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14 febbraio Anti-PsychoDays before, late in night, I was in downtown, walking. All of a sudden, I found that I got an unexpected company. A white young man was walking along me. He is about 185cm in height, brown hair. Victoria's winter night is uncomfortably cold. Even though I had my heavy coat, I had to walk fast to keep myself warm. Apparently, my new friend didn't have enough to wear. He had a drip of nasal mucus hanging on the tip of his big nose.
It's late in the night, and it's in a foreign country. Everything seemed to be dangerous to an outcomer. Homeless people stared at me from corners of garbage. Drunk young men could be threat too. So, you can see I don't really like this.
"Don't take it." He started talking. He spoke really fast, so I didn't get it at the first time. "The drug, Anti-Psycho, don't take it."
I heard the word "drug". Oh yes, I see what's going on here. He tried to sell me drug. It happened to me several times. I know drug control in Canada is not as strict as in China, but this's just too often. I don't know, maybe I have the addict look to Canadian? Dude, I don't even smoke.
"It's bad. It's very very bad. It destroys your brain. Don't take it."
After a while, I understood that he's not a drug dealer. Instead of that, he was trying to persuade me not to take the drug "Anti-Psycho". That's interesting. Why he said this to me? Oh no, I must be really like a addict. And why it's only for "Anti-Psycho"? Did he mean it's OK to take marijuana? I don't get it.
Anyway, it's very nice of him to do so. Although I searched "Anti-Psycho" on goolge afterwards, I didn't find nothing. 11 febbraio Presentation By A Poor ESLerThis was taken in my seminar course. It was the professor's idea to tape us so we can learn from our mistakes. I kindda good at public speaking, in Chinese. So when I do some presentation things, I always trend to improvise instead of get well prepared. Maybe this is just an excuse cuz I'm lazy to prepare. But unfortunately, with my poor English, improvisation seems not a good idea. I only spent like half an hour on this presentation, cuz things were running crazy last week so that I don't have time. Apparently, it was not enough. To my international friends: I really appreciate if you can tell me how difficult is my speaking to you. Please Please Be strainghtforward. Frankly speaking, I cannot totally understand myself when I saw my video. :) 09 febbraio Graceful As A Native SpeakerAn interesting phenomenon I observed:
The ability of learning English varies between foreigners. Excellent ones can speak fluent English within 3 month after they come to Canada, while most of us are still struggling to speak coherently after years. Those fast learners really surprise me, because From a forienger's point of view, some of them are as good as native speakers. However, after I have more experience of being with them, I find out that they are not really speaking better. They just seem to be like that. The information conveys in the conversation is still poor.
I know this sounds like jealous though.
Language is for exchanging information. According to Information Theory, the less a word is used, the more information it has. That's why people need to talk gracefully. They want to include more information in a given time. Altough some foreign speakers are quite fluent, they are not the same meaningful. While others might get stuck when they are talking, but they are still understandable. For example, when talking about favorite food,(say dumpling), one foreigner may say:
Speaker A: "It is...kinda like, you know, meat and vegetable inside. like the, I dun know, maybe stuffing? Something like that. And... I am sure about this, butta covering? Yeah, it's made of flour."
Another one may say:
Speaker B: "It has meat and vegetable ... errr ... inside as ...errr... stuffing, with ...er... covering ...er... made of flour."
By the first impression, you may say A is a much better speaker than B. However, if you think about it, the information conveys in it, which is the orange part, is almost the same. It says that A's speaking is no more meaningful than B. I obeserved this phenomenon recently. Some newcomers appear to speak very good English in short time, which is amazing. In fact, they are not. They just memorize some phrases and use them repeatly when they are speaking, like "you know what?" and so on.
This reminds me that lazy Chinese student on English often use the "American peasants only know 1000 words" as the excuse for their poor vocabulary. A-type people above is an analogy to "American peasants". Their English is fluent and barely no accent to me, which is good. But if you want them to explain some complex idea or concept, they'll be stuck immediately. On the other hand, B-type people may have stronger accent and are not so fluid, but they can represent theirselves better, like my professor.
In other words, they only speak fluidly when talking nonsense.
The reason is, if you want to describe some complicated concept, you need to know the nuance between similar words. Native speakers learn this by reading numerous literatures and having conversations when they grow up. They take 20 years or more to pick up their mother tongue. And this takes a foreigner forever. For me, I cannot distinguish the words "simmer" and "stew", and so far as I know, their usages are not exactly the same. Although we have much more words about cooking in Chinese, I still cannot tell the difference. And what's the difference between "lawless" and "illegal"? Again, I've no idea.
A-type speaking isn't that difficult. All you need to do is do some replacements, like using "sweet" instead of "nice", or "intense" instead of "great". These 2 words are used frequently here among young people, I don't know if it's a local thing or universal in all English speaking countries. This part is actually easy to pick up. But I just wouldn't say a word unless I'm sure I know what it means. (However, in most cases, I still have to use unknown words.) What I really want to pick up is the ability of those foreign professors who can convey their thoughts precisely.
The bottom line is: I've never talked to any peasants yet since I came to Canada. |
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