许多动物生下来就会走、会跑，我们人类却有七坐八爬只说；许多动物天生就会觅食，我们人类却要在襁褓中嗷嗷待哺。难道动物生下来就能学会那么多东西？其实，动物学东西，只不过是一种基因支持下的“学习”；而人类却拥有强烈的主动学习探索的潜能。

这一讲，北外的顾曰国教授将鼓励那些英语初学者们：学习英语就要像婴儿那样，不怕跌倒，不怕犯错，勇敢迈出第一步，最终才能会坐，会爬，会跑。

Well, the first kind of learning is genetically programmed learning. Animal learning.

Do we talk about animal learning? Well, very interesting. You know. When I was quite young, even younger than you, honestly, I was born in the countryside. I was a country boy. So one of the things which always amazed me is that when a chick, a small chicken, when a chick was born out of an egg, right, when he is out of an egg, he moves out of the egg, then crawled on the floor, then in something like five minutes, it's something amazing happened. The small chick can walk. And the small chick can look for food.
 
And then you look at another small, like, you know cow for example, a baby cow was born, then he chases around and turned around on the ground for three rounds, then he starts walking,  and looking and sucking milk.
 
Where did he learn all these skills? Where? You see. When you look at a human baby, when a human baby, for example, when my son was born, all he could do was only cry, wow, wow, wow, only cry. And anything else he has to learn. Ok? So here what's happening is lots of animals are genetically programmed. They are genetically programmed to learn something.
 
Well, human, a lot of things a human has to learn later. They are not genetically programmed to learn it. So here is the huge difference. The animals learn a lot of things in quotation marks. You see that I put learning in quotation marks because when it's born, the learning is already there. You see my point. The trick is because they are programmed to learn that sort of thing.
 
If you ask them, ask the animals to learn something which is not genetically programmed, it is impossible. You see my point? For example, how can you teach a cow to learn English? No way. Can you teach a cow to read Chinese characters? No way. Even you can not teach a cow how to eat dog meat. Cows never eat dog's meat. Why? Because it is genetically programmed.
 
For example, in the United States in the world, many many people try to prove that human's closest kin, our closest relatives, for example, apes, chimpanzees. Do you know apes and chimpanzees? 猩猩，那些猩猩们。 They believe they are very close to humans. You see? So can we teach those apes and chimpanzees to speak English? Oh. Yes. Lots of people are devoted to really, to testify whether they can teach these people.
 
One of the well-known things, one of the couples is called the Gardiners for example. This couple was so determined to teach chimpanzees to speak English and they rented a chimpanzee from the zoo. They rented a chimpanzee from the zoo. 就从公园里租了一个chimpanzee. And bring brought the chimpanzee home to raise together with their son.
 
The chimpanzee's one year and a half and his son is called Tom, is also one year and a half. And they raised the two together. So whenever they fed Tom with milk, they fed the chimpanzee with milk as well. They dress Tom. They dress the chimpanzees as well. When they talk to Tom, they talk to chimpanzee as well. Actually determined. You see.
 
You know, after one year and a half, you know what happened. Well, Tom, of course, could speak English. Well, at that time, he is only like two years and a half. Not quite fluently, but could speak English without any difficulty.
 
What happened to the chimpanzee? Could the chimpanzee speak English? No way. No way. No way. But the couple had to give up the experiment. Why? Well, instead of the chimpanzee learning to speak English, Tom started to behave like a chimpanzee because they play together.
 
What I'm saying here is that humans have a great potential for learning. Although they are not genetically programmed to learn, but they have a huge potential to learn. Here is the difference. Ok? So now human's learning to walk.
 
Here is an example. What I try to show you is even walking for a human is not easy. Even walking for a human is not easy. He has to learn it. For example, this baby. When he is something like, 我们叫七坐八爬，九个月长牙，对不对？Then this baby starts to climb. Why? Because this baby wants to stand up and wants to walk. Of course. Then she has to be helped. Otherwise, she just falling down all the time.
 
What we learn from this is that it takes quite a long while for a baby to learn to walk. One thing. Another thing is that the baby is extremely motivated to walk. If the baby is not motivated to walk, it's difficult to learn. Third thing, from this walking, is that the baby is never afraid of falling down. Never worry about that.
 
Only adults extremely worry about it. It is a little. No, no, you are going to fall down. But babies never care. You see. Actually people realize, after studying a baby learning to walk, people realize in order to learn to walk, one of the things which is extremely important in order to be able to walk, one of the things you have to learn, you have to do it is learn to fall. 要学会跌到.
 
If you don't know how to fall, you will never be able to learn to walk, even including you, everybody including me. 什么叫走路啊？第一步要学会往前倒，你要是不想往前倒，you'll never be able to walk. You try it. 比如，你像这样走。Can you walk? No. You have to do it. You have to change this state. Yes. Walk like that.
 
I, when I watch this, my goodness, I learned a huge lesson from this. In order to learn to walk, you have to learn to fall down first. The same thing with learning a foreign language. In order to learn to speak English, you have to learn how to make mistakes. Oh. I don't know how to speak English. I speak wrongly. Somebody will laugh at me. So I keep my mouth shut. You'll never be able to speak. Do you agree? The same thing with that baby. If you don't learn to fall, you'll never be able to walk. Exactly the same thing.