北外牛津校友雅思8.5，你能从她身上学到什么？
这篇是“英语高分高能牛人访谈”的第二期。
分享嘉宾：查敏，教育创新研究者，现任职于21世纪教育研究院，重点关注在家上学（homeschooling）与创新小微学校。北外翻译硕士，牛津大学教育硕士。雅思 8.5 分，其中口语 8.5 分，写作 7.5 分。
查敏是我认识的中国人中英语最好几个人之一。她的英文地道、自然、流畅、优美，而且有自己明显的文风。她的采访是用英文写的，干货满满，幽默睿智，非常精彩。相信大家从中能读到那个特别的查敏，也会同意她真实的英文写作能力远不止 7.5 分。
Justin: Could you talk a bit about your work? Do you use English often and much at work? Under what circumstances and in what way do you use English?
Min: I’m currently working at an NGO in education as an associate researcher. Despite the title, I often consider myself more of an education journalist in my current role--I travel, I interview, and I write. Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do. My main focus is on education innovation and it’s a very interesting field. New ideas and interesting people keep coming into your radar. It’s definitely helping me learn every day by making me step outside of my comfort zone. Plus, the NGO is highly regarded in the field, so sometimes I get to connect with people that I wouldn’t normally get to meet.
At work, I don't use English on a daily basis, but it is quite important for what I do. Education innovation is very open by nature. International exchange is of paramount importance if you want to know what schools on the other side of the world are doing effectively to help students learn in a better way. This is where I come in. I coordinate some of the cooperation projects we have with our international partners. Usually, this would entail writing emails in English. Sometimes, I need to have Skype calls or participate in web conferences where English would be the working language. When we go abroad for conferences or have international speakers at our own events, I might need to step into my old shoes as the interpreter.
Justin: How long have you been learning English? How did you start?
Min: I’ve been learning English since junior high school, which makes it almost 19 years (don’t even try to ask how old I am). In the beginning, I just did what the teacher asked us to do—singing the alphabets and reading textbook sentences out loud in that funny chanting voice that children always have. Like many other kids in my class, I would squeeze in tiny Chinese characters right under the English words in the textbook so that I would be able to ‘pronounce’ them when called upon by the teacher. I don’t really remember how I passed that initial phase of total confusion. But one thing I do remember is that our English teacher was very handsome and he stayed with us for all of the three years at junior high. Lucky me.
Justin: What is your greatest motivation of learning English? Why did you want to learn it so well?
Min: Don't you simply get excited to be able to hear the words of a different language roll off of your tongue? That’s how I am when I learn English. Every time I manage to speak this other tongue different from my own, there is a secret transformation going on inside me. I sort of turn into a different person, yet I’m still me. It’s like putting on a costume. You get to be the character in a play. You are inhabiting in a whole new world now, and yet afterwards you are still you. Or to be more exact, a new you.
Interest in foreign languages and the development of a self-identity--these are the biggest motivations for me to learn English. Of course getting good marks at exams was nice, but I was more in it for the primitive pleasure of self-expression and perpetual self-invention. So it was not difficult for me to start to enjoy learning English from my teenage years. I didn’t mind the hard work, or the sometimes repetitive efforts needed to hone my skills in, say, speaking.
When I got to university and started to major in English, having access to more resources such as native-speaking teachers played a huge part in furthering my motivation. They showed me the foreign, the “exotic”, which only increased my desire to understand English. So I put more effort into learning the language. And the more time I put into it, the better I became; the better I became, the more motivated I was. Voila!
Justin: Could you please tell us specifically how you made great progress in at least one of the following: listening, speaking, reading, and writing?
Min: Around the time in junior high school, I developed a habit of keeping a diary, in Chinese of course. As a teenage girl, I didn’t have the best of relationships with my mom at the time. One day, the family was having lunch. My mom joined a bit late. She casually passed a question to me and I immediately got furious. It turned out that she was late because she was reading my diary without my consent. And now she wanted to know why I felt the way I said I felt in the diary. After that day, I started to write my journal in English because I knew that my mom didn't speak English and she wouldn’t be able to understand what I wrote. In the beginning, it was really hard, because most of the time I didn’t know the English words that I needed in order to say what I wanted to say. But I would rather express myself in a broken sentence than to be spied upon. So I would just use words that I knew and tried to capture the happenings of the day, the week or the month as best as I could. Even though I’ve since developed a very good relationship with my mom, I still sometimes prefer to write my diary in English than in Chinese.
Not the most uplifting story of learning to love writing in English, I know. But the point I’m trying to make is that motivation is key when it comes to writing. I guess most people would agree with me when I say that writing is the hardest part when learning a new language. But if you have something you really want to express using English, then there’s no stopping you. And how do you make yourself really want to express something using English? Create an authentic audience! They can be your English-speaking friends, your pen pals on the other side of the world (do pen pals still exist?), or yourself, if you happen to have a mom who might secretly check on you through your writings.
