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0先自问一个问题，到底学来是为了暂时的考试，还是为你一生所用。
Today I want to ask a bold but important question:
Why is it that many Chinese students — including high scorers — actually have a lower real English level than they, or their parents, believe?
This is something I see again and again as an English teacher.
And no, it’s not because kids are lazy.
It’s because of how English is taught and measured.
Let me explain.
First: What is “good English,” really?
Many students — and parents — believe that “good English” means:
Using long, formal sentences
Getting high scores on exams
Memorizing vocabulary lists
Saying things like “In my opinion, it is of vital importance that…But in the real world, good English isn’t just big words.
It’s:
Expressing your ideas clearly
Speaking comfortably in real time
Understanding people from different cultures
Reacting to new situations — not just memorized ones
Here’s the truth:
You can sound “smart” but not be fluent.
You can write beautiful test essays, but still struggle in a real conversation.
And second: Many students only compare inside China
When a student gets 140 out of 150 on a national exam, it feels like they’re already fluent.
But that score is based on:
Multiple choice
Memorized sentence structures
Artificial tasks
They’ve been trained to beat the system, not to use the language.
because they’re only comparing themselves to other test-takers, they don’t realize how much they’re missing in real-world usage.
Let’s be honest:
Most students have never written an email in English.
Most students cannot hold a 5-minute spontaneous conversation with a native speaker.
Most students freeze if you interrupt their memorized speaking script.
Why?
Because their confidence is built on a system that measures performance, not communication.
So what happens next?
They enter college, meet foreign teachers or global classmates… and get stuck.
They study abroad… and realize they can’t follow real conversations.
They go into job interviews or presentations… and suddenly feel like their English is “broken.”
But it’s not broken.
It was never built with real usage in mind.
It was built for scores, not for skills.
If a student has only test scores and no real skill,
of course they break down when faced with true communication.
Because real English is messy. Emotional. Fast.
It’s not a test. It’s a tool for connection.
