去過外國既朋友..英文方面,幫下我

It's not the length of time abroad, but what you do that matters.

My experience with studying in Canada was that I was quite fluent after one year, and that was because I was hanging out with the non-Chinese students and the Hong Kong students initially thought I was from Singapore. My progress slowed down when I started to hang out with them.

Anyway, I think I managed to keep a healthy balance, that half of my friends were locals and half were Chinese. After 4 years I was quite fluent. By comparison, those of my friends who went to exclusively local small towns were more fluent, whereas those many who went to University of Toronto (with a large Hong kong student population at the time) and chose to associate only with Chinese friends spoke terrible English when they graduated.

I was never able to lose my "accent", mainly because I was already 21 when I left Hong Kong. I think those who went abroad in their early teens (say, 13 and 14) can eventually speak like a native, whereas those leaving after 20 will retain an accent in one form or another.

However, it is not necessary to lose one's accent. It is more important to learn the common usage and the proper pronunciation, whether it be British, Australian, Canadian, or American. Pronouncing "same" as "sam", "cake" as "kick", "soup" as "soap", "pri" as "pee", and "three as free" etc. is not an accent issue, but a pronunciation problem. This can be corrected right here in Hong Kong if you try hard.

I hope this information is helpful to you.

It's just common sense that your English has to be good if you use it all the time, and being in an English speaking country presents you with that opportunity.

Good Luck.











2010-05-17 05:45:42 補充：
To 003:
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MSN:[email protected]

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3-4 years should be enough but try to avoid best not to go to China Town, hanging around with Chinese, etc. Usually Australian are very friendly and make more local friends then. Good Luck.

For the accent, I don't think you could get rid of the chinese accent and 100% speak like a western people. But live with it, it is because of our mother tongue making us some of syllables cannot sound very properly.