我们通过使用工具来掌握工具，而当这些工具与我们息息相关的时候，我们就可以学得很快。
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So let me share a story. 先让我分享一个故事。 A keyboard is a tool. 键盘是一个工具。
Typing Chinese a certain way, there are methods for this. That's a tool. 有不同方法打中文字。这些方法属于工具的一种。
I had a colleague many years ago who went to night school; 多年前，我有一位同事，她上夜校学习中文打字。
Tuesday night, Thursday night, two hours each night, practicing at home, she spent nine months, and she did not learn to type Chinese.
每周二、周四晚上，她都用2个小时上课，然后也在家练习，她花了9个月的时间，仍然没学会打中文字。
And one night we had a crisis. 一天晚上，我们有一件紧急的事情。
We had forty eight hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese. 我们有48个小时来准备用中文发表一本训练手册。
And she got the job, and I can guarantee you in forty eight hours, she learned to type Chinese because it was relevant, it was important, it was meaningful, she was using a tool to create value.
她获得了这个任务 ，并且我可以像你保证，在48个小时内，她学会了用中文打字。因为这是相关的、重要的、有意义的，她在使用一种工具来创造价值。
So the second tool for learning a language is to use your language as a tool to communicate right from day one. As a kid does.
因此，学习一门语言的第二个工具是从第一天开始，用你的语言作为一种工具来沟通，像一个孩子那样做。
When I first arrived in China I didn't speak a word of Chinese, and on my second week I got to take a train ride overnight.
当我初次来到中国，我一句中文都不会说。第二个星期我乘坐火车过夜。
I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car talking to one of the guards on the train. He took an interest in me for some reason, and we just chatted all night in Chinese and he was drawing pictures and making movements with his hands and facial expressions and piece by piece by piece I understood more and more. 我花了8个小时，坐在餐车，跟一位乘警聊。因为某种原因，他对我很感兴趣。我们在那用中文聊了整夜，随着他画画、比划双手并动用他的面部表情，我逐渐地明白越来越多。 But what was really cool, was two weeks later, when people were talking Chinese around me, I was understanding some of this and I hadn't even made any effort to learn that.
但是真正有趣的是，两个星期后，当人们在我周围说中文的时候，我可以明白一些而且我并没有为之付出任何努力。 What had happened? 发生了什么？
I'd absorbed it that night on the train, which brings us to the third principle When you first understand the message, then you will acquire the language unconsciously.
在火车的那晚我已经吸收了中文也是我们要说的第三个原则。当你已经理解沟通的信息含义，接下来你将不知不觉下意识的获得该语言。
And this is really, really well documented now, it's something called comprehensible input and there's twenty or thirty years of research on this. Stephen Krashen, a leader in the field has published all sorts of these different studies and this is just from one of them.
而且这是有充足的证据证明的，我们把它称之为“可明白输入”，而这个概念被研究了了研究二三十年。此领域的佼佼者史蒂夫·克拉申发布了各类不同的学术研究成果，而这些数据来自他的一个报告。
The purple bars show the scores on different tests for language. 条形图里面的紫色部分显示不同语言测试的成绩。
The purple people were people who had learned by grammar and formal study, the green ones are the ones who learned by comprehensible input.
紫色代表那些通过正式学习和学习语法的人，绿色的代表那些通过可明白输入学习的人。 So, comprehension works. 因此，可明白意思的输入是有效的。
Comprehension is key and language learning is not about accumulating lots of knowledge.
理解是很关键的而学语言本身不仅仅是获取大量的知识。
In many, many ways it's about physiological training. 在很多方面，更多的是生理的训练。
A woman I know from Taiwan did great at English at school, she got A grades all the way through, went through college, A grades, went to the US and found she couldn't understand what people were saying.
我认识的一位来自台湾的女士，上学时英文成绩很好，大学英语也很优秀。后来，她到了美国，竟然发现自己听不懂别人在说什么。
And people started asking her: ‘are you deaf?' 然后人们开始问她：“你是聋的吗？” And she was. English deaf. 她确实是英语聋子。
Because we have filters in our brain that filter in the sounds that we are familiar with and they filter out the sounds of languages we're not.
因为在我们大脑里有一些过滤器会帮助我们过滤熟悉的语言声音进入脑子里，而把不熟悉的语言声音过滤出去。
And if you can't hear it, you won't understand it and if you can't understand it, you're not going to learn it.
如果你听不到，你不会明白；你听不明白，你将不能学会它。 So you actually have to be able to hear these sounds. 因此，你必须能够听到这些声音。
And there are ways to do that but it's physiological training. 这里有一些方法来做到，但这些是生理上的训练。
Speaking takes muscle. 说话需要用到肌肉。
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You've got forty-three muscles in your face, you have to coordinate those in a way that you make sounds that other people will understand.
在你的脸上有43块肌肉，你必须协调好这些肌肉来发声，让别人明白你的话。 If you've ever done a new sport for a couple of days, then you know how your body feels. And it hurts.
如果你曾经有做过几天新的运动，你会知道你的身体有什么感觉。有点酸疼。 If your face is hurting you're doing it right. 如果你的面部有这种酸疼的感觉，那就对了。 And the final principle is state. 最后一个原则是状态。 Psycho-physiological state. 心理生理的状态。
If you're sad, angry, worried, upset, you're not going to learn. Period. 如果你伤心、生气、担心、沮丧，你将不能学会。绝对是这样。
If you're happy, relaxed, in an Alpha brain state, curious, you're going to learn really quickly, and very specifically you need to be tolerant of ambiguity.
如果你是在一个开心的，放松的，好奇的大脑状态下，你将很快学会，而且，需要明确的一点是，你需要忍受歧义。