| Student 17 I know my English is so average and I really don't have much confidence in speaking English in front of so many people (as I think the others are good English speakers). I think this is the largest hurdle for me in this stage. |
| Student 18 I understand that we have to practise more to improve our English, but it is in fact not that practical to do so in our daily lives as we are living in a Chinese society. So What can I do to gain more opportunities to speak English outside school? |
| Student 19 I am not the kind of person that afraid of making mistakes. However, I just do not have the courage to talk in English sometimes. I am not completely comfortable in an “English-speaking environment”. |
| Student 20 …if I want to talk fluently, I must make many grammatical mistakes. Yet, if I want to reduce those mistakes, I need plenty of time to think and organise what I am going to say. So how can I manage them at the same time? |
| Student 21 How can I be more confident when I'm speaking English? |
| The ability to achieve a specific goal (like presentation)/information delivery |
| Student 22 How I can make funny, interactive and informative presentations? How can I upgrade my presentation skills? |
| Student 23 How to improve my body gesture when I am giving speech? |
| Student 24 In most courses, students are required to do presentations, but my public speaking skills are relatively weak. I would like to know how can I give an impressive speech? |
| Student 25 Since I am taking the CBS programmes, I am worrying if there is a great depress in my English proficiency as I am taught in Cantonese and Mandarin most of time. |
| Student 26 How can I reply the questions well in the Q&A section after the presentation? (As the Q & A section has no time to organize. I hope to know the skills to do better.) |
| Student 27 In the aspect of speaking, I would like to learn how I catch the attention of audience. |
| Listening |
| Listening comprehension |
| Student 28 How can I be able to grasp the main points of the speaker when he/she is speaking very fast? I am weak at listening, especially when dealing with foreigners. What are some long lasting methods I can use to improve my listening? |
| Student 29 Another difficulty I encounter is that I find it difficult to understand someone’s English with special accent. Therefore, I tried to talk to foreign classmates more often and I hope I can overcome this difficulty. |
| Student 30 Sometimes I even can not determine what the main idea of the speaker is. In the future, I may not be able to attend meetings effectively as I fail to jot down key points of the speaker. How can I improve that? |
| Student 31 How can I understand the humors from native speakers easily? (As this is a communication class, I think understanding what the speaker said is very important. If I can understand the native speaker’s humors, the conversation will be happier and smoother.) |
| Note-taking skills |
| Student 32 How can I develop good listening skills? As far as I know, it is uneasy, if not difficult, for me to jot careful notes during listening tests. Simply, I can't score good grades in such listening tests. |
| Student 33 The second difficulty for me is that I can never effectively jot notes during listening (this is my weakest paper in F.7). It makes me hard to catch the main point of the speaker when I am writing too slow. |
| An overall improvement in listening skills |