Before reading on, please consider the following short sentence:
They cannot see enough of each other.
What do you think this sentence means? Well, please consider and consider before reading on.
This is a very easy sentence, indeed, and I think every English or American schoolboy or schoolgirl understands it. In fact, it occurs in a story-book for children. But I have been asked to explain it by a senior middle school student, who, so far as I can see, has studies English earnestly for years and has acquired a fair knowledge of grammar and rhetoric and a fairly large vocabulary.
Why, after all, does the student fail to understand this short sentence? My answer is that it is because its way of expression does not have its corresponding way in the Chinese language. There are many ways of expression in English that do not have their corresponding ways in Chinese. These are puzzling to most Chinese students of English.
The above-quoted sentence mea...
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