Reading the “building your ice raft”

This essay talk about How to learn words when you begging learning a new language?

First the author points out that when you learning a new language , You will face many words. The English has between 650000 and 750000 words. And the German has a vocabulary of about 185000 words. The French has less than 100000words,It’s although fewer than the English , But it’s still too mach.So How to learn those words,The size of the task seems so big, Where should I begging?Do I need master all of them?

Actually Not, The Author shared his experience of he learning Chinese in BeiJing. A particular day, The author joins a test that it’s write a essay, And when The test started, the author saws that His classmate checking dictionary , they thoughts the essay using their first language, then translate them to Chinese. The author thoughts is bad, They should not using their mother language,it’s slowly and not helpful for your learning.The best way is totally using the new language, Use it to thinking,and that can help you immerse in the whole language,It help you learn it more effectively and easier.

The author get out a metaphor. That is Kevin’s metaphor, Kevin is a international business consultant.

He has a metaphor in the side of learn a new language. He said when you learning a new language that just like you stand on the piece of frozen ice,The ice in the ocean that is cold and large ocean, And you stand in the center of frozen ice.The ocean like the language that is you want to learn, and the frozen ice like the words that it’s you mastered.you can see over water,and there has a island,The island like The language is totally mastered like native speaker.So you need arrive the island.How you should do?It’s lucky, The frozen ice has specific side, It could grows,when you walking on it , it will becomes more bigger,thicker,when you always walking on it , until particular day,It will becomes most biggest,it can arrive the island that is over water.When you walking on it, it’s like you use the new language, you always use it,It will grow more faster.Of course,Maybe you would drop down on the water,It’s very cold water, You want grasp a life saver that is your mother language , but you understand it’s not helpful for your learning,you need climbing upon the ice,and walking again,it’s will help you. There has a particular day, You will arrive the island, You will speak the new language like native speaker.