这篇文章不是我写的,但是我觉得很有道理.
You can't express your ideas fluently in English because the ideas in your brain are in Chinese. Imagine you can only play the piano. You have a lot of songs in your head, for example, Beat it by Michael Jackson. Suddenly I want you to play the song on the guitar. You have the song, you have the melody in your head but you can't play it on another instrument. You've learned this melody on the piano so you can only play it on the piano. Don't waste time and money to pay for chatting with native speakers for so-called speaking practice. Because to improve your speaking first, you need to improve your listening. Your speaking can be only as good as your listening or worse but never better. Virtually nobody goes to a language school to practice their listening. Most people know that it is a waste of time and money. Those language teachers can't talk about your ideas, major or job even though they're fluent in English because they don't have the experience or the knowledge. How should the speaking be taught? Can words be put into students' mouths? What does speaking practice mean? Move the mouth's muscle? It makes no sense. If you are able to understand everything you hear, you will be able to speak. Guaranteed. You don't need to pay a language teacher to improve your listening. You already know that, just listen to content you like and use dictionaries. It's super intuitive. What is not intuitive though is if you want to improve your listening faster, you need to read. That's very counter-intuitive. Reading speeds up your listening comprehension by a lot. Listening is essential and reading speeds up the process by a lot. It is the biggest difference between how children and adults learn. It is the biggest advantage adults have over children. The argument for Listening being more important is based on the fact that babies start with Listening. Yes, babies do start with Listening. No question about that. But I don't know if you've noticed we are not babies. We are adults. Babies spent 3~4 years of intensive listening before they start speaking in full sentences. Children are full-time language learners. That's their main job. And let's not forget that they have at least 1, sometimes as many as 3~4 full-time private teachers. You know what I mean are parents, grandparents and so on and so forth. All children do is eating, playing, sleeping and learning their native language at least 8 hours a day, 365 days a year, for about 4~5 years. That works out to at least [color=var(--sepia_default-link-color,#0072C9) !important]12000 hours of intensive listening. Do you have [color=var(--sepia_default-link-color,#0072C9) !important]12000 hours at your disposal? Mind you, babies don't listen to CDs or videos. They listen to real people. That's very different. Reading is more efficient. Reading is always faster than Listening. It's the same in our native language. Reading gives you more exposure to the language than Listening. It is much easier to figure out new words, notice grammar and everything else. It is much faster to reread than to replay. With Listening you need to pause, rewind, play again. It takes much longer to figure things out. Reading and dictionaries are our main advantages over children. Let me make something perfectly clear. It is not an either or choice of Reading or Listening. No, of course not. Both are super important. The purpose of what I said above is to help you set your priorities straight. It is about finding the right balance between Reading and Listening. People spend way much time on Listening, passive listening, passively watching videos. For most people, the Reading to Listening ratio is 1:9. I think the right ratio should be at least 2:1. 3:1 is even better. For every 30 minutes of Listening, at least 1 hour of Reading. The confusion and general aversion people have to Reading is that when language learners hear Reading, they think about textbooks, the boring textbooks, reading boring vocabulary and grammar textbooks, TOEFL and TOEIC training books. No, no, no. We are not in the 20th century. This is the 21st century. Find something informative and interesting and read daily on the Internet. It is much better to find something useful for your job or school major, something you need for job better than for your hobby. Books and articles about your job or your school major. Reading and listening to informative content. That's right, not useless videos. Listen to something informative, but Reading is more efficient in terms of input.
补充内容 (2025-1-5 13:05):
w(ﾟДﾟ)w抱歉,babies那段格式有问题,参照:... That works out to at least 12000 hours of intensive listening. Do you have 12000 hours at your disposal? ... 顺便球球站长什么时候出个再编辑功能(*^_^*) | 
