My speech is about 70 words, telling my experience of learning English.

(Attachment: I have mastered reading, listening, speaking and writing in English, and I can also master reading, listening, speaking and writing in Japanese, intermediate in German, intermediate in Korean, elementary in Spanish, and elementary in Vietnamese. )

Since I serialized my notes on learning various small languages (including German, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese) on the Internet, many friends added my QQ and asked me about my learning experience in various aspects. Some friends also asked how to learn the most important English. English is my first foreign language, which I learned more than ten years ago. I have forgotten what it was like at first, and I find it difficult to answer these friends' questions.

Then I thought about it. After learning so many languages, I get the feeling that language learning is all in one, all in one, and there are similarities. Or I can talk about my previous experience in learning English, which is not only helpful to a larger number of friends who want to learn English, but also beneficial to friends who learn other small languages. In fact, I have written a talk about the introductory experience of German, Korean and Spanish before. Even friends who are not learning these languages can visit my QQ space and get some inspiration from it.

To sum up briefly, the acquisition of a language is nothing more than reading, listening, writing and speaking, and each aspect involves vocabulary (not just single words, but also idioms) and grammar, thus forming a 4×2 matrix plane. I will introduce my English learning process from this matrix plane.

In addition, in case readers don't understand my situation, let me talk about my English learning at that time. At that time, my school began to learn English in junior high school, and I lived in a small town. Before I 18, I had never seen foreigners around me except on TV, so there was no foreigner to help me practice listening and speaking. At that time, there was no internet to provide a large number of free study materials. So I have no advantage in learning English, so I think most of my friends now will only be better than I was then, not worse.

First, look (read)

I got the most traditional English teaching in China. So the strongest training at the beginning is the ability to see (read). In fact, I personally think that there is nothing wrong with the traditional Chinglish teaching. It is a good method for beginners. Reading, listening, writing and speaking all involve vocabulary and grammar, so we should solve these two elements as soon as possible in the introductory stage, and then when you feel that something is missing, you can concentrate on solving the "short board" in that aspect. Traditional Chinglish teaching can solve these two problems quickly and firmly. The only problem is how to exert the energy of these two accumulation factors in reading, listening, writing and speaking.

There are vocabulary and grammar, there is nothing to say, just recite. Many people don't like reciting, but I think the most labor-saving way is actually reciting. Memorizing words, typical examples of grammar, and memorizing texts, these things will be done for a period of time in the primary stage, and the elements of vocabulary and grammar will be solved soon, and at the same time, the aspect of "seeing" will be completed.

vocabulary

Take my study of English as an example. At that time, the junior high school curriculum was very loose, and our school strictly implemented the requirement of "reducing the burden", and almost all the afternoons were self-study classes. I remember that there was only one regular class on Monday afternoon, one extracurricular interest class on Thursday and one class meeting class on Friday. But there are two classes every afternoon, so there is at least one self-study class. And the third class is left by the school for us to go out for sports on the playground. If you don't need to do sports every day, that kind of class is actually a self-study class. So I often finish all the homework of the day quickly, and the rest of the time is to recite words repeatedly there.

Recite words all the way to college. When I was in middle school, I always felt that my vocabulary was not bad. Occasionally, there will be some words that have not been taught in the textbook during the exam. When other students met them, they had to hand in blank papers. I know them at ordinary times, and even correct the English teacher's vocabulary mistakes in class, so that the teacher can remember me after many years. When I visited him after graduating from college, he lamented that although students now began to learn English very early, their vocabulary was not as rich as then.

But when I entered the university, I found myself a frog in the well. Because I come from a small town after all, compared with the students in that town, my English vocabulary is very powerful; But once you enter a national key university, you are really far behind the national elite students. In the English exam at the beginning of the first semester, my English score was only enough to enter the second class, but I was not admitted to the fast class where English elites gathered. I have always been a top student, and I am very excited about it, so I am trying my best to catch up. At that time, I reflected on the reasons why my grades could not reach the fast class, and summed up two points: First, my vocabulary was not enough. Second, my hearing is not good at all. This is all because I come from an ordinary town. At that time, there was no listening test in the college entrance examination, and the middle school was too lazy to practice listening for us. In fact, my English teacher in junior high school is very good, and she always insists on giving us lectures in English, which is not required by the school. But in high school, the English teacher changed, so I stopped doing it.

