My two cents

I never think there is one magic book that can solve all your spoken English problems. Here I think most people here in this forum just use NCE to hone their pronunciation and intonation skills since NCE is a set of well-written textbooks as you have said, which cover many aspects of life and have a large range of vocabulary. It has its reason to be in circulation for such a long time because it is classic. If you can go through the whole set of books with quality study, not just flipping through in a couple of days, you will have a very good foundation of pronunciation and intonation. And your English writing will definitely reach a high level. From this perspective, I think NCE has served its purpose very well.

I used not to pay much attention to the details of pronunciation although I know a bunch of phonetics concepts. As long as I could get myself understood, I was ok with it. Since I started with NCE reading, I have found lots of problems I missed or ignored before, like EE or AE pronunciation. I also found my ears become sharper and more sensitive than before when I listen to the news or other English programs.

In the NCE studying, you have book CDs to follow with. You can also put your own recording on the forum to let other learners to pick errors. Because of its popularity, it has lots of followers. People can study from each other and help each other, which is not what one can achieve in daily conversion or self-study. To be frank, no native speaker will stop to correct your pronunciation during the daily conversation; at most they will just pardon you if they can’t even guess out what you are trying to say.

The way you have suggested is also a very good way of learning spoken English. I just don’t agree you have such a negative opinion on NCE studying unless you have been through the whole set seriously and felt it is a just failure to you.

Anyway, I think we need do intensive English reading besides extensive reading. Of course, you can pick whatever textbooks you like. Don't have to stuck with NCE. Quote a Chinese Saying here - "Details determine success or failure"

Just my 2 cents

所有跟帖： 

• Well said! Lilac -eyeyey- ♀ (24 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:04:47

• 写得真好！向你学习。 -好学又好问- ♀ (0 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:52:02

• I agree with your points at your English level -englishreader- ♂ (1062 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:55:18