The old code farmer teaches you how to learn English

Author's microblog: @ laobaonong's home location

The importance of English is naturally beyond doubt for our coders who are highly advanced and always in line with international standards. Especially those who are ambitious and want to break into the coding farming industry, and become a potential opportunity to kill their younger siblings. mastering English is one of the most critical factors for success. Imagine holding the JSP file translated by a publishing house
The younger brother next to you is studying and developing single-page applications with the original angularjs in action. Although you have been studying JSP templates for a month, can the same effect be achieved?

Therefore, only good English can learn the latest and most dazzling technology. Otherwise, you can take the Chinese translation version to learn the old antique two or three years ago and use it as a treasure. What's more, do you not know the level of Chinese translation books? How many pitfalls are translated! Not mentioned! In fact, I participated in a Java Development Guide translation more than a decade ago. At that time, I had been developing on the IBM host, so I didn't know Java at all, so I was definitely wrong. Looking back, shame! Please forgive me for my sins. Amen ......

Now let's get down to the truth and talk about how coders should learn English to be proficient in English.First of all, I need to clarify the concept that English learning cannot be achieved quickly. Students who want to speed up don't have to read it down. Otherwise, I will not take any responsibility for wasting your time.

As a programmer's habit, naturally, the first key is to accurately define the concept of "mastering English.

My definition is as follows:

• 1. Read: You can directly read English documents, such as MongoDB: the definitive guide. The reading speed and comprehension can be equivalent to that of your mother tongue;
• 2. Writing: the ability to directly write English documents and emails, to a level that can be understood without ambiguity by the English speaker. Students with strong skills can impact the strict logic and rigorous use of words;
• 3. I heard that: it is able to smoothly communicate with English-speaking people in technical aspects, to a level that is unambiguous between the two parties, students with strong skills can also strive to show their sense of humor and personal taste in the conversation.

Some people may be dissatisfied: Why is the starting point of learning so high? Only by following this standard can you fully discover the benefits of learning English well and use English as much as possible to form a virtuous circle.

So how long does it take to reach this standard? For CET-4 or 6 level students (yes, 4 and 6 are a level, almost no difference), I guess it takes more than 10 thousand hours. This is also the reason why I have never been able to speak English quickly. The estimation method for the data of 10 thousand hours is as follows: Read 5000 hours, listen 2000 hours, write 2000 hours, And say 1000 hours:

1. Reading is the foundation, core, and top priority for improving English proficiency.

Why? The most effective learning method is imitation, and only listening and reading have imitation conditions among the four elements of listening, speaking, and reading.

Why not listen more first? There are two reasons. First, the spoken language is relatively casual, there are many slang dialects, and the expression is not as rigorous as the written content; second, it is not easy to find and repeat what you cannot understand once. Therefore, a large amount of reading is the key basic work to improve the English proficiency.

Someone asked again, don't you memorize words first? Well, I hate memorizing words. How can I push you into the fire trap? Furthermore, simply memorizing words is of little use. Words remembered during reading are useful.

For example, you can find the word avalanche at the beginning of the GRE word table. The meaning is N. avalanche VI. collapse, you can stick it back, remember it with thousands of other words, and then one day when you see a sentence in the document :"... To handle an avalanche of client requests... ", You may not be able to remember the word avalanche. Even if you think of it, you may not be able to understand its meaning accurately.

Why? Because memorizing words is to remember words one by one in an isolated way, it may be useful for the test, but it is half the effort. The best way is to understand it during reading. For example, if it is still the sentence, I don't know the word avalanche at all, but I will read it from the beginning and end, an avalanche of refers to a lot of meanings. If you are not sure about the meaning, check the dictionary, it means "a lot of things rolling in like an avalanche".

It is best to look up words in the English-English dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster's Wei's English dictionary. Also, when querying a word, do not remember those Chinese interpretations. Some people like to recite words like chanting: "capability, talent, ability, capacity, performance, productivity, capability, talent, ability, capacity, performance, productivity ......", The onlookers felt tired for him, right? In fact, you only need to blur the meaning of it, and try not to mix Chinese in learning English. Foreigners do not know what the term "talent, capability, capacity, performance, productivity" does not affect the use of capability. Isn't it?

In addition, I think that words are the same as people, and they are also eye-catching. Remember not to force them if you cannot remember them. It doesn't matter if you forget it after reading it this time. After you read it, you will naturally remember it when you encounter more times. Some people say that if some words are rarely used, what should they do? I am speechless about this problem. What do you remember when there are few words? There is a famous word. What does Chinese mean when the early silver version is used for photography? I don't remember it. What can it do for me?

Through this process, you not only remember the word, but also master its common usage, which is a good foundation for future writing and speaking. At present, the disadvantages of many people learning English are exam-oriented thinking. As Kong Yiji said, there are four types of NLP, and missing one may cause the score to be deducted for wrong questions during the exam, but in real life, you may only need to know what it means and use it accurately.

