，不看字幕。听得差不多懂了再看英文字幕。最后再看中文字幕，试着把它口译成英文，如果自己口译出来的英文与演讲者的差不多的话，那恭喜你，你成功了！
Learn from American dramas (less recommended)
Selected
- How I met your mother (老爸老妈罗曼史)
- House of Cards (纸牌屋)
- Single by 30
Strategies
- get rid of subtitiles
- repeat and follow
- try to use right away
Outdoor Practice
- 打客服电话
我的经验是如果能在电话里面顺利沟通，那你的英文交际能力应该没啥问题了。美国有很多服务电话，比如给小米打电话，咨询学校的项目或者活动，安装cable，办手机卡，水电费单子有问题，银行账户要开通某个服务关闭某个服务，买车咨询dealer，租房子打电话咨询情况，要收养宠物，预约看病，买宠物的口粮等等。（来源：知乎）
- 多交美国本地的朋友
不太会主动社交，实践较难。