– Share the story about the Author’s train trip to Beidaihe.

 

During this train trip, the author was companies by a railway security guard in an official-looking cap and white jacket who obviously had nothing important to do at the time but communicate with the author. The security guard didn’t know a word of English and the author didn’t know much of Chinese. However, during this overnights trip, they found a way to talk to each other the whole time. With the help of body language, little pictures, written Chinese characters, they did make conversations successfully. The author was exposed to over a thousand new words in Chinese and most of the commonly used elements of the Chinese language. It was a turning point for the author. From that night on, he found Chinese learning easy and fun.

 

– Write about the key ideas from the author that came out of his train trip to Beidaihe. How do these ideas match with your own experience?

 

One of the key idea from the author that came out of his train trip to Beidaihe is exposing yourself to the language you’re learning and sensing the patterns. In spite of the fact that he knew very little of the Chinese language while the Chinese guy he communicated with on that train trip didn’t speak a word of English, they did converse with each other successfully. By exposing himself to the language as well as sensing the patterns that were emerging, the author managed to understand some of what the security guard was saying.

 

And that matches my own experience of learning English. When I first heard about this idea, I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I even thought the author was slightly mad when he asked us to just listening to English as music or songs no matter we can or can’t understand the meaning. I’m a good learner so I simply followed the idea to test it on myself. After doing this for a month, the magic emerges. I found myself hearing the sounds and pronoun actions more clearly. What’s more, I understand more of the meaning without learning and remembering a single word as we usually did in a traditional class. Unbelievable!