[曾经为外语系学生做过一次演讲，以下是演讲稿]

This evening I am going to share my experiences of English learning and teaching with you, my fellow students from the English department. I want to tell you three stories from my over three-decade experiences as a learner and teacher of English.

The first story is about how I started learning English at the very beginning.

Leaving the secondary school at 14 or so, I went to work as a tractor driver for three years on a big state-owned farm over 400 kilometers away from home. At that time, I knew nothing about the English alphabet or the pronunciation of a single English word. I did not have to feel ashamed because no English lessons were offered from kindergarten to college throughout the country in the years of the so-called Great Cultural Revolution. Truth being told, I did not know how to read the alphabet until I was about 20 working alone in an office, when a friend and neighbor of mine, majoring in English for just one semester, taught me the English Phonetic Alphabet (IPA for short) in two separate hours during his winter vacation. He came to my office one morning and taught me the IPA and the 26 English letters for about one hour. That was my first English lesson, delivered to me by a freshman rather than by a graduate with a university degree or an experienced teacher of English. I used the Chinese Pinyin to help facilitate my grasp of those strange pronunciations in the course of his instructions.

Since he was on the winter vocation and I had to attend to my office work, we spent another follow-up hour going over the previous stuff after an elapse of about a week. Nothing but a single textbook was available, which claimed to be compiled for adult Chinese learners of English. No tape recordings, no other teachers of English, and no other English course-books were accessible to me. Nor did I have any English-Chinese dictionaries on hand, nor yet anything like English TV programs or videos. Many of my contemporary English learners were no exceptions in this regard.

I then set my heart on English learning by burying myself in the textbook, beginning with the vocabulary and then going through with the text, notes and the exercises. Very soon I was able to spell as well as to transcribe the words I learnt, although I would find it hard to finish all the exercises attached to the end of each text. I used to ask some fellow worker of mine to test my vocabulary and I would be very pleased and proud each time he told me that my spellings or transcriptions were perfect or next to perfect. And I would translate the text from English to Chinese and then from Chinese to English each time I finished with the text studies. By giving my heart to do such cross-translations, I came to better perceive where my weakness lay in terms of English grammar. Keep in mind that no foreign language was taught throughout the nation for over ten years running throughout the so-called Great Cultural Revolution and that I was staying and working in an out-of-the-way community.

The shortwave radio and English broadcasts played a very important role in helping to improve my English pronunciation and to develop my listening skills. I was a regular of BBC and VOA, and by listening in regularly I tuned up my pronunciation and made much improvement. I was confident that I could tell whether my pronunciation was acceptable or what was wrong with it, otherwise it would be advisable for me to give up and try something different which demanded less on the left hemisphere of the brains.

About two years passed before I had barely finished half of the textbook. I could then somehow transcribe the 26 letters and the words in the texts I learnt, write down the plurals for such nouns as woman and fish, and handle some not-so-tough cross-translations as well. Then it so happened that the nation-wide college entrance examination was resumed after an abruption of ten years at the end of the so-called Great Cultural Revolution. I hastened to sit for the examination and I was offered to study as an English major in a three-year college program after I fortunately passed all of the required tests of Chinese, mathematics, modern history of China, geography, politics, and English. Many people of my generation were not that lucky, and you can imagine how I rejoiced at the admission. So I went to college after I had worked for about eight years and without attending the senior high-school.

I was convinced then that we can and we should paddle our own canoe in the pursuance of knowledge and that we can get a bit better prepared for the days ahead by persisting in our internal improvement instead of twiddling thumbs and babbling complaints about external surroundings.

My second story is about my three-year college studies of English.

The college, being located in a small and underdeveloped township over 200 kilometers away from Guangzhou, was but an overnight set-up by simply having a dilapidated former school re-named as such. Small wonder that almost everything over there inclusive of the classrooms, the dormitories, the dining hall, the school library, the sports ground, and the toilets, remained in quite poor condition. To make matters worse, there was no tap water there. Like it or not, that was the very college we entered. Since the school was moving to a new site nearer Guangzhou in two or three years when we were about to graduate, little was done to improve the buildings and facilities on the old site, which passed into oblivion some years after the college moved away.

