Hello! this is Atyaf from Syria :)

[Atyaf]

Hello everybody .
My name is Atyaf . I'm 19 years old and I study English language and literature at the University of Aleppo / Northern Syria .
It was my dream to be professional in English. I've always wanted to be able to speak it fluently ; I thought that university would be the right way to achieve this ambition , but unfortunately I was strongly shocked by the teaching methods , courses chosen and the old-fashioned mentality of the lecturers !
I'll devote a separate topic for the difficulties I've been facing at university . Here ,I am introducing myself here as a third -year student of English who is going to graduate next year without being content with her language skills !!
I hope this will be the place where I'm going to improve my English with people who have the same aim :)

Best Regards .
Atyaf Mahdi - Syria

[Torsten]

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Hello Atyaf,

Welcome to our forum and many thanks for sharing your ideas with us. What do you think is the most effective method of learning English?
Talk to you soon,
Torsten
PS: I hope you pronounced your name correctly? If not, please tell me how it is pronounced properly and what it means in English.
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Atyaf]

Thanks for the nice reply , Torsten .

Well , I'm not sure I can name a specific perfect method of learning English .. because it differs according to the skill you want to improve .. Anyway , whatever the method is , practise is what counts .. that's what I think.

What do YOU think about that ?

( I'm sorry I couldn't listen to your voice message , there was a problem with my browser . It is Atyaf .. as it is written , exept for the "t" sound which should be pronounced with more force . It's an Arabic name and it means spectra or shadows. )

Thanks again.
Atyaf.

[Torsten]

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Hello Atyaf,

Thank you very much for your response. I totally agree with you there is single perfect method of learning English -- it's just a combination of things. I would be very interested to hear how exactly you learned English. How often do you speak English and who do you talk to?

As for listening to my voice recording, all you need is Java which you can download and install for free. For more information, please read How can I record voice messages?

Regards,
Torsten

PS: Did I pronounce your name correctly this time?
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Atyaf]

Hello again , Torsten !

First , I'd like to apologise again for not being able to listen to your voice message because of the slow connection I have :( , it takes me decades to download several mega bytes ! I'm trying to do it now and I hope it works this time . Thanks for your patience !

Well , I live in Syria . I started learning English at the age of 8 at school just like all children do. Unfortunately , our educating systems were so poor . For the first five year of studying English I wasn't able to produce a simple well-formed sentence.
And now I study English Language and literature at the University here , and it's not good at all as I've said before !
I rarely get chances to speak English , even when it happens , the other person is not always a native speaker or even a perfect one. Even at University , some teachers of ours discuss their lectures in Arabic !
So , my main problem is : When I speak , I don't produce a (pure) English .. it's just a speech in English which used to be in Arabic once! that's because I don't know the mentality of an English speaker , who acquired language unconsciously .

What about you ? where are you from and what makes you interested in English ?

Best regards,
Atyaf