In China today, learning English is very much in vogue, especially in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and many others. Young people in their early twenties with a good command of English or just a little more than a nodding acquaintance with the language find it easier to secure a desirable job than those without. As a result, short-term English training courses are springing up like mushrooms everywhere across the country. However, many people are heard to complain that however hard they work at English and however much time they spend on it, they are always unduly rewarded in progress. When asked about its cause, they all attribute it to what they call “inadequate vocabulary”. Is that so? Here, I have to disagree with my young friends.Words in a language play the same part as bricks do in civil engineering; they make up the elementary components of both. Yet words alone, however numerous, if devoid of the art of arranging them in a prescribed way, can never be organized into an intelligible speech in the same way as a man in mere possession of bricks yet without the knowledge of architecture can never put up a building.
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