We'll talk about listening later Let's talk about how to increase vocabulary. At that time, I first went to find a vocabulary manual for CET-4 and CET-6 to recite, then I found a TOEFL vocabulary manual compiled by Tsinghua University, and then I found a small pocket dictionary with about 30,000 words after reciting this. Later, this became the only way to increase my vocabulary when I was learning other languages-using a small pocket dictionary with a vocabulary of 30,000 as a back word.

The way to recite words is this: not one by one from beginning to end. Instead, look for books in this language. When you meet a word you don't understand, look it up in this small dictionary and underline the new words. When you finish reading a certain amount of books a day, you will encounter a certain amount of new words, and you will remember these new words that day. Because these new words are encountered in the process of reading, there is a context. When memorizing words, think back to the context in which the new words appear. Because the content of reading has stories, it is easier to remember the meanings of these new words in the context of telling stories, and it is not necessary to remember new words in isolation.

The new words written down that day will be recited repeatedly in the future. Divide that small dictionary (or glossary) into six or seven equal parts according to the number of pages, and review one of them every day, so that you can review all the words you have crossed in this small dictionary within one week (six days are not Sunday, seven days are Sunday). If you find that you can't remember anything, fold up the small dictionary on that page and review it again that day and the day after tomorrow.

In fact, I learned all other languages in this way. I once used a small Japanese dictionary, because the paper quality of the dictionary is poor, and it can't stand repeated reading and folding. Finally, I was "tortured" until the page broke and the binding line broke. Another small German dictionary, although the paper is better, didn't break the pages for me, but the soft cover outside was broken for me. Later, I simply took the soft skin apart and threw it away. Small dictionaries in other languages are not shabby, but they are dirty and black because they are read repeatedly every day.

Yes, when you open the small dictionary, you can stop memorizing words. (Now I don't have to recite English, Japanese and German words every day, and I can almost put it down after learning TOPIK Advanced in Korean. ) For each language, roughly 1000 is the entry level, 2000 is the primary level, 3000 is the intermediate level, and 5000-6000 is the advanced level. (Japanese requires a high vocabulary, 3000 is elementary, 6000 is intermediate, and 10000 is advanced. However, there are a lot of Chinese characters in Japanese, so there is no need for China people to memorize them. So there are actually not so many Japanese words that need to be memorized. Of course, such a vocabulary means that you really understand and master it, not that you only know the word and vaguely remember its meaning. So there is no need to pursue too much vocabulary. I didn't recite the GRE vocabulary manual because I didn't intend to study abroad, and most of the words in it were biased, which Reagan didn't need on weekdays.

Of course, according to your own professional or professional needs, you have to expand your vocabulary in related fields, which will vary from person to person and from time to time.

(2) Grammar

Grammar is to be learned, and a solid foundation should be laid at the beginning. In the advanced stage, you don't have to think about it.

Nowadays, many people despise the traditional Chinese teaching method in China and admire the communicative Chinese teaching method abroad. Yes, that kind of teaching method abroad can make you have a simple conversation with foreigners quickly, which seems to be useful immediately. But, I want to say that's all. If you don't master grammar well, you will never go deep. You will only stay and say "It's a beautiful day today" and "How are you?" This kind of joking conversation. If you are abroad, you can also have a language environment, so that you can learn the intermediate level slowly and imperceptibly. However, because most of us live in China, and there is no corresponding language environment, we can only stay at the elementary and junior level forever.

I once met a young European who was proficient in many foreign languages. When he introduced his experience in learning a foreign language, he only said: grammar is very important!

I still remember Churchill, who served as British Prime Minister twice and won the Nobel Prize in Literature as a politician. He talked about how to improve his English (this is his native language! ) ability also said: learn grammar!

How to learn grammar? The quick entry method is reciting: reciting typical examples that can reflect the main points of grammar. This is especially important for Japanese, Korean and other languages, because almost all of these languages are supported by idioms. However, European languages such as English, German and Spanish are not enough. We must recite the text and understand the role of grammar in the context.

I memorized the text in junior high school English textbook for three years. At that time, every day in walking to school, one way 15 minutes, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, one day was an hour. During this hour, I just recited the texts in the English textbook one by one while walking (some teachers haven't taught yet, but I have previewed and recited them).

