Can you write something about the importance of language?

The importance of learning a foreign language ~

A mother mouse and some little mice are on the grass.

Walking in the park, a cat named Xiao Lao suddenly came.

All the mice were scared to hide, except the mother mouse.

The mouse kept calm and didn't dodge.

Seeing the cat approaching from a distance, the little mice were very scared.

Afraid, at this moment, the mother mouse knew.

Dogs bark, but cats don't know there's a trick.

Turned and ran away.

When the cat ran away, the little mice trembled one after another.

Come out in fear and look at their mother.

When all the mice are here, mom.

Rat just to longly say:

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Li Lanqing on Foreign Language Teaching

First, promote the reform of foreign language teaching.

Reporter: Foreign language teaching in China has long been time-consuming and inefficient. What do you think is the problem?

Li Lanqing: Since I came into contact with education, I feel more and more that I must pay special attention to foreign language teaching. What's the problem? It takes a long time to learn a foreign language in China. In some places, it starts from the third grade of primary school and lasts for 14 years until graduation from university. Some places have been 10 years since the first grade of junior high school, but what is the effect? The general impression that gave me at that time was that college graduates were poor in listening, speaking and writing except for foreign language majors. Reading may be better, but compared with the study time, it is also half the effort. What caused this? In my opinion, the main problems lie in the following aspects.

First, there is not enough understanding of the importance of learning a foreign language, and there are even some narrow nationalist ideological obstacles. This thought of cultural exclusion has its objective and subjective reasons. First, objectively speaking, after the Opium War 100 years, we have been bullied by the great powers and have a natural aversion to their culture. Our generation's childhood and adolescence were all during the period of Japanese militaristic aggression. At that time, we were forced to learn Japanese, and we were sincerely unwilling to learn it. The scene of my first Japanese class is still fresh in my mind. I remember when Japanese teachers came into the classroom, the first sentence they taught us was "I am a teacher and you are a student", and we were all disgusted. When he taught us to read aloud in Japanese, we children invariably repeated his words loudly: "I am a teacher and you are a student", which made him angry and helpless. We study other subjects hard, but we don't want to learn Japanese, and our grades are very poor. After the reform and opening up, I have more contacts with Japan. Although I have studied Japanese for eight years, I really regret it. Second, it is subjective, so it is complacent. After the Opium War 100 years, why did we plummet from a powerful country and be invaded, bullied and slaughtered by foreign powers? After the Renaissance, Europe realized the industrial revolution, and science, technology, economy and culture all developed by leaps and bounds. Japan followed the example of Europe and America, implemented the Meiji Restoration, and became a powerful country from a weak country. And China? Still intoxicated with the historical dream of the prosperous time of Kanggan, they turn a blind eye to the progress and development of the world, and are unwilling to learn, draw lessons from and absorb all the advanced achievements of civilization in the world while inheriting and carrying forward China's excellent cultural traditions. Even after Comrade Deng Xiaoping initiated the great cause of reform and opening up, this narrow nationalist ideology is still reflected from time to time. In my opinion, to improve the foreign language level of the whole nation in China, we must first solve the problem of understanding the supremacy of culture. If you hear others speak a foreign language, you will be disgusted. There is no environment for popularizing foreign languages at all!

