《人人都能用英语》前言

Preface to Everyone Can Use English

> By Li Xiaolai · 2010-11-27 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110906164850/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/10250.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

After much struggle, I've finally started reorganizing the manuscript of Everyone Can Use English (《人人都能用英语》). (I don't know why, but it seems I have to write every book at least twice... four or five books so far, and it's been like this every time.) A while ago I [made public the first draft delivered to the publisher this April](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/10234.html), and many readers offered very valuable opinions. This made it necessary for me to rewrite it—although in fact there isn't that much content that has to be reworked. Below is the preface to Everyone Can Use English.

---

The words in this book have, as their whole meaning, just two characters: **"inspiration" (启发).**

Some knowledge you not only have to understand, but understand deeply. To understand it deeply, you not only have to study, but also practise, and even more, repeatedly try and err, gaining encouragement from success and drawing lessons from failure; the road is long and far, and only by searching high and low can you achieve the true result. From something as small as driving to something as big as starting a business, the knowledge required is all like this. Facing knowledge like this, we need to understand What—what exactly is it? We need to understand Why—why is it the way it is? And even more we need to understand How—to master it and apply it, what steps must be followed?

**However, there's another kind of knowledge, often especially important knowledge, that may begin to have a major effect the instant you know it; indeed, in the instant you know it (What), all its major effects have been fully exerted (as for Why and How, they may even have long been self-evident in the instant you understood its What).**

In my personal memory, along the way I've come across a lot of this kind of knowledge that "takes full effect instantly as long as you know it." When I studied probability and statistics and came across the concept of "independent events," that was a typical example of this kind of knowledge. Before that, I naturally assumed that if a coin came up heads 9 times in a row, then on the 10th toss the likelihood of heads would be far lower than the likelihood of tails... In the instant I read about "independent events" in the probability textbook, all the effects of this knowledge had been fully exerted: it can change some people through and through—those who happen to see its practical meaning. Whoever you are, when making almost any decision, you have to consider "likelihood" (in academic terms, "probability"). Many decisions I made before I knew the concept of "independent events," had they come after I knew the concept, I would by no means have chosen that way—this is change, and qualitative change at that.

Another example that left a deep impression on me is learning a programming language when I was very young. Over many years, what influenced me most deeply wasn't the BASIC I learned then, or the PASCAL I learned later, or the C, C++ and so on I learned after that; what influenced me most deeply was a way of thinking—before running a program, browse the code over and over and rehearse it in your head; rather than running the program right after writing it and dealing with errors when they come. This is an important way of saving time and raising efficiency. At first I didn't know how great an effect "understanding this way of operating" had on me; but many years later, observing that most people around me never had the habit of "rehearsing in your head before doing things," I understood the enormous benefit to me of knowing that practice when I was very young—and a benefit that there's no way to explain clearly to those who don't know it. (Perhaps precisely because of this, there are always people who say helplessly: those who can do it, naturally can; those who can't, can't no matter what.)

**More crucially, acquiring this kind of knowledge is "irreversible."** In the instant you know it, it has already changed everything; your life changes because of it and can't be restored. We can never again turn a blind eye to this kind of knowledge, turn a deaf ear to it, ignore it; it takes deep root in an instant and can't be uprooted. People who've studied the common sense of probability and statistics are by and large unable to pay money for lottery tickets... because buying lottery tickets is, in their eyes, an insult to their own intelligence—yet at the same time, lottery tickets are the best-selling product on Earth (bar none), which shows how many people never have the chance in their whole lives to understand that important knowledge.

Of course, having read this far, readers will all agree: perhaps what's most worth spreading (or at least worth working toward) is this kind of knowledge. The greatest significance, even the only significance and purpose, of spreading it is "inspiration." The words in this book have, as their whole meaning, just two characters: "inspiration." **The author sincerely hopes that (some) readers, after reading these words, will be inspired (at least) in their use of English.**

Perhaps some readers will find "too much waffle" in it; that's only because of the nature of this kind of knowledge: it's too "unremarkable in appearance"; if it were made to appear before them in its original form, they wouldn't notice it—however important it actually is. In its original form, they would be even less likely to notice how extremely important it is; otherwise, they would long ago have been changed by it through and through... But in fact, aren't they still the way they were?

Perhaps some readers, naturally following the inertia of thinking, hope to see more "How." But as explained before, for most of this kind of knowledge, in the instant the reader understands the "What," its effect has already been fully exerted; "Why" may be only a superfluous explanation, and "How" is either self-evident or varies from person to person and needs readers to feel their own way...

**This kind of knowledge is destined to belong to a minority.** Besides the reasons already mentioned, there's another important reason: people only want to spread knowledge they believe—even if that so-called knowledge is simply wrong. What matters isn't right or wrong; what matters is feeling. Although "feeling right" and "being right" may be a hundred and eight thousand li apart, for most people they're simply the same thing; at least, they'd rather they were the same thing. So what's easily passed on is things "that naturally make people believe (feel) they're right," not things "that are in fact right."

A few years ago, when I wrote [Make Time Your Friend](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/464.html), I was somewhat pessimistic about its spread. Because I knew that what those words conveyed was overwhelmingly this kind of principle, this kind of knowledge—whose nature determines the difficulty of spreading it. So at that time I felt that if just a scattered few people could be changed by those words, it would already be a great blessing. The internet age is full of miracles: those words were browsed online at tens of thousands of clicks a month. And after [it was printed and published as a book in 2009](http://www.douban.com/subject/3609132/), it was actually reprinted 11 times within a year, surprising me once again. However low the proportion of readers who truly accept those principles, because the base is enormous, I know I've still solidly changed a lot of people.

It's precisely this motivation that makes me willing and patient to write the words in this book. Knowing that they'll in any case change some people again—even though I myself can never know exactly which people are changed in the end. Life is full of helplessness, yet some people, lucky like me, can after all change something. And so those helplessnesses, those misfortunes, fade a little.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.