第六届希望之星初中组决赛选手戴梦：学习经验

　　Learning English: My Own Way

　　If you ask me how I learn English, I would like to remind you of what Benjamin Franklin, a famous American figure, said about learning: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” If you want to learn English, then the most important thing to do is to involve yourself in something English: read an English book, watch an English TV programme, write in English, have a conversation with someone in English, or even talk to yourself in English.

　　Why is it necessary to get oneself involved in all kinds of English activities. Well, to answer this question, we need to know what language is. As we all know that language is a tool for communication. Then how do we communicate with this tool? A tool is something used to help us to do a particular piece of work. When we communicate with others, we use language to express our ideas. Without language, we cannot tell others what we think or feel.

　　Once we have understood what language is, we are in a position to understand why we should be involved in English activities. I divide the activities in two kinds. In one kind, we are involved in understanding others through language, which means matching language expressions with ideas. While we are doing this, we will learn different expressions from our reading or listening. In the second kind of activities, we are involved in expressing ourselves by using the expressions we have learned from the first kind of activities. Here are two of the most important habits that I have formed in learning English.

　　1. Be aware of the different expressions in a foreign language. In different countries, people use common phrases to express themselves. For instance, in Chinese we say “banmennongfu”, but in English they do not have such a saying. This does not mean that they cannot express the idea. They say, instead, “Don’t teach your granny to suck eggs” or “Don’t teach fish to swim”, which literally means your grandmother is more experienced in sucking eggs, and fish are born swimmers. Both in English and Chinese, this phrase means “you will make a fool of yourself if you show off in front of an expert.” In a sense, learning a foreign language means learning the artistic expressions of the foreign language. Once you have developed the habit of being constantly aware of foreign expressions, you will find more and more different expressions to express ideas that you will have in real communication.

　　2. Do my best to use the expressions. To be aware of language expressions is one thing, but to use them correctly in your own communication is another. The key point in speaking a foreign language is to try to connect the ideas that you want to communicate with the language expressions that you have learned. For example, when I first met the English expression “a piece of cake”, I knew it meant “xiaocaiyidie” in Chinese. Whenever I wanted to express the meaning of “xiaocaiyidie”, I would say “it is a piece of cake”, until one day the English expression “it is a piece of cake” came out of mouth as easily as “xiaocaiyidie”. Just as the proverb goes, practice makes perfect. We will have to do a lot of practice before we become fluent, automatic and natural.

　　Some of my favorite phrases such as “Where there is a will, there’s a way” and “Rome was not built in a day” remind me to keep on studying English and never give up.

　　家长或老师文章

　　Interest is the Best Teacher

　　Maria’s experience of learning English might be different from most English learners in China. First, she began to learn English in England at the age of 10. Her father went to England as a visiting scholar in 1999 and 4 months later he invited Maria and me to England. Although both her father and I were English teachers, we had not taught her any English before that. When she arrived in England, she was forced to communicate with people in English. That is why she speaks English with pure British accent. Second, she was completely exposed to English environment. She was the only foreign student in the school where she studied for 7 months. They arranged for two teachers to take special care of her when they had literacy and history classes, and for some classmates to help her with whatever trouble she had in school. For her, learning English was learning to survive. She learned how to ask a question in class as well as how to raise her hand; she learned what to say if she wanted to wash her hand; she learned how to make appointment, and so on. When she left school in the afternoon, she watched TV at home or learned English from us when we were not busy with our work. She really loved staying in the library with us, where she could find interesting books to read from the bookshelves for children. At the end of the seven-month stay in England, we were amazed to find her speaking fluent English with people round her.

　　Both her father and I were really worried about her English when we got back from England. We encouraged her to study New Concept English by herself, but a ten-year-old girl could not have so great an amount of self-control. Many other means were also tried to keep her English from being forgotten, but in vain. It was quite evident that she understood why we wanted her to do all these, and tried her best to do as required. We could see that she was also worried about the declining of her English. English learning had become a burden for her. Later, we found that she was reading stories of Teddy Bear, which we bought before we left England. As English teachers, we began to realize that English textbooks are intended to be used in the classroom with the teacher’s help, not to be used as self-taught material for a ten-year-old child.

　　We bought the Bookworm Series published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Oxford University Press, and many other simplified publications. She was so happy that whenever she had time she would burry herself in such novels as Oliver Twist, Great Expectation, David Copperfield, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, etc.

　　Why learning English the boring way? She loves watching English film and English TV programmes, and listening to English songs. Since September last year, she has been in a boarding school. When she comes home on Saturday, the first thing to do is to copy some listening materials to her MP3 device. She said she listens to it for about half an hour before she goes to sleep. She is so used to it that she cannot go to sleep without it.

　　Another good habit of her learning English is to mark out useful phrases in her reading. If a language learner can develop the ability to pick out good and useful expressions, he or she is well on the way of foreign language learning.

　　If you ask me to sum up in one sentence how Maria learns English, I should say: “Interest is the best teacher”. Learning English without interest is just like driving a car without petrol. It simply does not go.

　　Maria’s mother: June