41 Learning Methods That Benefit a Lifetime

Chapter 26 Memorizing Articles with Pictures (1)
The following is the first lesson of the second volume of New Concept English to explain the picture memory method.

The original text of this article is: I went to the theater. I had a very good seat. The play was very interesting. I did not enjoy it. A young man and a young woman were sitting behind me. They were talking loudly. I got very angry. I could not hear the actors. did not pay any attention. In the end, I could not bear it. I turned round again. "I can't hear a word?" I said angrily. "It's none of your business," the young man said rudely. “This is a private conversation? Choose”

The Chinese translation is: I went to the theater last week.My seat is fine.The play is very interesting.I didn't get to appreciate it.A young man and a young woman sat behind me, talking loudly.I am very angry.I couldn't hear the actor's lines.I turned away.I looked at them angrily.They ignored it.Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.I turned away again. "I can't hear a word!" I said angrily. "It's none of your business," the young man said roughly. "This is a private conversation."Please check the icon definition in the square gray area in the lower right corner of the figure below.An ellipse with two legs underneath represents a person.The letter I in the human head represents "I", M and W represent the pair of men and women in the text, the clock symbol represents words related to time, the flame represents "angry, rude" and "negation", and the mouth represents " Say, make noise, etc.Gray areas in the figure are for illustration.

Start reading from the solid circle in the upper right corner of the picture.After the curve starts from the solid dot, it encounters the clock icon, indicating that there is a time-related word here.Comparing with the text below the graph, I learned that the word is "last week".Then, the curve encounters the human-shaped icon again, indicating that there is a word related to people here.Compared with the text, the word is "I".Continuing to follow the curve, you will find "go to" and "theatre".Therefore, the above-mentioned words constitute the first sentence of the text: Last week I went to the theater.

Note that the go to in the figure needs to be changed to the correct tense went to, and the article "the" before theater is also omitted.Therefore, the words that appear in the picture are called the keywords of the text.After getting familiar with this figure, even without giving keywords, you can quickly look at the picture and retell the whole text.A mind map without keywords is called a "pure mind map".

Graphical learning visualizes abstract knowledge, which is easy to understand and remember, so it is a good method.

In the process of writing and lecturing, this learning method has been called "Zhong's method", "natural method", "dictation method" and "reverse method".Learning English is like "sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat." Take the word "inverse" and finally name it "reverse method".To put it simply, the reverse method is to listen to the recording first, then write down the sentences you heard, then learn their pronunciation and read English and recite them, and finally summarize your own learning.

The reverse method is a learning method of "taking the roundabout way".Maybe at the beginning of reverse learning, due to more difficulties, the short-term real-time effect may not be as "immediate" as "forward learning", but it can receive the effect that "forward learning" cannot achieve.

The specific practice of reverse learning includes five steps of "listening, writing, speaking, reciting, and thinking".Beginners with low English proficiency can listen to English recordings without written materials. It is very difficult for beginners to understand them word by word. The specific methods are as follows:
write what you hear

First listen to a certain recording from beginning to end several times, and if you don't understand it, you have to listen to it.First understand the general idea, separate paragraphs and sentences, and then listen to it repeatedly in units of one sentence.Find out how many words a sentence consists of, what role each word plays in the sentence, which words are the subject, predicate, and object, etc.Every time you listen to it, write the words you understand one by one on the paper in order, and arrange them into sentences, and leave the words you don't understand first blank.For people with low English listening ability, there are a lot of places that they don't understand at the beginning. Sometimes, I am afraid that even I can't tell how many places I don't understand.In this case, only by writing out the words that you understand can you find out how many words you don't understand.

For the new words you encounter, you must hear that you can read them correctly by imitating the recording, and you can accurately grasp the pronunciation of each syllable.Because only by accurately grasping the pronunciation of each syllable and reading it out, it is possible to try to spell some words based on grammar and phonetic knowledge, and look them up in the dictionary.Since the correct answer often needs to be repeated many times to find, so when dictating, "write one line and two blank lines", leaving sufficient room for repeated revisions.In order to correct incorrect spellings, look up the dictionary when you have any doubts when "writing", and use colored pens to mark new words and wrong spellings.

For words that cannot be dictated, don't talk about "words" in terms of "words". Stop the tape recorder as soon as you can't dictate, and stop dictating.You should continue to dictate, and put the words that cannot be dictated into the overall content of the article to understand.There is often such a situation that it is difficult to understand a word in isolation, but if it is connected with the whole sentence or the whole message to understand, the thinking will be broadened, and often you will know what part of speech is and how to spell it .

Sometimes the same new word appears in multiple places in the recording, and one part is unclear or incomprehensible. You can play it first to see if you can get inspiration from other places.Because maybe the recording elsewhere is very clear, or you can understand it when it is paired with other words.During the dictation process, the words that are not sure should be "written" first, and then checked and corrected in the continuous dictation process.When the same news is broadcast by different announcers at different times, it is helpful to understand the pronunciation of some difficult words because of the difference in the intonation of each announcer.

