A crew member asked me two days ago:

"Sister Q, my main purpose on board is to learn English well. Which position is more suitable for practicing English?"

This is a good question. But I didn't get to the point.

Learning English has little to do with your position.

Many people think that they can speak English fluently by going abroad and boarding a cruise ship.

Because of the language environment, it must come naturally.

But in fact, many Chinese people have stayed in the United States for many years and cannot speak English at all.

There are also many foreigners who have gone to Hong Kong and have lived in Shanghai for many years, but still cannot speak Chinese.

Why is this?

Language expert Long Feihu once said,

In fact, learning a language is not something you can do by hearing, reading, and seeing.

If you don’t have inner motivation, those words will be invalid information for you.

It will be automatically ignored by your brain.

If you are abroad, only hang out with Chinese people.

You are on a cruise ship, and all the people you hang out with are Chinese.

It is definitely impossible to learn English well.

After I signed a contract on the ship, my English level has gone from "I can speak a few words, but I can't understand" to "I have no problem chatting, but my business English is not good enough". "Proficient" level.

Now I am advancing to the proficient stage of business English.

Then I discovered how to learn English well: It’s not that I want to learn English well, but that I have to learn English.

For most people, success is basically not the result of choice, but the result of coercion.

I never learned to drive.

So when I was working as a car salesman, I would always ask my colleagues to help me move the car from the garage.

The feeling of asking for help was too uncomfortable, so I was forced to learn to drive.

In the first thirty years of my life, I learned to swim several times but never mastered it.

Before taking the seaman's certificate exam, I was afraid of drowning when I dived, so I actually learned it in three days (actually, I later learned that it was very difficult to drown yourself with a life jacket).

My advice to you is:

First: take the initiative to speak English, speak boldly, and look for opportunities to speak.

If your purpose is to learn English, position is not the most important.

You can practice English in most positions, as long as you have direct contact with foreigners.

Bars, Western restaurants, entertainment departments, duty-free shops, etc.

You can practice English wherever you can come into contact with customers.

So some people say, I am currently on a Chinese route, what should I do?

Although all the customers on China routes are Chinese, half of the employees are foreigners.

You have to take the initiative to help them and make friends with them.

Teach them how to use Taobao, teach them Chinese, and they can make friends.

That’s what it’s like to be a friend, you have to give first and then get.

If you don’t know how to make friends at the beginning,

Your supervisors and managers are usually foreigners.

Communicate frequently with your boss and take the initiative to do your own tasks.

It is also very helpful.

Of course, there are also some jobs that are really closely related to English.

For example, I used to translate for micro plastic surgeons.

When you follow foreigners every day, you must speak and understand.

You work as an AHD (Assistant Hotel General Manager) and receive one hundred foreign language emails a day.

Definitely good for English.

But these positions are all based on your ability to understand English.

Without this ability, it is impossible to recruit you for no reason.

So you still have to start from the basic positions.

Second, don’t stay in your comfort zone.

If you don’t like to talk at work and watch Dad’s Happy Camp after get off work,

you won’t review, socialize, or watch American TV series. English will not get better on its own.

Actually, I didn’t take the initiative to learn before.

The first manager was Chinese, and I couldn’t understand the English she spoke.

Other Chinese girls can joke with foreign handsome guys, but I can only giggle.

They are all Chinese, why is there such a big gap?

At this time, I felt very embarrassed,

So I started recording the manager’s meetings and imitated them repeatedly when I got home.

Later not only could I understand it, but I could also translate it.

Three months later I was promoted and my manager was changed to a foreigner.

This is easier to practice.

My manager and I often communicate, study, report, discuss, and even quarrel.

Being able to understand most daily expressions without even realizing it.

If you usually have no motivation to communicate with others,

then the purpose of work is your most inescapable motivation.

Practice your work vocabulary first and wait until you are proficient and confident.

Let’s move on to communicating with people.

Third, increase comprehensible memory and memorize words and sentences encountered in life.

If a foreigner says a word or sentence that you don’t understand, try to figure it out and write it down.

This is much better than memorizing example sentences from a dictionary.

For example, my manager said: "I need wires."

I forgot the word wire and stayed there for a long time. Later, my colleague handed him a plastic wire.

I will never forget this word.

Because it is my own memory. I will always remember the embarrassed look on my face when I couldn't help the manager.

This is comprehensible memory.

I think the so-called English environment is to force you to understand the meaning.

Speaking of comprehensible memory, this time Joy came to Qingdao.

When we returned to the ship, we met Mr. Richard and Mr. Zhu who came to visit our students who were boarding the ship.

Now I regret not listening carefully to Teacher Richard’s class.

Under his education at that time, many students’ English made a qualitative leap.

What he uses is brainwashing to suppress Dafa.

He will take you to memorize English over and over again, and then take the test after you memorize it;

If you don’t study hard, you will suffer ruthless blows during his mock interviews.

I watched helplessly as a girl who couldn't even pronounce her own name at first,

After two months, she could fluently introduce salad dishes.

During that time, you were always speaking English in your dreams, and it was all about professional knowledge.

This is the benefit of having to learn.

Babies who haven’t boarded the boat yet.

You must enjoy this time of being forced every day!

Let your English proficiency match your interview proficiency.

At that time, Richard also told us:

I want you to learn English now, not just for interviews.

This will be good for your future.

I understand this sentence very well now.

If I didn’t obediently be abused by Richard at that time, I would be abused by a foreigner later.

Fourth: Don’t study across levels.

If your English is really based on abc,

Even if you are lucky enough to pass the interview and get on board, it will be difficult to learn English well.

Progress means that 1 is promoted to 2, not 0 is promoted to 10.

If the surrounding information is completely invalid information,

you will be very stressed. Big ones.

Plus having to work, it’s easy for people to collapse.

This is also the reason why many people feel uncomfortable working on board ships,

and even quickly resign and go home.

Tired, unable to communicate, lonely...

These are real difficulties.

Don’t think of yourself as too strong.

It is still recommended to lay a solid foundation before boarding the ship.

Actually, how much money you make on a cruise ship is not the most important thing.

If you can learn English well, this will be your job for a lifetime.

It is better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish.

Money is fish, and English is the method of fishing.

Finally, I wish you find a way to force yourself to learn English.

Stop talking and just memorize the words.

Who said I was despised by foreigners again today...

Oh.