It is a long-term process to learn a language well. It takes thousands of hours of practice. The most serious problem Chinese students have in learning English is that they do not use English as a tool. Most Chinese students study English like it is a science subject. They remember grammar rules and all the difficult words but they do not use them. I remember being told by an English speaker that the English words commonly used in daily English conversation is less than one thousands. What does this mean? This means that most words Chinese students remembered are not very useful. May be you can find these words in books or a newspaper, but in a real conversation we don't use these words. Many students complain that their vocabulary is inadequate. They want to spend more time to remember new words. This is really unnecessary. I think it is much more important to use the current vocabulary that you know instead of memorizing new words. Another interesting thing I know about Chinese students is that they learn English by translation. The other day in a Poland Workshop, one student did not understand the word "Austria". The teacher told her that Austria is a land locked country of Central Europe. The student was not satisfied with this explanation. Se asked the student next to her what Austria meant. This student told her the Chinese name for Austria. She happily accepted this and was then satisfied. I don't understand why this student persisted in knowing the Chinese name. I am quite sure that when she sees this name again, what will come to her mind is the Chinese word for Austria. She will not know the perfect definition for the word Austria. Is this really learning English.
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