Chapter 5 Part 1: How to Speak English with Piano and Dictionary

Whenever I talk to my friends about learning English and the confusion of memorizing words, I think of a girl who can play the piano. I have seen the whole process of this child learning the piano. She started learning the piano at the age of five. At first she played Thompson, Bayer and other etudes, and then the score gradually became Czerny, Bach... Now when I hear people talking about learning the piano, I feel like Hearing those dull tunes that the kid played.It was a dull day, and the girls would sit there and play for hours every night.Spring came, she grew taller, and another summer came. It was the girl's eighteenth birthday. She said she would play Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" for me. Watching her flexible hands jumping on the keys, watching her graceful posture of playing the piano, I think of the day when she first started playing the piano... How many boring days have passed, how many monotonous notes vibrate her eardrums, how many touches That row of black keys and white keys makes such a beautiful piano sound fly out from under the dexterous fingers...

What I want to say here is that learning English words will also have a process, just like playing the keys repeatedly. This process may be very long, but only by playing and memorizing repeatedly can you become proficient.I think anyone's skill training will go through such a process.The important thing is to be patient, just like the girl who played the piano.For several years, or even more than ten years, she has always been playing etudes that are so boring to outsiders. She seems to be walking on a long journey, living in repeated content every day. the end.But playing the piano will never show artistic feeling without hard training, let alone become an excellent pianist.

Not long ago I watched a movie called "Pianist". The movie described the tragedy of a Jewish pianist in Poland hiding from the Nazis during World War II.The pianist still insisted on practicing the piano even in the extremely harsh environment. Without a piano, he just relied on imagination to move his fingers and recall the feeling of playing the piano. In this way, the pianist kept the memory of playing. Later, he and his country finally gained free.At a concert, the pianist's performance moved Poland and also peace-loving people all over the world. Music is connected one by one, and language is connected one by one.However, it is not enough to learn a foreign language by memorizing many words. It is also necessary to connect with the text, life and imagination. Grasping the expressive power of vocabulary is the most important thing.

I know a famous reporter who told me about his experience of learning English. In the turbulent era of the last century, he was imprisoned for several years for political reasons. However, in that situation, he I memorized a small English dictionary with tens of thousands of words.But when he went to work abroad, he found that he could not use English, because he only had a small English dictionary in prison at that time, but no English textbook. He memorized thousands of words, but he did not learn English. Grammar, and no chance to practice English, he had to pick up English textbooks again.Therefore, I believe that memorizing words is not enough to learn English, but a systematic and comprehensive study is also required. A dictionary is just a tool.

Some people are always eager to learn English. When they just start learning English, they buy a bunch of dictionaries, thinking that they can use English by looking them up.My friend H bought "A New English-Chinese Dictionary" (A New English-Chinese Dictionary), "The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation" (The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation), "English-Chinese Dictionary" ( The English-Chinese Dictionary (Unabridged)), "Chinese-English Dictionary" (A Chinese-English Dictionary), Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (New Edition), Webster's New Collegiate English Dictionary, "English Idiom Dictionary"... Actually , the dictionary does not lie in many, but in application.When I was in the primary stage of learning English, I often used the "Concise English-Chinese Dictionary". I think it is very convenient to look up, and the definition of words is also very appropriate. The "Concise English-Chinese Dictionary" contains more than 26,000 words, and the definition of words is really concise.for example:

ideal as an adjective: 1.Ideal; Desirable; Exemplary ideal weather (ideal weather) an ideal place for holiday 2.conceptual; idealistic; idealistic as a noun: 1.ideal realize one's ideals 2.typical Florence Nightingale is the ideal of many young nurses. (Florence Nightingale was a role model for many young nurses.) With the deepening of learning, more articles are read, the genres of articles are enriched, the knowledge involved becomes wider and wider, the amount of new words will increase, and some relatively uncommon words will be encountered.Once, when I read an article about astronomy, I saw the word corona. The definition in the dictionary is "crown, crown, halo". I looked up Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (New Edition), the explanation of this article yes:

ring of light seen round the sun or moon, eg during an eclipse. (A halo around the sun or moon, for example, during a solar eclipse.) I then understood that corona means the corona.When encountering such words, it is difficult for the "Concise English-Chinese Dictionary" to meet the requirements. I use a medium-sized or larger dictionary, such as "New English-Chinese Dictionary", and English-English dictionary such as Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (New Edition). dictionary. "New English-Chinese Dictionary" was published relatively early. After revision and addition, it is still one of the dictionaries I use most. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (New Edition) has about 100,000 entries. Accurate, and there are illustrations, easy to check and understand.With the help of such a dictionary, you can read some more professional articles and books.I think it is very helpful to expand the scope of reading and improve the quality of reading.

