Overcoming the Chinese Thinking Logic in English Reading: A Deep Dive into The Economist

When English beginners read texts, it's inevitable for them to transfer their Chinese thinking logic to the decoding process. This transfer occurs on three levels: language form, meaning, and concept. Referencing the characteristics of The Economist text, if readers want to thoroughly analyze it, they not only need to master the English structure form but also need to be familiar with and accumulate knowledge of English language and culture. When Chinese native speakers learn English, their thinking patterns gradually begin to be restructured, and their existing Chinese conceptual categories will be broken down and reorganized step by step.

Language influences thinking, and in Whorf's research on linguistic relativity, transfer phenomena occur not only at the language level but also at the conceptual level. Humboldt believed that only by learning a foreign language can a person change their original way of thinking and break away from thinking limits. The concept transfer in linguistic relativity mainly explores the impact of the second language on the thinking mode of the mother tongue.

The process of reading The Economist text is also a process of English learning practice, and the improvement of English proficiency is conducive to transforming the inherent Chinese thinking mode and ultimately helping Chinese readers improve reading efficiency.

In terms of vocabulary concepts, The Economist often uses data expressions such as 'year-on-year', 'slash', 'plunge by 20%', and 'nearly', as well as global news report features such as 'OECD', 'pqc', 'PRI', and 'ESG', and cultural expressions of the times such as 'Luddite'. These often have corresponding expression forms in other languages. For example, in Sapir-Worf's Hopi language experiment, the conjecture that the Hopi language has no linear development of time concepts fell into the preconceived concept, because the lack of similar vocabulary does not mean the lack of concepts, let alone the lack of ways to express the same concepts.

Therefore, when the main cause of reading obstacles exists at the vocabulary level, Chinese native readers can obtain the part of speech of vocabulary through the category of conceptual categories, then obtain the definition or explanation composed of known vocabulary through related attributive clauses in the context, and then search for corresponding concepts in their own corpus based on the acquired information and give the original expression a definition.