The same is true of learning Japanese. Go to school by bus every day, one hour for one way and two hours for one day. It is also the time to recite the idioms to be taken in the Japanese Level 2 and Level 1 exams.

Later, I studied German, and now I study Spanish and Korean. For at least three months from the beginning to the end, you have to endorse. Memorizing sentences and texts, in this process, not only memorizing grammar, but also memorizing vocabulary and idioms, and also cultivating a sense of language, has a preliminary oral foundation, which can be said to be multifaceted.

3. Reading

Of course, the focus of this section is actually on reading. This aspect seems to be what traditional Chinese teaching is best at, but it doesn't mean that you can follow the teacher step by step in class. There is not enough reading in class, and a lot of reading is needed after class.

I began to read a lot of English, especially when I was in college. I felt that my vocabulary was not enough, so I began to accumulate my vocabulary by reading a lot. At that time, my practice was also very simple: I went to the university library to find books such as "English". I always look for novels, especially popular novels. Because this kind of work has plots and is interesting, it can attract you to overcome the language barrier and keep reading. First, I read the abridged version adapted by China people (I still remember that the first abridged English novel I read at that time was Stevenson's Treasure Island), and then I read the original directly after accumulating a considerable vocabulary.

The way to find a suitable reading is also very simple. If you open a page and read on, you will find that there are about five new words you don't understand within one page, and the maximum is 10, which shows that the difficulty of this book is suitable for you. This book reads from 5 pages to 10 pages every day. Don't look up the dictionary yet, guess the meaning roughly from the context. After reading the prescribed amount on that day, look it up in the dictionary to make sure you guessed correctly, and memorize these new words. Of course, when remembering, recall which sentence and what kind of plot background it appears in the novel, so as to construct a vivid source for this new word.

Writing here, I suddenly remembered learning Chinese as a child. I don't know how I can read, because I can read before I go to school, and my parents didn't teach me specifically. When I was about four or five years old, I saw a copy of Arabian Nights on my uncle's bookshelf, so I took it down and read it. My aunt thought I was putting on airs when she saw a child like me reading such a big book. She teased me and said, "Don't pretend if you don't understand." I immediately replied to her: "I'm not pretending, I know everything." She didn't believe me, so she chose a story from it and asked me to read it to her. I have read all the words except a few I don't understand. Then according to my mother's later memories, I carry this big book to kindergarten every day and read stories to my classmates. The children all like me to read stories, but they don't like the stories told by my aunt in kindergarten.

I thought about how I learned to read without being taught at all. The only possibility I can think of is that my brother is already in primary school and his parents will help him with his homework at night. At that time, let alone the internet, there was not even a TV. I, a child, have no entertainment. I just sit and watch my parents supervise my brother's reading. Probably, I learned it unconsciously when my parents taught my younger brother to read.

Then, I also learned traditional Chinese characters without being taught at all. I kind of remember how I learned this traditional Chinese character. Because it was in primary school, I can still remember it at that time. It should be because there are many old books printed in traditional Chinese characters at home, and my father often borrows some original martial arts novels from Hong Kong and Taiwan to read at home, so I read these books in traditional Chinese characters together. I clearly remember that when I was in the sixth grade, I was able to read Jin Yong's traditional Chinese version of the legendary swordsman completely. If there are some traditional Chinese characters that I don't know, or simplified words that I guess from the context or something similar, I still can't guess them, which seriously affects my understanding of the novel, so I will look them up in Xinhua Dictionary. (Many people may not know it, and traditional Chinese characters are marked in the Chinese dictionary. )

Learning traditional Chinese characters is very helpful for me to learn Japanese in the future. Because the Chinese characters in Japanese are basically traditional Chinese characters, it saves me a lot of effort in memorizing Japanese vocabulary.

2. Listen

Listening is a great pain in learning English (and many other foreign languages). Because China has a vast territory, it means that there are few opportunities for contact with other countries. Unlike many small countries in Europe, it is easy to listen to any foreign language radio station.

