“The more American dramas you watch, the better your language sense becomes” — this saying has screwed over countless poor English learners.

A-Programmers-Guide-to-English, an English learning guide written specifically for programmers, with 16.4k stars on GitHub.

In one sentence: treat learning English as an engineering problem. Deduce training methods from the essence of language acquisition — not a pile of tips, but the underlying logic.

The author himself is the case study:

He scored 442 on CET-4 (China’s college English test), barely passed formal exams with around 60 marks — a textbook poor English learner. To go abroad he needed IELTS 6.5, so he studied seriously from scratch for half a year, and finally scored 63 on PTE (equivalent to upper-middle IELTS 6.5).

But he says the biggest takeaway wasn’t the score — it was figuring out the underlying mechanism of English learning: why most advice is ineffective or even harmful for low-level learners.

What this guide covers:

(1) The essence of language learning — not vocabulary, not grammar, but building the “recognition system” in your brain. Without that system, memorizing countless words is a waste.

(2) Understanding English the programmer way — analogizing English comprehension to a program parsing input. If a module is weak, the whole process hangs.

(3) Concrete training methods — not tricks, but a training flow derived from the essence. Use it according to your level to avoid going down the wrong path.

(4) Resource and tool recommendations — which ones are truly useful and which are time-wasting traps (the author has fallen into all of them, so you can just reference directly).

Who it’s for:

Programmers stuck at the stage where you can read code comments, need to look up words for technical documentation, and your mind goes blank when you try to speak.

This guide doesn’t teach quick fixes, but it tells you why you’ve been studying for so long without improvement, and how to truly break through.

Link: http://github.com/yujiangshui/A-Programmers-Guide-to-English…

Good stuff, share it with brothers who need it.

#EnglishLearning #Programmers #OldYangSharing

yujiangshui/A-Programmers-Guide-to-English

Source: https://github.com/yujiangshui/A-Programmers-Guide-to-English

A Programmer’s Guide to English

An English learning guide written specifically for programmers.

Click here to open the online version (https://a-programmers-guide-to-english.harryyu.me/) for better formatting, or you can view the GitHub source code (https://github.com/yujiangshui/A-Programmers-Guide-to-English).

Warning: This guide may take you a lot of time to read. It is recommended to read it in one sitting on a Saturday morning, plan your own learning strategy in the afternoon, and start practicing on Sunday.

Overview and Target Audience

My last formal English exam was about five years ago — CET-4, scored 442. In college, I barely passed each semester’s exams with around 60 marks. I was a pure English poor learner. But due to some special needs, I needed an IELTS score of 6.5 or above, so I have been learning English since June 2018. During this process, I went from being unfamiliar with language learning to familiar, from having no clue to knowing some practical training methods, from reading random experiences and constantly switching methods to summarizing my own learning approach.

After four months of intermittent study and nearly two months of full-time intensive preparation, I took the PTE exam (similar to IELTS) in December and scored 63, which corresponds to upper-middle IELTS 6.5, meeting most university admission requirements for studying abroad and immigration. The preparation was extremely tough — I feel it was far more demanding than the college entrance exam. Although I’m still a distance away from fluent communication with native speakers, I have improved several times compared to my CET-4 level of 442. Therefore, I am writing this tutorial as a milestone summary — partly to facilitate my own next-step training plan, and partly to help friends at a similar level who may need it.

The target audience for this tutorial is people who want to spend some time truly mastering English, especially poor English learners. For poor English learners, the miscellaneous tips and experiences found online may not be very helpful and can even be misleading. For example, this Zhihu answer (https://www.zhihu.com/question/22968875/answer/529514279) says that if someone asks the author how to learn English, she would simply say “watch more American dramas to develop language sense.” Fortunately, that answer detailed her actual level and long-term efforts; otherwise, it would mislead a large number of low-level poor English learners into frantically watching American dramas. So when learning English, pay attention to experiences and tutorials that match your own level, otherwise you may go down the wrong path.

If you’re looking for materials like “Master English in 21 Days,” “Memorize 1000 Words in 10 Days,” or “Crack English Writing in 10 Days,” this guide is not for you. Especially for language learning, the learning cycle is measured in months or years. The sooner you realize there are no shortcuts in language learning, the less time and money you will waste on various materials and experiences, and the fewer detours you will take.

Since the effectiveness of various English learning tips online depends on the learner’s level, this guide will delve into the essence of language learning (mainly using Chinese as an example) and think about it in a way that’s easy for programmers to understand, providing training methods and experiences derived from that essence as a reference. The key is for you to design your own training method based on the essence, and at the same time, be able to discern the learning methods and materials you find online and judge whether they are suitable for you.

One more thing: due to my limited level and ongoing learning, I will frequently improve, upgrade, and update this guide. It is strongly recommended to Watch this repo and come back occasionally. Therefore, if you reproduce this guide, please keep the source to avoid outdated information. If you have objections or suggestions, discussions in Issues are also welcome. Also note that because this document is in text form and cannot play audio, I use Chinese to describe some incorrect pronunciations of words. In daily English learning, you should use phonetic symbols instead of Chinese annotations for pronunciation.

Content

Please go to:

• A Brief Analysis of the Essence of Language Learning
• How to Build a Program That Recognizes English
• My Training Method
• FAQ
• Resources, Tool Recommendations, and Further Reading

Afterword

I am still continuously learning English and planning to develop some products to assist learning. Feel free to follow my GitHub (https://github.com/yujiangshui), Zhihu (https://www.zhihu.com/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/yujiangshui) to see the latest progress and some sharing.