Hello everyone. It’s late at night, but I’m still at work.(why not say some wo
rds to praise me?) Hope my last article has given you a deep impression. Today I
want to talk about learning English. An old topic, but I’m Li xiao yao, I don’
t like to follow other people’s footsteps. Hope you can benefit from my article
.
Basic attitude towards learning English:
I often heard some people said: ”do you have some good ways to studying English
? ” “ I don’t like reciting, can you recommend me some better ways?” “ Can
you tell me how to learn English well in a short time?”
If you insist the above childish idea, I advise you not to read the following, i
t’s wasting your precious time which should be spent on chatting with callow bo
y/girl students (people who have the above idea are usually immature students wh
o surf the internet just intend to find some tedious gossip or find another imma
ture students whom they think would be Snow White or Prince Charming.) Learning
a foreign language is a hard work, you don’t need to have a huge vocabulary, y
ou just need to have a smaller vocabulary which you can use them very efficientl
y. I don’t think one can learn English well in a short time. Good English must
be based in hard work and patience. So I advise those hotheaded students to aban
don the silly thought of finding some shortcut to learn English well in a short
time.
How to learn English efficiently?
I admit that there are some good ways to learning English efficiently, but all o
f them are based on hard work.
Almost everyone has complained “I have a bad memory, I always forget what I’ve
learned easily!” I just want to ask a easy question : why do you still remembe
r the sentences of : “good morning!”, “I love you!”, “are you a girl?”(im
mature boy students always ask this questions), even “ When I was young I'd lis
ten to the radio Waiting for my favorite songs When they played I'd sing along I
t made me smile…”(oh, a long song, I admire you for your good memory) The answ
er is obvious, you use or see or hear them frequently. Once you have learned so
mething new, please try to use them as frequently as possible in your talking an
d writing. I find in the English corner of Hongen net, people there are very ent
husiastic, but what they are saying is simple words, simple sentences. I seldom
see they add some new words or structures in their talking, I don’t think they
have just learned so limited English expression. They just don’t have the mind
of using what they’ve learned. In this case, I don’t think they can benefit fr
om chatting in the English corner. ( maybe someone can, when a hotheaded boy stu
dent just intends to find a silly girl student.)
Some people said“ I’ve learned the grammar for a long time, but still always
make many grammar mistakes, why?” An illiterate English person who has never le
arn any grammar can also speak fluent English without or very few grammatical er
rors, why? because he knows how to hear others’ talking. In fact, what you said
was also said by other people before. What you write may also be written by oth
ers before. So I advise you to do much listening and reading, and often repeat t
he
English from English speaker or tapes. If you keep doing that you get over the g
rammar problem. You will know how to put the right words in the right places in
your talking and writing. Learning a foreign language just like learning to driv
e a car, you can’t learn to drive a car by reading the operating book. What you
should do is just practicing more. Manipulating a good language ability must be
based on hard work of reading, listening and writing. To remember new
words, I recommend you the way of writing some articles, using the words or phr
ases which you want to remember. “One day a pious pregnant pilgrim was walkin
g on the pavement with a precious pearl on her palm,……” (When I was a univers
ity student, I have written some articles in which the vocabulary almost covers
all the words of the dictionary. Oh, it was a hard work which took one year. Aft
er finished that work, I insist on rewriting those article once a month. Because
the articles were written by me, so I can remember every word and hardly forget
.)
Abandon the wrong way of teaching English
Almost everyone has said: “I just can’t catch up with foreigners, they speak t
oo fast, but if they speak slowly, I can understand them easily.” That’s anoth
er problem which is caused by a wrong way of studying English. Most people learn
English by the way of translation. Once they heard an English sentence, they tr
anslate it into Chinese, then get the meaning of this sentence. In the same way,
if they want to say something in English, they first have Chinese in their mind
, then translate it into English. As an result, when they are talk with an Engli
sh person, the process will be:
1. get a sentence from the Englishman
2. translate it into Chinese in the mind
3. get the meaning of what the Englishman want to express
4. thinking how to reply it in Chinese
5. translate the Chinese into English
6.reply the Englishman in English.
In this way how can you talk with the Englishman normally? (he ,he, in fact even
I can’t avoid this bad way, but thanks largely to my hard work and good Englis
h, the transfer time between each step is very short, so I can manage to talk wi
th foreigners normally. I’m still trying to establish the English mind when usi
ng English! I think it is a long way, but I will not give up halfway.)
If you have little children who are learning English, please don’t use the trad
itional way of “ Chinese to English, English to Chinese” to teach them. I reco
mmend you this way, for example, if you want to teach your little children the w
ord “monkey”, you can show them the animal or a picture of monkey and repeat t
he word “Monkey” over and over again without saying the Chinese “Houzi”. In
this way, you have rooted the English thought in your children’s mind, when the
children hear the English word “monkey”, the animal will appear in their mind
rather than the Chinese word “Hou Zi”
This is just my shallow comment on learning English. I believe there are many ta
lents in this BBS who have better ideas about how to learn English and someone m
ay has a God damned IQ of 160! I welcome everyone to express his/her opinions fr
eely. As for those hotheaded people who still think there is shortcut, please do
n't disturb me, I’m a very busy salesman, discussing with you will waste my tim
e which is very expensive. Time = Money
Notice: After read this article, please don’t get an idea that Li xiao yao is a
n English teacher. He is engaged in foreign trade, dealing in women’s underwear
, weight loss products and electronic gifts.( Is that interesting?)