Wang Le:Hey, everybody, what are your biggest problems with learning English? Liu Wen: Hi! I’ve been studying English since primary school. I used to get high marks in English, but now I’m having a lot of trouble with my listening. When I listen to native English speakers talking in a video, I can catch only a few words. I can never quite get the main idea. Any advice? Jia Xin: Listening to English radio programmes helps me get used to how fast native speakers talk. I also repeat what I hear to help myself to experience the feeling of the language. Sometimes I even record my voice so I can listen to myself and compare my pronunciation with the radio host’s! My biggest headache is how to be polite in English. It’s so much easier to just say “Open the window!”, but in English that can sound really terrible. I have to think about who I’m talking to and then decide whether to say, “Open the window, please!”or “Could you open the window, please?”or even longer “Would you mind opening the window, please?” Li Rui: Yeah, that’s really hard! I think it all depends on who you’re talking to. If I’m talking to a close friend, I can use short requests, like “Open the window”—our relationship is close and we’re equals, so I only need a few words to bridge
the gap between us. But if I’m talking to someone who isn’t very close to me, I must make my request longer—and I must make it a question, not a demand, e.g., “Could you open the window, please?”If I’m talking to someone senior to me, then I should say, “Would you mind opening the window, please?”For me, vocabulary is my biggest problem—there are just SO MANY new words!I can’t keep all the new vocabulary straight in my head, and I certainly can’t remember how to use them all properly. HELP! 学习英语 王乐：嘿，各位，请问你们在学习英语时遇到的最大问题是什么？ 刘文：你好！我从小学就开始一直学习英语。我以前英语成绩挺好的，但现在我的听力有很大的麻烦。我在视频中听以英语为母语的人说话时，只能听明白几个单词。我从来就没能完全搞懂过大意。有什么建议吗？ 佳欣：听英语广播节目有助于我习惯母语人士的说速。我还会复述我所听到的，以此来培养语感。有时我甚至还给自己录音，这样一来，我可以听自己的发音，并把我的发音与广播主持人进行比较！我最头疼的问题是如何得体地使用英语。说“打开窗户！”很容易，但在英语里，这样说听起来真的太糟糕了。我必须考虑到我在跟谁说话，然后再决定是说“请打开窗户！”还是“请你打开窗户，好吗？”或者说句更长的“请问，您介意打开窗户吗？” 李瑞：是的，这真的很难！我认为这完全取决于你在跟谁说话。如果我是跟一位好朋友说话，我可以用简短的请求，比如“打开窗户”，这是因为我们的关系亲密，彼此平等，
