People who study English in China don't find English words difficult to remember. Every word is as difficult to remember as a telephone number. Not to mention that English learners speak, listen, speak, read and write, memorizing words alone takes up almost all the time in learning English in China. Anyone who has prepared for English has this experience. There is no time to practice listening, speaking, reading and writing in review. Basically, they just recited many English words several times and then rushed to the exam. The exam is basically based on that. Many college students simply feel that they have been busy learning English for many years, that is, memorizing words before each exam, once every exam, the initial test, the senior high school entrance examination, the college entrance examination, CET-4 and CET-6, TOEFL for postgraduate entrance examination, or memorizing so many thousands of English words, it seems that they can't remember them. What's going on here?
It is difficult for China people to remember English words. The main problem is that they only remember the "shape" of words, but not the "sound" of words.
"Sound, form and meaning" are the three elements of any language, but different languages have different memory principles. Chinese characters are hieroglyphics, and remembering Chinese characters mainly depends on remembering the "shape" of Chinese characters; English words are pinyin, and the key to remembering pinyin is to remember the "sound" of words. No one in China has memorized hanyu pinyin, but all of them use hanyu pinyin to type Chinese characters on computers and send short messages on mobile phones. Just because they remember the pronunciation of Chinese characters, they can write Chinese Pinyin according to the pronunciation, which is called "phonetic memory". So do English words. Each English word is a set of sounds consisting of 26 letters. If you can remember the sound of a word, you can write the letter spelling of the word according to the sound. Phonetic words are memorized by pronunciation, which is a natural objective law. Contrary to this objective law, memorizing the word "shape" is equivalent to memorizing a phone number. Remembering thousands of English words is equivalent to remembering thousands of telephone numbers. Whose brain has such a big memory? So there will be disastrous consequences of forgetting, forgetting to remember, remembering or not remembering.
So why didn't anyone in China think of "phonetic recognition" and "phonetic memory" of English words in the past? This is because in the past, we didn't find the corresponding law of sound and shape of English words. Many people complain that Chinese Pinyin corresponds to sound and shape, so you can write it after reading it. Of course, you can remember by pronunciation, but the pronunciation of English words is irregular. A letter has several pronunciations, so you can't remember by pronunciation. This understanding is extremely wrong. In fact, English words have very regular corresponding rules, otherwise how can foreigners remember words? The fundamental reason why people in China can't find this corresponding rule is that people have never found the "slow pronunciation" of English words, that is, the accurate pronunciation of slow, complete and loud.
What is slow pronunciation? Every English word has two pronunciations: one is the well-known pronunciation marked by phonetic symbols that people can see in dictionaries, which is called "fast pronunciation", and the other is the unknown (or unexpected) English pronunciation, which is called "slow pronunciation".
Fast pronunciation is a simplified fuzzy low-pitched pronunciation, which is an inaccurate approximate pronunciation. Just like the pronunciation we usually use to speak quickly in Chinese, many sounds are simplified pronunciation. For example, when we say the word "learn English quickly", it sounds like "Xu". Although fast pronunciation is not strict and accurate, it is a normal pronunciation that people naturally use in their daily lives. If you pronounce every Chinese character correctly in your daily life, it will scare people away and think you are abnormal. However, when learning the pronunciation of a language, slow pronunciation is a matter of life and death. The word "learning English" must be pronounced "Xue Yingyu". If you study as "Xu Yi" at the beginning, then the subsequent study will not be confused. It is a great pity that the pronunciation phonetic symbols of English words seen by China people in dictionaries, tapes and textbooks are marked according to the appearance of rapid pronunciation, which makes China learn English for many years, and he doesn't know what the pronunciation of those words he memorizes is, so he has never been able to find out the corresponding rules of the pronunciation and shape of English words, so he has to memorize English words as telephone numbers.
"Slow pronunciation" refers to the slow, full and loud pronunciation of English words. It sounds easy to do, but in fact, if you try, you will find it difficult to do it. Just like riding a bike is fast, but not slow, and some people even fall down. Because the phonetic symbols of the words you saw before are all accented phonetic symbols, only the accented position is accurately marked, while the light tone position is a fast and vague approximate phonetic symbol. If you really get the position of light tone right, you will find that you really can't do it. You haven't even thought about how to pronounce the position of light tone. Only when you hear the slow, accurate and loud pronunciation of words, can you suddenly discover the corresponding laws of sound and shape of English words and the wonderful laws of memorizing words through pronunciation.
