If you look at your reflection in the mirror and you see some dirt on your face, what should you do?
A. get angry, refuse to acknowledge that your face is dirty and walk away
B. clean your face
Any person in his right mind would choose B.
The fact:
Sadly, some students get upset when their mistakes are corrected by their teachers. Many students say that they know a lot of grammar rules, vocabulary items, expressions, etc. Oh yes, we know that you know rules. If we didn't, we wouldn't expect you to use them properly, would we? But, can you use them? If you just know them in your mind but you can't use them properly when you speak, then you really don't know them.You may know a lot of grammar rules and thousands of words, but if you instinctively say He don't instead of He doesn't, or if you impulsively say I'm very interest your book instead of I am very interested in your book, then you are a beginner. Or, your sentence may be grammatically correct and logical, but if you look at the ceiling and blink and blink for three minutes before you can put what you want to say into words, then you are also a beginner. You just know the rules and words in theory, but not in practice.
The same can be said when it comes to pronunciation. You may know all the phonetics, but if you say inhormatiom instead of information, or dericious hood instead of delicious food, then you don't know anything about pronunciation at all. We don't assess your English level by how many words or grammar rules or sound symbols you know.We gauge you by how well you put your knowledge into practice.
It may sound and feel harsh in the beginning because maybe, in the school you attended before coming to ACE, you were always told how good you were, or how excellent your pronunciation was. Well, at ACE, we don't tickle your ears. We tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Do you want us to tell you that you really are good even when you truly are not? Do you want us to tell you how excellent your pronunciation is even when it's not? In other words, do you want to spend your money, time and effort without really learning anything, without improving? Do you want us to make you believe lies?
Of course, when you have always believed that you're good and suddenly, your teacher points out your mistakes, you may feel bad. But please don't forget that effective medicine tastes awful.
If you want to be a weightlifter, you go to the gym, and the instructor tells you that you need to lift weights to have more toned muscles. You know that by doing so, you'll have muscle pains, and this can really get inconvenient. But, you also know that the more you lift weights, the more you get used to it until finally, weightlifting becomes an easy thing and you will eventually develop thicker, bigger, stronger and toned muscles.
In the same manner, when you are learning English, don't expect to learn all you have to learn at once. Learning anything is a process. But along the process, expect to encounter some difficulties. When your teacher guides you through all these difficulties, don't get upset. If your teacher doesn't help you, who will?
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