在本版上周的文章中，袁岳先生提出了中国年轻人何时留学最好的问题。他的建议是，在研究生阶段留学能使人在洞察中外文化、开阔视野方面获益最大，并且不会破坏这个人与中国的“联系”。

 “联系”所包含的面很广：一种基本上是中国人的感觉，在用一种（而不是唯一的一种）中国方式处事时感到很自在，而不容忽视的是，保持国内的那些有用关系，没有了这些关系是很难在国内发展事业的。袁先生在这一点上无疑是对的：他说，在研究生阶段出国的人极不可能有失去根的感觉———或者说当他们回到中国后，不会作为“准外国人”而被边缘化。

In an article that appeared on this page last week, Mr Yuan Yue asked when it is best for young Chinese to study abroad. He suggested that study at the postgraduate level yields the greatest dividends in cultural insight and widening of perspective without damaging a person's "connectedness" with China.

"Connectedness" covers a lot of ground: a feeling of being primarily Chinese, a sense of being most at ease in dealing with life in a (not "the") Chinese way, and not least, retaining those useful connections inside China without which careers here are difficult to launch. Mr Yuan is no doubt correct in asserting that people who go abroad as postgraduates are least likely to feel uprooted -- or marginalized as quasi-foreigners when they return to China.

我对这个问题的看法却很不同。我首先会问，某个年轻人为什么打算去留学，根据其原因，出国学习的最佳时间会很不一样。以我的经验来看，留学的原因通常是3个：想掌握英语，想学习如何在国际环境下工作，想成为某个领域中有创造力和活力的一员。当然了，这几条理由之间往往是相互关联的，并且都包含了另一层意思，即摆脱中国教育方式中广泛存在的对个人发展的严重限制,这些教育方法往往会损害学生的自发性、想像力、观察力和独创能力。其结果呢，从一个西方人的角度来看，则造成了对创造力和职业潜能令人吃惊的损害，而这种损害往往是不可补救的。

要想成功地学好一门外语，关键是要寓学于乐，并在明智的指导下多接触外语。现在据我观察，如果说有一件事中国的学校是持怀疑态度，那就是形式自由地在玩中学。作为一名在华的外语教师，我的体验是，大多数在其他方面倒还聪明的中国大学生几乎没想过、也许是没有能力将课上所学的东西变为娱乐的对象。对于他们来说，学与玩是对立的，“在玩中学”这一概念是难以理解的。新词汇和新句型被小心地归在头脑中的一个专区，就算哪天会被调出来，那也只是为了应付考试。以新学的语言知识来娱乐是很少发生的。中国的外语阅读教学在某种程度上算是成功一些，可最终还是几乎没有哪个学生觉得阅读是有乐趣的，其结果是，他们很少主动去阅读———而在我看来，这意味着学校教育的失败。由于写作能力有赖于广泛的阅读和对基本口语的掌握，他们的写作能力近乎为零，这也是不足为怪的。

My approach to this question, however, would be quite different. I would start by asking why a given young person is going abroad to study. Depending upon the reason, the best time for foreign study would vary considerably. In my experience, the usual reasons are three in number: to master English, to learn to work in an international environment, to become a creative and dynamic practitioner of a profession. Of course, these tend to be related to one another, and all imply something else: escaping the severe limitations imposed on individual development by the educational methods prevalent in China. These methods tend to undermine spontaneity, imagination, powers of observation, and independent initiative in students; the result, from a Westerner's perspective, is a shocking -- and often irremediable -- curtailment of creativity and professional potential.

To learn a foreign language successfully, the key requirements are playfulness and intelligently guided exposure to the language. Now from what I have observed, if there's one thing Chinese schools view with suspicion, it is free-form playfulness. My experience as a language instructor is that most otherwise intelligent Chinese university students have little inclination or perhaps even capacity to play with what they are taught in the classroom. Work and play for them are antithetical, and the notion of "serious play" hard to grasp. New vocabulary and language patterns are carefully filed away in a special mental library, to be brought out, if ever, only for tests. Simply playing with new elements of language seldom happens. The teaching of reading in China is somewhat more successful, only in the end few students find reading fun, and as a result they do little of it on their own -- which, in my opinon, means the schools have failed. Writing skills, dependent as they are on wide-ranging reading and mastery of basic spoken English, are, not surprisingly, next to nil.

                                            编辑：高攀亮