Second, don't equate language and culture completely. Language has a strong cultural attribute, but it also has the attribute of interpersonal communication tools. Except for a few professional researchers, most of us should learn a foreign language as a tool for interpersonal communication. Didn't Marx, Engels and Lenin all master several foreign languages at the same time? Aren't there many people in our older party and country who study and understand foreign languages? Although Comrade Mao Zedong has never studied abroad, hasn't he also studied English? Don't they respect national culture? Some people may say that a common language is necessary, so why not learn to promote Esperanto? There are the most people who speak Chinese in the world, so why not promote Chinese? In this regard, I dare to express an opinion that may be opposed by esperanto experts. I think it's just an idealistic wish to promote a language that everyone doesn't understand all over the world, which is impossible to realize. The use of esperanto in recent years can explain one thing or two. As for Chinese, first of all, although there are more and more foreigners learning Chinese now, our economic strength has not developed to the point where all countries think it is necessary to learn Chinese. Maybe there will be such a day in the future, but not now. Secondly, to tell the truth, China's language is not difficult for us in China, but it is still not easy for foreigners to learn! Every nation thinks that its spoken and written language is the easiest, but it is not. I remember when I was an intern in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, I visited a summer camp for children. The children asked me, Is Chinese difficult? I said it was not difficult. They asked me again, is Russian difficult? I said it was difficult. Then the children said in unison, "no, you are not right!" " Russian is the simplest language in the world. "In order to make it easier for foreigners to learn Chinese, we should summarize the laws and methods of foreigners learning Chinese. Beijing language and culture university and other universities have done a lot of work in this field, and should continue to strengthen this work in the future. In short, we should eliminate all kinds of ideological obstacles, vigorously advocate and promote the learning of foreign languages, mainly English at present, and encourage the learning of other languages. This is the need of scientific and technological progress and national rejuvenation.

Two, learning a foreign language should pay attention to six points

Reporter: How do you think foreign language teaching should be reformed?

Li Lanqing: With regard to the reform of foreign language teaching, first of all, I advocate a unified study period, starting from a city. Why? Several years ago, I found that in a city, some schools began to learn foreign languages in the first grade of primary school, some in the third grade of primary school, and some in junior high school. Results Primary school rose to junior high school, junior high school rose to junior high school, and senior high school rose to university. In fact, learning from scratch every time is a serious waste of time. I also found a phenomenon, that is, learning from scratch every academic year, just like a donkey pulling a millstone. 1996 10 When I was working in Xining City, Qinghai Province, my comrades in Xining City told me that the city began to learn English from the first grade of primary school. I was very happy when I heard that. Xining can be a western city, and so can many cities in the central and eastern regions. Of course, the conditions vary from place to place, but in any case, at least I think that in a city, the initial scores of foreign language courses should be uniform. Conditional cities can start from the first grade of primary school, unconditionally from the third grade of primary school and unconditionally from the first grade of junior high school. In short, we should be unified and formal, and we should not go it alone. Of course, this uneven phenomenon mainly reflects the problem of teachers. This was indeed a big problem in the past, but now there are more and more foreign language talents trained in colleges and universities, which should be alleviated. Especially now, due to the increasingly developed audio-visual and information network technology, the price is getting cheaper and cheaper. It is entirely possible to use the best courseware and the most standard pronunciation in English teaching through technical means, which is helpful to solve the contradiction of insufficient number of foreign language teachers, especially insufficient level. Once, I went to a primary school in a poor area in the west and listened to an English class. It should be said that the teacher's work attitude is serious and responsible, but there are many pronunciation problems. At that time, I felt that foreigners and China people could not understand the foreign language taught in this way. It is said that the teacher was invited from other provinces. I calculated that about 2000 yuan is enough to equip a set of digital video disc (DVD) projection equipment and use high-quality foreign language courseware CD, and the teaching effect will be much better.

