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In
China today, learning English is very much in vogue1,
especially in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and many others.
Young people in their early twenties with a good command of
English or just a little more than a nodding acquaintance2
with the language find it easier to secure a desirable job
than those without. As a result, short-term English training
courses are springing up like mushrooms everywhere across
the country. However, many people are heard to complain that
however hard they work at English and however much time they
spend on it, they are always unduly rewarded in progress.
When asked about its cause, they all attribute it to what
they call 'nadequate vocabulary' Is that so? Here, I have
to disagree with my young friends.
Words in a language play the same
part as bricks do in civil engineering; they make up the elementary
components of both. Yet words alone, however numerous, if
devoid of3 the art of arranging them in a prescribed4
way, can never be organized into an intelligible speech in
the same way as a man in mere possession of bricks yet without
the knowledge of architecture can never put up a building.
In my contact
with young learners of English in recent years, I've observed
something at once interesting and rustrating; many of them
take great pains to memorize long Latinate5 words
in the belief that the more polysyllabic6 words
they know, the more learned and knowledgeable they must
seem in the eyes of their fellow students. While concentrating
their time and energy on long polysyllabic words, they tend
to overlook or even go so far as to belittle7
the function of short monosyllabic8 words, believing,
mistakenly though, that they are too simple to be worth
the trouble of learning. I must say these young people are
very much mistakenin the way they think. To illustrate my
point, I might as well quote a passage from a speech by
Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom. He said,"We shall fight on the beaches, we
shall fight on the hills, we shall never surrender.?nbsp;Of
the three sentences quoted above, only the word 'surrender'
is a foreign one and all the rest are words of the native
English stock9.
Having said this much, I am not
in the least suggesting that we can do without Latinate
words, which found their way into the English language two
hundred years after the Norman Conquest of England by the
French-speaking King William in 106610. In fact,
most of the terms in superstructure such as politics, religion,
philosophy, medicine, science and law came from Latin through
French for the Royal Family as well as the nobility spoke
French only. But the poor English farmhands11,
being unable to learn French at school, could only speak
English. Therefore, English became the language of the poor
and more and more simplified as a result of disuse. That
is why it is advisable for Chinese tudents learning to communicate
in English to begin with monosyllabic words, which are accompanied
by vivid images and can be easily recalled, if ever forgotten,
by linking it to a conspicuous image, which serves as a
reminder. For instance, if you fail to call to your mind
the English for qiguanyan, 'man who stands in awe of12
his wife' you only have to call up in your mind the picture
of a hen, here compared to 'wwife' and you will immediately
be reminded of the English idiom 'a hen-pecked13
husband'.
Here is another example to support
my argument against the use of Chinese in learning English.
The Chinese translation for the following three English
phrases are far and wide apart although they have in all
of them the word 'figure' such as 'figure skating' ,'woman
with a fine figure', 'figurehead of state'.14
Except for animal names in the zoo and other objects with
fixed Chinese equivalents, never learn English words, especially
verbs and prepositions, in isolation of context. In addition
to learning English through images or through association
of ideas, there is also what is popularly known as 'situational
English'. In many current English-Chinese dictionaries we
find the Chinese explanation xihuan for both 'enjoy';and
'take to'. 'Ducks take to water.' 'The convict took to the
forest.' 'I enjoy your company.' 'She enjoys laying her
head on his shoulder.' Are 'enjoy' and 'take to' interchangeable
here? Of course not. Why? This is because the meaning and
usage of a word changes with the change of situation, hence
'situational English'.
1. in vogue:
正在流行的。
2. a nodding acquaintance:
肤浅的知识，皮毛。
3. devoid
(of): 毫无的，没有的。
4. prescribed: 规定的。
5. Latinate:
从拉丁语派生（或演化）的。
6. polysyllabic: 多音节的。
7. belittle:
轻视，小看。
8. monosyllabic: 单音节的。
9. stock:
[语]语系，语族。
10. 1066年法国诺曼底公爵威廉渡海征服英格兰，建立诺曼底王朝，史称“诺曼征服”。威廉于12月25日在威斯敏斯特加冕为英国国王，称威廉一世，这位英国国王却只会讲法语。
11. farmhand:
农场工人。
12. stand
in awe of sb.: 敬畏某人。
13. hen-pecked: 常受老婆责骂的，“妻管严”的，惧内的。
14. figure
skating: 花样滑冰；woman with
a fine figure: 此处figure是“身材”的意思 ；figurehead:
有名无实的首脑，傀儡
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