我们常说要通过阅读英文书积累词汇，但具体怎么做呢？
通过阅读英文书「积累词汇」并不够有效。如果把一本书当作一本词汇书读，我们还不如读词汇书。
读书更适合「激活」词汇——一方面遇到新词汇，混个眼熟；一方面复习熟悉的词汇，了解它具体的使用场景。
因此在具体的阅读中，我们要不断关注词汇，并且从一个词汇开始主动联想和它相关的词，这样我们才能在阅读英文书的同时提升词汇。
在这里分享一个我的学习思路，我把它称为「主题词汇意识」。
即在阅读的过程中，观察、收集、整理同一主题的词汇，这样做的好是：当我们阅读同一主题的文章时，我们更有自信。当说和写到和这个主题相关的内容时，这些词汇更容易组团跳入脑海。
记一个单词忘得快，但如果给这个单词一个主题，我们就给大脑创造了更多回想的触发点。
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以 Awaken Your Genius 第一章为例，和大家分享几个我在阅读中会关注的「主题词汇」。
🟠 先看这样几句话，这些话来自书中的内容，按出现顺序排列。
读的时候心里想：如果让你从中学英语你会怎么学？Eric 为什么会把这些句子放在一起，它们有什么共同的特点嘛？
- Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
- Show your child how geometry and fractions will help them fix their bike. Explain to your employees how the new marketing strategy they need to execute will help land a worthy moonshot.
- But I wasn’t learning anything. I was regurgitating a string of meaningless words that defined osmosis, and I had no idea what those words actually meant.
- The student absorbs knowledge by osmosis and regurgitates it on the exam. Education is all about the passive accumulation of yesterday’s answers to yesterday’s questions.
- Although educators pay lip service to valuing creativity, many end up discouraging it in practice.
- Instead, let’s ask, “What made you curious today?” or “What questions are you interested in exploring?” or “How would you figure out the answers?” or any other question designed to get students to think for themselves and to put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom.
- When you spoon-feed right answers to others, you’re acting like a personal trainer who “helps” clients by lifting their weights for them.
- I experienced the truth of this saying firsthand. In my early years as a professor, I upset several prominent scholars by writing a series of articles that bucked conventional wisdom in my field.
这几段话的主题都和教育相关，主要可以分成两派，一个是有独立思考的教育，一个是填鸭式。语言上我会把它们总结为这样几个表达：
- Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods
- XX will help land a worthy moonshot
- regurgitating (a string of meaningless words)
- absorbs knowledge by osmosis and regurgitates it on the exam
- educators pay lip service to valuing creativity
- get students to think for themselves and to put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom
- you spoon-feed right answers to others
- bucked conventional wisdom in my field
我们还可以继续把它分成两类，一类是「正向的」，即我们期待的教育，我会想到这些说法以及用法：
1）XX will help land a worthy moonshot（鼓励他人要目标远大）
2）get students to think for themselves and to put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom（这里的 put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom 简单形象，强调上一句的 get students to think for themselves）
3）bucked conventional wisdom（呼应上面的 put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom）
我可以怎么用呢？我随口说了这样的句子：
If you want to land a worthy moonshot, you need to focus less on the "WHAT" and more on the "WHY". You have to be willing to put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom and even dare to buck it.
一类是「负向的」，即吐槽填鸭式教育，我们可以总结为：
1）Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods（也就是说学生通过教育后不敢 buck the conventional wisdom 了）
2）regurgitate（非常准确的词，表示未经消化机械地引用、重复）
3）absorbs knowledge by osmosis（by osmosis 和上面的 regurgitate 相似，在这里表示没有刻意学习，潜移默化地被影响）
4）XX pays lip service to valuing creativity（pay lip service 表示「光说不做」，可以用来吐槽 the powers that be 们的不作为）
5） spoon-feed right answers to others（这里的 spoon-feed 是不是和上面的 regurgitate，by osmosis 一起记忆？比如老师 spoon-feed 学生，学生就会 absorb by osmosis and regurgitate it on the exam。）
我可以怎么用呢？
我想到当我吐槽我们的传统教育时，我可能会说：
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. The powers that be pay lip service to prizing creativity. In practice, teachers spoon-feed correct answers to students, who absorb them by osmosis and regurgitate them on exams.
你可能觉得这样做是不是太麻烦了啊？
我在阅读时并没有这样整理。
我看到一个说法时，会想到「刚才在聊这个主题的时候，还出现了一个相关的说法」，然后在脑中让两个说法打个招呼就完了。比如看到 by osmosis，我想刚遇到过 regurgitate，后面读到 spoon-feed 时，我又把它们 3 个联系到了一起——这样的联想就是我们的主动学习。
学的时候有联想，用的时候也更容易一拖二、一拖三组团出现助我们一臂之力。
无论是读几页书还是读一篇文章，从语言学习的角度看，要能读完后看到这些「主题词汇」。
每一次学到的英文表达不是一粒粒散沙，而是一串串葡萄，这个学习速度会随着你的进步不断加快，继而开启一个正向的阅读-学习词汇的正循环
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