In an article that appeared on this page last week, Mr Yuan Yue asked when it is best for young Chinese to study abroad. He suggested that study at the postgraduate level yields the greatest dividends in cultural insight and widening of perspective without damaging a person's "connectedness" with China.

　　"Connectedness" covers a lot of ground: a feeling of being primarily Chinese, a sense of being most at ease in dealing with life in a (not "the") Chinese way, and not least, retaining those useful connections inside China without which careers here are difficult to launch. Mr Yuan is no doubt correct in asserting that people who go abroad as postgraduates are least likely to feel uprooted -- or marginalized as quasi-foreigners when they return to China.

　　My approach to this question, however, would be quite different. I would start by asking why a given young person is going abroad to study. Depending upon the reason, the best time for foreign study would vary considerably. In my experience, the usual reasons are three in number: to master English, to learn to work in an international environment, to become a creative and dynamic practitioner of a profession. Of course, these tend to be related to one another, and all imply something else: escaping the severe limitations imposed on individual development by the educational methods prevalent in China. These methods tend to undermine spontaneity, imagination, powers of observation, and independent initiative in students; the result, from a Westerner's perspective, is a shocking -- and often irremediable -- curtailment of creativity and professional potential.

　　To learn a foreign language successfully, the key requirements are playfulness and intelligently guided exposure to the language. Now from what I have observed, if there's one thing Chinese schools view with suspicion, it is free-form playfulness. My experience as a language instructor is that most otherwise intelligent Chinese university students have little inclination or perhaps even capacity to play with what they are taught in the classroom. Work and play for them are antithetical, and the notion of "serious play" hard to grasp. New vocabulary and language patterns are carefully filed away in a special mental library, to be brought out, if ever, only for tests. Simply playing with new elements of language seldom happens. The teaching of reading in China is somewhat more successful, only in the end few students find reading fun, and as a result they do little of it on their own -- which, in my opinon, means the schools have failed. Writing skills, dependent as they are on wide-ranging reading and mastery of basic spoken English, are, not surprisingly, next to nil.

　　　Even in European countries where foreign languages are taught with outstanding success, young people go abroad to gain fluency and naturalness in their use of the target language. Ambitious young Chinese obviously have even more reason to spend a year or two in English-speaking countries. But they really have to be in the company of non-Chinese (preferably though not necessarily native speakers) -- something they often overlook in a penny-wise pound-foolish eagerness to save money. Live with fellow Chinese and "save" money -- by failing to gain 80% of the value of being abroad: this looks like squandering opportunity to me. The long-term cost to career far outweighs the short-term savings.

　　I have seen many of my own graduate students and Chinese faculty colleagues go abroad for 6-18 months. Those who hang around with fellow Chinese return with little improvement in their English beyond a gain in listening comprehension; those who live and spend social time (chatty lunches above all) with non-Chinese come back delightfully at ease in English, and in many cases even their written English has improved substantially.

　　Learning language is undeniably easier for children than for adults, especially when the learner is immersed in the new language. Put a Chinese child under the age of 12 in an American or Canadian school and he is virtually certain to sound like a native speaker within a year, and to be reading at roughly the level of his agemates in two.

　　The problem for the parents is twofold. First, they need to make it possible for their offspring to reenter the Chinese school system smoothly. The easy part here is making sure the child learns the hanziand gets the extra math needed; the harder part by far is preparing the child psychologically for the regimentation of Chinese schools. Second, wise parents need to devise means of keeping the growth of their child's English from stalling -- there is little career advantage in being 22 and speaking English like a Canadian 10-year-old. How to manage that? Next week!(听英文51178,作者简介511782)