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INTRODUCTION
In my experience the most enjoyable way to learn a foreign language is through the use of stories. Stories create mental pictures in your mind to which it becomes relatively easy to attach unfamiliar sounds. Everybody loves a story. Quintessential Language uses this natural inclination by reducing the language learning process to its simplest, elemental form, to the bare bones. I call learning a language through literature “Quintessential” for it is the pure, highly concentrated essence of language acquisition. As you progress from story to story, you will find that with a few repetitions of each story, you will begin to acquire a vocabulary and a sense of structure possessed by the native speaker. The sentences which make up the stories are short and the images they
convey are clear. Practice everything out loud. Make it a habit to match the
phrase of one language with its equivalent in the other 抱起她的碗 = picked up her bowl, 所有的貴人 = all the great men. This practice will enable you to express the same thought in several languages. This automatic association is the essence of translation and the above practice will help you to become a translator should you so desire to become one. Learning a new language is essentially acquiring a storehouse of ready-made sentences and phrases that you can combine at will to express your own thoughts and wishes. By working like this, you will find that it is only a question of time until you become proficient. Tom Curtis , 11/9/2001
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