ESL 2 BY TORRE WU

Do not have blind faith in foreign teachers. Native speaker does not necessarily make a good language teacher nor does it a prerequisite. It is easy to understand because most of us, as native Chinese speakers, are not qualified as good Chinese teachers, so do those English speakers. Compared with foreign teachers, bilingual teachers have their advantages in teaching a foreign language. They can better understand their students, both their needs and difficulties, they can explain to students in their mother tongue, and, most of them are qualified teachers hold degrees from normal universities or language institutes.

English is a language rather than a science. Although there are many rules in English language, such as semantic rules, lexical rules and syntax rules; they are useful but not always strictly observed. So do not be panic when you find something do not obey the common rules and just try to memorize them, such as irregular verbs and nouns and the idioms, collocations etc.
Learn by practicing, practice by imitating. That is the basic pattern for learning a language. It is especially useful for adult language learners. As adults, we some times reluctant to imitate others and dash to use the language in the ways that we think are right. By this way we just keep on making mistakes rather than progress. While by imitating, we will familiarize ourselves with authentic speeches and texts so that to produce it in the right way.
Finally, get a good dictionary. I myself like Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Collins COBUILD English Dictionary.

Pronunciation and listening
Among many aspects of learning a foreign language I consider pronunciation as the most important one. By saying pronunciation, I mean the pronunciation of words, sentences, and, giving speech, in a word, oral English. There are several reasons for it. For one thing, it is your pronunciation that other people will have as a first impression about your language ability and thus to make judgment about it. You may argue that it is unfair, but it is the fact most times. For another thing, good pronunciation will help get you understood by others. You will be more confident if you can be understood by your interlocutor while vice versa will make both definitely frustrate and the conversation may even not be able to continue. What more, good pronunciation will always help you gain approves from teachers and classmates and colleagues which will encourage you keep on studying. I remember it vividly that almost every teacher praised my pronunciation publicly and how happy I was at it!
Now the question goes on to how to improve pronunciation. My experience can be summarized as following: practicing, imitating and practice pronunciation and listening simultaneously. Find some audio materials accompanied with text scripts, e.g. text books with cassette tapes, or download MP3 with scripts for internet. Then listen to it and imitate it until your pronunciation is close to it. You may record yourself and compare yours with the original audio and pay attention to the differences. I used to listen to tapes and read aloud in the mornings when I was in middle school and it really helped me to pronounce correctly. Be careful in choosing audio materials because there are many dialects and accents but only BBC English and Standard America English are widely accepted and privileged and stick to either one but do not change frequently. By this way, we could improve both our pronunciation and listening at the same time.