For example, the fast pronunciation of the word astronomy is [anti-estr, anti-Cn, anti-emi]. This phonetic symbol is a quick phonetic symbol that people can see in the dictionary. Except "tr anti-c", all other sounds are approximate phonetic symbols. You can't spell words when you hear this pronunciation, because the phonetic symbol [anti-E] is approximate pronunciation, corresponding to A, E, I and O, and the slow pronunciation in astronomy is [a s- tr anti-C-n anti-eu-mi]. This phonetic symbol is an accurate phonetic symbol, which people can't see in the dictionary. The pronunciation of this phonetic symbol corresponds to the spelling of the word. You can easily write the word as-tro-no-my as soon as you listen. This method of spelling English words in slow sounds is called "slow sound memorization"
Some students may ask, when you hear a pronunciation of English, sometimes you can write a few letters. For example, when you hear the phonetic symbol [anti-V], you may write both U and O. What should you do? Don't worry about this problem. Don't think that Chinese pinyin is one-to-one correspondence, you can remember it by sound. As long as other words are not one-to-one correspondence, you must learn by rote. In fact, there are other corresponding methods besides the one-to-one correspondence of phonetic characters. For example, the correspondence rule of English words is called "shun correspondence". Although there is a phenomenon that one pronunciation corresponds to multiple letters, the pronunciation of one letter in a word should be the most fluent. With this rule, you can judge the spelling of a word, and with other pronunciation rules such as open syllable and closed syllable, it is still enough to judge the spelling of a word. For a few words that really don't follow the corresponding rules (such as loanwords), you can also get familiar with their shapes through eye reading. As long as you listen, speak, read and write at the same time, you will have enough time and opportunity to see and remember that the spelling of "school" is school, not skool, and the spelling of "computer" is computer, not komputer.
Some students may ask, don't you still need to remember "shape" instead of "sound"? Is it just as difficult to remember "sound"? Please don't worry about this problem. The ability of human brain to remember sounds is stronger than that of shapes 1000 times. It is not easy for people to remember 10 phone numbers, but it is very easy to remember thousands of voices. People can easily remember the main theme of all the songs they have heard since childhood, and all the voices they have known since childhood, but they don't consciously remember and distinguish all the voices in nature. If a singer is singing on TV, or a politician is giving a speech, you can immediately know who he is without looking at people. An old friend whom I haven't seen for years can recognize his voice as soon as he calls. The human brain has the innate advantage of recording sound, which is why human beings invented language, named everything in the world sound, and then remembered them with sound for communication. Memorizing languages and characters with sounds, especially English words with phonetic symbols, is like a dragon returning to the sea and an eagle soaring in the sky, which will have an overwhelming memory advantage and will completely solve the English learning problem that has plagued you for many years.
Some students will also ask, if you remember the words with slow pronunciation, will the words be pronounced faster? Don't worry about this problem. If you ride slowly, do you still need to learn if you speed up?
Some students will also ask whether the memory methods such as "radicals" and "associations" that have been known in the past are still useful. The answer is "useful", but it doesn't matter how you say it. Radicals, associations and other memory methods belong to memorizing shapes, not memorizing sounds, nor are they fundamental memory methods. At present, the biggest problem for China students to remember English words is to ignore phonetic memory, and the most fundamental way to get rid of the pain of memorizing words is to remember sounds.
Some students will also ask ...
Don't ask, remember English words, you have to rely on pronunciation, this is nothing to discuss, this is an objective law. Foreigners are like this, so foreigners don't recite words. People in China don't know the exact pronunciation of English words, so they remember the shapes, so they have all kinds of memory difficulties. With English pronunciation, it is easy to remember English words. No pronunciation, all the questions came out. Please learn to memorize English words with accurate pronunciation as soon as possible, which will help you get out of the confusion of memorizing words and turn back.