Life in the UK/ Changes are gifts (4)_Language
Contents:
1. English Story
2. 中文文章- English Story
Procrastinator as I am.
I’ve actually had some rough ideas for this article, for almost 2 months. But just very, very rough ideas. The reason why I did not develop them into a nice article was that I didn’t feel the ideas powerful or persuasive. They were like “Staying in the English environment can make you an English speaker!” or “Don’t be afraid of speaking! Just do it!” which were….. partially nonsense.
In the past two months, I didn't want to mention my English ability at all. I had always felt my cognitive capacity depleted, refusing to deal with anything in English. I even felt painful when reading an email or structuring sentences in my brain before speaking.
So, what made this article today?
After I came back from my Easter trip, I started to feel more comfortable when using English. To be honest, I don’t know what’s the difference between other Europe countries and the UK. Maybe because those countries were unfamiliar to me, I somehow became braver and able to convey my thoughts confidently when traveling. I didn't stop communicating in English after I came back to the UK(this sentence sounds weird?); instead, I spent plenty of time on reading English materials, communicating with peers, writing in English for the assigments. It was until today when all the presentations ended that I understood my English ability has improved significantly. The reaction time in conversations has reduced and I absorb new usage of different words more efficiently than before. How surprising!
Suddenly I recalled a scene in the Korean drama “Twenty-five, Twenty-one”. When Hee-Do’s dad told her the improvement (function) of fencing would not be like an upward sloping linear function, (Oh no I can’t help mentioning economic things..) but like a staircase function! You can’t expect to see progress when you put marginal effort, but you will suddenly see it after a period of time with continuous practices! Unfortunately, most people give up by the time they see the progress.
Same in everything. Every skill, language, goal you wish to accomplish. There’s nothing special with my experience. I did nothing but accidentally see the difference after the trip. Back to the beginning of this article. I said those encouraging ideas are partially nonsense because they are useless with the lack of patience. Every practice I did, every effort I made was not in vain as long as I had that patience to see the improvement.
And I believe it is more important to tell you this personal experience than sharing something you can find on Google by yourself. The staircase improvement function does exist.
2. 中文文章
拖延症患者如我。
我其實在兩個月前就陸陸續續有了這篇的點子，但也僅於模糊的輪廓。之所以沒有更深入將點子發想成文章，是因為我認為那些點子還不夠有說服力，也無法帶給你們力量。大概是那種「待在全英文環境久了英文就說得自然了！」或是「別害怕說話！說就對了！」。我只部分認同這些浮現在腦海的點子。
過去兩個月以來，我其實一點也不想提及我的英文能力。那陣子常常覺得頭昏腦脹，認知資源耗盡的感覺。我拒絕用英文處理任何非必要的事情，甚至還覺得僅是閱讀 email 或是在說話前組織語句就讓我十分痛苦。
那是什麼契機促成了這篇文章呢？
自從我從復活節旅遊回來後，我開始感覺自己用英文變得自在許多了。我其實不知道其他歐洲國家和英國有什麼不同，但也許是因為那些國家對我而言更加陌生，讓我在旅遊時鼓起了勇氣，去自信地表達自己的想法。然而，我並沒有因為回到英國就停止用英文溝通(這樣講好像也很奇怪？)，反而花了更多時間閱讀英文的資料、用英文和同儕溝通、用英文寫作業。直到今天，所有的報告都結束後，我才赫然發現，原來我的英文進步那麼多了。對話的反應時間減少了、學習新字詞的用法也變快了，多令人驚訝的變化！
我突然想起韓劇《二十五，二十一》的一幕情景。希度的爸爸在告訴她，擊劍的進步曲線不會像是一條正斜率的斜直線，而是像階梯式的曲線！你無法保證在每付出一點努力時就能看到一點成果，但是只要持續的練習，在未來的某一天，你會突然發現自己進步了許多！然而，大多數人在看到自己的成果之前就放棄了。
這個道理在每件事都是類似的。每種技能、語言、或是你想達成的目標都是一樣的。我的經驗沒有任何特別之處，僅僅是剛好在旅行後就看到這樣的成果了。回到文章最初提及的，我說那些鼓勵的點子只能部分認同，是因為缺乏了耐心，那些都是沒用的。每個練習、每個努力都不是白費，只要我抱持著這樣的耐心，直到看到成果的那一刻。
而我相信這比那些可以google找到的東西還更值得分享。因為這是我的個人經驗，我可以很有信心的說，階梯式的努力方程式確實存在。
中文文章放在後面的原因是，因為這篇是先寫了英文文章，然後才翻譯成中文的，這應該也足以顯示現在的我不再為英文感到認知資源枯竭了吧：）
