What should I do if English majors teach young children English after graduation and feel that their English ability has deteriorated?

I received a private letter two days ago. This question is very good:

After graduating from English major, I taught in preschool institutions and taught children some simple oral dialogues. I think my English is deteriorating, and I'm afraid. What should we do?

This is a kind of question that I often receive. It's just that some people may have graduated from English majors, and some people may not be English majors, but they have learned English well, at least they have done well in the exam. Later, they may stay in the comfort zone because of work, and have no continuous learning and improvement, so they will have the fear of losing all their English skills.

Generally faced with such a question, I will ask them first:

What do you want to learn English for?

This is very important. Know why you are on the road before you know the depth of each step in the future.

For example, someone will tell me that he is very dissatisfied with his current job and feels that he will not stay in this institution or this industry for long. If he wants to switch to translation, he can do both interpretation and translation. This is very simple, and the question is simplified to: how can I get into the translation line?

When I just graduated from college, I wanted to do a lot of things, such as foreign trade, training, translation, administration, HR…… ..................... My favorite thing to do is to go to the major recruitment websites to search for companies that need the above positions. What are the requirements of their recruitment notices for candidates, and can I meet them? I can't do the work content and requirements they wrote. Finally, I found that either I couldn't meet the requirements of the employer, or I didn't like it when I arrived at the post. So my first job was dealing with words, and I can't do without words until now. Maybe it's destiny takes a hand.

It is the same to stand outside the translation industry and have a look. What are the requirements of the recruitment notice of the search translation company, and then work hard in that direction. At present, the most common requirement for part-time or full-time translation is CATTI level 2. So this question is simplified to: how do I prepare for CATTI level 2? Next, you can search the real questions of the exam, content settings, recommended bibliography and so on. And peel them off layer by layer, which becomes an executive problem: have you read grammar books? Did you hear the news? Did you repeat it? Have you practiced translation? Do you insist on doing all the above? ……

On the basis of the previous question, this translation friend added another question: Are all the cases of translation companies articles?

This question is quite specific. But actually, translators should know that practice and actual combat are really two different things. What impressed me the most was that I remember once or twice that the translation team of Zhixin studied and practiced Chinese-English translation. It seems that Chinese is not standardized, so some translation friends ask, how can such Chinese be translated without standards?

In fact, this is a high-frequency problem in translation practice. You are dealing with all kinds of customers, and they throw in all kinds of projects and texts. You can't ask them to have the Chinese skills of Xinhua News Agency reporters or the English writing skills of The Economist columnists. In many cases, their original texts are full of mistakes, unreasonable sentences and logical contradictions. Translation needs pondering, verification and communication with customers. Finally, after translation, to be on the safe side, you should write a translator's note and tell the customer that you think so. The subtext of translation according to this idea is: I tried my best, but I still want to ask, am I thinking the same as you?

Well, the above is aimed at those translators who are dissatisfied with their current jobs and want to switch to translation, but at the same time feel that their English level is declining, which is also a question I often receive. After all, this is related to one's own vital interests, and it is only a question, so many people ask it, and they are all eager.

Of course, there is another kind of translator who may just hope not to give all the English back to the teacher. At least, when I was a student, I spent so much time and energy learning English, and I was very distressed because of too much degradation. If so, professional and in-depth translation practice may not be needed. TED videos, some beautiful and classic English short articles and their reading audio, original English novels or foreign periodicals such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal can all be used as materials to persist in English learning.

Writing here, it suddenly occurred to me that an interpreter looked for me in Weibo two days ago, saying that after reading my notes and materials on the subway, I felt so satisfied when I got out of the subway.

My thoughts suddenly flew to the days when I went to work by bus every day a few years ago. At that time, unlike now, there was no Himalayan litchi micro-class, and you could study anytime and anywhere. There was no such thing at that time. I used an mp3 player. I copied the BBC news into the mp3 player the night before. The next day, I crammed it into my ears on the bus after work to practice extensive reading. I opened the text of the news during my lunch break and looked up the words to see if it was very different from what I heard and understood in the morning. I continued listening on the bus when I came home from work at night to clean up the mistakes.

I forwarded the Weibo and shared my experience of studying in my spare time on the bus. I don't want to cause too much abuse. Some people don't practice listening on the subway, but read learning materials, such as the notes of China Daily Morning and Evening News that I regularly send in Weibo, and the ted videos that I also send in Weibo. My TED video is not only bilingual subtitles, but also highlights some new words and annotates their meanings.

Last week, I heard from Wu Xiaobo Channel that Zuckerberg made a study plan for himself every year. Last year, his study plan was to learn Chinese. Now his Chinese level is much better than that of his Asian wife. It can be seen that busy work is not an excuse for not having time to study at all. Can you be busier than others?

Time is squeezing. Slowly, you will find that whether you can do it or not is one thing, and more often, you want to do it.