I like English. I like the open-minded English culture. It's always much relieved and straight forward to use English. English opens a new door to me. I can know a lot of things at first hand, and learn new things from different perspective. I never live or study abroad, so I have been studying English on my own for many years. My passion gradually becomes enthusiasm, when I get praise from friends and colleagues. The tastes of accomplishment really feel good. But there is always a huge gap between context learning and practical using English. I cannot fluently express my thought without preparation beforehand. I have difficulty following the lines in TV series. All these frustrate me. To tackle this frustration, I started to change the way I study English. English magazine such as studio classroom was replaced by more interesting materials online such as blogs, tech news, and TED talk. To understand what phrases people use at chatting, I take notes at the lines from my favorite TV series. Such changes have continued for a month, I post all the notes on my blog and FB page, and try to log such experimental changes. This process becomes very interesting, and many materials are inspiring. There is total different feeling when using it rather than learning in context. English somehow comes alive, because words have meaning, and sentences become ideas. Those frustrations are not that severe anymore, but does my English really improve during this period? I can feel a little enhancement, but still limited. I found that the idea of using English is still passive in this way. Listen is passive. Reading is passive, too. I start thinking my next trial is to create an active talking and writing environment. That's why I am here, sharing my experience. I can not flourish on my own, because English is a language to use, a culture to build. That means we need to use it in our daily life to communicate, transfer ideas, and learn new things altogether with each other by English. If you have been through the same frustration or have the same passion, I'd like to invite you to join together to build an active English environment. Simply, use English together! There is still no specific project to roll off yet, but will be hopefully in near future. No rules and obligations, too! The bottom line is use what you learn, and keep learning what you might need to use. If you are interested, come to my FB page, https://www.facebook.com/notesoflives and start sharing your thoughts on posts! Your input definitely shapes the discussion or even the content I collect. You are also welcome to share your experience of English learning, and how you think we could improve it in a more efficient way --

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