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学习外语的简单方法 Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Benny the Irish polyglot of Fluent in 3 months. 编者按：本文作者Benny，一位在3个月内便通晓多种语言的爱尔兰人。 When I was 21 years old, the only language I spoke was English. I had done quite poorly in languages in school and believed that I was too untalented and even too ‘old’ to consider ever speaking a foreign language, even basically. 我到21岁还只会说一种语言，那就是英语。在学校的时候，我就在语言学科上学得很不好，以至于我认为自己完全没有什么语言天赋，甚至认为自己太老了，学不会外语，即使是基础的外语也学不会。 Now seven years later I speak eight languages fluently and can get by quite well in several others. In my day-to-day life I almost never speak English and my travels and scope of friendships have been greatly enriched because of this. 然而七年后的今天，我却可以流利地说八种外语，另外还有几种外语说的也不错。现在我在日常生活中基本都不说英语了，而且由于会多种外语而大大扩展了我的朋友圈子。 How I reached this stage was not by studying a lot or investing thousands in software or courses. It was by applying the simple principles outlined here. 有人要问我是如何做到在短时间内精通多种外语的？我没有经过大量的学习，没有花钱买各种各样的学习软件，也没有参加各种培训班。我只是很好的应用了以下这几条原则: Having the right learning approach 制定恰当的学习规划 What mostly surprises people is my confidence that anyone can reach a high level of fluency in a language in just a few months. Many of us will have studied a language for years in school and are barely able to string a sentence together, so this idea might sound nothing short of arrogant. 我认为任何人都有可能在短短几个月内精通一门语言，人们通常会惊讶于我为何如此自信。鉴于大多数人在学校学了多年的外语之后往往还只会简单的拼出一句话，我的这个观点可能会显得有点自夸。 However, considering what you are actually doing in school; a couple of hours of theory, using the language unnaturally for exam purposes, and some half-interested homework – this barely adds up to a few weeks of real work even over half a decade. 但是，想想看我们在学校学外语时都是怎么学的？几个小时的理论，为了通过考试而机械地去练习外语，以及一些没有兴趣投入的家庭作业...。按照这样即使学了好多年，真正学习的时间加起来也不过几个礼拜而已。 After just two months living in Budapest, with no previous exposure to the language, I was ready to be interviewed entirely in Hungarian on video. I am not smarter or more talented than anyone else who might attempt this, but I am much more committed and serious about reaching my goals. 我以前从未接触过匈牙利语，但在布达佩斯生活了仅两个月后，我就可以用匈牙利语进行视频对话。我并不比其他任何人更聪明或更有天赋，我只是更坚定于更认真地对待自己想要达到的目标。 You don’t have to devote your life to the language, but you must invest at least an hour a day, ideally more, which involves focused use of the language. 你不必把全部精力都投入到学习外语，但必须保证每天至少花一个小时，超过一个小时当然更好，来专注于练习这门外语。 Casual interest can only get you so far – if you just ‘want’ to speak a language, that gives you no edge. Who wouldn’t want that? To make real progress, that want has to become a need. With focus and your full attention you can learn much quicker 仅仅是兴趣爱好不会有很大的进展——如果你只是“想要”说一门外语，这没有给你任何界定。谁不想要多说一门外语呢？想要真正有所进展的话，那这个“想要”就要变成“需要”。 全神贯注会让你学得更快 And there is only one way the language will become a true necessity: you need to start speaking it with other people, now. Stop learning the language, and start speaking it! 有一个方法可以把外语变成真正的必需：假如你现在就要用外语和别人交流。 不要再学外语了，开始说出来吧。 If I had to summarize what definitely separates those who fail in attempts to reach conversational fluency and those who succeed, based on my experience of meeting thousands of language learners, it is simply the fact that the latter group actually use the language. Not for exams, not for listening to podcasts or reading, but to communicate with human beings. 我接触过数千个学外语的人，他们都想要达到能用外语进行流利对话的目标，但有的失败了有的成功了，如果要我说这两类人的主要区别是什么，我会说一个简单事实就是后者真正的去使用外语了，不是为了考试，不是为了听广播或者阅读，而是用外语去和别人交流。 If your goal is to be able to read perfectly or understand the radio perfectly, then lots of reading and listening will be precisely what you need. 如果你的目标是能够完全读懂外文资料或者完全听得懂外语广播，那么你要做的就是大量的阅读以及听力练习就够了。 However, to speak well, you need to speak often! You can’t avoid this, it’s kind of the whole point! 