While I was cleaning up the room that we are going to use for my new baby girl, I found this (slightly broken) plaster relief plaque of the colossal German writer Goethe in a cabinet.
So many memories of my student days came back to me when I saw this plaque, haha.
I received this as part of an academic prize for a paper I wrote in 2010, when I was studying abroad in Munich, Germany. I was studying German Literature as a guest student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich then.
I can’t remember exactly what that paper was about now, but I believe it had something to do with the concept and representation of “utopia” in the writings of the German Enlightenment writer Christoph Martin Wieland.
Anyway, I was proud to win this award while studying in Germany (among German students!).
This was not the only academic award in a foreign language that I received in university. When I was back at Harvard, my home university, I also received an award from the Swedish department before I graduated.
I am not trying to brag. 🤣 Finding this plaque just made me want to share that I have been a dedicated student of foreign languages and literatures my whole life, and my passion in this area still drives my work as a foreign language teacher today.
I couldn’t be successful in learning foreign languages and literatures myself if I never had insight into Linguistics concepts and how languages work -- so my wish as a teacher is to systematize and share these insights with all of my existing and prospective students in their English-learning journeys.
Foreign languages really are not that daunting once you see clearly how they work in a systematic light.
If you would like to learn English through the same kind of structural insight that has shaped my own lifelong study of foreign languages, the best place to start is my core course, Core Concepts of English.
In that course, I created a framework to help students see how English sentences work — grammar is not a pile of disconnected rules but rather belongs to a consistent language system that can be understood, analyzed, and gradually mastered.
我在收拾準備給新女兒用的房間時，在櫃裡找到了這個有點破損的 Goethe（歌德）石膏浮雕牌。
一看到這個浮雕牌，很多學生時代的回憶都回來了，哈哈。
這是我 2010 年在德國慕尼黑留學時，因為一篇論文獲得的學術獎項的一部分。當時我在 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich 作為交換生修讀德國文學。
我現在已經不太記得那篇論文具體是寫甚麼了，但我印象中應該和德國啟蒙時期作家 Christoph Martin Wieland 作品中的「utopia（烏托邦）」概念和呈現有關。
總之，當年在德國讀書時，能夠在德國學生之中獲得這個獎項，我是很自豪的。
這也不是我在大學時唯一一次因為外語相關學術表現而獲獎。後來回到我的母校哈佛大學後，我畢業前也曾經獲得瑞典文學系的獎項。
我不是想炫耀。🤣 只是找到這個浮雕牌之後，突然很想和大家分享：我其實一生以來都是一個很投入的外語學生，而這方面的熱情，到今日仍然推動著我作為外語老師的工作。
如果我自己從來沒有對語言學概念和語言怎樣運作有深刻理解，我不可能成功學習外語和外語文學。所以，作為老師，我的願望就是把這些理解系統化，並分享給我所有現有和未來的學生，幫助大家走自己的英文學習旅程。
當你能夠在一個有系統的角度下清楚看見外語怎樣運作時，外語其實真的沒有那麼可怕。
如果你也想透過這種曾經深深影響我自己外語學習的結構性理解去學習英文，最適合開始的地方，就是我的核心課程《Core Concepts of English》。
在這個課程裡，我建立了一套框架，幫助學生看清楚英文句子怎樣運作——文法不是一堆零散規則，而是屬於一個有一致性的語言系統；而這個系統是可以被理解、分析，並逐步掌握的。