L 1: How to find this book? (Synonymous sentence)

"How can I learn English well?" Although this is an overused topic, it is actually difficult to answer. I have been teaching English at Beijing Foreign Studies University for 40 years. Almost every year, students test me with this question, but I have never been able to give a satisfactory answer. Learning a language involves too many aspects. Now I just want to talk about some personal views on some specific issues, hoping to help beginners. First of all, I want to say an old saying that people are tired of hearing: If you want to learn English well, you must have enough confidence and firmly believe that English can be learned well. In fact, even many people abroad think that China is very talented in learning English. Every year, thousands of people in China get high scores or even perfect scores in TOEFL, and some GRE students do better than American students, which proves this from one aspect. Of course, it is not enough to have confidence, but also to have determination. Because learning English well is not easy. You must be prepared to make great efforts. Nowadays, fast food culture is popular, and everything is quick and quick. No matter what you do, you are eager to get high returns quickly with very limited investment. The media often tell stories about mastering several foreign languages through self-study, which makes us feel very ashamed, because we have studied all our lives and are still afraid to type the word "proficient" in a foreign language. But calm down and think about it, I'm afraid it's hard to have such a cheap thing in the world. Recently, I heard that many new products appeared in the market, such as Happy English, Miracle English and Crazy English. I haven't studied them carefully, but I think as long as it is "English", it must always follow the rules and conform to the general laws of language, the special laws of English and the specific laws of China people learning foreign languages. Fun is a good thing. Lively and colorful teaching materials and methods are all helpful to learning. But I don't believe in luck, luck, crashing cars and jumping off buildings. The problem of many beginners now is the lack of a hard-working spirit. Some friends always think that it will take a semester or two to pay for the last training class. It is a misunderstanding that you can learn English well by listening to classes several times a week and buying a "quick translator" on a whim to help you during the exam. Darwin said, "Only those who persevere can succeed" (only those who never give up can finally succeed. ), I'm afraid it's hard to taste the pleasure of mastering a country's language without great effort. Having said that, I can't help but "recall the bitter experience" again. When we were students in our sixties, what were our advantages today? Lack of books, single teaching materials and no information with the outside world. There are no English videos, and English movies are just a few old films from the 1940s, less than eight model operas. The tape recorder is an old "clock" weighing forty or fifty kilograms (it has already entered the museum). When practicing listening, the whole class stretched their ears and stood in front of the speaker and could not hear clearly. Not to mention foreign books, newspapers and magazines. I remember when I was in Shayang Cadre School in Hubei, the students listened to English broadcasts in the open air every day, and when it rained, they listened with umbrellas. But even under such conditions, people have mastered English skills. It depends on a kind of perseverance. In this sense, "How can I learn English well?" The answer to this question is actually simple: nothing is difficult. In the past, if you want to learn English well, you must "throw away your illusions and prepare for battle." When it comes to the determination to overcome difficulties, the most needed time is probably the english introduction stage. It's hard to get started. Because of the difficulties in English learning, I'm afraid 80% of them are concentrated in this stage. Phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills should achieve zero breakthrough at this stage, lay a good foundation and form habits. No wonder all kinds of English teaching methods at home and abroad are mostly aimed at various problems at this stage. In a word, "the master leads the door and practices in himself." After this entry, the following article will be easy to do. Now hundreds of thousands or even millions of people begin to learn English excitedly every year, but in the end, maybe only a thousand people insist on taking the self-taught exam, and most of them live at the entry level. Can we bypass the entrance? No, anyone who wants to skip the introductory stage, five to ten will eventually become raw food. Haste makes waste, and it's a dilemma. We must be down-to-earth in the initial stage, one step at a time. Doing so was slow at the time, but it will prove to be the only way to save money quickly. Learning materials should not be as difficult as possible. It is an illusion to think that textbooks are difficult, that is, high education. Our current middle school English textbooks are often out of proportion to students' actual mastery level. I dare say: this is really a mistake. Learning less is not as good as learning well, and learning well is solid. The task of the entry stage is very heavy. Phonetics has not been practiced for a year and a half, and it is not enough to rely solely on Chinese phonetic symbols. Basic grammar, such as plural nouns, inflections of verbs, tenses, voices, comparative degrees of adjectives and adverbs, and various basic sentence structures, will not be sui generis without repeated practice for a year or so. About 3000 words in the introductory stage are basic words and structural words, and it is difficult to really master them without a year or two of hard practice. All these