Pony, suddenly pulled to the back word deviation. Or how to read it? I recommend a brute-force method. No matter how basic you are, first look for one or two technical-related vernacular books, which are the areas you are most interested in, for example, the classic Man Month myth (Mythical man-month)
And the original version of Joel on software. After all, in this initial stage, persistence is the first. Otherwise, I will try this book "advanced economy". It is said that 95% of coders will go crazy three days later.

Even the books you are interested in are difficult to read at the very beginning. Maybe some people open the first page and look at it. Mom, I don't know half of the words! What should we do? It's okay. As I said before, I'm sure that I'm sure of it. If I'm not sure about it, I can check the Chinese meaning and write it next to the word. The principle is to understand it all.

Also, the sentence is too long and there are a lot of that ..... Which ..... Who .... What are the clauses? It doesn't matter. No one else can understand it, but we are coders. We know the principles of nested structures, not recursion! The number of links that he connects, from the last one forward one by one, the clauses are marked one by one with a colored pen, and finally the nested relationship is clearly understood, the sentence is easy to understand. In fact, I think the best part of English is here. It can describe a concept in an infinite tree structure in a sentence, until it is defined strictly and unambiguous. Chinese cannot do this, and it is much more difficult to understand it.

In this phase, you must not be quick. It is normal to read only half a page in one day, but you must ensure accurate understanding. I would like to remind you that you must stick to it if you are not comfortable at the beginning. In fact, the most difficult part in English learning is not listening, speaking, reading, and writing, but English thinking. The Chinese language refers to the misty beauty. The more profound things are, the more they are. The less they are, the less they are, the less they are, for example, "the meat is mean, and it is not a long term", while many European and American articles aim to be precise, accurate to define, and fully demonstrated. To avoid logical loopholes, conclusions are often cautious. Generally, they are objective data, avoid subjective opinions as much as possible. For example, "based on the satellite cloud map, the probability of precipitation tomorrow is 70% ". When I was a young man, I bought Sun Tzu's Art of War and the theory of war by krautz.

There is also a big difference in humanities. After the Renaissance, foreigners have laid a good foundation for humanistic care, with more emphasis on personal freedom and rights. The so-called "wind energy, rain, and kings cannot enter "; from the perspective of historical and cultural inheritance, we consider that the collective is greater than the individual, and the individual is more stressed to adapt to the environment. For another example, foreigners are very jealous of the discrimination and ridicule of disadvantaged groups, but Chinese people are often used to the joke that the blind man and fat man in the sketch may fall apart.

Therefore, these differences in thinking are the biggest obstacle to learning English. A large amount of Reading helps to understand and develop this kind of thinking habit. Especially in terms of logic rigor and the objectivity of expression, it is difficult to train the current education environment in China due to cultural traditions and teachers themselves. However, by reading a lot of English materials, you can achieve a good brainwashing effect. It is a necessary medicine for home travel and peaceful evolution.

Even if I have finished reading two or three vernacular books, I can start to read more boring things, mainly professional teaching books. When I went to college, I would have returned the "Data Structure", "Discrete Mathematics", and "operating system" to my teacher. I would have to review them in English. Find the original basic course materials related to your major, about 5 books, start training. According to the above requirements, I will take a closer look at it. If you don't want to be quick but refine your skills, you can do a good job of exercise questions. Otherwise, how do you know that you understand it?

After reading these books, you can start to practice writing and listening. The specific practices will be detailed later.

At the same time, we should begin to look at some of the latest technical documents in the industry. These may not have been published yet, or there may be some free PDF files. In any case, you may also find about 5 Documents, which of the following are MongoDB, neo4j, and node. JS, angularjs, and so on. Let's take a closer look at it and make a system trainer. Because there are still few new technical documents and there are not many things in the community, we can't go to stackoverflow to ask, or go to GitHub to find some examples. Don't be lazy. These are good learning methods.

When you take down these books, it is estimated that the English documents you read on the Internet are almost the same as those in these books. Congratulations! Your reading skills are definitely okay. If I did not guess wrong, you would not be too lazy to read the translation version at this time, let alone spending money to buy and spend time reading it.

In addition, after the reading ability reaches this level, there is a basic foundation for writing. The so-called "regular reading of three hundred Tang poems will not make any poems, it will also Yin", after reading more, you will find that there are some routines in English writing, and Chinese is a truth, after a lot of reading, many sentence patterns are already in your mind. As long as you use them frequently, you will naturally become familiar with them.

2. Writing should create an environment and write more than 1000 words every day.

This is not difficult in the Internet era. The simplest and most straightforward way is to register a stackoverflow account. At first, I went to ask a question and paste the code that you may not be able to solve it. Some of the experts will help you solve the problem, so you can read and practice it; when your technology level rises, think about how many people have helped you to become a great bull. You can't just enter it. If you have any assistance, you should retaliate against the society, so I often go to stackoverflow to find some theme that you have mastered and help other cainiao to answer some questions, so I have practiced writing. How nice is it!