I also want to talk about the "Chinese-English Dictionary". Now there are more and more Chinese-English dictionaries in China, but I still like the revised "Chinese-English Dictionary", and there is a newly published "Chinese-English Double Interpretation Modern Chinese Dictionary" (The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary [Chinese-English Edition]) is also very practical and can meet the consulting needs of English lovers.However, it is much more difficult to choose a suitable word from the dictionary to use in a sentence than to look up the dictionary itself.Because behind the same Chinese vocabulary, there are often several English words or phrases with the same or similar meaning.For example, in the "Chinese-English Dictionary", after the word "watch", there are more than a dozen corresponding English words and phrases:

1. see; look at; watch 2. read (silently) 3. think; consider 4. look upon; regard 5. see or consult (a doctor); treat 6. look after 7. call on; visit; see 8. depend on 9. mind; watch out 10. try and see (what will happen) 11. look (what you have done) When I first started learning English, I once wrote a letter to a friend. I wanted to translate a sentence into English: "In this case, I think you should think about it carefully", but I didn't know that "see" should be used here. How to translate, I went to look up the dictionary, opened the dictionary but didn't know which one to choose.At that time, I felt very at a loss. Under the item "watch", in addition to the see, look at, and watch I learned in the text, there are also: consider, judge, pay a visit, call on, treat, regard, look Upon, look after, look out, think, etc. Later, I thought that the "I see" here is a suggestion, so I chose suggest and translated the sentence into:

Since it is so, I suggest you should think it over. To choose vocabulary correctly, you can only rely on reading more and practicing more at ordinary times, thinking and memorizing in reading and training, and paying attention to the idiomatic usage of English and American languages. There is no end to learning English. A train can have an end, but language learning has no end, because new vocabulary and new usages appear every day.Those who compile dictionaries can never rest. For a new word, especially a more specialized word, sometimes you need to look up several dictionaries, and even look up the "Concise Encyclopedia Britannica" (Concise Encyclopedia Britannica). In the spring of 2003, a terrible infectious disease was prevalent in many parts of the world. It was atypical pneumonia. WHO (World Health Organization) said that this disease should be called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)—— Such a new word was born again. This abbreviation cannot be found in the existing large dictionaries, but I believe that it will appear in the new dictionaries soon.

Not long ago, a news article in the newspaper said that scientists recently isolated a coronavirus from an animal called civet cat, which has 99% homology with the coronavirus that caused SARS.I guessed that the civet cat might be a kind of fox, so I checked the "Chinese-English Dictionary" first. This entry explained that the civet cat is a "painted raccoon cat". The English is: masked civet gem-faced civet Ah, what is a civet? Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (New Edition) ("Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English") says: civet : (also civet cat) small spotted cat-like animal of Africa, Asia and Europe. (raccoon: also known as civet cat, a small animal that lives in Africa, Asia and Europe, like a cat, with spots on its body.) The Random House College Dictionary explains it this way: any cat-like, carnivorous mammal of the subfamily Viverrinae that secrets a yellowish, unctuous substance with a strong musk-like odor. (A cat-like carnivorous mammal, a subspecies of the civet, that secretes a yellow, greasy substance with a strong musky odor.) The description on the picture reads: Civet, Civettictis civetta (Total length 4 ft.; tail 11/2 ft). Finally, I checked "The Concise Encyclopedia Britannica" and found out that the civet cat is a kind of civet. Dictionaries are good assistants in learning a language, but the most important thing is to learn how to use dictionaries correctly.The beginning is inquiry and memory.When you reach a certain level, you might as well learn about the origin, evolution and application of a word in different situations.To enrich one's knowledge reserve with such learning, the "English-Chinese Dictionary" adds the source of the word after the definition of each word, such as the word nation, which comes from the old French natio, the original meaning is birth, tribe, and the old French From Old Latin nasci (to be born).This proves that its original meaning has a lot to do with blood relationship.From the word nation, many words are derived, such as: national nationally nationalize nationalist (nationalist) nationalism nationality (nationality; nationality) international transnational (transnational; transnational) nationwide (national) native (native, native, native) nativity (birth) I have many large and small foreign language dictionaries, and I regard them as treasures, but many large dictionaries are so heavy that I can hardly even move them, so I can only read them on the table.But now I have a very portable dictionary. I don't need to hold it in my hand. I just need to keep my eyes on the computer screen, click the mouse lightly, and the word I want to look up will appear in front of my eyes.The English name of this dictionary is OED Online (Oxford English Dictionary Online Oxford Online English Dictionary) - this is a revolution in the history of lexicography.Online dictionaries can follow the cursor, display in real time, and at the same time hear the pronunciation of words, some of which are simulated by a computer, and some are read aloud by real people.There are also various portable electronic dictionaries that are more convenient, no matter where we go, we can easily look them up.Now learning English, computer technology also comes to help.However, I think no matter how advanced science and technology are, human subjective efforts still come first.