Thoughts on Reading My Hard Reading Experience

Pulling out a long-unread anthology of Feng Zikai's classic works from the bookshelf and opening the bookmark position is an article that Feng Zikai shares his reading experience. This book has not been opened for two years, but I remember this article vividly. Because I learned Feng Zikai's method when I recited words in college. I write the words on the card and turn my back every day.

Reading this article again makes me know more about "learning". The author once went to Japan to study for ten months. Because of his short experience in studying abroad, he often takes time off to visit exhibitions, concerts, libraries and operas in order to explore more directions. Unable to stand the teacher's long teaching, he decided to drop out of school and learn Japanese and English by himself, and hid in an inn in Tokyo every night.

This article describes many ways to learn a foreign language. For example, in order to learn Japanese, Feng Zikai signed up for a primary class in an English school. His purpose is to listen to how a Japanese gentleman explains the English he already knows in Japanese. For example, if he wants to read a famous English book, he will write all the new words in the book on cards, touch the cards in the box like a divination every night, review the new words, and then finish reading the book smoothly. For example, instead of learning grammar directly, he read Japanese-English bilingual articles word for word. He said that grammar is a theory. As long as the theoretical concepts are clear, he will not learn grammar, and he can understand English regardless of nouns and verbs.

Feng Zikai has always said in his article that these are mechanical rote learning methods. He envies those students who study easily. He understood learning as "studying hard". But I feel that learning has to go through a relatively "bitter" early accumulation process, just like memorizing words and reading the original English fluently.

In addition to his experience in learning a foreign language, he also talked about his experience in reading non-fiction books: every time he reads an important place in the book, he will write a summary in his notebook to understand the position of this chapter in the whole knowledge framework. After reading a book, you just need to look back at your notebook. Isn't this our popular mind map? After so many years, the essence of learning methods has not changed.

After returning from studying abroad, Feng Zikai has been busy with art teaching for decades. In his spare time, he can only learn foreign languages, draw pictures and play the violin. When my fingers itch, I wipe them on the waste paper, thus drawing the cartoons of the Republic of China that we saw on the streets of Shanghai today.

The next time I see his paintings in the subway station, I will definitely stop to look at them and think about how he learned foreign languages during his short study abroad and how he managed to find time to feel the artistic atmosphere in Tokyo. Maybe I can urge myself to cherish time and not fall into a boring and false world.