In terms of foreign language teaching methods, I think it is mainly to strengthen the two weak links of listening and speaking, and I don't agree to spend a lot of time teaching foreign language grammar in Chinese. No matter which country's language is, its cognitive law is generally listening, speaking and recognizing words first, then learning to read and write, combined with learning grammar. At the same time, for most people, learning a foreign language is to use the language as a tool for work and communication, with emphasis on practicality. Professor Chen Daisun described his experience in learning German. At first the teacher threw him a book for him to translate. He studies by translating books. I had the same experience. I study English. Although I have never taught English in primary school or junior high school, I have tutored English after class. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, I have been learning English from grade three, high school to university. After liberation, Britain, the United States and other countries blocked our country, and English was useless. We must learn from the Soviet Union and ask for help. Our college students are catching up with the first "Five-Year Plan", and the country has begun to build a conventional economy. I was assigned to Changchun to participate in the preparation of the first automobile factory. As the factory was aided by the Soviet Union, a large number of technical materials and organizational designs need to be translated in Russian, and many books on enterprise management also need to be translated and introduced to China. Due to the shortage of full-time translators, the factory leaders assigned a task to our college students: learning Russian and taking part in translation work. It took us a short time to finish reading "Crash Russian" compiled by Tsinghua University, and then we concentrated on translation. At first, the translation speed was very slow, the whole article was full of new words, and the grammar was not well understood, so I looked it up in the dictionary. Whenever we look up a new word, we write it down with a small piece of paper. We have many stacks of words in our pockets, which we can memorize at any time. As more and more words are mastered, the translation speed is getting faster and faster, and the translated books and articles are published one after another. At that time, we spent almost all our spare time studying, translating and writing at our desks, except for our busy work. Later, the factory sent me to the Soviet Union for an internship. The factory leader felt that I no longer needed to study Russian full-time, and I was nervous at work and didn't have time to study, so I went directly to the Soviet Union. After arriving in the Soviet Union, I didn't feel any special difficulties in speaking English. 1956 On the National Day of China, I was invited by Moscow Radio to give a radio speech in Russian on behalf of China students and interns. When the 1957 World Youth Student Festival was held in Moscow, our international students and interns were also invited to translate for the China delegation. Today's learning methods, such as walkman, audio tape, CD-ROM, digital video CD-ROM, computer, Internet, etc. , are much better than a book and a dictionary at that time. There are also various teaching and learning methods, among which there are many good strategies that you can choose freely. Speech contest is a good way to promote foreign language learning. From June 65438 to June 0997, the State Education Commission held an English speech contest for college students from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Hong Kong to welcome the return of Hong Kong, which not only expressed their feelings of loving the motherland and looking forward to the return of Hong Kong, but also played a positive role in promoting college students' English learning.

As far as my personal experience is concerned, no matter what good learning methods are adopted, we should pay attention to the following six points: First, interest. No matter what motivation, no interest, just being forced to learn, it is absolutely impossible to learn a foreign language well. The second is diligence. No matter which good method is adopted, you should study hard on your own. Foreign languages don't automatically appear in your mind. Third, practice. Practice makes perfect. Fourth, courage. Don't be afraid of making mistakes when using it. How can you make progress if you are always afraid of making mistakes when speaking a foreign language? This is the biggest concern of China people when they speak a foreign language. They are afraid of losing face and being laughed at. In fact, when foreigners speak Chinese to us, we will only feel friendly, even though they use inappropriate words and pronounce it incorrectly. Where can we look down on them? On the other hand, I made a mistake and gave my memory nerve a strong error correction message. I don't think I will make the same mistake next time. The fifth is persistence, not just learning a foreign language, no matter what you learn or do, you must have the spirit of perseverance and perseverance. "Three days to fish, two days to dry the net", it is difficult to achieve anything. Sixth, confidence. China people are not stupid, so is language learning. As long as they work hard, they can learn well. Compared with other foreign languages, English is easier to learn, especially there are similarities between grammar and Chinese, so be confident. Of course, teaching methods are very important to improve the efficiency of foreign language learning. There are many learning methods now, which need to be carefully screened, improved and popularized. The most important thing is to create more application environments for students to listen, speak, read and write, especially in listening and speaking. In my opinion, many experts and scholars from all walks of life are not inferior to their foreign counterparts in academic level and practice, but due to the limitation of foreign language expression ability, they have suffered a lot in international exchanges and cooperation, which is a pity. Now the situation has changed greatly, and the foreign language level of teachers and students in the school has improved obviously. I hope that through further efforts, in the near future, China will become one of the countries with the highest level of speaking foreign languages and the largest number of people in the world.

Third, we must not lose the national treasure of Chinese characters.

Reporter: You often emphasize and advocate that students should learn to write and write articles well. What is the special significance of this in the information age?

