English study plan for 2016

I'll go through the 4 main parts of my 2015 study plan, Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing.

As an IELTS warrior (That's how I call people that are preparing IELTS), I do Cambridge IELTS text books and listen to BBC radio or sometimes watch English TV series, just to get more use to British accents. (Most of my English teachers were South Africans and Americans in Taiwan.) I found that IELTS listening test has not only British accents, but also Australian, New Zealand, South Africans and even Indian accents. There's a big portion of Australian accent indeed, IELTS headquarters is in Australia. It is a fun experience to identify different accents by practicing IELTS. The pronunciation of  'Laboratory' is not the same though.

That was my listening part for English study. As for reading, I prefer reading English novels, however I only read the English book that I've read in Mandarin. Apart from this, I also switched all of my languages settings into English on my mobile phones, computers, etc. Write down some fancy lines from English articles, such as TIME, National Geography, BBC news, the list goes on.

Speaking is the most difficult part from most of the Taiwanese. Owing to not much opportunities to speak English around myself, I skype with my foreign friends, doing language exchange, which is quite interesting and efficient!

How I improve my writing skills is to keep writing and writing and writing. I usually look up my notes, which I collect some nice quotes and lines from the English articles or novels.  I also write short stories in English, but that doesn't work really much on me.

I think I'll remain the same on studying English for 2016 until I reach my IELTS 7 goal in next February. Maybe add some new methods, such as turn off the subtitles of any kinds of English videos. And spend more time in the museum being a English guide.

A questionnaire result of Dreams

Q1.What is your gender?

12 participants (8 females and 4 males)

Q2.What is your biggest goal or dream?

All of the female participants not only want to live themselves a better life, but also willing to make the whole society better, though the jobs they want to do in the future varies, it is quite obvious to see they have the same goal in some ways. However, the male participants are tend to be more individualistic.

Q3.What is your ideal self?

3 out of 4 male participants do not know what their ideal self is. On the other hand, female participants are all capable of telling their ideal selves accurately, such as be humourous or be more confident.

Q4.Are you living the life of your dreams now?

Most people do not think they are living in their life of dreams.

Q5.If you have one year left to live, what would you do?

Almost every participant would like to spend their last year on traveling.  

Q6.If you have one day left to live, what would you do?

Every participant would stay with their friends and families at their last day, some would donate or assign their money to the others.

Q7.What's stopping you the most from pursuing your dreams?

Female participants are likely to be lack of confident when pursuing their dreams, however, male participants think that no money is the strongest factor in this case.