Tittle：《听脱口秀和看肥皂剧帮助最大》Listening to Talk Show and Watching Soap Opera Helped Most
（节选自John Y 长篇英语回忆录《ENGLISH SPEAKING-AN ECHO ONLY FROM
ENCOURRIGING STORIES OF
LEARNING SPOKEN ENGLISH
英语口语学习励志故事
COMMITMENT》）
Listening to talk show and watching soap opera helped most
However, even in the United States it is still not easy for Chinese to get access to the native English speaking environment, nor is it easy to melt into the American society. Chinese and Americans belong to two groups with different languages, cultures, customs and psychological thinking. Few Americans are willing to initiatively join the Chinese community, and vise versa, Chinese joining Americans is even more difficult.
Then, how could I get into English language environment effectively and to eliminate cultural and psychological differences between Chinese and Americans?
While studying at UCLA, I had some Chinese roommates, one studying Math and one studying Double E. They came to the States a few years earlier than I and could speak fluent English barrier-free with local Americans. One of them even had attended the 1984 World Olympics in Los Angeles as a volunteered interpreter for Chinese delegation. I found that they liked watching American TV talk shows, soap opera dramas and sports games such as live broadcasts of the NBA. While watching they also liked to imitate the voices and speeches by the hosts, characters or players. Since such programs were rich for oral English nutrition, they were of special benefits for training language senses and skills in English with applicable purposes.
Another roommate was the youngest son of Zhao Dan, one of the most famous movie artists of last century in China. We were all from Shanghai, got visa to the US on the same day, came to UCLA at the same time and lived in a same rental apartment in the first year. He studied in Motion Pictures and his early English could hardly been complimented. But when meeting him again several years later I found there was great progress with his listening and speaking skills in English. It was clear that he had taken special advantages of his major which provided him with rich spoken English materials and required intensive training and practicing in English communication.
While watching American TV I had a breathtaking experience at my apartment. It was on a weekend evening and my roommates and I were attentively watching TV in our apartment, as that was our major leisure activity after a whole day of the stressful academic life. Then we heard from out of the window a mixed loud noise of music and din. It was a group of American students holding a party at the opposite student's dorm, singing and dancing crazily. They did it every weekend bothering us a lot, but this time we really couldn’t stand it any more. One of my roommates Chen immediately removed from the wall a toy gun, then took it to the window, pointed it at the opposite dorm and shouted: "Shut up! Shut up!"
This action resulted in a fantastic response. The opposite dorm immediately turned silent. We were all able to return to our TV again.
After a few minutes, suddenly "bang!", there was a crash at the door. Before we could realize what had happened, a few armed LAPD officers broke in with guns pointed at us and shouted loudly: "Hands up, hands up!”, “Down on your knees, down on your knees!”
We all were dumbstruck with hands up above heads and kneeled down on the floor.
"Where is the rifle?" a police officer asked. We immediately realized that the American students from the opposite dorm called the LAPD and the policemen came to the scene in response to a report of the “bandits with a gun”!
At this moment Chen reacted quickly and pled: "That is a toy gun, officer! We are Chinese students. They were making too much noise, and we were just using the toy gun to shut them up!"
The following story was like a conclusion of a comedy. After our defensive explanation, the LAPD seemed satisfied with that this was just a case of misunderstanding. These Chinese students had overreacted with no criminal intent or harmful results. So they turned friendly and gave advice to us when leaving: "Sirs, this is in America, not China. Remember, never point gun even toy-gun at innocent people, it's against the law!"
This event had not only taught me a lesson of common law in the US, but also punctuated how important the fluent English communication skill was. In fact it might break down the cultural barriers, or in some emergency circumstances even dissolve serious conflicts between Chinese and Americans.
I knew I had to improve my language skills, and first of all, I needed to enrich my English language environment by firstly watching soap operas and American movies, listening to the talk shows and other broadcast programs. Later on I found that the best place to practice it was in my car.
In the United States, people could do nothing without a car. In a big city like LA, there were always traffic jams on Freeways, especially during rush hour when all freeways turned into parking lots. Therefore, stumbling on freeways for several hours to and from work became part of my daily routine. But this also provided me with a best chance to listen to the car radio.
Radio broadcasting programs in the US were popular talk shows and some were really attractive. Talk shows were usually played by two hosts and contents covered everything including news, food, living, entertainment or politicians. They were filled with humor and language wisdoms and were very enjoyable. So I gradually generated a hobby that whenever driving or sitting in my car, I’d like to turned the radio on to a talk show and that would have given me at least two or more hours of "listening practice" a day. Sometimes I couldn’t help stop staying in the car listening even after I got home. My language ability with listening and speaking, in addition to the influence of the ordinary language environment, was mostly obtained directly through watching TV and listening to radio talk show programs.
Inherited from the hobby of listening to English talk show in the US, it has become my favorite past time to this day, to watch CCTV English programs (now as CCTV news) as well as its talk shows, such as Crossover, Dialogue, Up Close, New Money, China 24 and others. From my experience these programs are most helpful and effective at improving skills in English with listening and speaking specially for those Chinese learners lacking English communication environment.