When you mix up a name hall on so, someone will come to you, for example, to help you do some work, ask questions, and so on. Naturally, you can contact me via email, this is a chance to practice writing. Even if you don't want to help him, you can also talk to him.

In addition, get a wall-turning software such as goagent, register a Google Plus account, go up and read hot articles, and write your own experiences. If you are bored, you can also find a big cool such as Linus. Every time you post a post on it, you can go up and comment on it or ask for advice. You should first get familiar with it! He also practiced writing. After a long time, maybe Daniel still liked you. Maybe he could give you a chance to turn over the wall. This is an unexpected pleasure.

In short, writing is a result of a great deal of reading, but pay attention to the fact that every sentence or even every word written must be accurate and authentic. Do not write anything you don't know, you can either change the method you are familiar with, or check it clearly before writing. If the Chinese can understand the written sentences and the foreigners can't understand them, the previous efforts will be wasted.

3. Listening should begin to practice after the reading ability reaches a certain level. It is similar to the reading and writing mentioned above. At the same time, listening is actually laying the foundation for oral English.

The first thing I want to talk about is that you should never practice listening with an American drama or something. You are not planning to sneak in to New York's Queens to sell drugs and mix them with the black brother, even if you hear it, you will be able to tell if WTF is that you are an Italian, an Irish, or a black man. What is the use of WTF? We must not forget our score when we are a code farmer. We have to mix it with the big brother of the Code farmer. Therefore, to practice listening, you must talk to the big bull in the IT circle.

The most classic nature is the young man who died in the Age of envy. When you listen to his interview, you will know that his success is not accidental. Such a person with strict logic, active thinking, strong expression ability, good at mobilizing the mood of the audience, a good sense of humor, and a strong toughness in doing things is really a rare genius for a hundred years.

The interview with Bill Gates is too bad. His ability to express is really not flattering. Sometimes he cannot understand the key points, but he is a little confused about the charm of Mr. Han qiaosheng. The politician series are not recommended either. Like Obama's speech, there is always a kind of familiar fashion. I think this is not the American version of the pyramid sales lecture!

Therefore, it is absolutely true to listen to the interview with God Qiao. Why is it an interview? Because it is a conversation, the form matches our needs. The English conversation we need at work is similar to the interview style. Do you think about it? In addition, his interviews are all about us, and he is familiar with background knowledge. Just listen to his expression and logic. If you are not satisfied, I will give you a recording of the biology professor's lecture on the molecular biology course for you to listen to. Can you still find the north after hearing it?

These interviews are available on the Internet, and there are a lot of podcast in iTunes, but don't listen with subtitles, tens of millions!

Now that the materials are available, what should I do? First, I will tell you that each interview should be listened to more than 100 times. The first 20 times are confused, so you can understand how much you can understand and understand what you don't understand. But I can assure you that 20th times is more than 1st times. After 20 times, you are still blind. You can still hear 100th times, so it makes no sense if you try again. At this time, you can read the text for a better time, then we collected it and listened to it for 20 times. At this time, some of those who had been blinded could hear it. After 20 times, we listened to it again and listened again. After 100 times, we should not have used it, then listen to the next one. I have heard it for 100 times, and I will review it frequently and listen to it repeatedly. Many sentence patterns will automatically enter your mind and lay a good foundation for your oral English.

4. It is the most troublesome thing to say, because the conditions are the most difficult to create. This requires a large living person to seriously chat with you!

Of course, if you can talk to a foreigner in the English language, it will save time and efficiency. However, when you have finished your oral practice, you must kick it off. Remember, you are a Chinese, and the fat water will not flow into foreign fields!

Well, it's not a long evening. There are several ways to practice spoken English: making foreign friends, going into a foreign company, or spending money to hire a foreigner to talk to you. Different people have different jobs and different economic situations. Choose your own. Now that reform and opening up are in progress, some people are getting richer and talking to others is quite helpful.

However, I would like to remind you that you should not go to any English Corner to Practice Oral English. In this case, there may be more than one hundred people around a foreigner, just like watching monkeys, either a bunch of Chinese people come to each other with a few good likes, and they just want to touch each other's stomachs to see how good and how oily they are, which is a waste of time! In my opinion, to practice oral English, you must find a person whose native English language is required. In this way, you can get twice the result with half the effort.

In addition, I have the opportunity to go to the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and other places to experience my learning achievements. However, I am mainly talking about things related to the work of coders, basically not about life-related English, such as buying a milk shake at McDonald's. These things mainly rely on-site experience for on-site learning, however, with the English of the Gender's high-end upper class society in front of Yang chunbai as the foundation, the English of life of these people in the lower class is very quick to get started, and I'm sure I want to give it to you.

I 'd like to talk so much about how codenong can learn English well. Finally, I would like to sum up that learning English is a lifelong career. It can last forever only when you slowly turn it into a hobby through a painful initial stage. When it truly becomes your favorite thing, you will find that the world in your eyes has ever changed. It has become larger, diversified, and more beautiful. At this time, all the efforts and persistence have paid off.

Author's microblog: @ laobaonong's home location