I want life to be enjoyable instead of suffering. Thus I also want to make my daily English study fun instead of tiring. After weeks of using flashcards, I find English-to-English flashcards are time-consuming, although it’s good to look up new words using an English-to-English dictionary when reading a novel. Recently I found a better English-to-Chinese flashcard software, Baicizhan. Using Baicizhan is enjoyable for it provides an from-easy-to-hard review procedure and some tips on memorizing a word’s meaning.
There were lots of tasty food in the town I was living in. I tried two different meals for lunch and dinner. These foods originated from Guangdong or Fujian, China. And most of the locals here spoke Hokkien (Fujian dialect). And they used both Chinese and Malaysian on stall sign boards and mainly only Chinese on menus. In the afternoon, I drank Chinese tea in the tea house on the ground floor of my hotel with my host. Tea sold here was imported from China. His youngest son, a second-year college student, was playing a computer game called Dota 2 in the same room.
The son and I went out to a nearby park to have a walk. He was studying character modeling for video games. In fact he wanted to learn animation design, but modeling was the most related major he could find in Malaysian colleges. He wanted to study animation making in Japan after graduating.
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Sounds like a great day!
Using English-to-English dictionary when reading a novel helps me a lot as well. Also writing words down in the notebook and revising them after reading while remembering the context they were used in helps me to remember them a lot.
@starrynight Thanks for your sharing. Maybe I should also try to write unfamiliar words down and look up them later. Sounds like a good idea!
@Oscar Yeah. Have a nice day!
@HaroldBlog Oh, I look up the words right away, otherwise I won't understand the sentence. I also won't remember the context they were used in and won't be able to choose the appropriate meaning. But it also adviced to read the first time without using a dictionary and the second time using a dictionary. I don't do it, though, because it's too time consuming for me.
@starrynight Thanks for your detailed explanation. I prefer not to look up word while reading because I want to read as quickly as possible. I would guess the meaning of unknown words according to the context so that I can continue to read. But of course I would stop to look up some words if they are vital for comprehending the context. I am using the extensive-reading technique of language learning, which focus on a large amount of comprehensive input. For vocabulary, I am using flashcard software to memorize vocabulary lists.
@HaroldBlog Thank you for the explanation and the link as well. Yes, I understood about flashcards, I thought you are using them to remember the words from the novel. I guess the meaning of the word before looking it up too, then I still look it up to know the exact meaning. But method depends on your goals and of course you should use the one that works for you best :)
@starrynight Yeah. Your are right. And the word list I am learning is from IELTS vocabulary.
@HaroldBlog I see. Good luck in achieving your study goals!