对于非英语为母语的人，尤其是成年人来说，学英语是否总是一段痛苦的经历呢？ 简单回答，有时是，有时不是。 作为一个在中国出生和成长的非英语为母语的英语学习者，我在学习这门语言的过程中既有过“我想自杀”的时候，也有过“学英语真好玩”的时候。这么多年过去了，我发现学英语到底是否必须如此不愉快，甚至创伤，实际上取决于许多因素，包括学习方式、学习目的以及学习的英语类型等。 对于中国人来说，如何学习英语是我们大多数人从未考虑过的事情，因为我们被扔进了以英语考试为导向的小学甚至幼儿园的英语课堂。老师们强迫学生记单词和语法，并要求学生仅基于此构建完美的句子和文章。显然，这种方法缺乏效果，相反，反而是有问题的。大多数学生会忘记他们花几小时记住的单词，而我们中的大多数人无法用这些单词组成一个段落。 为什么会这样？当然，个别学生学习的速度不同，而且并非每个地方都有足够的资源，但主要原因是中国传统的英语学习方法与人类大脑相悖。更具体地说，他们试图在脱离上下文的情况下教授英语。这就像在没有水的情况下教游泳。为了记住语法并建立您的词汇库，我们必须对它们感到舒适。与仅仅反复背诵令人痛苦的单词表并记住“abandon”等词语不同，我们应该花更多时间将它们放在真实使用情境中，即我们的日常交流。怎么做呢？简单，做并提高。对于在毕业后真正想学英语的中国大多数成年人来说，始终建议从简单开始，然后逐步提高。例如，如果您想表达购买软饮料的需求，只需从以下简单的句子开始：
I want to buy a drink
自己重复，直到当这句子从您的口中说出时，奇怪的感觉消失为止。然后我们需要做一些改进，例如，
I would like to purchase a soft drink, specifically, a can of Coca-Cola
同样，重复直到您感到舒适。然后，让我们再次进行改进，使其变得更有趣一些
In earnest desire, I am inclined to acquire a can of soft drink, Coca-cola, to be more specific, to save me from the extreme hot day
每天都以相同的方法进行，您会发现自己在相对短的时间内对英语有很好的掌握。而且，我不确定您是否注意到，我们并没有翻译。
另一个常见问题是人们学习语言时没有明确的目的。我遇到的每个在英语方面表现出色的非母语人士都有明确的学习动力，其中一些需要学习，因为他们在一个完全使用英语的环境中工作，而另一些则因难以理解重要的论文和论文而学习。我所知道的最令人印象深刻的人之一是一个努力获得澳大利亚永久居留权的女孩。她只用了不到4个月的时间就在雅思考试中取得了8分。
同时，您还需要了解您想学习的英语。作为一种最常见的语言，英语已经在几乎所有场景中使用。但您必须弄清楚您尝试使用的词汇是正式用于论文还是更适用于日常交流的设备。想象一下，一个说唱歌手突然爆发出什么都不是GRE词汇表。
说到学习英语，还有很多要谈论的，但最重要的是要开始。
P.S. 当我写这篇文章时，我是用英语写的，然后请ChatGPT翻译成中文。如您所见，我做到了，您也可以。
Does it have to painful to learn English for adults
Is English learning always painful for non-native speakers, especially when it comes to adults?
Short answer, yes and no.
As a Chinese born and grown, non-native English speaker, I have experienced both “I want to kill myself” and “English is so much fun” time on my path of learning the language. After all these years, I figured that the answer to the question whether learning English has to be so unpleasant or even traumatic actually depends on many factors including how to learn it, why do you learn it, and what kind of English you learn.
For Chinese people, how to learn English is something most of us never think about, because we are thrown in our English exam oriented classes in primary schools or even kindergartens. Teachers forced students to remember vocabularies and grammars, and ask students to construct perfect sentences and articles just based on that. Obviously the approach is quite lack of effectiveness, while ,on the contrary, is problematic. Most students forget the vocabularies they spend hours to remember, and the majority of us are not capable of compose a paragraph using these words.
Why is that? Of course, individual students learn at different paces, and not every area has sufficient resources, but the main reason is the traditional English learning method in China works against human brains. To be more specific, they try to teach English out of context. It is like teaching swimming without water. In order to remember the grammars and build your vocabulary bank, we have to be comfortable with them. Compared with sheerly reciting the excruciating word lists repeatedly and remember nothing but “abandon”, we should use more time to put them in real use case, our daily communication. How to do that? Easy, do and improve. For most adults in China who wants to actually learn English after they graduate, it is always advisable to start simple and move from there. For instance if you want to express your needs to purchase a soft drink, just start with
I want to buy a drink
Repeat it your self until the weird feeling is gone when the sentences comes out your mouth. Then we need to make improvements, for instance,
I would like to purchase a soft drink, specifically, a can of Coca-Cola
again, repeat until you are comfortable with it. And then, let’s improve one more time to make it fancy a little bit
In earnest desire, I am inclined to acquire a can of soft drink, Coca-cola, to be more specific, to save me from the extreme hot day
Use the same method on a daily basics, you will find your self have a good command of English in a relatively short time. And, I am not sure that you have noticed, we did not translate.
Another common problem is people do not have clear purpose of learning the language. Every non-native personnel who are excelling at English I come across has clear drive of learning, some of them need to learn because they work in a full English speaking environment, and some of them learn because they have hard time understanding important thesis and papers. One of the most impressive person I knew about was a girl who strived to get permanent residence in Australia. It only took her less than 4 month to score 8 in IELTS tests.
Meanwhile, you also need to understand what English you want to learn. Being a most common language, English has been used in almost every scenarios. But you have to figured out whether the vocabulary you try to use is formal for papers or they are more daily communication kind of devices. Imagine a rapper burst out nothing but GRE vocabularies.
There are so much to talk about when it comes to English learning, but the most important thing is to get started.
P.S. when I wrote the post, I did it in English and then ask ChatGPT to translate to Chinese. As seen, I did it, so can you.
