20/09/2019
http://www.aja.org.tw/articles/content.php?id=154
Taipei Zoo Panda Is First in the World to Get Special Kind of Heart Exam
This is the first in a new project, "Anesthesiology Unmasked", to publish some articles in our journal that are written in plain language for general readers, and and also for doctors, healthcare providers, and scientists who use English as a second/foreign language, who often learn formal and academic English well enough, but may have developed less familiarity with simpler, more conversational English.
How about you? If English is a second/foreign language for you, do you think you missed opportunities to hear and read conversational English?
Recent research suggests that we learn languages better when we hear and read messages that we can understand easily and smoothly, and that "studying" vocabulary and grammar is ineffective.
One Taiwanese professor of applied linguistics at National Taiwan University of Technology put it this way at an English Education conference in Taipei recently:
"With traditional language education, we often build knowledge like a wall of bricks, but without the cement that holds it together". Unfortunately, that is a pretty weak wall, and it will never serve us well unless we can "go back" and enjoy simple English, like stories and interesting fiction. If we focus on the meaning of the messages instead of the form of the language, our brain unconsciously builds the best mental representation of a language, and that results in proficiency!
http://www.aja.org.tw/articles/content.php?id=154
