Just be a parrot for learning English As far as I am concerned, Learning actual English is learning how fluent English speakers speak. Is it wrong ? When I was a student, my English teacher taught us a lot of English grammar. This was correct. One day, there was a translation test, and my answer was : " Long time no see" Immediately, I was corrected by my English teacher " " I have not seen you for a long time" I said " But every American says it like so" He said "The sentence doesn't accord with English grammar" After listening to what he said, I was also sad. A language is just a tool for communication, not merely for studying. The most important of all is to make English speakers know what you wanna express. Otherwise, if you become a mute while meeting an English speaker, you just regard English as decoration, not as tool. Try to imagine what would happen, if my English teacher corrected an American as well, this made a chinese teach an American English. What a joke!! More than correct English, we need communicable English.