Hi guys, I'm Gian from the Philippines. I'm a third year college student taking up BS Computer Science. Ever since my elemetary days, I have never took my english subjects seriously. And now I'm experiencing the consequences of that. College life is full of recitations, essays, thesis writings, etc. and you have to do that in english. Sometimes, there's the idea in my mind, and I know that my idea is a good one, but what happens? The idea just goes off, why? because I'm afraid that my classmates will make fun of me if I speak with some grammatical errors.. It was a good thing I survived the last two years in college. Whew. But now, I'm in my third year, there's a lot of things to do that requires english speaking/writing skills. We must talk to a lot of different people like owners of companies, executives, and interview them, write business letters and proposals, etc.
I've been listening to some self help audio books like brian tracy's (my favorite) and one thing he mentioned is about self-limiting beliefs of people. For years I have believed that I'm no good at english, that somehow, english is not for me. But, what if it isn't true? What if I can be good, or even the best in english? I can say I'm a good computer programmer because I believed, I am. Why not I try to believe that I can be good at english? And then, I set goals, and listed that tasks to be done and said to myself "kaya ko to!" (I can do it!).
I have evaluated myself and I found out that the one skill, that if I mastered, will change my whole life and career forever, is mastering the english language. I want to talk and write in english with full self-confidence. I have set a goal for myself to really, really improve my english skills.
So far, I've listed some tasks to help me with my goal, and these are:
* Read at least one english book a week
* Watch english tv shows
* Write a blog / journal (in english of course) . At least 3 posts a week
* Answer at least 5 online quizzes a week (like the one on this site)
* Record my voice and try to speak and english to check my pronunciation.
* Be active at this forum and other similar ones.
Ok guys, that's quite a long introduction there. I hope that the people here are friendly and will able help me to reach my goal! God bless everyone.