The outcome of merely “studying” without “applying” (which is the reality for most Chinese students) is that after more than a decade, they are still studying and still lack practical use (which is the reality for most Chinese students).
The reason for “studying a lifetime” yet insisting on “never using it a lifetime” is the fear of making mistakes. When children make mistakes, they often face punishment. After adulthood, even without punishment from others, making mistakes can lead to self-inferiority and embarrassment. Therefore, many people avoid errors “at all costs.” However, you must know that the process of acquiring knowledge cannot be separated from trial and error. Without trial and error, comprehensive and genuine progress is impossible. So, you must know that making mistakes is normal, even indispensable. When doing things, making mistakes is inevitable. If you are doing something and there are absolutely no mistakes, then you are not doing something—you are dreaming.
“animals are born equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
There are many benefits to being able to read English fluently. The word “freedom” is basically the biggest summary. For example, we can read primary source materials directly, without having to wait a long time to read translations that are actually riddled with errors. Translations are often unreliable because translation is truly a very, very difficult job. Many times, the unreliability of the translation is not the fault of the translator; at least, a part of the language is fundamentally untranslatable. If you can read English fluently, you will inevitably laugh occasionally when reading a translated work—for many mistranslated sentences, you can even reconstruct the original English in your mind based on experience. Not relying on translation is a great liberation. When your English reading becomes proficient to a certain degree, you will naturally feel grateful; it is a priceless relief. However, that time hasn’t come yet. As for the present, whether you believe it or not is up to you.
Not Knowing Oneself
— Because Chinese nouns do not distinguish between singular and plural, and Chinese verbs do not have tenses. After eliminating these two errors, it is equivalent to solving most of the problems.
“Agreement/Consistency Relationships”: Subject-verb agreement, tense agreement between the main clause and the subordinate clause, agreement between non-finite verbs and the logical subject (active/passive relationship), pronoun reference agreement, agreement of parallel components’ structure…
As an English user, don’t be misled by English teachers. As teachers, as part of an educational product, they naturally emphasize “correctness,” “accuracy,” and “standard”—regardless of whether they themselves are truly “correct,” “accurate,” or “standard.” Sometimes it is quite sad to think that most teachers are forced to raise their own standards, not out of a desire for progress, but merely to satisfy the practically unreasonable expectations of the “consumer.” English teachers are human, and thus most of them have the same psychological or, rather, human limitations as most other people. When a person cannot achieve something, they will pretend, and keep pretending until they themselves believe it.
Another important worry about daring to speak English is being ridiculed by those around you. This is indeed annoying. But think about it: Would a normal person mock a baby’s stumbling steps? No. Would a normal person mock a disabled person? No, and they shouldn’t. So look at it this way: Is it reasonable that someone speaking a foreign language with non-standard or unpleasant pronunciation will be mocked? Is it reasonable that someone speaks a foreign language their whole life with an accent and cannot correct it, yet is mocked?
“Whether or not you understand” is not important here. The purpose of significantly increasing the auditory input volume is to rebuild speech recognition ability; the focus is not on textual comprehension ability. Babies…
Bilingual Speech Filter
…should have been solidified long ago. In fact, I highly suspect that various types of English early childhood education consume too much time that could have been used to acquire other skills, thereby limiting the development of the young child’s brain. However, you cannot rely on just listening to recordings or watching TV for a child to learn a foreign language.
— As long as you start, you will find that it is not difficult, because “even if you don’t understand, it doesn’t matter.” If you listen a lot, and listen for a long time, sooner or later, it won’t be easy to not understand. Of course, even at the beginning, for better results, you can consciously and gradually increase the text difficulty, and it is best to combine it with intensive reading. During this period, almost everyone will feel like there is no progress, but this kind of…
Brainstorming
The most serious yet most subtle reason among the important reasons why most people ultimately fail in learning English might be this: most people demand too much from short-term gains, but demand too little from long-term gains.
In fact, most people find it difficult to fluently read any sentence in their native language—even though most people believe they can do it. For example, perhaps most people can relatively fluently read any sentence from The Reader magazine without any preparation.
And these “speed reading” suggestions are basically treating the symptom, not the root cause, because they only solve the problem of input speed, not the problem of comprehension speed after input. No matter how fast the input speed is, if the comprehension speed cannot keep up, what good is it? Sometimes, you can’t figure out why so many people clearly think in their minds that they want to improve…
Picking up a dictionary and looking up words by yourself is one of the most direct and effective ways to improve reading comprehension.
Even those who don’t look up words in a dictionary, every organ in our body possesses a certain “evolutionary ability” to some degree. If you play the piano for a long time, your fingers will become more flexible; if you exercise consistently for a long time, your cardiovascular function will become stronger; if you speak more than others, your tongue will become more flexible.
The biggest difference between English teachers and students might be just one: English teachers must look up words in a dictionary (and perhaps grammar books or other reference books), while students have another choice besides looking up words—attending various courses. What does the teacher do in English class? Actually, they mostly just lecture the students on the words, phrases, and sentences that they looked up the previous night and then had to think hard to understand using the dictionary (and other reference books). And the students? They sit below and listen. The students listen, but essentially, they do not participate in the process of reading comprehension.
If you meet a person of the opposite sex who doesn’t understand that “love” and “marriage” are not the same thing, it is best to keep your distance, otherwise a painful life “is waiting for you not far away”…
If you meet someone who is confused about the difference between “government” and “nation,” don’t easily communicate with them, otherwise you might find yourself facing endless troubles and infinite disasters…
If you meet someone who doesn’t know that “goal” and “plan” are not the same thing, and doesn’t know that they themselves might ultimately fail to achieve the goal because of “sticking rigidly to the plan”…
If you meet someone who doesn’t know that “attending school” and “studying” are not the same thing, some of them might look down on those who graduated from vocational schools simply because they have a Ph.D.; conversely, others might hate those with Ph.D.s simply because they only have a vocational diploma…
If you meet someone who doesn’t know the difference between “a person” and “a person’s opinion,” they might either blindly worship authority or treat themselves as the absolute authority…
If you meet someone who doesn’t know the difference between “Action” and “Reaction,” they might end up being a slave to their surrounding environment for life, all while remaining in a completely unconscious state…
Many students hate history class, but it is actually just that they haven’t understood the important difference between “history” and “a history book”…
Organizing vocabulary. You should know that after reading an article, organizing the vocabulary yourself is far more efficient than memorizing words from a textbook—unfortunately, most people do not believe this.
A fifth-grade student, if they can manage to read independently for 10 minutes every day, will read 622,000 more words per year than children who do not engage in independent reading…
— Whether it is abstract or concrete. What is the function of an adjective? You use an adjective to record your perception of the thing you can sense. What about a verb? A verb is used to record the action emitted by the thing you can sense. And finally, what about an adverb? When an adverb modifies a verb, it is used to record your perception of the action emitted by the thing you can sense; when an adverb modifies an adjective, it is used to record your perception of the perception of the thing you can sense. (This minute’s content looks somewhat convoluted, but as long as you can accurately punctuate and understand these words, in just one minute, you will have undergone a complete transformation.)
“Concise, simple, effective, accurate, specific.” Of course, this is not an iron law; if you have the ability to explain the principle clearly using ornate words, that is not impossible; conversely, telling a moving story using simple language is also acceptable. But everyone who hopes that their thoughts can be effectively expressed should keep this standard of ten words firmly in mind.