但如果你想要把外语说好，那就需要经常的说外语！这是免不了的，这就是说好外语的关键。 Seriously, stop studying the target language so much! A language can’t be treated like a subject in school such as history or biology; in the real world you cannot ‘fail’ when you make a certain number of mistakes. Other people are very helpful when you are genuinely trying to speak with them. 说真的，不要过多的去闷头学外语了！你不能把一门外语看作是类似于诸如历史或生物这类学校里的学科来学习；在现实生活中，没有规定说你说外语的时候错了多少次就算是不及格。如果你诚心用外语去和别人交流，那么他们对于你学外语是非常有帮助的。 People told me that in Berlin I would find it hard to convince Germans to not speak English to me all the time, but even when I was initially struggling they would be very helpful and patient with me as I spoke. They could see that I was serious about speaking their language and rewarded me for my efforts. 有人告诉我在柏林你会发现很难让德国人不和你说英语，不过我刚开始德语还不太好时，就算我磕磕碰碰的用德语和他们交谈，他们也会很乐意的帮助我而且会很耐心的和我交谈。他们能看得出来我是认真地在说他们的语言，而且还会对我做出的努力进行鼓励。 I can assure you, if you start speaking now with the little you know, you will indeed make mistakes but other speakers and natives will forgive you for this and you will realize that you always had the ability to communicate and get your point across. 我敢肯定，可能对某门外语你只会一点点，但如果你现在就开始尽自己所能去说这门外语，刚开始你肯定会犯一些错误，但是其他人以及以此为母语者不会因此而怪你的，而且你会发现自己总是有能力来进行交流并且能表达出自己的观点。 Thanks to this practice, any studying you do will be focused on real use of the language relevant to your life, rather than theoretical applications recommended in generic courses. 这样的练习，会让你的学习侧重于在日常生活中真正的使用外语，而不像一般的学习课程那样侧重于理论上的应用。 Don’t wait to finish the course – take matters into your own hands! 不要坐等课程结束——自己动手才最重要！ What so many courses miss is that no matter how much you study, unless you start to use the language with others on a regular basis, it will have no real context in your mind and it’s very hard to make any real progress. 大多数外语课程都容易忽视的一点就是，不管你学的再多，你的意识中都不会有一个真正意义上的语言环境存在，这样就很难取得实质上的进展。除非你开始定期的运用外语来和别人交流。 I know people who are like walking dictionaries – they know the most obscure words in the foreign language and can explain precisely how the grammar works. And yet they are still not confident enough to speak. 我知道有些人很喜欢口袋字典——这些人知道那些最生僻的词汇都是什么意思，他们讲起语法来头头是道。但他们还是不能自信的张口说外语。 One of these was another foreigner I lived with in Spain who could run circles around me if you put the two of us in an examination. Despite this, Spaniards I met when we were together would tell me that I spoke much better than he did. I wasn’t thinking too much about saying things perfectly – I just let the conversations flow. 在西班牙的时候，我和另一个外国人住在一起，如果我们俩去参加考试的话，他能把我甩得几丈远。但西班牙本国人还是觉得我说得比他好的多。我并没有考虑太多怎样说才最完美，我只是让对话能顺利地转起来。 People focused on perfection still need to learn ‘just a little more’ and they’ll be ready ’some day’. There are seven days in a week and ’some day’ isn’t one of them! 人们总想要完美，总觉得还需要学的“再多一点”，然后“总有一天”他们就学好了。但你要知道，一个星期有七天，没有哪一天叫做“总有一天”。 Those with much less theory behind them, but more experience actually speaking, will outdo the academics every time. This has nothing to do with natural talent, it’s about simply opening your mouth and really using the language. 任何时候，虽然缺少理论知识但具有更多实际说外语经验的人永远都胜过那些学院派。这和天赋没什么关系，只在于是否去张嘴说出来以及真正去使用外语。 A language is a means of communication. If you think of it as a list of vocabulary to learn off, or a table of grammar to memorize, you are missing the point entirely. 语言是交流的工具。如果你把它看成是大量的词汇去学习，或者是语法表格去死记硬背，那你就大错特错了。 When you start practicing, you will improve on your speaking skills dramatically. It won’t be easy, but once you accept that you simply cannot skip the stage of making mistakes and try to enjoy it, then the mistakes will disappear quicker. 你一旦开始练习说外语，就会显著提高自己说外语的水平。当然这不会很简单，但是只要你能意识到犯错误阶段是不可避免的而且尝试着去好好体验这个阶段，你会发现很快就不会再犯错误了。 