English skills never improve

[hopelives]

According to this NY times article a subtext to this awful event is the killers lack of English ability. We know that coming from a tonal language to English is exceptionally difficult. Did any of your SO's reach a point where their limited skills never improved and how did you cope? Did any of you have an SO that was having a difficult time but later showed great improvement when you changed approaches? I know that the main focus of many on this board is the immigration hurdle but in the end that may be the easy part

 

jim

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/nyregion...mp;ref=nyregion

[warpedbored]

My wife's English dramatically improved her first two years here. Since then it is still improving but not at such a rapid pace. I wouldn't worry about it. These women are smart and motivated.

[lostinblue]

According to this NY times article a subtext to this awful event is the killers lack of English ability. We know that coming from a tonal language to English is exceptionally difficult. Did any of your SO's reach a point where their limited skills never improved and how did you cope? Did any of you have an SO that was having a difficult time but later showed great improvement when you changed approaches? I know that the main focus of many on this board is the immigration hurdle but in the end that may be the easy part

 

jim

 

From what we are reading this person came here as a young person and he also wore a hearing aid. If this hearing problem was severe you would think that learning a second language would be somewhat difficult. When yan arrived from ChengDu she could read english fairly well. When in china as our relationship moved along she used a web cam and as a result her spoken english did improve a great deal. She has mentioned that early on after arriving at my home the english language was a bit difficult to hear (understand)We would sit around the table during dinner with my parents and she would understand only 50-60 % of what was said. Her "ear" for english has improved a great deal during the last 2 years being here. Yan is going to college and this has FORCED her to improve her english. She is always using the computer to look up words that she have never seen before. Going to college has pushed her english ability to a higher level.