(II)                 Observation - English Oral Presentation in 1 Semester  觀察 - 3個月讓成都學生說流利英文

Let's look into this problem.

To begin with, we set our target issue--why didn’t most of the Chinese people learn English well? In my observation, they didn’t have much of a chance to speak English. Well, that sounds useless. In addition, Pinyin romanized phonetic system for Chinese language confused most of the kids with the pronunciation of the same alphabets in English.

Let’s look back a little bit, in the English-speaking countries, how do the locals learn English? Is it similar to the way Chinese people learned Mandarin Chinese or their own local dialects? I believe the answer is yes.

At least, at the very least, I'm sure about one thing--Chinese mothers

didn't make

their infants to repeat any single word for 100 times!

我們先來檢視這個問題：如何學好英文？

首先，我們設定我們的根本問題——為什麼多數中國人學不好英文？我認

為是接觸的少。這有點像廢話。另外，漢語拼音系統也對許多字母的發音

造成誤導。

那這些英語系國家的人們怎麼學好英文的？是不是類似中國人學普通話或

是自己家鄉的方言的方法？我相信答案是肯定的。

起碼，最起碼，我敢肯定，中國媽媽絕對沒有教小孩把每個單詞重複抄寫

100遍！

We all started with speaking instead of writing for our first language

when we were young, that is, speaking at 2 years old, spelling words at

4, writing theses at 18. But in China, in my classes, when most of the

students finished their bachelor degree, reading tons of papers in

English, however, they did not even speak English. On the

the contrary, back in the States, there are still lots of illiterates, and

movies without subtitles as the result. So the fact is, for the Chinese

English learner, there is no English-illiterate, instead, there are 1.3

billion "English dumbs".

It happened once in my class when I just took over the job for a couple

weeks. From the podium, I found one of a girl squirm at her seat and

keep looking around when I was teaching. In the meanwhile, she stood

up and walked to me. I knew there’s some situation she needed to talk

to me, but she suddenly rushed back to her seat as I realized it. She

asked the guy next to her in Sichuan dialect, “How to say restroom in

English?” I was requested not to speak any Chinese in class though, I

nod to her meaning “Okay, go ahead. Take your time!” as it was a

special situation.

We can see how wrong it is here.

我想大家小時候都是從說話開始，先會說、才會讀、寫；2歲會時說話、4

歲會拼單字、18歲會寫論文。但中國的學生甚至發表完英文論文，還不會

說英文。或是反過來說，在美國有很多“文盲”，看電影時都沒有字幕是其

中一個例證。事實是，在中國學英文的人中，沒有只能說英文的英文文

盲，多數是只能聽、只能寫的“英文啞巴”。

可見我們學習方法有多錯。

To pick up a new language, we should speak, of course. But for these

Chinese kids under a long period of spoon-fed education, they had

totally lost their creativity and ability for critical thinking already.

When my assignment went as, "Come on, just say something,

whatever.", they would rather take the handwriting ones.

So I came up with an idea then. I made my students to comment on

photos and videos, writing practice with minimum creativity. It was

partly because that these freshmen were definitely active on social

networks, and that I had better take both creating and speaking into

consideration.

I loved to travel and used to do it often. I selected some of the most

interesting photos in my current trips for my students to “imagine”

commenting on Facebook in class. Sounds like some easy money for

me! (Oops…Facebook was not accessible in China, and I, of course

didn’t dare to install proxy servers for everyone in my class.

Fortunately I joined the QQ groups of my classes soon after and it was

like something I expected.)

從這角度來說，我們應該從“說”開始！但對長期接受填鴨式教育、失去創

造力的學生來說，一下要他們“隨便說”，反而是最難的！我有點忘記，我

們牙牙學語的小孩也不是一開始便要他們發揮創意，是生活中有需要或感

興趣才說的。於是我想了一個辦法。一方面符合這批剛上大學的學生的日

常社交生活，一方面從簡單開始讓同學逐步學會“自由發揮”和“說”。

我很愛旅行並且去過很多地方。我把這些年來旅行中最有趣的照片挑出

來，要學生們想像在Facebook上評論 （只能想像，在大陸沒辦法用

Facebook，我也不可能在大學的教室幫每個人下載代理器。不過後來我

加入了同學們的QQ群，其效果非常接近我的理想）

In the beginning, I wrote captions for the photos I uploaded as sample,

and asked each and every student to comment on them and read it

aloud in class. The effect was surprisingly good while everyone was

super concentrated! Students at this age tend to spend a lot of time on

social networks, so I basically just successfully switched the whole

activity into English and got good results from it easily.

Soon, we moved forward to the second step -- every student uploaded

their own interesting photos and described for me. Never

underestimate these sentences of descriptions! With a little help, they

were

soon able to compose them into a short paragraph very well.

一開始，我先做了我照片上傳的描述，並要求每位同學對這張Facebook

照片做一則評論，並在課堂上念出來。這效果出乎意料得好，每個人超級

專心，這年紀的學生平時就花很多時間在社群網路上，所以我只是把他們

得心應手的活動換成英文。很快地，我們就進到了

第二步驟——每位同學上傳自己認為最有趣的照片並加以描述——

別小看這幾個句子的照片描述。他們很快地在這過程中讓原本兩、三句話

的描述變成了一個段落並在教室裡講出來給大家聽。

I took the advantage of this moment and assigned them with more

exercises bycommenting on some videos. Later, I gradually cut down

the time for them to prepare. With these steps, most of them got

incredibly great improvement. Not until this moment I started my Oral

Training course officially, including the informative speech and the

persuasive speech.

我趁著這個局勢，又讓大家練習評論了一些影片，並慢慢地減少給他們評

論前的準備時間。經過這個步驟，我的學生們漸入佳境，我才正式開始了

我的“台上英語演講訓練”，其中包括傳達訊息式的演講、說服式的演講。

In fact, adding social networks exercise into my course was actually

the main idea of the speeches “The way to learn English” that I

delivered in other colleges in Sichuan. I called it “the surroundings”.

The thing I did this time was just the same, making it as simple as

possible to the very last detail. Besides, the comments on social

networks might be quite useful in the future if they were going to New

Zealand or somewhere else in the world for culture exchange.

As to the main idea of my speech, the surroundings, I will share it with

you in the next part!

其實從頭說來，這次這個步驟的加入，就是我在四川省其他學院“如何學

好英文？”演講時的主軸——環境——只是我們在各細節做得更簡單。現階

段學的社群網路評論會是將來這些學生到新西蘭或世界上其他地方做交換

學生時最實用的英文之一。

至於關於“環境”的細節討論，我會在下一篇繼續分享！