正文
The question then is how do you do that？ Well, it's actually really easy. You look around for people who can already do it, you look for situations where it's already working and then you identify the principles and apply them. It's called modeling and I've been looking at language learning and modeling language learning for about fifteen to twenty years now.
接下来的问题是，怎样做到？这实际上是很容易的。看看你周围那些已经做到的人，寻找在什么情况下，它是有效的，识别这些原则后好好利用它们。这是一种高科技模仿，而我已经用这种方法研究语言学习大约15到20年了。接着多年的观察，我得到的结论是，任何一个成年人能在6个月内把任何外语学得流利。
And my conclusion, my observation from this is that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months.Now when I say this, most people think I'm crazy, this is not possible. So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress, it's all about expanding our limits.
呐，当我说成年人能在6个月内学会任何一种外语，大多数人都认为我疯了，这是不可能的。因此，先让我提醒在座各位关于人类历史的进展，所有人类历史都是在扩展我们的极限。
In 1950 everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956 and from there it's got shorter and shorter. 100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn't fly。Except it does and we all know this. How does heavy stuff fly?We reorganize the materials using principles that we have learned from observing nature, birds in this case.
在20世纪50年代，所有人都相信跑出4分钟1英里的成绩是不可能的，后来罗杰?班尼斯特在1965年做到了，而从那开始跑1英里的时间变得越来越短。100年前，每个人都相信重的物体不能飞。它不但可以飞，而且我们大家都知道这个事实。那么，重物是怎样飞的呢？我们观察大自然的原理，在此是鸟飞行的原理，，根据这些我们重新组织材料来使重物可以飞。
And today we've gone ever further, so you can fly a car. You can buy one of these for a couple hundred thousand US dollars. We now have cars in the world that can fly.And there's a different way to fly that we've learned from squirrels.
如今，我们甚至走得更远，你可以驾驶一辆会飞的汽车。你可以花几十万美元购买一辆这样的汽车。我们现在有了会飞的汽车了。在能飞的松鼠的身上我们学会了另一种不同的方式来飞。
So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does, build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.
你只要做的是去复制一只飞鼠如何飞的原理，建造一套翼服，你就可以像一只飞鼠那样可以在天空中飞翔。
Now, most people, a lot of people, I wouldn't say everybody but a lot of people think they can't draw.However there are some key principles, five principles that you can apply to learning to draw and you can actually learn to draw in five days.So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this.
那么，大多数人，很多人，我不会说所有人，但很多人认为他们不会画画。然而这里有一些重要的原则，5个原则你可以利用来学习画画并且实际上你可以在5天内学会。如果你平时画成这样，那么你学习5天这些原则, 然后应用它们，5天后，你可以画成这样。
Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do. And I looked at this and I went ‘wow,' so that's how I look like when I'm concentrating so intensely that my brain is exploding.
我知道这是真的，因为那是我第一次画的，5 天后我应用了这些原则，我可以做到这样。当我看着这个，我“哇”了一声，那就是我非常强烈的专注，专注到我大脑快要爆炸的样子呀！
So, anybody can learn to draw in five days and in the same way, with the same logic, anybody can learn a second language in six months.
因此，任何人都能够用 5 天时间学会画画，同样地，用同样的方式和逻辑，任何人都可以在 6 个月内学会一门外语。
How: there are five principles and seven actions.There may be a few more but these are absolutely core.And before I get into those I just want to talk about two myths, dispel two myths.
怎么做呢？有 5个原则和 7个行动可以参考。可能有更多，但这些绝对是核心部分。进入这些点之前我想先说说两个误区并消除它们。
The first is that you need talent.Let me tell you about Zoe. Zoe came from Australia, went to Holland, was trying to learn Dutch, struggling a great deal and finally people were saying: ‘you're completely useless,' ‘you're not talented,' ‘give up,' ‘you're a waste of time' and she was very, very depressed.And then she came across these five principles, she moved to Brazil and she applied them and within six months she was fluent in Portuguese, so talent doesn't matter.
误区一, 你需要有天赋。让我跟你们说说关于佐伊的事情。佐伊是澳大利亚人，她去到荷兰并尝试学习荷兰语。她非常挣扎，最后人们跟她说，“没用的，”“你没有天赋，”“还是放弃吧，”“你根本就是在浪费时间。”她对此感到非常沮丧。后来，她无意中发现了这 5 个原则，去了巴西，并把这些原则应用到她学习葡萄牙语中，6 个月内，她可以说流利的葡萄牙语了。因此，天赋不重要。
People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language. But look around Hong Kong, look at all the westerners who've been here for ten years, who don't speak a word of Chinese.Look at all the Chinese living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada who have been there ten, twenty years and they don't speak any English. Immersion per se doesn't not work, why? Because a drowning man cannot learn to swim.
人们还认为学会一门外语最好的方式就是，到说该门语言的国家去。但是看看在香港已经呆了 10 年的西方人，还是一句中文也不会说。看看那些居住在美国、英国、澳大利亚、加拿大 10 年、20 年的中国人，还是不会一句英文。只呆在一个新的国家本身是没有用的。为什么？因为溺水的人是学不会游泳的。
When you don't speak a language you're like a baby and if you drop yourself into a context which is all adults talking about stuff over your head, you won't learn. So, what are the five principles that you need to pay attention to;
当你不能说那种语言，你就像一个婴儿，如果你进入一个环境，那里全部都是成年人在叽叽呱呱的说一些你完全听不明白的话，你还是学不会。那么你需要注意的那 5 个原则是什么呢？
First: there are four words, attention, meaning, relevance and memory, and these interconnect in very important ways. Especially when you're talking about learning.Come with me on a journey through a forest.You go on a walk through a forest and you see something like this.Little marks on a tree, maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't.
首先，有四个词，注意力、含义、关联和记忆。这些在很多非常重要的方面是相互连接的，特别在你谈论学习时。请跟随我来一趟森林之旅。你穿越森林，然后你看到一个像这样的东西。你可能注意到树上的这些小标志，可能没有。
You go another fifty metres and you see this.You should be paying attention.Another fifty metres, if you haven't been paying attention, you see this.And at this point, you're paying attention. And you've just learned that this is important, it's relevant because it means this, and anything that is related, any information related to your survival is stuff that you're going to pay attention to and therefore you're going to remember it.
