About 13 years ago when I was preparing for my public exam, I asked my physics teacher some questions found in the past papers (I have forgotten what they were). Instead of telling me which equations or theories I should use, he just told me to read the answer books and actually refused to explain the logic behind the answers. I confessed that my feeling was a little bit hurt at that moment. And I was very surprised that my teacher told me to learn physics by reading the answer books. But then he went on to say something that would significantly change my life.
“The scientists spent their lives working on those theories. Why do you think you can finish their lifetime works in just two years? You’re a student. Your job is to learn, not to ask why. When you become a scientist in the future, you can ask.”
I know you may not agree with my teacher. But considering that it was just 3 months short of the public exam and there were still a lot of things I didn’t understand, learning by rote was definitely my only way out. In fact, public exams are very repetitive. They never demand you to come up with anything original. You just need to apply the good old theories to the familiar situations. Who cares if you understand the theories or not? You gain scores when you know WHEN TO USE those theories. There is simply no need to understand them in an exam.
For your reference, I learned Physics by rote for three months and got a B. It was not something to write home about but definitely proved that my teacher was right. Yes. It was counter-intuitive and I strongly suspected that he would have lost his job if the principal had known about that. But it WORKED. I then applied this do-not-ask-why learning attitude to my English study and successfully mastered the language. That’s why I said a while ago that it would significantly change my life. It DID change my life.
And I believe that if you can apply do-not-ask-why to your language study. Yours will be changed too.
I can still remember some of my classmates asked my English teacher why we should use “an hour” instead of “a hour” and then my teacher’s explanation just confused them more. Instead of asking why, I applied do-not-ask-why and just learned by rote that “an” should be used before “hour”. I did not care if the “h” is pronounced or not, because I knew that was something beyond my ability to understand (at that time) and I did not want to confuse myself.
So for the next two years, I crazily read a lot of English books and magazines. I could read through a whole Newsweek from front cover to back cover. And I damaged my dictionaries by flipping them so often. I read native English and used dictionaries to learn HOW to use English. I never asked why “were” should be used in sentences like “if I were a bird”. I just observed how native speakers use this “were” and imitated them.
And I observe that usually the “logical” people are bad language learners. They cannot accept that something is true unless they can understand the logic. For example, one of my friends ask me why we should use “he has fallen” instead of “he has fell”. This is not a typo. It’s the exact quote. How in the XXXX should I explain to him why “fallen” should be used? Would it be easier if he just remembers that “fallen” should be used after “he has”?
Another reason why language learners should not ask why is that most of the time they do not have enough related knowledge to understand the explanation. For example, if a learner knows what “vowels” and “silent h” are all about, he will never ask the “an hour” question. On the other hand, if he does not know, then there is no way for him to understand why. As for the “has fell” friend, I quickly found out that he did not even know what “perfect tense” or “past participle” were about.
So I am very unhappy when somebody asks me why “ga” instead of “wa” should be used after “dare” in Japanese. Don’t get me wrong. I am unhappy not because I am mad at them. Instead, knowing that they will fail in their Japanese study makes me really sad. If you also make this kind of question from time to time, listen up:
“The linguists spent their lives trying to give explanations to grammar rules. Why do you think you can finish their lifetime works in just two years? You’re a student. Your job is to learn, not to ask why. When you become a linguist in the future, you can ask.”