Refuse to treat yourself as mentally retarded

Refuse to treat yourself as mentally retarded

ByLi xiaolaiOn 2008/09/20

InAbout English articles

Education always plays a role in failure-success is always enough by chance.The odd thing about education is that if students are taught as geniuses, they will almost never become geniuses. However, if students are taught as mentally retarded students, they will definitely become mentally retarded.

English education in China is a typical example. English textbooks, from junior high school to a bachelor's degree, are clearly based on careful design, but there must be something wrong, or how did people graduate from a bachelor's degree and learn English for at least ten years, but what is the worse it is? With my personal intelligence, it is hard to imagine a full explanation. But at least we can see some clues.

The entire middle school English teaching material spans six years of learning, but is based on the seemingly reasonable and practical assumption that a middle school student can grasp about 2500 English words within six years.As a result, a group of children considered "Mastering 2500 words" as their upper limit, and changed themselves from ordinary children to mentally retarded young people as required.

During the process of mother tongue acquisition, children first learn to hear and then read and write. When I started to learn to write the first word, it was generally around four or five years old -- it was taught by my parents. In elementary school, I learned to read and write about 1000 Chinese characters. It was about the third grade. (Do you still remember that I went to school with a dictionary every day ?), In fact, at that time, we were able to understand the news and all the TV series (except for the feeling, power, or something of the adults ).

This is the case in China. What about the British and American countries? According to statistics from some scholars, in the third grade, the number of English words that children can read and write is about 1500, And the vocabulary heard is much larger than this number, which is about 3500, it does not include a large number of names, place names, strange new age terms (such as the terms in electronic games), idioms, slang, and so on.

In this case, the Chinese middle school English teaching materials are in fact forced to complete the task that the original third-grade primary school students should complete in a certain sense. The direct sequelae are large-scale "Mental Retardation" (only in English ). Six years later, after four years of undergraduate education, the tasks that should have been completed in the third year of elementary school have completely become "impossible tasks" (Mission Impossible ), it is difficult for a considerable number of people to obtain excellent scores if the vocabulary is 4500, not to mention, the vocabulary is required for the 6-level examination of 6000, the TOEFL/IELTS examination of 8000, And the GRE examination of 15000.

After arriving at college, English learning becomes more difficult. One of the reasons is that at the university stage, the ideas in the students' Brains become more complex and rich. Therefore, the precision requirements for expressing the languages used increase exponentially. Therefore, although it is not absolute in a university, this phenomenon is common: Most of the so-called "fluent" students are often not because of the so-called "good English ", it is easy to express because it is "simple-minded. In the end, only a few people who fail to learn well when they are young can pass the customs through hard work. (For example, I did not pass the test, for example, pronunciation is hard to hear ......)

When I was in middle school, I felt that my "Chinese" teaching material was "mentally retarded ". Later, we found that good Chinese children share a common feature, that is, they hardly read Chinese textbooks. When the teacher analyzed Lu Xun on the stage, it was difficult to hide another book because of its low syntax. Reading novels, magazines, and turning heads have become the fundamental way for most children to acquire language knowledge. The textbooks of "Chinese" can only be viewed for exams.

In almost the same sense, if you are a freshman or sophomore, do not limit yourself to the scope defined in "high school English textbooks. Now that the Internet is very developed, you can find a lot of original books on the Internet (this is not very easy to do even five years ago). Read the original book as hard as possible. You can master at least 2500 of the vocabulary of any book. The first semester of the first year of the second year, almost all TOEFL/SAT tests can be completed after a little preparation. The so-called high scores can be achieved by hand-then you can enjoy Undergraduate Education in the United States (note that you can enjoy it ).

I often hear that "the potential of a person is unlimited ". I don't know why. I always think it may be more reliable to say this sentence from the mouth of a leader. It seems that no truly accomplished person has ever succeeded by "potential" or "subconscious. If you don't believe it, you can think of Darwin, Newton, William James, Einstein, Edison, Hamilton Friedman, Thomas solwell, Richard Dawkins, Hawking ...... Everyone in China is more familiar with it and lists enough books.

High school students do not use their full potential to read the original English Scripts, but they do not treat themselves as "mentally retarded ". . In fact, the textbook designer certainly did not mean it, and there is no need to blame others. There is no perfect, reasonable, and always effective education system between Ancient and Modern Chinese and foreign countries. Therefore, education is actually a matter of your own. One day, one day, one day, free from shackles, and one day more freedom.

If you have not been a high school student, you have already been a college student, or you have been working for many years, you do not have to feel sad. It is not too late since today, from today on, we do not regard ourselves as "mentally retarded", or, accurately, jump out of the "mentally retarded standard" created by humans-to be a normal person. In any case, do not think that "carrying so many words" is not a normal thing, because you are not mentally retarded and you refuse to be treated as mentally retarded, it is not normal to learn all common words.