language elements should be transformed into practical skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing. To do all this, it is impossible to reach a certain temperature. Another reason why the initial stage often fails to last is that during this period, there is actually no ability to communicate in language. Therefore, novices often can't see their progress and taste the sweetness. In fact, they are approaching the threshold step by step. Stick to it for a while, maybe the future will be bright and suddenly enlightened. It's a pity that I suddenly lost confidence and fell short. The introductory stage can generally be divided into two parts. One focuses on pronunciation and the other on grammar. When it comes to grammar, some beginners often think it refers to the theory of grammar. This is a one-sided view. There are many articles in grammar, which have obvious guiding and inductive functions. The ever-changing language, once discovered, becomes something with rules to follow, which of course brings great convenience to learning. But in the primary stage of grammar theory, we can't speak, let alone speak. Drilling too early, too thin and too deep will not only waste unnecessary time and energy, but also have adverse consequences. Skills training should be emphasized in the primary stage, and the prominent word is "practice". So instead of sitting on the beach and reading the swimming manual repeatedly, it is better to go to the beach for an hour or two. Most articles on grammar are not difficult to understand and remember, but to master them skillfully, you have to practice hard for thousands of times. Everyone knows the difference between him and her in English, but some people have been studying all their lives. Some beginners of science and engineering are used to starting with grammar rules and then assembling sentences with corresponding rules. Their mistake is often to overemphasize theory and neglect practice. That is to say, pay too much attention to knowledge and ignore skills. As a result, although some beginners can clearly analyze every difficult sentence with grammar, they still can't understand it and have no ability to actually use the language. So in the initial stage, it is not appropriate to ask questions at the end. Generally speaking, it is better to imitate complex grammar into some different sentence patterns. Otherwise, it may be like the "centipede" in the fable. When its friend asks it, "You have so many feet, how do you decide which leg to take first?" , it froze. As a result, I walked well, because I wanted to figure out theoretically which leg I should take first and never walked again. By the way, here are my views on various exercises. It seems logical to emphasize practice in the initial stage. Practice is to do all kinds of exercises. But in fact, the exercises can be designed in many ways. Of course, different exercises can achieve different goals. But focus on the key points. In the introductory stage, I advocate doing less exercises aimed at clarifying concepts and doing more exercises conducive to practical application, skill proficiency and ideological expression. I have special reservations about all kinds of right and wrong questions and multiple-choice questions. Because this approach is easy to lead to a simple thinking mode of either or. It is also easy to lead to a dead end. More importantly, its purpose is only to clarify concepts and does not involve the actual practice of language skills. At present, students at all levels of schools in China are suffering from sea tactics. Some schools and students have to take doing problems as the main way of learning, and take all kinds of exams as the core of all teaching work. This is an extremely harmful practice. Most exercises are just to test students' learning, just like measuring people's temperature with a thermometer. You cannot be mistaken for mastering a language by doing exercises. Just like a thermometer can't reduce a patient's fever. Nowadays, the TOEFL test is widespread in the whole country, which affects the normal English learning. Let people think that if they pass the TOEFL, they will learn English well. This is another serious misunderstanding. There are also various training courses popular in society, which teach students how to get high marks by cleverness, how to draw circles quickly and guess correctly. Let me tell you a joke. If you get full marks in such an exam, there may be something wrong with the students' English. Just like a student I heard in the 1970s, he bought a second-hand bicycle with 9 yuan RMB. It is said that after a bicycle can be ridden, a normal bicycle will not be ridden. I'm worried that this exam will become this used car bought for 9 yuan. Practice and exams naturally have their uses. However, just because a person with a good English level can cope with exercises and exams does not mean that a person who can cope with exercises and exams has a good English level. Language educators agree that there is only one reliable standard for English proficiency: to see how many ideas a person can express with it, to what depth, and to what extent it is accurate, vivid and fluent. In the primary stage, we should emphasize the word "practice", that is, we should always use our eyes, ears, mouth, hands and brain. In my opinion, the most important thing here is to overcome the listening and speaking level as soon as possible. You must learn to speak as soon as possible. When "freedom of speech" can be realized, the door to learning English will be opened. To solve the problem of introductory listening and speaking, first practice pronunciation, and then practice basic sentence patterns repeatedly by combining basic grammar and basic morphological changes. Beginners, of course, practice simple rhetoric, but from now on, tall buildings should not be arrogant. Ordinary adult beginners are often reluctant to speak because they think it is too