In the movie “Joker,” there is a line, “I can’t remember what happened before…,” that resonates with me.
Perhaps only those with unique experiences like Haizi can write such beautiful verses as “Facing the sea, with spring blossoms.” However, this dream seems simple, but it’s a beachfront house…
Here are some discussions about learning foreign languages:
A netizen mentioned in response to my question, “Can you learn Japanese at 50?” that learning a foreign language requires at least a thousand hours.
A female author in a video said that when she first arrived in the US, she couldn’t understand English at all. Then she watched talk shows every day. Three years later, she suddenly realized she could understand them. She later said that learning English requires watching video programs, especially talk shows, and not relying on reading materials or checking words, as there are too many English words to look up.
Luo Yonghao mentioned in a speech that he spent more than a year, like being in prison, learning English and became a GRE teacher at New Oriental. Later, one of the teachers at his training school became a GRE introductory course teacher after about six months.
In a speech video, the speaker mentioned that she taught English in many countries. Once, she encountered an audience member who asked questions in English, and the listener’s English level was clearly low, but interestingly, communication with this listener and others using English was very smooth, even though it was just low-level English.
I’m quite concerned about the thousand-hour figure.
The numbers are coincidental, but it can be generally concluded that skill mastery is strongly correlated with the amount of study time, though not linearly.
Although I didn’t previously agree with the “work experience” evaluation method (like in ancient China’s bureaucratic system, where promotions only happened after a certain number of years), a skill indeed requires enough time to be proficient. What’s more frustrating is that skill mastery is not sudden; you won’t be unable one day and suddenly proficient the next. Such surprises don’t exist in the real world.
The more common situation is understanding 1 word in a sentence yesterday, 2 words ten days later, and 10 words a hundred days later, but a sentence has 20 words, so understanding 10 words doesn’t help much. Will understanding 20 words in two hundred days be enough? Sentences vary, and so do tone, intonation, and speed. A more accurate analogy would be an image gradually becoming clearer from a low resolution; you can’t accurately identify the content until it’s fully clear, but you can get some information as it becomes clearer, and the resolution increases unevenly.
Sherlock Holmes in “Sherlock” has a persona of knowing every skill needed for investigation. He can tell someone’s three-day itinerary from the mud on their shoes, knows various gun models, bullet diameters, and the use of firearms in different situations. He even keeps a criminal’s head in his fridge to study the coagulation process of saliva after death. Yet, he doesn’t know common knowledge, like the moon orbits the earth, and the earth orbits the sun.
Guess what I’m trying to say? Perhaps, and definitely, omniscience is unnecessary, whether it’s knowledge or skills. If one must master a skill to a certain extent, it’s only right to say that the current situation is just right. This view aligns with Hu Shi’s “Why fear endless truth” :P
By the way, my categorization of “knowledge” and “skills” is that knowledge can be known and understood in a short time, while skills are many pieces of knowledge combined to solve a class of problems. Knowledge can be mastered in 3 minutes, but skills require 3 + 3 + 3 +… Judging someone’s skill level based on a few pieces of knowledge is incomplete.
Abruptly changing the topic, I’ve recently discovered an interesting board game called Script Murder. Although often unsatisfactory, it always leaves some interest. There are two major acting systems for theater actors, the Brechtian system and the Stanislavski system, also known as the experiential and representational. In the game, I lean towards the experiential… Of course, my feeling about this game is: I know how to play the game, but not how to play people. Games have good and bad, scripts have good and bad, players have good and bad, experiences have good and bad, and moods have good and bad…
There’s nothing new under the sun, but the sun always rises.
I also want a house facing the sea, with spring blossoms.
Hello, tomorrow.