Make wrong order for food

   In this passage, the author talked about his experience when ordering food in a Chinese restaurant. They misunderstood the measurement of the food, and use their original concepts to make an order. The result let them start to think if the languages only relate to the words, or the language is connected to everything in the cultures, customs, and even histories in the country. When we are learning the language in the school, we only get the words, grammar, but we don’t know how to connect it with the world. This is what mentioned in this section on “The school subject mistake”.

   In fact, many concepts and common senses in a given country is unique and difficult to explain. Only you went to this country and experience it then you just could get it and kept it in your mind. People use some words to give the concepts or things a label, and they all agree this labels. It’s difficult to explain why they do so. As the result, the language is morphing as time goes by. If we only learning the language from school, we would lose a lot of information to connect the world.

   Recently, I met one girl who majored Russian in college. She told me that even she learn Russian over 6 years in college and graduate school, however she still failed to talk with the Russian in daily life. She said that her Russian ability was improved a lot because of an opportunity in college. She came across an opportunity to join an expo event as an interpreter at the time. From the first day, she found that she couldn’t communicate with the people from Russia, even she tried to do her best to use all of her skills learned from school, but still couldn’t help herself. But situations got changes after one month, she start to talk with the Russians and felt more and more easily and interesting. She told me that her Russian ability is truly released from that day on. This case provide the evidence for us again, learning language as a school subject can’t help you to pick up the language. You have to use it as a communication tool then you could really get it!