The two steps of "listening" and "writing" are not completely separated. For beginners with low English proficiency, the dictation of a recording can not be completed at one time, but after many times of "listening" and "writing". "Promote each other, inspire each other, and move forward alternately to finally complete it.

From the perspective of learning English, beginners must listen and write at the same time at the initial stage. If they only listen but not write, there may be the following two situations.One is that some incomprehensible words are missed, and the opportunity to learn and improve is lost; the other is that when there are incomprehensible words, if you only listen but not write, often you may still not understand no matter how many times you listen. , but if you write down the part you understand on paper, connect the content before and after, and listen to it after thinking about it, you may understand some other content, and repeat this until you understand everything.

Words that cannot be inferred from the pronunciation due to severe noise interference can be supplemented according to grammar. Just assume that you are the author of this news, and what words should be used where you can’t hear clearly.Maybe the words filled in are incorrect, but it is better than leaving them blank, and as the time spent listening to the recording increases and the level of English improves, it is possible to discover and correct it by myself.

Consciously listen to the content of unfamiliar majors, and use the reverse rule to pay attention to going against the familiar majors, and consciously dictate English recordings that have little or nothing to do with your major.For example, technicians engaged in science and engineering go to dictate English recordings in medicine and liberal arts.

This is because when dictating professional English that you are familiar with, you will consciously or unconsciously rely on reasoning to understand the meaning of English.In other words, it mainly depends on the understanding of the content itself, and English itself may not really understand it.For example, listen to an English recording about the working principle of radar. It is said that a sound wave is emitted from the mouth of a bat, and an echo is generated after hitting an obstacle and received by the bat's ear. Radar also works on this principle, and so on.For a person who already understands the principle of radar, as long as he understands a few key words, he will understand the meaning of the entire recording, and he really understands it.But don't you understand every sentence, every word?Not necessarily, and probably far from it.This kind of learning method not only fails to learn real English, but also tends to produce a false sense of satisfaction, thinking that one's English level is relatively high.

In the process of learning, it is a normal thinking phenomenon for people to understand things by using the existing knowledge in their minds to reason, and it is difficult to completely avoid it in the process of dictating English recordings.However, for beginners with low English proficiency, in order to really improve their English, try not to speculate on professional knowledge to understand the meaning of English, but to take the initiative to dictate more English recordings that have nothing to do with their major, and do not use a single word. Dictate it all.Doing so at a certain stage can greatly improve the ability to find new words from the dictionary based on pronunciation and understand the content of the article directly from English itself. The effect is much better than listening to English recordings related to your major.This situation is very similar to the reverse performance of opera actors. Actors who sing painted faces have to deliberately learn to sing Tsing Yi, the opposite, in order to exercise their overall performance ability.In this regard, we have to learn from professional translators.The content they translate is varied. Today’s major is tomorrow’s major. It’s impossible to understand all the professional content to be translated, and sometimes they even rush into battle.However, due to their solid basic English skills, they can translate quickly as long as they temporarily "surprise" some relevant professional terms.

Learning English content that has nothing to do with one's major is very helpful to expand the knowledge and vocabulary of English.For non-English workers, although they cannot be required to reach the English level of professional translators, they should also be careful not to make their English knowledge too narrow.Whether it is reading or oral technical communication with foreign countries, the English involved will never be limited to a narrow range related to one's own major, and often use some other categories of vocabulary or other interpretations of a word .Daily conversations involve a wider range of knowledge and vocabulary.In the process of daily conversations with foreigners, you will definitely realize that "words are used only when they are used up".Only in the usual long-term dictation process is not limited to learning English knowledge related to one's own major, but to "listen to the road" and learn English words from all walks of life in an eclectic manner, learning and memorizing word by word, It is possible to subconsciously say what you want to say from your mouth during the conversation.

can say, want to achieve, can recite
After dictating the whole article, you must learn to "speak".The method is: listen to a sentence from the speaker, and learn to say it yourself.When learning "speaking", try to use a repeater that can continuously repeat a piece of recording content, determine the length of time to learn "speaking" according to your own level, and try to "speak" a complete sentence.

The process of learning "speaking" can be divided into two steps: the first step is "compare reading", that is, record the pronunciation of "speaking" that you have learned, and compare it with the standard pronunciation on the tape to see what is different from it. Keep repeating until you can imitate and speak roughly the correct voice; the second step is to "speak" synchronously with the voice on the tape.

