【有效学习英语】

Why is it so hard for Chinese to learn English?

本文英语部分为342字，阅读需要大概3分钟。

导读

今天是上班上学的第二天啦，有没有收拾好心情开始新一轮的奋斗呢！为了让大家更好地适应学习的氛围，今天小编想起了困扰自己多年的问题。作为英语专业的学生，有时候真的觉得学一门外语太艰难了吧。无论怎么努力，自己和那些大神以及native speaker的水平依然相差甚远。那么，阻碍我们登上英语学习巅峰的巨石到底是什么？今天的文章或许会让大家茅塞顿开。

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回答

In my experience, the biggest obstacle to Chinese learners of English is logic. English and Chinese are built on inherently very different logics. We say things in English that you just wouldn’t say in Chinese, and vice versa. We *think* differently. This transcends beyond the mire of grammar or the (extremely real) difficulty of accurately mapping vocabulary across the two languages.

根据我的经验，中国人学英语最大的障碍是逻辑。英语和中文是建立在不同的逻辑上的。我们用英语表达的东西，你们无法用中文表达，反之亦然。我们“思考”的方式不同，这超越了语法的困难，也超越准确地映射两种语言的词汇表的困难。

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As a simplistic example that happened to come up in one of my classes a few days ago, let’s take the sentence 我怕冷。Directly translated to English this would be “I’m afraid of cold,” and that is exactly what my student said to me. I told him, “You don’t like the cold.” He considered briefly and reiterated, “I’m afraid of cold.” All I could tell him is, “That’s not how we say it in English,” and trust him to abandon his (very evident) confusion in time.

举个简单的例子，恰好前几天发生在我班上，让我们说“我怕冷”的句子。英语直译是“I’m afraid of cold”，我学生正是这么说的。我告诉他是“You don’t like the cold”，他三思后又说，“I’m afraid of cold”。我只能告诉他，“英语不是这么说的。”

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I could understand his feelings (and have founded confidence that he would eventually wrap his head around the whole situation), because some years ago I was in the same situation, but reversed. I had told a Taiwanese 我恨热 (I hate the heat), and that person had replied 你怕热 (You’re afraid of heat), and I had been deeply confused. Heat isn’t scary! But in Chinese it is. As are any foods you just can’t stand.

我能理解他的感受（并相信他最终会理解这种情况），几年前，我也是这样的，但扭转过来。我告诉一个台湾人“我恨热”（Ihate the heat），那个人回到说“你怕热”（(You’reafraid of heat），我深深疑惑了。热并不吓人！但中文表达是这样的。

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This kind of logical discord is common between any two languages, but between English and Chinese it’s practically the name of the game. And this, I think, is why it’s so difficult for Chinese to really get English, and vice versa. The only way to get past it is deliberate immersion,and at least a small dollop of talent.

这种逻辑混乱在两种语言间很普遍，但在英文和中文之间，它只是一种游戏。我认为这就是中国人真正难以掌握英语的原因，反之亦然。唯一方法是有意识沉浸其中，还需要至少一点资质。

一字一字看完以上回答的小编，感同身受啊。有时候明明看懂了每一个单词，但却无法理解这句话的意思。思维方式以及表达方式的差异就像一个鸿沟，让我们与英语的距离遥不可及。愿大家早日架起通往英语世界的大桥，寻得其中的乐趣。