Q: Who are you?

A: My full name is Tomasz P. Szynalski, but people just call me Tom. I studybusiness administration(企业管理) and computer science at the Wroclaw University(弗罗茨瓦夫大学) of Technology. In the past few years, I have worked as an English-Polish(英语-葡萄牙语) translator and as a web designer(网页设计师).

Q: How did you learn English?

A: I started learning English when I was 6 years old. For 8 years I learned English the way everybody does-- by going to English classes. It was awfully(十分) ineffective. Reading English texts took me a long time, I made lots of mistakes when writing, my pronunciation was bad, and I could only speak English very slowly.

It got a little better because of... computer games. Playing the games, I would read a lot of English sentences, and after some time I gained a little “grammarintuition(直觉).” You see, I would often “feel” the right answers in grammar tests, while other students had to remember dozens of(许多) grammar rules. But my English was still pretty bad.

In 1993, I got into the best high school in Wroclaw. It has a special program with a lot of English classes. I owe a lot to the people I met there, both students and teachers. My first two years in high school were very important for my English. My English teacher, Mr. Laskosz, gave a lot of good advice, especially on pronunciation and vocabulary. My brilliant friends, Wojtek and Michael, were both fantastic(极好的) English learners. I didn’t want to be worse than them, so I studied harder, and my English improved.

Following the advice from Mr. Laskosz and the example of my friends, I made some good decisions during my first year in high school. I learned Englishphonetics(语音学), started using English-English dictionaries, listening to recordings and watching English-language TV, and talking to native speakers every chance I got. The result: I improved my pronunciation, I was no longer afraid to speak English, and I could understand spoken English quite well, too.

During the summer vacation of 1994 I started reading books in English, mostly novels. I would learn a lot of new words from these books, but I had terrible problems memorizing them. I had to look up(查字典) the same word many times, which was quite annoying. I realized I needed a way to remember all this vocabulary. It was a breakthrough(突破) for me. I started noting down words from the books that I read. I would come back from school and then sit for an hour or two and noted down new words and added them to my collection. In two years, my collection had grown to 3,000 English words.

In late 1995, I got on the Internet, and soon started to write E-mail in English. It was excellent writing practice-- something I had lacked before. Around 1997, Michael and I decided to use English to communicate. Another good decision, which improved my ability to speak English.

Today, I think I use English more than my first language. Certainly there is no big difference between using my first language and using English. Over 90％ of my E-mail is written in English. Most of my reading (websites and books) is in English, too. Speaking is no problem. I can go to any English-speaking country and communicate easily.

Q: What has English given you?

A: I am addicted to(沉迷于) English. I love the language, and I love using it. I like writing English sentences, speaking English to native speakers, reading books and the Web, watching American movies, and so on. I like the intellectual challenge(智力挑战) of using a foreign language. When I learn something new about English, I feel I’m getting better and more powerful.