page21-23

what dose the author mean by these things?

from the stories that the author shared,what principles can we understand about language learning?

“learning a language is something natural that we do”

as the author said, the story about michael who is learning Mandarin Chinese with a strong Contonese accent. but he is a western who did not know Cantonese. this is very really strange. in fact, not only him, but also the other three people lived in hongkong for a number of years have the same trouble– they using Mandarin’s pronunciation that a native Cantonese speaker would use. so the author’s conclusion is actually no way to stop people learning another language. look at the world, perple all over the world can speak at least one language to communicate. even in some countrys, people can speak more different language. it turns out that learning language is an instinct

at this point, i feel deeply. China is a country with a large land area. Mandarin Chinese just the offical language. each place has a local language.in fact, each city speaks a different language, and the language of the north and the south are even more different. i lived zhejiang province, the local language even sounds like the japanese,because it is said that a long time ago my local language and japanese were a language family. as a matter of fact, local people just like to speak the local language. just like michael’s story, these people who is living the local place speaking the Mandarin Chinese with a strong local accent. indeed, some old local people speak the Mandarin Chinese that is just the local language with the Mandarin accent. they do not feel the different.but, unlike michael, the local people who are speaking with the local accent do not feel bothered. they speak something with the context ,with the body language. that’s another question.

back to michael, obviously, his Mandarin Chinese learning is not go well. a lot of people in the world struggle to learn a second language. some people even given up the language. but as the fact said, people don’t stop learning. as the author view, people are hard-wired to learn language. it’s so weird. one the one hand, people want to learn a second language, and on the other hand, they have the ability about t learning language. the result is that most of them still learn well. i think the most problem is that the someone language’s ability do not used for specific learning someone language. like michael, if he had lived on the mainland when he learning Mandarin, it must would accelerate his Mandarin learning. but he had lived on the hongkong, it’s as if you are using froce in the wrong direction. it’s so pity.

i think, this theory is very against the common sense. as i said above, too many people are struggling to learn a foreign language. the the fact, it turns out that we already have the learning language ability, just need to dedelop it? how? learning a second language, the environment is very important. but many people don’t have the environment. so i think we need to create this environment for ourselves. for example, everday listening to foreign language news, setting the devices to a foreign language, practise and practise. just like the locals above, always tell myself, don’t to be afraid of embarrassment.