In language learning, 'How to say’ is more important than 'what to say’

Just imagine this: I have a wonderful Chinese story that should and need be told to a foreigner, but my vocabulary is limited, my grammar is full of mistakes, my pronunciation is strange, and my expression is inappropriate, what will happen? There will be many possibilities, namely, he can’t understand, even misunderstand me, he will lose his interest in my story, he will be offended for the culture shock(s), he will even confront with me as a result of a wrong choice of a world, etc.

From this, we can find some things that are concerned about English teaching and learning. Before you focus on what to say, first of all, you should concentrate on how to say. If you know not much about how to say, you will less able to say what you need to say. This is a wisdom taught by our wise greatest teach Confucius, who remarked ever: Better tools, better job. Anyone who desires to establish a systematic theory for teaching a language or a foreign language should take what Confucius taught as a great source for his theory. That is to say, he should be fully aware that 'how to say’ is more important than 'what to say’ in a language learning and teaching. Only after becoming a master-hand in applying the language to doing things should he begin to consider more what to say than how to say, for example, a businessman negotiating with his business partners or rivals.

As a learner in junior high school and senior high school, with a limited vocabulary, unfamiliar grammar terms and rules, stumbling spoke English, it is a little to difficult for them to consider more what to say than how to say. We all know that language is closely connected with culture, thoughts, history, politics, economy, but it doesn’t mean that language teaching and learning should first of all focus on culture, thoughts, history, politics, economy etc, because even they know them all very well, it is not necessarily certain that they know how to say. This means, before laying a good foundation of how to say, I mean, basic knowledge and basic skills, they should focus on language itself but not anything else. Yes, they should pay some attention to culture, thoughts, history, politics, economy etc. to make their learning effective, but that absolutely doesn’t mean that they should focus these things more than the language itself, forgetting the basic ones. Remember: good at how to say, good at what to say; but it’s not true of the opposite situation. That is to say, being good at what to say doesn’t necessarily mean being good at how to say. But if you are not good at how to say, even you are the best at what to say, you can only stumble.

I don’t oppose empathizing the importance of what to say, but if we think that in English/language learning & teaching, what to say is more important than how to say, we are putting the cart before the horse. What’s your opinion? Leave it in comment zone.