I don't often use these three letters. This time, I have to use them. OMG!
OMG! I have fallen into a trap. How the heck you mainland Chinese folks can write so long and in elaborate details on these things? Anyway, it's done at last - a very long piece translated into English for English learners. You don't tell yourself that you have already mastered English if you cannot read the Chinese original and repeat in English i.e. almost like simultaneous interpretation as echoed by the same blogger in another blog entry I translated and posted here earlier today.
After registering myself as a member here for half a month now, haha, quite a lot of friends come to me to seek me out to practice English. I am very honored, and also very pleased. There are so many friends that I talk to until my mouth dries up. What I discovered is that verybody is eager to raise their level of oral English skills. Yet it is hard to raise their standard, as if there are no solutions and no way out. Summing up all the problems, we come up with only one: At the end of the day, how can we learn English really?
First of all, I feel that we have to sort out our learning attitude. The Chinese economy has gone haywire and so are the Chinese. Everything has to be accomplished at speed. There are too many crack English courses in the market. You can open your mouth to speak English after tens of days. You can remember so many words after tens of days..... We have all been misled. There isn't such a thing in learning English. There is no short-cut in learning things, much more in learning English. We can only approach it progressively and orderly. There isn't any other method. Listen not to these bullshit specialists especially those which wear titles with "China" in the front. New Oriental has never taught you short-cuts. New Oriental is also passing on to you a spirit in learning.
Think of us who learn Chinese. The time that we can really able to read and write freely is when we have completed Primary 4, roughly between age 8 to 10. I don't know about you, but at least I am like that as I may be a little bit dumb. That is to say that under an all Chinese environment, it has taken us exactly 10 years to have a basic grasp of this Chinese language. Think of learning English yourself, how many FULL years have you been studying it? Note - FULL years. One year? Two years? Three years? Then why are you in a hurry? Let me tell you this. A student who is going abroad to study, after passing his TOEFL, will under an entirely English speaking environment takes almost one year to understand the course. In order to fully understand a broadcast, it takes him 2 to 3 years. In order to fully master English, he has to live there for a few years. This is student who is working rather hard. Think of you who is staying in China. What the heck are you in a rush for? Sit down and do it slowly. You can't just rush into it. It is an accumulating process that takes years.
2) English is a skill. It is not knowledge. It is not something you can pick up after studying a book or two. Skill is a sense. What's a sense? If you are hurt, you will shout out loudly "ouch". If you like to flag down a taxi, you will shout out loudly "TAXI"! It is like when we feel hungry, we will go for rice. You will think like this when you feel hungry: “Then according to biology books, when humankind are hungry, they need food.” You will go straight to the ice box to look for something to eat. This is skills. Some people like to segregate knowledge and skills. They think knowledge is knowledge, and skills is skills. Saying that English is not knowledge but skills, they think they are saying something innovative. In actual fact, skills is higher than knowledge. We need to use English ultimately so we must put into use the grammar, vocabulary we have learned like a reflex that takes a second or two. This is a headache with English compared with other subjects. A mathematics problem may take you a few hours to work out a solution. With English, you are talking to others that you have to respond in a second or two. The time is too short, so short that we don’t even have time to come up with the Chinese. Therefore, generally there is a requirement that you can sense the English directly and blurt it out. Should I punch you, you will shout out OUCH at once. You won’t think about it first. ALAS! Then you shout out OUCH afterwards. Mayun told those who had done an MBA course. First of all you must forget what you had learned in your MBA course, even after you had graduated. He is not telling you to forget the knowledge, but to tell you to convert them to skills and store them in your brain, rather than having them as pieces of management rules listed in the books. The ultimate aim of English is the same. Forget all the words, grammar and sentence patterns. If you can speak as you open your mouth, without ever going back to your memory, you have made it.
3) If we insist that there is a short-cut in learning English, then that short-cut can mean much more time spent in the end compared to others. Yu Min Hong was in Chengdu once. He delivered a long talk. I could only remember two points. 1) That day he shaved his head bald. 2) He cited a very lively example. He talked about driving a car in the US. If he was driving at 60 miles, others did it at 65 miles (I am sorry I don't know exactly how many miles it was. I can't remember clearly. Anyhow, that's what he meant.) After one or two hours, I wanted to catch up with him. Then you would find it really very very difficult. The distance between one person and another is also increasing slowly on the same principle. If you want to make it good learning English, there are nothing more than working hard and persistence. Learn more each day. It will accumulate as days and months pass by.
