Skill Not Concept (Lesson 438)

Obviously, language is a skill. As the author says, we do language. It’s easy to understand why learning English through communicate with some person more easier and effective. Because people comunicate to each other in English, they talk anything that they interested in. As I mentioned above, people do not learn a language, they just communicate the emotion and feeling through a languagle.

Think about next situation. Just now your friend is crying in front of you. If without a language, you don’t even know why she is crying. Because is she happy, angry, or upset? If she is so happy that crying, then you don’t need to comfort her. At that time, you just have to celebrate with her. But if she is sooo upset that can’t help crying, at this time, you should comfort her. It’s very different. Then you would recognize these situations through a language. You could ask her, what’s wrong with you? Or you can listen to her talking with you about what is going on. All most of things need to communicate in a language.

As the author’s point, because language is skill, use it or lose it. You use it and you gain it. On the contrary, if you don’t use it then you will lose it. I think it’s very correct. Let me talk about my experience of learning Japanese in college. I learned Japanese about two years in college. I passed the Japanese-N2 test in college. In China,the top highest degree of Japanese language is N1, the xext degree is N2. Actually these people can communicate with native japanese people on a daily basis fluently at N2. In fact, I would travel to japan alone in college, and all communication in Japanese. But as the years goes by, and the important thing–COVID, we can’t travel or business any other country, even if Japanese. Now, I feel my japanese is deteriorated. Firstly, I can’t comunicate with someone in japanese fluently. Second, I feel difficulte to read the japanese news, sometimes I even can’t comprehend some Japanese essay. It’s so sad.

Actually, English is the same. Even if you learn well in class, you have to back up to communicate. As the author says, language isn’t a concept, and it’s changable. People learning the changable language through the comunicate. If we don’t communicate, the language just a language, we would forgot them in the end. In my opinion, it’s cost-effective! Let’s calculate the cost of time. In generally, I start to learned English in junior high school. It’s at least 15 years. If I still can’t communicate, isn’t that learning waste of time?