呵呵，我就是儿子编写的全英文小说集To Be Continued … 《未完，待续…》的特殊编辑！要不是为了出这本书，我肯定没有功夫一个字一个字地去读儿子写的这些天马行空的英语故事。

    看了《英语，儿子“教”我学》的读者应该知道儿子写故事有一个毛病，就是很少有结尾，他还给自己这个毛病找了冠冕堂皇的理由：让读者去结尾，以及让自己继续写下去！

   所以，从他已经没头没脑地写了20多万字的作品中挑选合适的，情节还算完整的故事也不容易。我们首先选择的是那些字数接近或超过1万的故事，有18篇，都是儿子在10～12岁之间完成的，8～9岁他虽然已经开始写了，但没有上万字的。

    我原先是从他最早的成形的作品开始读，却发现和他后来的故事相比较，那些故事无论从语言上还是内容上都太简单、苍白和直接了，于是我又从他最近的作品开始往前读，深切地感觉到他在英语、知识面、想象力和编故事的功底上方方面面的变化和进步。而这些变化和进步完全是他通过大量阅读自然内化的结果，没有任何外界教育式的干预，看来对于孩子喜欢做的事情，他们的潜能都无需外力就可以不断地成长。

   

这里，摘录我为本书写的来自特殊编辑的序。

From a special editor:

As Eddie’ mother, I have always been the first reader of his English stories. I witnessed his growth in both English and creativity since he started to write when he was eight. When he reached his 12 years old, I suddenly realized that during those four years, he had written some 200,000-word English stories. I decided to help him publish some of his works as a record of his first cycle of life (In China, a cycle of life is 12 years.). So here it is.

Eddie was born and grew up in Beijing, China. It remains a mystery how he got interested in writing fantasy stories, and amazingly in English, obviously a foreign language to him! His fondness of English may have two explanations. One is that I am a professor of English Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University, a university renowned for its language education in China. Though I have been too busy to teach him any English, I have been guiding and encouraging his reading in English. The other is that he once studied at a local primary school in Nottingham, UK for three months when he was eight years old. It was during this period that his English grew from limited single-word utterance to native-like simple communication.

Whatsoever the reasons, Eddie has demonstrated a talent in his mastery of a foreign language and his story writing skills at this young age. I am sure that my admiration for him is not simply because I am his mother, but also because, after all these years of my teaching English to college students who take much pain in learning this foreign language, Eddie’ relaxing and enjoyable journey in his English learning and story writing has deeply challenged my … and maybe a lot others’ belief and practice in English language education.

I invited two of Eddie’s classmates, Connie and Sunny, to do the illustrations for his stories. These two girls have genuine interest and great talent in drawing pictures. So this book is actually a joint work of three 12-year-old Chinese kids to show the English world the dream and the power they have.