Thoughts on learning English directly

I used to treat English as a subject to be translated. I would read a sentence, pause, and rebuild it in Chinese before I felt I had understood it. That habit kept me at arm's length from the language.

What changed

The turning point was small and unglamorous: I started keeping a running notebook of expressions instead of vocabulary lists. A list asks you to memorize; a notebook asks you to notice. When I write down I wouldn't go that far, I am not storing a definition — I am marking a moment where the phrase did a specific, useful job.

What I try now

• Read for meaning first, translate only when stuck.
• Notice collocations: take a look, have a say, make sense.
• Re-read my own notes every so often. Old entries resurface and do more work than I expected.

It is slow, and it is supposed to be slow. The goal is not to accumulate words but to make the language feel like a place I can walk around in.