7. LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE

　　7.离开你的舒适区

　　Willingness to make mistakes means being ready to put yourself in potentially embarrassing situations: talk to strangers in the language, ask for directions, order food, try to tell a joke. The more often you do this, the bigger your comfort zone becomes and the more at ease you can be in new situations:

　　经过上一步，意味着你做好准备可以面对尴尬：和陌生人聊天、问路、点菜、开始讲笑话。突破越多你的舒适区就越大，在各种情境里就更加应对自如：

　　“At the beginning you’re going to encounter difficulties: maybe the pronunciation, maybe the grammar, the syntax, or you don’t really get the sayings. But I think the most important thing is to always develop this feel. Every native speaker has a feel for his or her own language, and that’s basically what makes a native-speaker – whether you can make the language your own.”

　　“一开始你会遇到一些难题：可能是发音，可能是语法，或是你还没学到的表达方式，重要的是培养自己的感觉。所有人说自己的母语都会有语感，能不能把外语学成母语，关键就看有没有这个语感了!

　　8. LISTEN

　　8.仔细听

　　You must learn to look before you can draw:“We’re able to pronounce anything, it’s just we’re not used to doing it. For example the rolled r doesn’t exist in my form of English. When I was learning Spanish there were words with the hard r in them like perro and reunión. For me, the best way to go about mastering that is actually to hear it constantly, to listen to it and to kind of visualize or imagine how that is supposed to be pronounced, because for every sound there is a specific part of the mouth or throat that we use in order to achieve that sound.”

　　人在学会画画之前，一定先学会观察：“要相信你有能力掌握所有发音方式，不过没有习惯而已。举个栗子，英语里没有R的大舌头音，我学西班牙语时就遇到perro或reunión这种需要卷舌才能发出的单词，我找到最好的学习方法就是不停地听别人说。先听，然后想象这个音是用口腔的那个部位发的，再模仿。

　　If you can’t watch and imitate a native-speaker in person, watching foreign-language films and TV is a good substitute.

　　要是身边没有老外供你观察，看电影和电视剧也是不错的选择。

　　9. TALK TO YOURSELF

　　9.自言自语

　　“It might sound really weird, but actually speaking to yourself in a language is a great way to practice if you’re not able to use it all the time.” This can keep new words and phrases fresh in your mind and build up your confidence for the next time you speak with someone.“

　　听起来可能有点怪，但在你没法整天使用这门语言的时候，自言自语是练习的好办法。”让新的单词、词汇经常跳跃在你的脑海里，下次开口聊天前你也会更有准备!

　　10. RELAX!

　　10.心态放轻松

　　You are not going to annoy people by speaking their language poorly. If you preface any interaction with, “I’m learning and I’d like to practice…” most people will be patient, encouraging and happy to oblige.

　　你不会因为讲得不好就惹人厌烦的，如果聊天开始前你说：“我正在学，非常希望练习……”大多数人都会很耐心，乐意鼓励和帮助你的。

　　BUT WHAT’S THE POINT?

　　但是有什么意义呢?

　　We’ve gone into HOW to start learning a language, but are you still on the fence about WHY to learn? Matthew has one last point to make:

　　我们已经探讨了怎么开始学外语，可你是不是还停留在为什么要学外语?马修还有一个观点：

　　“I think each language has a certain way of seeing the world. If you speak one language then you have a different way of analyzing and interpreting the world than the speaker of another language does. Even if they’re really closely-related languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, which are to a certain extent mutually intelligible, they are at the same time two different worlds – two different mindsets. “

　　我认为每种语言都有其特定的认识世界的方式。不同的语种，会让你们有不同的对世界的分析和认知。即使是两种相似度很高的语言，如西班牙语和葡萄牙语，在某种程度上确实互通，但同时他们又代表两个不同的世界——不同的思维方式。”

　　“Therefore, having learned other languages and been surrounded by other languages, I couldn’t possibly choose only one language because it would mean really renouncing the possibility to be able to see the world in a different way. Not in one way, but in many different ways. So the monolingual lifestyle, for me, is the saddest, the loneliest, the most boring way of seeing the world. There are so many advantages of learning a language; I really can’t think of any reason not to.”

　　“因此，学会了不同语言，置身在不同的文化，我很难再选择单语言的生活方式，因为这意味着你将放弃另一种看世界的方式，不仅一种，而是很多种。对我而言，单语种的生活是最悲哀、最孤独、最无趣的了。学习外语的好处如此之多，我真的想不到不去学的理由。”

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（责任编辑：何莹莹）