第五届希望之星高中组1号选手张菁菁：学习经验

　　☆ 我是这样学英语的

　　I learned English as a second language instead of a foreign language. I stayed in the US for four years, and English has naturally become part of my life.

　　When I just went to America, I wasn’t able to communicate with my classmates or understand the class lessons. I stayed in a bilingual school for 2 months, and then I transferred to a normal middle school. In the first year there, all of my classes were ESL (English as a second language) classes, and there was always a bilingual teacher there to explain things to me and my other Chinese classmates who had difficulty understanding. That way, I soon was able to understand most of the class lesson by myself. Every class I took helped me gain comprehension of English, but the class that helped me the most was the reading class. There, I was required to read English books for above half an hour everyday as homework. I started my way from reading eighty or ninety paged small storybooks, and eventually got to Harry Potter. In class, students were required to write, “think aloud” while reading articles. And constantly we’d take reading comprehension tests, and WASL tests of past years. I benefited a lot from that class.

　　In 7th grade, a few of my classes changed out of ESL classes. I had fun observing my American classmates; I improved my English as well as my understanding of the culture.

　　In 8th grade, all of my classes switched to normal class. This was a challenge to my ability, but I ended up doing fine. My average grades were always around 3.6 to 4.0. Out of all my classes, I especially favored my language arts class. There, I was taught about classic American novels and Shakespeare plays. I had fun learning about Romeo and Juliet. I fell in love with the passionate poetic metaphors. After the course ended, I began reading some of Shakespeare’s plays by myself: Twelfth Night, A Winter’s Tale were the ones I spent a long time reading. I might not be able to understand all the Shakespearian words, but I used my heart to appreciate them, and so I understood.

　　In 9th grade, I weighed out of the ESL students list; that is to say, I theoretically became a normal American student. I started to have American friends whom I’d use English to talk with for the whole day. We were able to share thoughts and beliefs, and to communicate by words and also by heart. I even began to melt into the culture! I loved the TV series, and loved to watch movies with my friends. I still loved my language arts class. There, I learned more about classic poetic English. In that year, I studied about poems and Greek mythology. I spent half semester learning about Odysseus. I was fascinated!

　　That was how I learned my English. After 9th grade, I came back to China, but that is not the end to my learning of English. I schedule my time, and I regularly spend an adequate period of time per day to practice my English. During the weekdays, I would read English books, and spend time doing vocabulary or grammar practices. In this year, I read many different kinds of books, those famous novels like Gone with the Wind, Far from the Madding Crowd, War and Peace, different series of Chicken Soup. Despite my favorite, “Gone with the Wind”, I also found Tolkien’ s Lord of the Rings trilogy very interesting. I love the meaning and words in the book and how vividly the author created a legendary world that on points reflect the good and evil of the real world. I read almost all the books related to the trilogy and watched the movie made from the book. And on weekends when I come back home, I would talk with my mom in English, and watch the English Channel: CCTV9, or watch English movies.

　　Last but not least. I own my thanks to my mom for the English I’ve learned, since she had been a college English teacher, and got her PhD in English in US. She is the one that inspired me to learn English, and she showed me how beautiful the language is!

　　However, the more I learn about English, the more I see what I lack. The process of learning English has also become a process of learning about life. Now I know that learning and progressing is what life is all about. There is no limit in learning of knowledge.

　　☆ 家长或老师文章

　　妈妈谈女儿的英语学习

　　菁菁开始学英语是在她快十一岁的时候。在那之前，我想让她学点英语，可她似乎一点都不感兴趣，我也只好顺其发展了。她念完小学五年级就转学到了美国。在那儿四年的学习、生活使她轻松自然地习得了第二门语言——英语。当然，开始也是不容易的。我们很难想象一个没有任何外语语言基础的人能够在必须使用外语的环境中自如地应付日常的人际交往。开始的艰难是很正常的。但是这一阶段对菁菁来说似乎出乎意料的短。我和她好像很快就开始在日常生活中用英语进行交流了。后来我发现她开始看英文原著，如Harry Porter，Lord of the Ring等。显然，她的英语从几乎是零提高到了接近高级的水平。

　　那么，她是以什么方式在这么短的时间内达到这样的水平的呢？当然，语言环境起了很大的作用。但是，在同样的环境中也有未能取得如此成就的。总结起来，我认为以下几点在她的英语学习中起了关键作用：

　　首先，对英语语言有一种敏感，包括语音、语调、说话方式等。菁菁能本能地扑捉到那些细微的区别。

　　其次，她对小说特别感兴趣。大量的阅读使她既学到了英语，又丰富了她的人生体验。

　　第三，对电视剧的爱好使她能自然地习得活生生的语言。在特定的情境中，她能通过人物之间的关系理解对话的意思。实际上，很多外语学习者通过这种途径学到了地道的外语。

　　最后，也是最重要的一点，菁菁的英语学习大部分时间是在使用而不是学习语言知识。也就是说，她在使用英语时不太顾及语法，没有什么规则的约束。当然，这是在有大量规范英语输入的前提下。因此，她能比较快地掌握这门语言。