Excerpted Opening Remarks by  Robin, English instructor of SISU MOE Training Center for Overseas Study

2023秋， 新朋友， 新出发。  

Robin老师的开班典礼致辞总是充满激励。她说， 作为一名汉语学习者， 我的目标是不断精进，用中文与我喜爱的人们分享彼此的人生故事。 这意味着我必须不断努力，永无止境。

亲爱的学员们， 学习英语， 何尝不应如此？ 让我们一起许下这份秋日最美好的心愿： 用英文讲好人生故事，不断精进， 永无止境。

让我们一起品读Robin老师 对外语学习的真诚思考！

Robin老师-最优秀的汉语学习者

September 4, 2023...                  

The greater challenge of second language learning is rooted in WHY you imagine you’re doing it at all. Your challenge lies in sustaining the conscious determination and continuous renewal of commitment to the effort it takes to succeed. Second language learning often feels like 99 parts grind and sweat for every single spark of joy one experiences along the way. Solid reasons of your own, reasons to focus your mind and fuel the fire to keep going – are as essential to your success as patience, time, good sleep, and fresh air. I know this as a language teacher – and as a language student.                                

Passing a test isn’t my goal. My goal is not a number on a piece of paper or a specific point in time where I have enough to ‘get by’. I can already ‘get by’ in Chinese; I want to do much more than that. I told her my goal is to keep going. My goal is to read, write, listen, and speak – ever more and ever better. My goal is to grind and sweat my way through countless grammar exercises, textbook readings, and unscripted conversations with my teacher that lead inevitably to the joy of understanding someone I want to connect with who is saying something important and interesting in Chinese. My goal is to find the words in my second language to share my stories with them. My goal is to feel more and more confidently myself and at home as a Chinese speaker, connecting with people who speak this language as easily as I do English. In truth, my goal has no end – and will never be reached.                  

There will always be some piece of it ahead of me to keep reaching forward. People learn to focus on what we call short-term goals - like tests - for obvious practical reasons, and far too often they boil their ambitions down to nothing but short term goals. In confining their reach, they miss out on worlds of limitless possibility they could also have reached for. Short term goals get the grocery shopping and the laundry done, and that stuff does matter – but I would advise you to keep such things in their place to make space for a much bigger picture. A list of your short term goals here, starts with getting your homework done, getting to classes prepared and on time, getting a good sleep every night, and joining us at English Corner on Wednesday evenings. Let that to-do list fill your days here, one by one. Grind and sweat your way down the list and back up again, open to the joys that come along as a result. Know that as you do, your many short term goals are piling up under your feet, taking you someplace much grander than a test. You are not many, ...but you are bold – so be bold about the challenge you take up here today. If your reasons are small and limiting, so will your achievements be small and limiting.                  

Let your goal in this endeavour expand beyond any test or polished collection of phrases for ‘getting by’ in English. Let your goal grow and broaden to include more and better of everything it means to speak and understand a language in community with others. Let the goal you came with widen and deepen and unfold itself – until at last your true goal is revealed – perfect in scope – a goal that has no end – and will never be reached. Let your true goal be unlimited. Then you will have it all; then you will live up to the boldness of your decision to be here today.

2033秋季国家公派出国留学高级英语培训全日制班——起航合影

2023秋季国家公派出国留学高级英语培训开班典礼--歌乐川外欢迎您

第19期国家公派出国留学高级英语培训——云南班起航合影

图/文： 四川外国语大学出国培训部