B-school英文生存:提高听/说/写

我之前在reddit发过这个，意外收到很多好评，所以搬运到CD上。同时天涯沦落人，不如多分享分享干货！

I'm sharing these tips and the tools I use everyday. I was an international student at a top-tier business school in the U.S.. I just graduated last year! I would describe my English as really good, but I still have a lot of pain in using English in everyday school life/ work life. I can't write as precisely as I would hope for, sometimes I don't understand what people are saying (especially when it's noisy and people speak to fast), sometimes I go completely shut down and don't wanna talk with anyone in English (especially in happy hour, or small chat...)

Now that I've been in the U.S. for 2 years, I'm getting better. And I would like to share a few tips with you- if you are in the same boat.

1. If you want to improve writing, especially how to write like a native speaker: I like using WordTune. It's a chrome extension that with 1 click, it will give you writing suggestions. When I write pretty serious email in English, I will ask WordTune to tune it to be more professional. When I'm replying to my friends' messages, I will wordtune my reply to sound more casual. This is a free tool for a certain usage and it's enough for me to use it everyday!

2. If you want to improve your listening skills: try LingoPie. It's like a netflix, where you can watch English TV shows (or other languages) with both English subtitles and translated subtitles. This way, whenever I miss a word, I can always go back and learn about it, and even add it to review later. I will give this a 8 out of 10. Unfortunately this is not free, but there's free trial.

I also tried out a free version called Language Reactor. It's the same idea but it's a chrome extension. When you watch youtube or Netflix, you can turn on it and you'll be seeing subtitles on the side, and you are also able to save words that you miss and review them later. I usually try my first time without looking at subtitles, and if there's something I missed, then I go to the subtitles on the right panel. This helps my listening skills a lot. I will give it 9 out of 10. It is free so that's great, but its design can sometimes be confusing.

If you want to improve your speaking skills: try BeSpoken Language. They provide real-life scenarios that you can practice with - interact with the video chatbot, reply to their questions, and get immediate language feedback on how to sounds more like a native speaker. For example, I did this campus encounter scenario (quick link here: https://www.videoask.com/fs0kjkakf    you can try if you'd like, it's a 3 mins practice), it simulates a scenario where you run into a couple of friends on the way to class, and how you make small talk to them, how to get out of a conversation with someone you don't like, etc. It helps me a lot because I really need to improve on my small talks skills. I will give it 9 out of 10. It's completely free, but currently there's only a dozens of scenarios available for practice. I hope there can be more.

Let me know if you have any other tools you like!