路线图 | Roadmap to be a native English speaker

Motivation

These two days I am hearing some academic talks and presentations on AI in Huawei, Santa Clara. Though it is so good oppotunity for me, a Deep RL beginner, to closely know about the most talented professionals in the field, I am strongly stucked by my poor English listening ability. Surely, one possible reason is that I am not familiar with the content they are talking about since I am a beginner. It still turns out that the English understanding and listening ability is now blocking my way of going deep in my field, both in AI thoery and applications.

I make my determination that I should devote enough effort into building my English listening and speaking ability, which are both related with each other.

A good news is that I am surrounded by English speakers as I am in US. I have chance to hear but I speak too little.

Here I wanna gather some resources and stategies so I can quickly go and make my hand dirty.

Indoor Excrcise

I was dreaming that I could be on the stage one day showing my project and discuss with people interested. That could be true, because I should be.

Listen to and Imitate Good Speakers

Selective Channels

1. American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States

   有前100佳演讲，奥巴马演讲，电影中的演讲等等，还提供文本和录音，很适合作为英语学习的材料。

2. Ted - Ideas worth spreading
3. John F. Kennedy's Speeches

Classical Speeches (only list top 5)

1. John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

2. Steve Jobs iPhone 2007 Presentation (HD) - YouTube

3. Randy Pausch Last Lecture

4. President Barack Obama's farewell address (full speech)

5. Emma Watson UN speech - YouTube

Stategies

1. 一篇演讲反复听个100遍效果会比100篇演讲只听一遍的效果好。
2. 前面只听，不看字幕。听得差不多懂了再看英文字幕。最后再看中文字幕，试着把它口译成英文，如果自己口译出来的英文与演讲者的差不多的话，那恭喜你，你成功了！

Learn from American dramas (less recommended)

Selected

1. How I met your mother (老爸老妈罗曼史)
2. House of Cards (纸牌屋)
3. Single by 30

Strategies

1. get rid of subtitiles
2. repeat and follow
3. try to use right away

Outdoor Practice

1. 打客服电话

   我的经验是如果能在电话里面顺利沟通，那你的英文交际能力应该没啥问题了。美国有很多服务电话，比如给小米打电话，咨询学校的项目或者活动，安装cable，办手机卡，水电费单子有问题，银行账户要开通某个服务关闭某个服务，买车咨询dealer，租房子打电话咨询情况，要收养宠物，预约看病，买宠物的口粮等等。（来源：知乎）

2. 多交美国本地的朋友

   不太会主动社交，实践较难。