Mattie Said:

How to read the sentence?

We Answered:

In other words:

She also made a campaign advertisement that was supposed to make up for her admission that she once experimented with witchcraft. This added to the entertaining mix of things that all go to make up American politics.

Teresa Said:

Why is English so difficult to learn?

We Answered:

I've not had any first hand experience in China, but have heard a lot of stories from people that have taught there. I teach in Taiwan and a lot of the reasons you might be having trouble are similar to reasons students here have trouble. Let me talk about my experience here in Taiwan and see if it fits.

One of the biggest challenges you face is that English grammar is so much more complicated than Chinese grammar. At least in Mandarin Chinese, there is no conjugation of the verb. For example, when we think about a sentence in English, there are two things that change the verb we use: The subject of the sentence and the tense (or when it happened). In Chinese, we can translate word for word and say, "I go to the store yesterday." In English, the fact that it happened yesterday changes the verb to "went." That's a hard concept to really make natural in a country where the language system that does not naturally do that.

There are also no articles, so you don't use "a", "an", and "the" in the Chinese language. I have students, even advanced levels, still write, "I went to store" rather than "I went to the store."

The biggest challenge I face here in Taiwan is the testing system that the kids have to go through. The tests actually make it harder to learn. Most teachers in the west view learning in 6 different ways that build on each other. For example, if we read a story, the teacher will guide the student through the following:

1) Knowledge/Remembering. Can the student remember the basic information of the story as well as some details?

2) Understanding - Can the student describe and explain the story well?

3) Apply - Can the student apply the knowledge from this story and relate it to other ideas or concepts?

4) Analyze - Can the student analyze relationships between ideas?

5) Evaluate - Can the student make judgements about the story and support them from details of the story?

6) Create - Can the student use the information to create something new or change something that already exists into something better?

What happens in Taiwan is that most schools that teach English focus on the first two levels. They ignore the rest and, as a result, make English something that is used more as a means to pass a test than a way to communicate effectively with people.

Another thing that has happened here is everyone has ignored the development of a language in the student. They seek, for example, to have a spelling test on students that should be working on inventive spelling. (For example, it is much more important that an early language learner spell out the sentence, "The giraffe has a long neck" by writing it out, "The jeraff has a lawn nek." These steps in literacy are often skipped in the system here because the focus is not on creating something, but on getting the right answer. This is true of the questions we ask students in stories. When that happens, a foreign language is viewed as more a way to have the right and wrong answer to a question than it is to communicate.

This also leads over into the listening aspect. You've likely been trained to listen to get an exact idea of what the speaker is saying rather than listening to get the overall idea and learn to pick out key words and guess at the meaning. This leads, again, to a problem you stated. Now you're nervous when you meet a new foreigner that you don't know. You're worried they won't understand you. If you're worried, you're less likely to talk. If you're less likely to talk, then you won't talk as much and your English ability will go down quickly.

The final factor for English being taught so poorly here has to do with the people teaching it. Generally speaking, English is taught mainly through school programs run by people that have no experience teaching English. They hire a foreigner who is just out of college and put them into a situation where they have not been trained to teach anything with a curriculum designed by someone that has never taught English. The larger schools in Taiwan are able to train their teachers. The smaller schools simply hand the teacher a book and tell them what pages they'll be teaching. The teachers coming over might mean well and have the best of intentions. The owners of the school might mean well. The problem is nobody at the school knows what to teach or how to do it.

Again, I know we're talking about two different places here, but Taiwan and China are not that different in terms of how they run a lot of their educational systems. (At least from what I have heard). I hope this answer helps some. The important thing to remember is this: Language is about communication. You've communicated your ideas perfectly here, so you're in a much better position to use the language than someone that simply got a better score on a test.

Wilma Said:

How to read the sentence?

We Answered:

This politician once admitted to having done some sorcery. This made a bad impression on people, and so when she was campaigning for election she had an advertisement that tried to get rid of that bad impression.

The journalist who wrote this report considers that American politics are entertaining, and this advertisement added to the entertainment.

Ian Said:

when I on the 'Learning English of VOA or BBC, the RealPlayer no work?

We Answered:

A decade ago to learn English, you had to attend costly English classes or purchase course material like tapes and books. Now you can learn English for free from the comfort of your home using the Internet. The BBC and the British Council offer a number of on line courses, which teach written and spoken English. You can also improve your English by watching television programs and reading English newspapers. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/qnzpt

Steve Said:

Are there "standard American accent" in the US?

We Answered:

What you hear when watching a national American news show is what Americans would call a "standard American accent." It is very difficult for news people to make it in the business without neutralizing their accents. If your American accent is like that of the news people on CNN, you will be very easily understood.

Your English is quite good, by the way.

Edit: Barack Obama is NOT a good person to model your speaking after. It is true that Obama is easily understood by Americans, but this is because he is a native speaker of the language, and was not raised in places with strong dialects. The problem with modeling your speaking after Obama is that he has a very distinctive way of speaking that has to do with the pacing and inflection of his words, rather than his pronunciations. If you were to speak like Obama, you would sound to Americans as though you were trying to imitate the president, the way that comedians here do. If you were good at it, it would be very obvious who you had learned to speak like, and it would seem either funny or disrespectful to Americans.