The then English department had but three faculty and staff: two teachers and one typist and office girl, in addition to a total of 30 students of English. No language laboratory, no foreign teachers, no English videos, no TV programs in English whatsoever. Such things remained unavailable years after my graduation.

Only two English courses were offered: Intensive English A, and Intensive English B. No other courses like grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing through English or something were launched. And this was to last for three years running; the English department did not have any more teachers until three years later when we graduated and were offered to join the faculty.

Except for the textbooks for the two courses, we did not have to handle any other materials like the exercise books, the student’s books, the teacher’s book, and so forth, which are indispensable supplements for the nowadays English learning and teaching.

Like many of my fellow students, I gave my heart to the studies, oblivious of the unsatisfying surroundings. I knew that the time given to us for English learning on campus was very limited. I worked hard against the clock.

Upon graduation, I could manage to comprehend Special English programs from VOA with my portable shortwave radio because I gradually developed my listening skills through tuning in and listening regularly to those radio programs, and I could consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD for short) comfortably for explanations to definitions, idioms, usages and etymology because I persisted in the use of the very dictionary throughout my studies and by doing so I slowly but surely built up my dictionary skills and acquired some knowledge about the English language which would be hard to come by in the classroom. The COD was a godsend: the exclusive foreign language bookstore in Guangzhou had no other types of dictionaries on sale when, one day in the third semester of my college studies, I made there by covering over 100 kilometers for the purchase. I had no other choice: either the COD or no dictionary. And that was it. Again, throughout the sixth term I found myself being able to read stories and novels in English and I did finish reading such novels as Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain before my graduation.

My experiences convinced me that you do not have to be taught throughout your learning and that there are far more things to be learnt on your own than to be imparted on your teacher’s part. I also learnt that reading great works gives you an unforgettable and lasting experience while doing tests, exercises and examinations offers no comparable impressions as such.

My third story is about my English teaching and persistent learning on campus.

I was offered to teach in the college where I graduated, because there was a great shortage of English teachers with university degrees at that time, and the shortage was not fully covered until fifteen years later. So I started teaching English then and there after my three-year English learning in the college. Meanwhile, I persisted in my English studies in my own way. I enjoyed learning English songs by heart, took pleasure in reading a wide range of English books including essays, proverbs and quotations, detective stories, classic novels, and the then best-sellers and magazines available in the school library. Also, I applied my heart to writing précis and summaries. Meanwhile, BBC and VOA broadcasts became background music whenever I sat down alone at the desk for my English studies with my shortwave radio.

When an educational exchange program was introduced in the early 1990s, I was picked to participate because I was then the only one who furthered English studies as a postgraduate for three years away from my college.

Thanks to that program, groups of American visitors, many of whom were retired professors and senior citizens, came in and stayed with us for one week before they returned to America, engaged in scheduled sightseeing to scenic spots, visit to a kindergarten and households in a rural village, presence in lectures on the modern history, literature, education and culture of China. I accompanied each group throughout all those activities.

We enjoyed our company by exchanging English jokes and riddles, singing along English songs like Auld Lang Syne, America the Beautiful; and we talked about English literature, sharing our joy in reading the great writers we admired such as Mark Twain, George Orwell, Earnest Hemmingway, John Steinbeck, to name but a few. And one week as such was long enough for us to make friends, let alone acquaintances. I got a 2-year gift subscription each to the two well-known magazines--Reader’s Digest, and National Geographic, in addition to some other gift books like A Dictionary of American Proverbs and the Complete Christmas Music Collection from my American friends after they returned home. Those gifts always remind me of them. Let us have a look at the pictures of the two gift books.

I came to see from those experiences of mine that persistence in improvement in English learning will eventually pay off once you make a regular of English broadcasts, a voracious reader of various books, and a skilled user of English dictionaries.

For me, either this is the secret or there is no secret in English learning, and teaching as well. Thank you.