simple and naive. I dare not say what I want to say, because I am afraid of making mistakes and making people laugh. The result is that you understand as soon as you learn, understand as soon as you listen, forget as soon as you pass, and make a mistake when you say it. The rich thoughts of adults have become psychological obstacles. The learning effect is not as good as that of some unscrupulous children. I remember when I graduated from college in my twenties, I taught a group of outstanding middle-aged scientists, all of whom were going abroad. Professor Yang, president of Fudan University, is one of them. At that time, I advised them to learn English from me, tell short stories like Little Tom and practice some simple things together every day. But the results of intensive training for one and a half years show that this basic training is effective even for these middle-aged scholars with cutting-edge science. No, imitation. Therefore, reading aloud, reciting and retelling are all necessary. I still believe that the old so-called listening and speaking ability of reading 300 poems of Tang poetry is actually irrelevant in the primary stage. There are too many things to recite, and sooner or later they will be digested and become their own things. I also think that in the primary stage, the so-called listening and speaking ability is the ability to understand other people's problems and ask them questions first. For anything, it will be a great achievement to learn to ask the time, place, process, reason, consequence and so on in different forms (general questions, special questions, rhetorical questions, multiple-choice questions, etc.). ), with different people and different tenses and voices, and can answer fluently. Of course, practice questions and answers. It's better for someone to practice. In fact, the premise of cultivating listening and speaking ability is that one should have the desire and interest to exchange ideas. Too introverted, usually taciturn, and in the end, people who don't even speak a few words of their mother tongue will certainly find it difficult to pass the customs smoothly. Listening and speaking training, of course, should be from near to far, from shallow to deep. Start with daily life and gradually expand the theme. This involves listening and reading more, because the way to absorb language is nothing more than seeing with your eyes and listening with your ears. Now the conditions for learning English are good, listening practice, software and hardware are available. But according to my usual observation, many students don't listen enough and don't listen well. In 1950s, English teachers often mentioned the relationship between "essence" and "universality", believing that they should be organically combined and not neglected. I still think this is a truth. I advocate that students should listen to something carefully in a planned way. Prepare materials for about an hour a week and listen to them seven or eight times a week, to the extent that my son listened to Tunnel Warfare that year. Even if you can't recite it backwards, at least you should make it sound easy. If you persist for four years and have about 200 hours of authentic English in your stomach, your listening difficulties should be solved. Not only listening, but also these familiar voices will certainly lay a solid foundation for the ability to speak. To improve listening and speaking ability, it must be combined with reading. Listening will also benefit from reading more, having a large vocabulary and being familiar with language phenomena. In fact, reading is not an introduction, and it is difficult to get started. The so-called introduction, in short, I think it is to start reading a lot, read the taste and form a habit. How much is a lot of reading? Can I set up a 50- 100 index in the introductory stage? When I just graduated from college, because of the political movement and social work in my student days, and the starting point was too low (starting from ABC), the foundation was too poor, so I'm afraid I can't compare with the top students who just entered school today. Later, I was forced to work hard and study hard after work. I remember that at that time, I had to attend classes 18-24 hours a week, and I had to give counseling for several hours after work every day, prepare lessons collectively for several hours, and engage in social activities and political activities for several hours ... Basically, I didn't have time to read books until 65,438+00 in the evening. In this way, I study almost every day until midnight. On Sundays, I basically carry a schoolbag, eat a few steamed buns and study in Zizhuyuan all day. Sometimes I even go shopping in the city and read books all the way. When I got to the city, it was too late to buy things, but I had finished reading half of the book. I was very pleased to see the book go back to school empty-handed. After more than a year, I finished reading145,000 pages in my little spare time at that time. Later, I found that this book became a turning point in my English study. I don't want young people to imitate mechanically. Today, it is too dangerous for someone to walk on the road with a book. I just want to make it clear that reading is very important Read what? Students often ask. My opinion is that we might as well do whatever we want. If you like reading love stories, let's start with love stories. If you like reading detective stories, you might as well read them first. In short, let nature take its course according to personal interests, needs and conditions. Because at first, the most important thing is to cultivate interest and form habits. After reading to a certain extent, people will naturally have the requirements and ability to expand the scope. But from the perspective of listening and speaking training, we might as well read some contemporary novels first; Especially read more scripts and movie scripts. Because there are