What's more? We have to approach this gradually and orderly. We must persist and learn every day. Learn orderly. This is very important. Those are bullshit again. You wasted your time reading them again. But this point you must bear in mind. Spending an hour a day throughout the week is absolutely more effective than spending a total of 7 hours on a weekend. There must be regularity in learning English. Read and learn everyday. Keep your brain excited. Get it so excited that you will pop up an English word first whatever you are thinking about. Insist on doing this for one two hours a day. The effect is absolutely much better than spending the whole day studying whenever you feel like doing it.
Then, persistence is a very difficult thing. Socrates told his students to shake their hands when they got home. In a year, only our saintly philosopher Plato was able to do this everyday consistently. What about asking us English learners to read English for more than an hour everyday. The solution we need (???) If the above is bullshit. Then the solution offered hereafter is the most important. I am sorry that you have wasted your effort again.
4) How to persist? I have read a lot of books. Yet only a book which is not connected with learning English entitled "Fundamental Movie Script Writing" talked about how to persist. I found it very precisely to the point personally. It was a book written by Syd Field, a script writer in Hollywood. In Chapter 12, it says that if we can sit down persistently and write something everyday. The original wording is rather long. Simply said: "When you sit down to write, you will encounter different kinds of resistance." If we swap that into the China scenario, we will think of eating something or watching TV, going online for a while, or going for a walk. This is what we call the sort of resistance we will encounter. We are the great master when it comes to giving various reasons and excuses for not writing. This is the hurdle in the process of creating a movie story. How can you tackle that? Very simple. If you know what is going to happen, then when it happens, you just admit it. When you are cleaning the ice box, sharpening your pencils or eating something, you should know what you are doing. Experience the resistance! Those are not big deals. Never despair. Don't feel guilty. Don't curse yourself. Only if you admit those are resistances, you turn round and do what you should be doing. Don't pretend ever that nothing has happened. Those things did happen. Once you have sorted out the resistance, you will be ready to pen your writing. In reality, writing is a coordinated learning process. The more you write, the easier it will become. (The original wordings, adopted from Chapter 12 - Writing the Movie Script) From the captured content, simply replace writing with "learning English". What we mean here is that drifting away from what you are doing is sure to occur. Whenever you know your mind is drifting away, and you don't like to learn anymore, you must understand that it is your mind drifting away. You have to persist and continue with your studies. Like the last sentence there, English is also a coordinated learning process. The more you study, the easier it will become. The content above is telling us the best method in the world to overcome tardiness and let us persist in learning English.
So much bullshitting. However much I write about, it can be summed up in two words: word hard, persist. You have wasted all your time reading the above. I believe if you can read all the way down to this part, you can be counted as one who is persistent enough. Persist and persist again. Work hard and work hard again. This is American spirit. A Malaysian teacher who taught in the States before told me that I should not just keep saying that the course is difficult. If you just happen to be in certain western universities, you simply don't have the chance to say so. If you say this, others will only tell you to work a bit harder.
所以废话这样多，英文学习其实也就是大家都懂的，努力跟坚持。
好意思，以上内容你们都白看了。
What about this load of bullshit so far?
Surely everybody knows what it is all about learning English.
希望您能够在英文学习上成功。
坚持，坚持，再坚持。
努力，努力，再努力。
I hope you will make it a success in learning English.
Persist, persist and persist again.
Work hard, work hard, work harder again.
I am going to develop my own course material to help English learners here in China. On dubbing for animated videos, I may have a problem because my voice is pretty flat. I don't mind looking into it if you can spare a moment. 作者: administrator 时间: 2009-10-17 14:17
ok,i have already contacted you via op messager. 作者: martinpeng 时间: 2010-1-13 12:19
Wonderful article and translation!
Success of life takes spontaneity and improvisation ability, so does speaking a language.
We learn how to swim when we swim;
learn how to do business when we do business;
learn how to live when we live;
learn how to speak a language when we speak;
