"Pizza?"
What does this mean? One word by itself doesn't communicate much. It could mean any of these things:
- Do you like pizza?
- What kind of pizza do you like?
- Have you ever eaten pizza? (Some of Joe's students never have!)
- Would you like to go get some pizza?
- Do you like to eat cold pizza for breakfast?
Okay, this last example isn't very useful unless you are Teacher Joe, but these are just examples. The single word "pizza", by itself, isn't enough to make communication clear. You need to learn sentences, MANY sentences!
Teacher Joe often has students who try to learn lists of words. Not only do they forget most of the words, they never learn how to use the words. So, Joe teaches them to study the same way he studied French, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese, using sentence lists. By studying sentence lists, Teacher Joe and his students remember better and communicate more clearly.
Using whatever English materials you have, find the key sentences and put them into a list. Any sentences that you think will be useful to you are good. Carry your sentence list wherever you go and practice until you have mastered all of them. If you can find five sentences a day, five days a week, you will have over one thousand new sentences in a year and your speaking will improve dramatically!