again about Language barrire

happymomof1
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:04:07 +0000

More ideas on where to find books to read:

Make friends with the staff at your university library, especially the reference librarians. They all will have favorite books and authors that they can recommend to you. Ask them about non-fiction as well as novels. Ask if the library has a “leisure collection” - that would be a section set aside for books that aren’t related to classes. Sometimes these books aren’t in the main library, but are in another location on campus. Some residence halls also have small collections of paperback books that have been donated by students who are finished with them.

If your university has an Elementary Education program, the university library will have a collection of children’s literature for students in that program to analyze for their classes, but anyone at the university can either read them in the library or check them out and take them home. If you just want to learn some US history quickly, this might be a good place to start. There should be novels set in different time periods of US history (one series to look for is “Dear America” which is written in the form of diaries written by teenage girls), as well as non-fiction books about historical and cultural figures.

If your university doesn’t have many “fun” books, find out where the local public library is. If it is easy for you to get there, go visit that library and make friends with the librarians and ask for their recommendations for things to read. Once you are in the midst of your studies, you might find it hard to make time to read “for fun”, but many students like to do that to relax, and any trip off campus will give you a nice change of pace.

In your original post you wrote “I’ll say that I can understand 99% of his english, but with other americans especially from south is range from 80% to 95%, Don’t know why.” Don’t worry about this just yet. Lots of people who have lived in the US their entire lives have difficulty understanding people from other parts of the country. With exposure to other variations in pronunciation and regional words, your comprehension will improve. Don’t ever be afraid to ask someone to repeat something, or to ask for further clarification. Everyone here will know that you are an international student!