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It has been about one onth since you first came into English department in SCU; I believe that you all have learned a lot, like: doing the research, giving a presentation, writing a paper, participating in the discussion etc. And these experiences will be very important in your following learning strategies, so be sure to practice it frequently. Imaging that the first semester of your fresh year is the first gear of a car. The function of the first gear is to let the car moving forward and rising speed at the very beginning of the acceleration. Because the first gear performs the strongest torsion of the engine (which represents your ability), so it allows the engine moving the car easily. So does your first semester. The courses of this semester teach many important concepts, skills, learning attitude, culture background etc. all these knowledge are also very basic. Their function to you for your leaning is similar to the function of first gear to the car for the acceleration. However, after the car start moving, the speed of the car would stay on a certain range and couldn’t go faster with the first gear; what’s worse, the continually high rational speed would raise the oil temperature and the pressure of the engine, and the high temperature and pressure may destroy the engine. That is to say, if you want to have a better performance in the following years, with only the basic skills you have learned in the first semester wouldn’t be enough. Therefore, the engine needs the second gear to accelerate the car into the next speed range. And the second gear of your learning is the second semester. In this semester, the basic knowledge you have learned would be extended one step further, and the training of the classes would be also a little bit tougher. But don’t give it up, since learning contains many different strategies, and to adapt each strategy needs different abilities. The process of learning is similar to the process of car acceleration. The driver has to switch the gear at the right moment again and again, so that the speed of the car could rise from the lower strategies to the higher ones. Therefore, to get into the higher learning strategy, a good learner would be ready to obtain the new stuffs which are more extended than the basic knowledge they have learned during the “first gear” period. And that’s what you are going to do in the following semesters. Just keep learning new things, and always be ready for the next stage. Maybe it will be much tougher for you to adapt yourself to new stuffs; however, the now stuffs aren’t strange to you, try to use what you have learned during the first semester, and then you will find it easy to go on. Be sure to switch your leaning gear whenever you need, so that your learning could accelerate to a very high speed and take you to the higher level of knowledge. By doing this, you will find out many interesting during the process, and enjoy the feeling of progressing.Let’s see what is going to be during the “second gear”. George |