If I may put in my two cents, an English environment certainly is favorable for language learners, but determination and conscious efforts used in the right direction would make learning much more effective. By simply relating to the way we learn Chinese, our own experience on language learning may provide much insight. As we were exploring the world when little and learning to use the tool called Chinese, the 5 senses were the only things in our possession. This limitation didn't stop us from learning. On the contrary, this allowed us to focus on connecting the language to our inherent perceptions without any disturbance or ambiguity, thus developing our language skills as a second- nature. Compare it to the way we learn Engilsh, we are doing exactly what we don't want to do--learning second-handedly through translations of Chinese. The process of translation itself is already putting English at a distance, preventing us to build English as second-nature. By submerging in an all-English environment, we're trying to create exactly what we want, cutting off our reception of Chinese information from the surrounding world, and use English instead. Through our 5 senses, we can link our perspectives of the world to English itself. Even though it would be impractical to try to find such an environment in Taiwan, we can still achieve the same mental state with a conscious effort. Words of Advice: To push the learning one step further and truly prevent yourself from translating languages, move outside of the comfort zone and stop thinking in Chinese. When you talk to yourself, use English. When you step over dog poop, curse in English. If you don't know how to think through a complicated issue, simplify it to the elementary level. Grammar will fall into place as you get a better hold of the overall structure of English, and memorizing rules would not be all that critical. -- "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." -Mark Twain --

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