You don’t need to travel to speak the language 不必出国也可以学好外语 Successful language learners don’t aim to speak well some day – they use it now. Make all of your focus on immediate use of the language. Study can help, but it is most effective when it has immediate applications. 成功的外语学习者不是只盯着将来能说好外语的目标——而是现在就使用外语。把你的所有注意力都集中到立即使用外语。学习是有帮助的，但最有效的是能立即去应用它。 Find natives and other learners to practice with and arrange to meet up with them immediately. It will be hard at first, but you need real pressure if you want to make real progress. 找一些外语的母语者以及其他在学这门外语的人一起练习，安排一些和他们即时的面对面交谈。一开始这会比较难，但是如果你真想学好外语的话是需要一些压力的。 Rather than downloading podcasts and buying too many courses, meet up with actual people and use the language! A few resources I like to use include: 不要再去下载听力材料或者买各种各样的学习教程了，找一些人去使用外语当面交谈！我个人比较喜欢以下的一些资源： Meetup.com for language meet-ups in major cities. You can also read advertisements in newspapers and your local library to see if people meet up interested in speaking the language you want to. - Meetup.com，通过这个网站可以在各大城市找到一起说外语的人。你也可以通过报纸上的广告或者当地图书馆来寻找有兴趣一起说外语的人。 Join Couchsurfing and host foreign travelers in your home. The same site also has international meetings and a feature to search your city for people who speak a particular language. - 注册Couchsurfing会员，并在家里招待一些同样注册会员的外国旅游者。同时你也可以在这个网站上搜索在你的城市说某外语的人群。 You can also find native speakers online and practice over Skype, through many language learning social networks available for free online. - 你也可以在互联网的各种语言学习社区找到那些母语者并通过Skype与他们在线交谈。 You can do this in your home town. 在自己的家乡你就能做到这些。 The only reason I feel that travel really does make a difference for some people is because of the pressure to perform being constantly there. 我觉得出国旅行唯一的不同就在于你会有一直处在外语环境中的压力。 But many expats still waste the opportunity. I met a man who had been living in Prague for ten years and still didn’t speak any Czech, even though his own children did. He had created a bubble of his mother tongue that ‘protected’ him via his social circle and routines. 但是，虽然身处异国仍然有很多移居国外的人会浪费这种机会。我曾碰到一个人，他在布拉格住了十年但一点都不懂捷克语，但他的孩子们都会说捷克语。他就是通过自己的社交圈子人为把自己封闭在只说母语的环境中。 If he can do this in a foreign country, why can’t we do it from home with a foreign language? You don’t have to avoid your mother tongue (that is not a realistic solution for many due to work and family / friends), but you can create a ‘bubble’ where everything you do is in the target language, even if just for that hour a day. 他在外国都能这样创造一个母语环境，我们在家为什么就不能自己创造一个外语环境呢？我们没必要完全避开母语（由于工作、家庭、朋友的关系这也不太现实），但是我们可以创造一个做什么事都使用外语的封闭环境，即使是每天只这样做一个小时也可以。 A positive attitude is the key 积极的态度是关键 No matter what language I learn, I always try to look at my cup as ‘half full’. It’s possible to answer this post with a list of reasons why learning a given language would be too hard for you, but this bogus focus on excuses is what actually makes it hard for many people. 不管我在学哪门外语，我总会把自己看作是一个“半满”的杯子（译者注：我总认为自己还很有遗力来学会这门外语）。你可以有充足的理由来回复这篇文章说自己为什么学不会某外语，但找出这诸多借口恰恰就是大多数人学不好外语的原因所在。 You can also make it easy by deciding to have a positive attitude accompany you in your language learning journey. 在学习外语的过程中，如果你能保持自己积极的态度，这会让你的学习变得更加容易。 This positive attitude creates a feedback loop in your mind where you will look for more evidence to support the idea that it isn’t that bad after all and this will further fuel your openness to learn more without creating any invisible barriers. Progress will flow and you’ll be speaking confidently before you know it. 这种积极的态度会在你的意识中形成一个良性循环，你会找到更多的证据来证明其实学外语一点都不难，这就更进一步为你今后能无障碍的学习别的外语奠定了一个良好的开端。这样你的外语水平就悄悄地在一天天进步，你还没来得及意识到自己就已经能很自信的说外语了。 So stop reading about it, stop listening to others doing it, and stop over-studying and dreaming about ’some day’. It’s time to get out there and speak it! 所以说，不要再阅读什么外语学习材料，不要再听别人讲怎样学外语，不要再闷头学习外语而期待着“某一天”自己就学会了。现在就开始，走出去并张开嘴巴说外语吧。 |
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