How to practice primary listening? I have studied English (and Japanese) for so long that I don't remember it. I can only explain how the listening of other foreign languages I have recently learned is practiced. I wrote a post called "Magical Thirty Minutes and Three Months", which talked about how to practice listening in the primary stage:

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Recently, I helped a friend learn Japanese from scratch. The goal is to reach Japanese level 1 in one to one and a half years, so that he can study in Japan. For this reason, I found an article on the Internet entitled "How did I get Japanese Level 1 in one year", which introduced the method of practicing listening. This is exactly the way I teach my friends, that is, listening practice: record all the listening materials word by word, remember a word when you understand it, and remember a sentence when you understand it. If you don't understand it, you can't understand the text. The method introduced in that article is more detailed than what I said, but a time rule is added: listen for at least half an hour every day and keep listening for at least three months. In the author's words, it is "suddenly found that I can understand Japanese!" "

Recently, I started practicing Korean listening by myself. Because I have finished learning the third book of standard Korean, and at the same time, I have memorized the vocabulary of TOPIK, and the advanced vocabulary is almost finished. With such a rich vocabulary, it is unlikely that you can't understand a word because you don't know it, just because you don't respond to the sound. I use "Korean" from Yonsei University as my listening material. This book has five lessons, so I dictate one lesson (including text and exercises) every night, which takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Now I have just finished listening to Lesson 5, which means that it actually took less than a month (and it is intermittent, because I have to work overtime or other busy things, I can't do this dictation exercise every night), but I already feel that I am beginning to understand Korean. This so-called "enlightenment" means that after listening to a sentence, although you can't hear every word clearly, you can quickly reflect the meaning of the sentence in your mind. This greatly increased my confidence, and I decided that no matter how busy I was in the future, I would still squeeze out at least half an hour to dictate Korean every day, even if this half an hour was not enough for me to finish listening to a short article.

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The practice of primary listening is so simple. You don't need to buy any special listening materials, just use MP3 of other entry-level materials for dictation practice. But generally speaking, listening practice is difficult to practice immediately, because there is no corresponding vocabulary, even if you hear the sound, you still can't understand it because you can't understand the words! Korean is because I am not too eager to learn, so I haven't practiced listening. Until now, my "reading" ability has reached an advanced level, so I began to practice listening. If you want to develop your reading and listening skills in a balanced way, you should start practicing listening after you reach the primary vocabulary. In other words, you learn a language with a textbook, and after learning the first book, you can find the first book of other textbooks for dictation practice. The vocabulary and grammar of the first book in the same language and different textbooks are similar. After having the foundation of one book, practice listening with another book, and the obstacles of vocabulary composition will not be too great.

As for advanced listening, it means listening to the radio and watching TV directly. As mentioned above, I found that my listening comprehension was too poor after I entered the university, so I had to catch up. Of course, at that time, my English had passed the primary stage, so it was an advanced level of listening improvement. The method is still very simple, that is, listening to BBC and VOA every day. Whether you understand it or not, you try to identify the words and meanings in it. I encourage myself like this: as long as I understand one more word every day, I will gain something and make progress!

Of course, there is a network now, and there is a huge amount of listening materials on the internet. (especially English! You don't have to worry about finding authentic listening materials to practice, you just have to stick to it. When watching American TV series, don't watch subtitles. Open a blank "Notepad" text, and pull the window into a slender strip to block the subtitles.

First find a drama with slow speech speed and complicated vocabulary, and watch it again. Of course, I can't know everything. I have mastered the outline of this episode, and then I began to do the above dictation exercises and listen to the lines sentence by sentence. I also do it for half an hour every day. After listening for half an hour, watch the series again. You must have understood the dictation part, (although you may not be able to hear every word clearly because of the speed of speech. If you haven't done dictation practice, listen again. Try to catch more words than the first time, and use the information you have seen the whole episode to help your ears catch words. Do dictation for half an hour every day and watch this episode again every day. By the time you finish dictating this episode, you've probably listened to it a dozen times or even dozens of times. Of course, it takes a lot of time to finish such an episode, and it may take a month to listen to it at first (I suggest that you choose to finish an animation of a simple story in 20 minutes instead of practicing a 45-minute soap opera with correlation between episodes), but you will feel that your listening comprehension has improved obviously.

Then change to a more difficult drama to practice. In fact, many episodes don't need to be practiced. After three months or more, you will find that you have reached the level of understanding TV dramas. At this listening level, it is basically invincible in China at present.

