Chinese people, especially students encounter great difficulties when they learn English. Today, English is being taught at nearly all schools and universities, and students learn English at younger and younger ages. Many students or non-students learn English outside school. But after many years learning they still are not fluent in English, ever who has got a doctor degree. Why?

It is because they want to learn English. This seems a joke, how can a person master English if he doesn’t want to? So the reason should be they ONLY want to learn English. They don’t want to use it, many people will say he or she wants to use it, but actually, they haven’t used it. For most students, the only usage of English is to prepare for examination, but is examination a use? As long as the examination is passed and the students get high scores, they will stop learning English as soon as possible. Some students will say they hate English while they are studying English very hard for examination! What a pity!

After all, what have the students got beside the high scores? Actually they have gained something. They have known how to translate English into Chinese and vice versus. Many Chinese new words derived from English are emerging, there are already many. The derivations are so common that many Chinese people think it is English words that derive from Chinese. Chinese people get used to translate every English word into Chinese before they can understand the meaning of the word or a passage. As a language must be used to represent the real world to make a sense, the Chinese people use English to represent Chinese, not the real world. Without connection to reality and knowledge, the Chinese people find that English is useless. Unsurprisingly, many Chinese people potentially want to give up the tedious and useless thing.

This situation still exists inside the entire China, especially the mainland of China. To overcome this problem needs millions of people to do something--Stop the way that teach the correspondence between English and Chinese, instead, relate English materials directly to knowledge without translation during teaching. To achieve this, they can set a curriculum that includes some non-English courses, such as mathematics, given in English.

Charley Pein