“概念”比什么都重要

byXIAOLAIon2008/11/30·6 COMMENTS

in我要问笑来

一学生来信问：

Sorry to bother you. I’m a student in Singapore and wanna learn some bio modules. There are many terminologies to memorize. Which way is better, memorizing their English meaning or Chinese meaning? Usually I prefer the first way. It’s natural to me to use English to learn English. But it will spend much to handle all those terminologies. Or should I just use the first way to prepare early? Thanks.

我的回答：

When you’re learning a new term in any subject, what you should concentrate upon more is to fully understand what a term means, what it refers to, what the connotation and the extension of the term exactly are… As for what the Chinese counterpart of the term is not of much importance, but if you have extra time, you’d better invest some on connecting English terminologies to their counterparts in Chinese. The work must be time-consuming, and painstaking; but, trust me, it’ll finally pay a lot.

实际上，学习任何学科的时候，该领域中的专有概念是最重要的。不夸张地讲，任何一个学科的所有知识，都是由这些概念一点一点搭建起来的。看着房子的时候，不会觉得砖头有多么重要；但是对盖房子的人来说，砖头分为好多种，完成不同的功用……这就是内行和外行的区别。

于是，开始学习任何一样东西的时候，要做好准备“需要耗费很多时间精力才能彻底弄清那些最基础的概念”；并且要知道在这上面花费多少时间精力都不过分，因为，对基础的概念有了透彻的了解，剩下的就只有组合运用而已了；而如若对基础概念的处理只不过是囫囵吞枣，那么在其后的路途上，每一处都可能存在陷阱和障碍。