Hello Coin. Thank you very much for your post which I’m sure speaks for many of us. And let me tell you, the problems that you mentioned are exactly the ones that prompted me to do the programs on Sina UC in the first place. You, and millions of other Chinese, are the victims of a flawed educational system with an assessment scheme that misguided generations of English learners.

I do not want to sound too critical of the current testing system because it is indeed hard to have good language assessments that can effectively measure an individual’s speaking and writing competencies. Fairness, costs, and the ease of test administration, among other factors, have combined to form an insurmountable barrier for the test designers of yesterday. Even today, when one looks at the newest generation of 4-skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) English tests such as the IELTS and the TOEFL iBT, one cannot help but notice the high price of the tests. Will there be a day when CET or the college entrance exam reaches the quality and rigorousness levels of TOEFL and yet is administered at a cost that is affordable to tens of millions of Chinese? I am sure that day will come. But before it does, I’m afraid more school children will fall victim to the current testing system as you and I did a generation ago.

This is the first point I wanted to make. In other words, tests forced us to memorize vocabulary without knowing really how to use the words or phrases. It did not matter whether one knew or not how to “use” the vocabulary. After all, getting the correct answer of a multiple choice question does not require one to actually know how to use a word or phrase. It has been proven time and again that these tests can be “beaten” by test takers who go to cram schools like the New Oriental School. You could get a high TOEFL (the old version) score without actually being able to speak or write English.

Therefore, it is fair to say that most of us really didn’t finish the job of learning English. Like a swimming student, we have listened to the coach giving us instructions on how to swim at poolside. And we have been tested on paper on the knowledge of swimming—and we have passed the test. But we have never been in water, actually learning to swim. Your difficulty in “organizing” (to borrow your expression) the words you have learned is perfectly understandable because only now you are in the water, trying to swim. If you realize and agree to what I have said above, you will be at peace with yourself. Instead of thinking you have spent a lifetime learning English, try to tell yourself you are only “beginning” to learn English. I know it is sad to admit that all your past efforts were merely geared toward the tests and that they were mostly wasted efforts as far as “learning English” is concerned.

Let’s talk about your question regarding listening comprehension. To be honest with you, I don’t know what is keeping you from not understanding what you hear. Perhaps you can try memorizing words in phrases and short sentences. I am sure if you have sentence or phrase patterns in your head, you will be able to recognize them when you hear them spoken next time. Knowing individual words only and having to parse sentences real time as you listen to someone talk is just an impossible task!

Please come to my weekly program. Together let’s try to learn to swim, in the water!