Guide to Success

Choose those that you think this story has shown you:

John has cycling skill without cycling theory. Jack has cycling theory without cycling skill.
Cycling is a skill. It is learned through practice, not through reading enough information about it.
Neither John nor Jack is an expert in bicycle studies. John merely knows how, whereas Jack why. But only someone who knows both how and why can be entitled an expert.
John's skill is more useful than Jack's knowledge.
Jack is more learned than John.
Knowledge is useless.

Hi, my friend., you may say:

"This is a made-up story, and no real-life Jack would be that stupid."

You're not quite right. Whether the story is real or fictitious is not the point here. It is the lesson drawn from the story that is important. You and I all know that there are a great many speakers of their native language who have perfect language skills without the slightest knowledge of language theory, such as grammar. There are also quite a number of foreign language learners who have excellent knowledge of the target language, but can hardly speak it at all. This was particularly true in the good old days in China, and is still true in some Chinese departments in some universities, where people teach subjects such as western philosophy and literature through translation.

The lesson we should bear in mind is the following:

A language such as English is first of all a skill. You cannot learn it by reading information about it. You have to learn it by doing it. All the courses of this programme are designed on an activity basis. That is, you will be engaged in many activities, and by doing these activities you learn the language.


	You have a lot of falls and bruises in learning to cycle. The same is true in language learning. It is only too common to make mistakes and end up with misunderstandings. Mistakes and misunderstandings are part of your learning process. Through falls and bruise you learn not to fall or get bruised again. It is through mistakes and misunderstandings that you stop making them.

ŁAre you saying that reference books such as grammar books are useless?
ŁNo, not at all, my friend. Reference books are quite helpful if you use them appropriately.

Take grammar for example. The following is a list of things you can do with a grammar book. Choose the use that is appropriate. Circle the use that is not appropriate.

read it as a source book to acquire language skills;
read it as a rule book and learn the rules by rote;
read it as supplementary material;
read the grammatical rules in the book as a systematic summary made by a professional of individual linguistic phenomena. In this way you speed up your learning process;
read it for convenient terms that you can use in your own teaching;
clarify rules you are not sure of.