Today (yesterday) I finished my last English class — though I skipped billiards and lunch — and this was the last class of the graduate English course this semester, and perhaps also the last English class of my entire student life. I have no choice but to write a piece in commemoration.
This semester’s English class took up a great deal of my energy. Every week there were one or two writing assignments and one or two oral presentation scripts to prepare, as well as getting up early two or three times a week, occupying most of my study time. Although the total amount of work could hardly be said to be enormous, since my assignments always had to be left until the last minute before I could crank them out, and since after every class my biological clock had to be thrown slightly out of whack, coping with English class became my basic state this semester.
In terms of results, my English ability probably has not improved all that much. I still have obstacles in listening and speaking, and for reading and writing I still have to rely on Ciba. But I still feel that this semester’s English class was absolutely not wasted. At the very least, my feelings about English and my confidence in it have clearly changed for the better.
In the past, English classes were not without writing practice, but I never regarded them as real “writing articles”; they were nothing more than exam drills. Moreover, in the past English compositions were all written on paper. This semester’s writing tasks, however, were unprecedented. First, the foreign teacher was very serious. He was obviously not grading our compositions as test-prep assignments, but reading and commenting on them as real articles, just as our Chinese teacher used to read our weekly journal entries. Besides vocabulary and grammar, he was also concerned with the article’s ideas and viewpoints. Second, the topics and length of the articles were both substantial. In particular, the weekly journal assignment, which gave two famous quotations as themes each time, involved big questions such as human nature, freedom, religion, and the world. Writing on these topics inevitably required me to express my own thoughts and positions. Finally, and most importantly, all these articles were written on the computer (the journals had to be submitted in handwritten form, but I also wrote them out on the computer first and then copied them by hand).
Writing English compositions on the computer has several important implications: first, it is completely detached from the feeling I had back in the day when I wrote English on exam papers, and is much closer to the feeling I have when writing papers and blogging; second, English presented in computer characters seems more solemn; third, I can always use an electronic dictionary, a search engine, and Google Translate to assist my writing.
This last point is the most important. With the help of dictionaries and Google Translate, I became familiar with quite a number of words and usages, and my confidence in using English was strengthened. But of course, this approach may instead have deepened my dependence on digital tools when reading and writing English; in fact, writing away from the computer has not truly improved. But what, after all, is my “real” English ability? Is it the ability to read and write without any tools, or is it the ability I will actually need when I come into contact with English in the future? In the real situations in which I need to deal with English, in most cases I can actually use digital tools. Digital tools are an extension of my abilities, and my proficiency in using them is also part of my actual ability.
Being able to rely on digital tools truly enabled me to treat English composition as composition. In the past, because of my limited vocabulary, I was not choosing words and forming sentences according to my own thoughts; rather, I was deciding what to write based on what kinds of words and sentence patterns were possible. Now, what I think of can basically be expressed, so I no longer have to let limitations in vocabulary restrict my thoughts. But on the other hand, language is still constrained by vocabulary and grammar, and I felt this very deeply while writing: the very same thoughts, if written in Chinese, might follow one kind of train of thought, but when written in English, even though I have not yet managed to think in English, and what I write is still to a great extent Chinglish, I nevertheless find myself consciously or unconsciously adjusting my way of expression and my argumentative strategy. The clearest impression lies in the use of punctuation. Many times in Chinese one can just “string commas all the way to the end,” and although that is not very elegant, it does not create any major deviation in grammar or logic. In English, however, full stops are clearly used much more often; each sentence needs to form a self-sufficient structure, with subject, verb, and object, with subordinate clauses nested within one another, and with various terms occupying different positions combining into a whole within a single sentence.
I will not dwell on reflections about language for now. Here I simply want to commemorate English class. I’ll end by posting two English journal entries here as a memento:
JOURNAL WRITINGS I
“A SUPERIOR PERSON WILL FOCUS ON WHAT IS TRUTH, AN INFERIOR PERSON ON WHAT IS PROFITABLE.” ——CONFUCIUS
The original text of this maxim is “君子喻于义，小人喻于利”. The term “superior/inferior person” especially refers to ethical aspects. And the word “truth” corresponds to “义”, which also means “justice”, “rightness” or “reason”. Confucius told us a virtuous person should regard the “Reason” higher than “effect”. When we are judging whether something should be done or not, we should first consider the reasons for doing this. Once we decided to do it, we would then weigh the advantages and disadvantages in order to get better results.
This does not mean that inferior people would never consider justice or reason. They also talk about the rightness, but on the basis of the profits. What they regard as a right action is which could effect the biggest profit. They consider that the reason of an action should be judged just through its consequences.
A superior person needs not to be absolutely unselfish. He might has selfish desires, but could sympathize with others who have the same desires. On the other hand, an inferior person does not necessarily selfish. They might focus on the profits of public. The essential difference is that, actually, an inferior person never cares about the Virtue.
It is nothing wrong to weigh the consequences carefully. But how can we weigh something? We always need a ruler to measure the effects, and to identify profits and losses. We should first focus on our moral rule, thus we could choose a profitable action. The inferior people do not have their own rule, and they judge just according to the values of custom or popular.
JOURNAL WRITINGS II
What are the common beliefs or differences about humanity between Christianity and Confucius.
Both Christianity and Confucianism are teaching people to perform good deeds. They believe that one should not be selfish, but to love others as himself.
Love is a key concept of Christianity and Confucianism. Confucius and Mencius said that benevolence means love of humankind（仁者爱人）. And the apostle Paul said “the end of the commandment is charity.”(1 Timothy 1:5) Charity means love of humankind. The two religions both regarded “love” as the most important part of humanity.
However, there are some significant differences between their concepts of “love”. The Christian “love” is some kind of universal and indiscriminate love; while the Confucian “love” is mainly different and graded.
In Christianity, first of all, each person is God’s creation, so the most fundamental relationship is the relationship between human and God. There is an infinite difference between human and God. And then everyone is equal before God. Christianity hardly emphasizes the level of human relations.
But in Confucianism, first of all, each person is created and brought up by his parents, so the most fundamental relationship is the relationship between children and parents. The relationship between family members is clearly not equal. Everyone plays different roles in different positions in the family. Although family members should respect each other, the way for a son to treat his father would be very different to the way for a father to treat his son.
Confucius said, “filial piety and fraternal submission are the root of all benevolent actions.” Confucianism believed that the manner of treating others is an extension of the manner of treating one’s family members. So the community, just like a big family, may also have various levels of status.
Confucianism tends to support a hierarchical society, but its belief is not simply wrong. The natural love is really graded. And the grade of love does not necessarily mean discrimination. People need independence and impartiality, but they also need to feel loved. The universal love seems so abstract that people could rarely feel intimacy from it. The modern democracy gives people the rights to equality, but it could not tell us how to love others. The teachings of Confucius are still thought-provoking.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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