(3) Write

In language learning, "watching" is the easiest, followed by "listening", but both of them are passive acceptance, so they are relatively easy. But the "writing" and "speaking" to be discussed later are both active expressions, which are really difficult. Speaking is more difficult than writing, because writing can be thought about slowly, but speaking is time-limited. This is the same reason that listening is more difficult than watching. Because of this, the hardest thing to say is to put it into practice in the end. Practice writing first, with the foundation of writing, and then practice oral English is nothing more than practice reaction speed. This is the same as what I advocated before, that is, practicing listening first: with the foundation of reading, vocabulary and grammar will not become obstacles before practicing listening, and practicing listening is nothing more than practicing your response speed to sounds.

Although writing is more difficult than watching and listening, you can practice writing very early, because you decide what to write anyway. When you don't have a lot of vocabulary and grammar, you can write something simple first and avoid using complicated vocabulary and grammar structures.

As I said before, I started to learn English in junior high school, but I started to keep a diary in English in junior high school. I don't remember exactly when it started. It should be the second day of junior high school. In other words, I have only studied English for one to one and a half years (and it is still the kind of slow teaching in school), and I have already started practicing writing.

Practicing English writing by keeping a diary is actually nothing more than copying the way I learned Chinese writing to English. In the fourth grade of primary school, I took part in a picture reading composition competition. On the way back from the competition, I heard the teachers talking about the best way to practice writing. I remember what one of the teachers said, that is: keep a diary every day! The teacher didn't teach me. She didn't ask me to do what she said. But when I heard what she said, I did it at once, and kept a diary every day until I went to college. I'm busy working outside now, so I can't write every day, but I still keep a diary whenever I meet something I think is important or have important thoughts and feelings.

It is not difficult to keep a diary, but it is difficult to write it every day! I should have a gift for writing, but if I hadn't kept a diary every day since the fourth grade of primary school, I don't think my writing ability would have appeared out of thin air. By the second day of junior high school, I will set aside one day every week to write the Chinese diary I write every day in English. After writing, hand it over to the English teacher at that time for revision. The English teacher only praised me for my active study: even high school students in this school can't write such an English article.

I said just now that writing can accommodate my vocabulary and grammar. But I practiced writing an English diary in junior high school, but I didn't have much scruples. I changed my diary, which should have been written in Chinese, into English, so I won't think of another simple topic just because I don't learn much English. Anyway, a teacher corrected it for me. I couldn't figure out how to write a word, so I filled in a Chinese character. Sometimes I don't even know how to say the whole sentence, so I write down the whole sentence in Chinese and let the teacher correct it for me one by one. Of course, I wrote some sentences in English, but they didn't conform to English habits, so the teacher rewrote them for me. When I go back, I will make a good comparison and experience the teacher's revision. I have been learning how to write in English since junior high school.

Now, unless it is a rigorous legal text or literary novel, it is unnecessary to use difficult words and grammatical structures to write in English. We don't study English to be writers, so we can ignore novels. And the rigorous legal text, that matter is still left to lawyers to do. Don't speak English, even Chinese. These things are handled by professionals, which is safer and more reliable. So, really, the English writing ability practiced in junior high school is actually enough to meet the needs of this life.

Say another digression. In fact, I think writing ability is mainly not language ability, but your literary ability. Chinese is well written, and so are other languages. From primary school to middle school, almost every time I write a Chinese article, the Chinese teacher takes it to class and reads it as a model essay. When I was in college, my English teacher especially liked to read my English articles to the whole class. To this end, she also asked me: "If your English is so good, why don't you go to the express class and go to my middle class?" When I was in Japan, the Japanese writing teacher often read my Japanese articles to my classmates. In fact, my Japanese level at that time, whether in vocabulary or grammar, was far less than that of many China students who had stayed in Japan for many years and many Korean students whose first foreign language was Japanese. Therefore, it is not because of my high Japanese ability, but because of my good writing. I know how to avoid using words and grammar I don't understand, write sentences simply and directly, and reduce the probability of making grammatical mistakes.

Then, most importantly, I am good at making up stories! Since primary school, I have written students' exercises as novels, so the content of the article is very plot, interesting and readable. Therefore, everyone should understand that those English teachers and Japanese teachers are actually attracted by my story, not by my English or Japanese level. And because the words and sentences I use are simple and there are few grammatical mistakes, they can understand them. As long as they can understand it, they will love to read my stories (actually they are made up)!