Li Lanqing: The emergence of characters is a major breakthrough in the progress of human civilization and an important carrier of the inheritance and development of human culture. Chinese civilization can continue to this day, but also thanks to our words. In my opinion, China hieroglyphs are not only a good carrier to convey information, but also convenient for people to learn, remember and read because of their vividness and logical structure. For example, the radicals of Chinese characters are almost ideographic and related to the attributes of the things they refer to, such as birds, fish, horses, people and hearts. While the other half often expresses the same or similar pronunciation, such as goose, duck and pigeon. Therefore, there is a saying in China that "a scholar does not study, as long as he knows half." According to the frequency of words used by the relevant specialized agencies of the State Language Committee from hundreds of millions of words, if you master 1500 Chinese characters, you can basically read ordinary newspapers and periodicals. If you master 2,500 Chinese characters, you can read 98% of ordinary books and newspapers, and if you master 3,500 Chinese characters, you can reach 99%. Selected Works of Mao Zedong has more than 660,000 words in volumes one to four, with more than 2,900 words. For example, most Chinese characters have their own independent meanings, and more than two Chinese characters can be combined into new meanings. I read such an example in a book. For example, the Chinese character "fire" means "fire", "mountain" means "mountain" and "mouth" means "mouth" in English. These two or three well-known simple Chinese characters can be combined into "volcano" and "crater" in Chinese. English can't be called "Flame Mountain" or "Flame Pass", but there are other new words, namely "volcano" and "crater". Almost every time something new is discovered or appears, English will create a new word to express it. Chinese can use existing words to generate new words instead of creating new words. So, usually, most of us have learned 4000 ~ 500 Chinese characters, but we can actually know many more words than this number.

Because Chinese characters are hieroglyphics, theoretically speaking, we can read books with form, meaning and sound coming into our minds at the same time, and scan them quickly at a glance, without the need for literacy steps like Latin, from letters, syllables and words to pronunciation to cognition of their meanings. So we call it "reading", and reading is also called "reading". The efficiency of reading is much higher than that of reading. Of course, if Latin characters are proficient, they can also be scanned and read quickly, but in terms of text structure and logical order, it does not have the characteristics of Chinese characters being in one step, being clear at a glance and being able to scan and read quickly at a glance. Another feature is that the Chinese characters created by our ancestors were basically standardized in the Qin and Han Dynasties more than 2,000 years ago. The Qin Dynasty unified and standardized the national character Xiao Zhuan. Although people who have not studied specially may not know it now, they can recognize a lot. If we pay attention to its laws, we will know more. Compared with modern Chinese characters, official script has little difference. Chinese characters have played a great role in the inheritance of Chinese civilization. In the past, Chinese characters were difficult to input into computers for processing, but now they can be input and processed very easily, even faster than Latin characters. Therefore, Chinese characters are indeed great and magical creations of our ancestors, and we should be proud of them and cherish them.

Chinese characters also have some distinctive features, that is, they are cultural, artistic and ornamental. From ancient times to the present, Chinese characters can be divided into Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Shang and Zhou inscriptions, Warring States silk script, seal script, official script, cursive script, running script and regular script. All kinds of font schools are blooming, competing with each other, with endless charm, and have been passed down and developed continuously, forming an extremely rich artistic treasure house. Therefore, it is the historical responsibility of China people to write Chinese characters well, and it is to inherit and carry forward the excellent traditional culture of China. At the same time, it also helps to cultivate sentiment, improve self-cultivation and develop thinking ability in images, which is helpful for both study and work. Especially in today's rapidly developing information age, we must never lose the national treasure of Chinese characters. Nowadays, many schools have included calligraphy in extracurricular activities. Many children love calligraphy, and there are many young calligraphers, which is a very gratifying phenomenon. I once suggested that calligraphy should be the content of art class, and I can have at least half a class every week. In my opinion, this is not only conducive to promoting the all-round development of children, but also beneficial.

"Children, do you know the importance of learning a foreign language now? 』