After learning to "speak", it is time to "recite".Read a dictation record of a recording over and over again aloud, reaching the level of basic recitation. "Memorizing" has a great effect on improving listening: for example, slow English news broadcasts have certain formats and sentence patterns. It is easy to understand new content, and sometimes it can even surpass the voice of the speaker. After listening to the first few words in a sentence, you can say some of the following words in advance, or after listening to the previous sentence, you can say the next sentence in advance .At this point, the tension in dictation is reduced, or basically eliminated.Once the mood is relaxed, the level can be displayed, and what should be understood can be understood.

Be a caring person, "thinking" in the whole process

If the previous four learning links of "listening, writing, speaking, and reciting" highlight the spirit of "hard work", then the "thinking" link mainly talks about how to "work smart" on the basis of "hard work", that is, It is required to be a "caring person" throughout the learning process and be good at using your brain. The content of "thinking" has the following three aspects:
First of all, think about whether the learning progress is appropriate, whether the acquired knowledge is solid, and whether the learning requirements proposed in this book have been met.As mentioned earlier, since the learning progress is controlled by oneself, the learning progress will be accelerated unconsciously.Because there is no objective assessment, even if you don't learn deeply, you still think you have learned well.Therefore, throughout the learning process, especially in the foundation stage, you should always tell yourself "slower, slower, slower", and always check whether the acquired knowledge is solid.If you are not solid, resolutely relearn.

The second is to summarize and summarize the experience and lessons in learning methods.Just like learning any other knowledge, only those who often summarize and summarize can learn quickly and well.Everyone is in a different environment, and the difficulties encountered at different stages of the learning process are different, so the experiences and lessons gained are also different, and should be summarized and summarized in a timely manner.The experience and lessons summarized and summarized by myself are suitable for my own situation and used to guide my own learning. The effect is particularly good, and I can get twice the result with half the effort.Furthermore, the experience and lessons summarized and summarized by myself may also be of reference value to others.Viewed in isolation, every specific experience and lesson is small, unsystematic, and of little value.But with more accumulation, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, which may become a systematic, valuable, and innovative method.

The last is to summarize and summarize the learned English knowledge to make it systematized and memorized deeply.For example, every time you learn a word or some grammar knowledge, you should think about it carefully, and summarize it well after a period of time.One of the main contents of induction and summary is to analyze all kinds of mistakes in the process of dictation.Practice has proved that learning by analyzing your own mistakes is particularly effective.For example, some content cannot be dictated, some dictation is wrong, and some are understood but not written equally. It is necessary to analyze the reasons and find ways to avoid them.Let’s take words as an example. If you don’t know the words in dictation, the words you try to spell out many times are not in the dictionary, or although they are in the dictionary, they are not the answers you want. Finally, you can find the real answer through other means. The answer is to sum up well why the words I tried to spell many times were wrong, whether I did not accurately grasp the speaker's pronunciation, or my pronunciation knowledge is not high, or I encountered some special pronunciation.Every time you learn a new word, you should compare it with the words you have already mastered in terms of spelling, pronunciation, and interpretation to find out the similarities and differences, so as to form a "connected memory".Pay attention to words with distinctive pronunciation and spelling, and see if you can find the trick of remembering them.The same is true for grammar. If you can’t understand or understand wrongly, you should look for a grammar book to find out what the correct understanding should be, why you can’t understand it, or where your understanding is wrong, etc.

The advantage of reverse learning English

In the practice of many people, the reverse method uses the five methods of "listening, writing, speaking, memorizing, and thinking" simultaneously, so that the potential of the brain can be fully exerted, and it has many advantages:

① It can force learners to concentrate their attention and fully mobilize their subjective initiative and enthusiasm for learning.

Using the reverse method to learn, there is no ready-made written textbook, but the learning content is based on audio tapes, and the tape recorder and various dictionaries are used as the first teacher. Dictionary) constraints, synchronized with it.The tape recorder keeps turning, and the sound released is continuous, forcing the listener to concentrate, and if there is a slight negligence, they have to start all over again.It is indeed a good method for people who have difficulty concentrating on themselves.

With the method of dictation, learners write a textbook word by word through their own hard work.Since the learner is the active "creator" of the textbook, he will have a strong sense of participation and can fully mobilize the learner's subjective initiative and enthusiasm for learning.

② Integrate the learning of various English knowledge and the training of abilities.The five methods of "listening, writing, speaking, memorizing, and thinking" of the reverse method are simultaneously developed, which is a much more difficult learning method than the usual positive learning.It integrates the learning and application of pronunciation, intonation and sense of language, the meaning and spelling of words, sentence patterns, grammar and other knowledge.In the process of repeated listening, I unconsciously mastered the pronunciation, stress, and intonation of the word; in the process of constantly guessing and looking up the dictionary, I unconsciously learned a lot of pronunciation rules and firmly remembered the guesswork. The words that come out; the relatively simple texts can be memorized when they are basically written correctly; they are also very familiar with various commonly used sentence patterns; The English way of thinking directly accepts English and so on.

③I am deeply impressed by the English knowledge I have learned, so remember it quickly.

(End of this chapter)