Central to Jack's own distortion field are his skills as a communicator. Jack's speaking style is so effective because his message is easy to agree with, remember, and digest.

在书的第三章"From student to Teacher"中，作者描述了马云早期学英语的经历。

以下为书中的一些摘抄笔记。

As a boy, Jack fell in love with the English language and literature, particularly readings of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that he listened to on a shortwave radio.

Jack relishedany opportunity to practice his English.He started waking up before dawn and riding his bicycle for forty minutes to the Hangzhou Hotel to greet foreign tourists. As he recalled,"Every morning from five o'clock I would read English in front of the hotel. A lot of foreign visitors came from the USA, from Europe. I'd give them a free tour of West Lake, and they taught me English every morning, no matter if it snowed or rained."

早期的兴趣和努力为马云在英语学习上做了很好的铺垫。他是典型的“实用派”，做英文老师的时候的教学特点也是很少讲语法。他对自己的英文这样评价:

He is dismissiveof the quality of his English:"I just make myself understood. The grammar is terrible." But Jack never dismisses how much learning the language has helped in life: "English helps me a lot. It makes me understand the world better, helps me to meet the best CEOs and leaders in the world, and make me understand the distance between China and the world.

马云的英文学习和一生的贵人是来自澳大利亚的 Morley 一家人。这家人后来资助了马云读大学的生活费，并且在马云结婚的时候给了他18，000美元帮助他买房子。

Ken Morley的儿子David叙述了他和马云相识的画面。

It was on that free evening, flicking matches in the park, that I was approachedby a young man wanting to try his newly acquired English skills on me. He introduced himself; we swapped pleasantriesand agreed to meet in the park again.

It was on that free evening, flicking matches in the park, that I was approachedby a young man wanting to try his newly acquired English skills on me. He introduced himself; we swapped pleasantriesand agreed to meet in the park again.

David 把马云介绍给了他的家人，他也因此和 David 的爸爸 Ken 成为了好朋友。

David's father, Ken Morley, once described his first impressions of Jack as a "barrowboy," or a street hawker."He really wanted to practice his English, and he was very friendly. Our kids were very impressed."

从那之后马云就和这个家庭一直保持联系，并且开始了书信往来。

"What followed that meeting was a pen pal relationship that I kept up for a few years until my father started to take an interest in helping this young man." Jack would correspondregularly with Ken, referring to him as "Dad," who asked him to "double space his letters so that any corrections could be sent back in the spaces."David explained, "The originalwith corrections was returned for learning purposes with the reply letter. I believe this greatly helped and encouraged Jack to continue with his English studies.

书中有一幅图片，是当时马云和 David 写的信。那时侯他应该是16岁左右。

这封信大家可能看不清，信上还有一些他自己的修改痕迹。我放大后试着“还原”下，如下文：

Dear David:

It's a pleasure to read your letter and to know about your trip to China. The weather in January in HangChow is in winter. So it is very cold and it maybe have snow. I think it is a good time for you to come. I guess there is no snow in your city. The snowing view in HangChow is very beautiful and very famous in our country. I hope you will come to see us. David, I think April and May are the best season to visit China. There is halenear our city and it is very beautiful. In the hale, it has all kinds of stones. They are very strange. It is like a fairy land. We often go for an spring outing in April or May. On 5th April our school plan to have an outing. I don't know where we should go. I will write to tell you about it.

Thank you for the Rubik cubes. We like them very much. We call it “Mou Fang” （魔方） in China. People enjoy them very much and they often competitioneach other to see who do them the fastest.

Thank you for the books and diaries and a calendar cloth.

这封信中有一些语法错误，用词用句都非常的简单，但是这并不妨碍他们的沟通。通过这封信我也有些明白了为什么 Ken 觉得这个孩子很 friendly，他的字里行间中展现了他的自信和对他人的尊重 -- 这也是传统英语教学中所缺乏的地方。他不只是在利用他们学英文，而是真正的想和他们交朋友。这一点非常重要，也是学习英文的关键。

* 本文来源于英语学习笔记 （ID: ericenglish），作者 EricZ 。普特考试小助手经授权发布。

马云：“我们必须在别人改变之前先改变自己。”

We must first change yourself before others change.

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