Can English be learned with understanding?
From student days to the workplace, we work hard in the classroom to learn English, learning more hours than any other subject, but interestingly, not many of us are confident enough to communicate in English. What went wrong? Is it a lack of effort? Or is it the wrong approach? Before answering this question, there is an important question that needs to be clarified: Is English a Knowledge? Or is it a skill? I think most people would agree that it is a skill, and that any skill is learned through self-directed learning of one’s own experience in the process of becoming proficient in its application. This is the reason why some countries’ students have been able to integrate language expression into their cognitive system and become part of their skills. This is why some countries’ students have high test scores, but cannot speak English when they meet foreigners. It is because they treat English as knowledge and try to learn it in a comprehensible way, expecting teachers to teach them, rather than building their own sense of language through independent learning and application.
Where does the motivation for learning come from?
Self-directed learning and practical application is not easy in some countries, which lacks an English-speaking environment, and there are very few occasions to use the words you have learned. Therefore, meaningful independent learning tools or methods become very important. Imagine if you had to negotiate a price with a customer in English tomorrow, would you be motivated to search for relevant words or sentence patterns? If you had a role-playing tool or a complete textbook that allowed you to go through the various situations of price negotiation, it would be easier to internalize the communication skills! For business people, meaningful self-directed learning must be extremely relevant to their work in order to generate sufficient motivation to learn, and in a busy workplace, few people want to spend time on non-work related learning. “.
How do you feel about missing classes?
It is commonly believed that learning time is directly proportional to learning effectiveness, and that the longer you learn, the more you learn. However, in many training cases, it seems that the direct benefit of the learning content on the learner’s work is more likely to be seen as a change in the learner’s behavior. It is interesting to note that many of the learners whose performance improved as a result of their learning did not perform well in terms of hours of learning (attendance). Do learners succeed by learning on their own outside of the classroom? Or are they deliberately avoiding content that is not very helpful to them? I think both are possible reasons!