many living languages in these books, you can use them after learning them. At that time, I read the complete works of Bernard Shaw, James, Barry and john galsworthy for a while, and found that it was very helpful for my oral English. In a word, I don't approve of the premature merger of science and engineering or other majors. I believe that without a solid foundation of general English, it is difficult to really learn professional English well. Of course, in the long run, the materials you read should not be too biased. More interested. Like diet, picky eaters are not good. The difficulty of reading materials must be appropriate. I'm full of new words. I look up the dictionary most of the time when I study, and I only read two or three pages an hour. It's boring to read. I also lost the original intention of reading a lot. Therefore, the new words in the material should not be too difficult to reach what linguists call "fruit level" (the degree that students feel depressed). A suitable material should be read with relish and fondle admiringly. Because of this, seven or eight pages an hour is probably the lowest speed. In short, the materials are not afraid of being easy at first. Only when it is easy can we be rich; And only a large number can get started. Do you want to look it up in the dictionary? Don't ask if you can start, guess if you can start. Do you want to take notes? If it is your own book, it is also good to mark the wonderful places, and you can focus on flipping through them to deepen your impression in the future. But there is no need to take too many notes. Remember too much, spend too much time, also affect the consistency of reading, into a dictionary, but of little use. Will there be any gains from such general reading? There must be. This kind of gain may be immeasurable, but it will certainly become a rich source of your language learning. After the introduction of reading, of course, we should continue to improve. I remember that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Beijing Foreign Studies University advised students to pass simple reading, simple original works (such as English version of Chinese) and general original works. I think this article is still valid today. The key to reading a lot is to solve the problem of too little vocabulary. This became catch-22 in American novels. To read a lot, you must have a lot of vocabulary. To have a lot of vocabulary, you must read a lot. It's hard to say which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Perhaps this is the meaning that the two complement each other and cause and effect each other. In practice, I think it is particularly important to remember that if you want to expand your vocabulary, you must first learn to treat "positive words" and "negative words" differently, that is, you should not be satisfied with digging carefully one word at a time under the guidance of teachers, but should have a lot of contact. For this large number of new words, we can only seek recognition, not understanding. Only by lowering the requirements for mastering these words can we expand the number in a short time. On the other hand, only by expanding these words can we not get stuck in reading. If you watch too much, a lot of "negative words" will become "positive words", and the original "nodding acquaintance" will become your "close comrades". In order to enlarge our vocabulary, we should learn to associate, compare and draw inferences. A word has some interesting features in form, pronunciation, meaning and usage, which can help us remember and master it. When you see a word, think about its synonyms, antonyms and derivatives. There is a Latin course in British and American middle schools, which is said to be very helpful to master word formation. We don't have this course, but we should also pay attention to word formation and expand our vocabulary. Can we enlarge our vocabulary by memorizing dictionaries? I know many people have done this kind of work, and I am one myself (I once memorized a small dictionary, reciting and tearing one page every day). But in retrospect, unless there are special circumstances, such as revolutionaries in enemy prisons or educated youth who went to the countryside in those days, it is generally unnecessary to make this decision. Because the words included in the dictionary have no sequence and no context, it is not conducive to learning and mastering quickly and economically. It is much easier to enlarge your vocabulary by reading a lot. However, in a certain period of time, for a clear goal, it is still desirable to carry out some vocabulary assaults within a certain range. I remember that after my freshman year, I memorized more than 3,000 common words in a summer vacation. In the second year, I became very active in my study and the difficulty of reading was greatly reduced. Later, a writing competition was held in my grade, and I won the first prize, which made me flattered at that time and further enhanced my interest and confidence in learning. Of course, assault words should come in batches, just right, and must be combined with reading, otherwise rote memorization will be difficult to last in memory and impossible to learn. What I have said above is mainly about some problems in the initial stage. After entering the advanced stage of English learning, there are certainly many challenges. For example, writing problems will become more and more prominent. The training of translation ability is also a hard process. In addition to skills, knowledge has become the goal of endless exploration. A foreign language learner will eventually involve literature, history, philosophy, politics, economy, law and other fields. To truly become a useful talent, we can't stop at pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. There are always problems of overall cultural quality, humanistic quality, ideal and integrity. But these are not the subject of this article.