One evening, my roommate told me about something.
Their basketball team was training at the court in the evening when two black men approached, thinking that my roommate and his teammates were playing a game and wanted to join in. However, none of the basketball team members could say a complete English sentence to express that they were training and couldn't play together, and the black men didn't understand Chinese. In a desperate situation, someone from the basketball team managed to "squeeze out" a few words: team, play games. They wanted to indicate that their team was training, but the black men misunderstood it as an invitation to form a team and play basketball together. In the end, it was unclear how the situation was resolved.
My roommate felt embarrassed, both for himself and for having studied English for so many years. I also found it puzzling. If someone had been able to say at that time, "We are training, we can't play with you, sorry," the situation could have been resolved almost immediately. Why does this kind of problem still occur after studying English for so many years?
In my opinion, there may be two reasons.
- Lack of regular English conversations and practice in spoken English. Relying solely on teachers using English for questioning and communication in the classroom is far from enough.
- Nervousness. When chatting with familiar people, whether in Chinese or occasionally throwing in a few English sentences, there is no nervousness because the environment and state of mind are different. However, we have limited contact with foreigners in our daily lives, and we rarely interact with them. When having a conversation for the first time, we don't even know how to start, naturally leading to a blank mind and a phenomenon of not knowing how to express ourselves.
I do not deny that there are problems with English education today. English learning under the pressure of exams is only for the purpose of entrance exams, lacking consideration for specific applications.
English learning involves four aspects: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Knowledge should not only stay in textbooks, notes, or in our minds; we should learn how to apply it. "Practice makes perfect." If we don't use the knowledge, it will always remain as knowledge. If we learn English but don't know how to use it, then we only know that it is called "English."