送交者: 老中一号 于 2005-5-05, 17:46:34:
回答: that's partly true but you missed my point 由 xj 于 2005-5-05, 17:34:54:
the deficiency of English teaching. Remember how we learned English? Word by word. That is the worst approach for an English speaker to learn Chinese or a Chinese speaker to learn English. Just imagine from a kid's view how he picks up the language? Phrase by phrase. When he listens to a series of sounds (remember, he cannot yet parse the phrases or words yet), and associates the sounds with actions taken by the speaker. That is how a kid grasps the meaning of a sentence, or a phrase, not a word. How does a kid know when to add "s" for agreement or when to conjugate for past tense?
The secret is in listening and memorizing the whole sentence. Yes, you can only say limited things at the beginning, but once you get used to hearing "he" and verb + s in the same sentence, your brain starts to form a model itself, instead of trying to hammer that model through grammar drill. The key to human language is, we learn sound first, rule second. Therefore, memorizing a whole sentence or a whole phrase returns us to the very basic approach of how we learn our mother tongue from an infant stage.