Justin: How important do you think grammar is? How did you learn grammar? Have you ever learned it systematically?
Min: Grammar is important, but shouldn’t be the main focus when starting to learn a new language. Building a sustained interest and a sense of achievement is crucial in the beginning. Heavy grammar is counterproductive to this goal. So I would suggest English beginners to first focus on vocabulary and listening skills. After you’ve developed a somewhat good feeling towards learning the language and feel like you wouldn’t get deterred by (or you even actively desire) learning some structural patterns, then you can slowly let the grammar kick in.
I didn’t follow my own advice though. How could I—I couldn’t time travel to the past to give the 12-year-old me the wisdom of a mature English learner. Instead, what I did was to follow the systematic grammar instructions of my handsome English teacher in junior high. It worked as well. Not bad.
Justin: How large is your vocabulary? How do you build vocabulary? Have you used any vocabulary books (excluding dictionaries) heavily?
Min: I don’t really know how big my English vocabulary is. How do you know for sure (like, really for sure) you know the meaning of all the words in the vocabulary you supposedly have mastered? All I know is that I still run into words that I think I know but actually, I don’t and I need to confirm with Google translate every single time. Words like poignant, or shenanigan. Of course, I just turned to Google to make sure I’m not spelling them incorrectly. Human memory is just a weird thing. And as if that’s not bad enough, words change their meanings when contexts change!
For me, I learned a lot of new words through listening and reading. I remember a favorite radio programme during college called Studio Classroom. The two hosts would have a bite-sized conversation and then explain the new or difficult words or phrases using real sentences as examples. I loved listening to that show every evening during my college days. But yes I did try to memorize a dictionary. It didn’t go very far though. I kind of remember I got stuck on “abandon”.
Justin: Has your mother tongue positively or negatively influenced your English learning? If yes, how? Have you ever been bewildered by different languages? If yes, how did you handle it?
Min: Undoubtedly, Chinese has a tremendous influence on my learning journey with English. The Chinese grammar, or lack of it, influenced the way I spoke or wrote in English in the beginning. But this was not very difficult to overcome.The real obstacle is the cultural “baggage" that comes with a native language, especially the way people use language to think and connect with others. For example, many of my friends and I have come across to English-speakers as very direct or sometimes rude. What happened was that we don't always know the culturally appropriate things to say to a given person in a given situation. So we would just say what we would say if we were having a conversation in Chinese, oblivious to the cultural connotations hidden behind the language. During my year in the UK, I’ve made many such mistakes, which I only realize in hindsight. But I’ve also gained a better understanding of the British way of thinking and socialization by making those mistakes. I guess in a way making mistakes and developing a cultural sensitivity go hand in hand.
I’ve learnt German for a few years and I've also tried learning Japanese for one semester. I’m now trying to learn French. Because I only focus on one language at a time, I don’t really see them as enemies with each other. Rather, they reinforce one another and make it easy for me whenever I set out on a new journey.
Justin: With regard to English language learning, is there anything else that you feel particularly strongly about and want to share? If yes, we’d like to hear.
Min: For those of you who need to commute to school or work, my advice: listen to podcasts! Lots of them! Gosh, there are simply so many good materials out there that I can’t even start to count them. You can simply google “best podcasts in 2017” and you’ll get various recommendation lists. Start from those top ones on the lists or the ones whose content really interest you. Podcasting is making big waves at the moment and it is a wonderful resource for learning English.
Also, there are a lot of fun language-learning apps nowadays. The one that I’m using at the moment to learn French is Memrise. One of its features is “Learning with locals”, where I can access short videos of real French-speakers speaking French. Apps like this usually have English as a language option as well. Find one that you like and stick with it.
We live in such abundance in this time of ours. Make good use of it.
Justin's comments:
What a mesmerizing read! Zha Min's sensitivity to language is clear in every line. She has a rare ear for English and a distinctive voice. An IELTS band score of 8.5 seems only to be a byproduct; it doesn't say much about her English and brilliance.
It's OK if you didn't have a handsome or hot English teacher. It works too if you have a nosy mom. Or, consider the bonus of mastering a foreign tongue: a familarly strange persona or a fresh self-identity.
谢谢查敏的分享！
关于LIFE教育创新：
LIFE教育创新是一个集研究、倡导和行动于一体的大型公益项目，由21世纪教育研究院于 2014 年创建。LIFE寓意着教育关乎生命、融于生活和贯穿终身。作为引领和推动教育创新的跨界合作公共平台，LIFE致力于持续研究和传播全球范围内的教育创新经验。
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下期预告：英语比 95% 的英语专业学生都好，这个高中生是怎么做的的？
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作者：查敏
编辑、点评：孟庆伟 Justin
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