A Way to Learn English

The other day, a student asked me about ways to learn English. I mentioned to her a way my former colleague used. She taught history but was quite interested in English. To polish her English up, she read the editorial of the China Post and translated it into Chinese. Then, she read her Chinese translation and then translated it back into English. Now, she could compare her English translation and the original editorial in the newspaper.



I believe this is a good way. A few years ago, when I was teaching the advanced English class, I tried it in class. First, I gave every student a copy of an excerpt from Dale Carnegie's Stop Worrying and Start Living. The studsents read it, and after discussion, I had them from pairs and translate a passage into Chinese. After they were finished, we had a discussion about their translations. Then the most exciting moment arrived. They were asked to translate their own Chinese version back into English with their partner. Amazingly, the students did a very good job. Many of them were able to reproduce the original sentences, as they read in the article.