The following is a letter from my American friend Jenny. She's a master degree in media and recently got her teaching certificate. Her husband and she stay in my apartment for the moment.
In her letter we can catch a glimpse of the Amercians' ideas, quite interesting [M05]
Hi R,
I really admire you for always looking for ways to improve your English. I assure you your level is much higher than most foreigners living in the United States. It seems like Chinese English speakers who want to improve will be willing to work very hard. I guess my best advice is that (at a certain point) it is more useful to learn new vocabulary than to worry about having perfect grammar. No one does, and you really only need it when writing papers. I have suggested to some people that they read 1 article from one of the better English language newspapers every day and look up any words they don't know. In fact, most native English speakers could benefit from doing that as well.
I think it is very difficult for an American to learn Mandarin because we normally have no exposure to other languages as children. This is a problem that I think will be addressed within the next 10 years, and Mandarin will be one of the most common languages for U.S. children to have some experience with. I am very excited about this because I think American children will benefit from the exposure even if they never come to China or speak Chinese. I heard someone say in a lecture once that "You don't learn another language, you learn a different way of looking at the world." That is what is so lacking in our culture now. I don't think Americans need to travel outside the U.S. if they don't really want to, but I don't think we can advance as a culture if we do not begin to appreciate other points of view about the world. This has not been the strength of our education system.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you our teacher for spoken Mandarin is not strong in English, and we would find it difficult to give him suggestions. Also, we don't know if this is culturally wise. In the U.S. teachers sometimes like suggestions for how they should teach because it means the students care enough to take some initiative. But here, with a culture and language gap, we are not very sure of ourselves.
See you tomorrow (most likely),
J
[M24] [M05]
[本帖由菜籽修改于2007-02-05 22:49:18] |
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发表于 2007-2-5 22:43
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