环境，是朋友还是敌人？The environment, a friend or a foe?

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that is stupid."

— Albert Einstein

As soon as people hear the word "environment", the first thing they usually think about is pollution or the lack of clean air, especially in China. However, as an environmental psychologist, I tend to understand the environment as the space we are in and the people that we are surrounded by at a given time. With this in mind, our home, school, workplace etc are all environments that influence our behavior more than we are aware of. 

当人们听到“环境”这个词时，尤其是在中国，他们想到的第一件事通常是污染或者缺乏新鲜空气。然而，作为环境心理学家，我倾向于把环境理解为我们所在的空间以及在我们周围的人。所以，我们的家，学校，工作环境等都是能够影响我们行为的环境，这可能是我们意识不到的。

If it's the first time you hear about environmental psychology, no worries! You are not the only one. Very few people are actually aware of this broad, yet very important field. In simple words, environmental psychology looks at how our behavior influences and is influenced by space. In other words, everything we do is space related, whether we do it alone or with others, thus the space and the people around us will influence our behavior. Starting from this idea, we can separate the environment into two parts: physical (space) and social (people).

如果你是第一次听说环境心理学，不用担心！因为还有很多人没听说过。然而环境心理学是个很重要的领域。简单地说，环境心理学是去看环境是如何影响我们的行为的。换种说法，我们所做的任何事情都与环境相关，无论是我们独立做事还是与他人合作，所在的空间以及周围的人都会对我们的行为产生影响。有了这个理解后，我们可以把环境分为两部分：物质环境（空间）和社会环境（人）。

Environmental psychology has broad implications, but for the sake of clarity, in this article I will focus on the physical learning environment to emphasize its influence on our learning outcomes, more specifically in relation to language learning, given the amount of Chinese people who are currently studying English.

环境心理学有着广泛的含义，但是为了在本文中清晰地表达，我将主要强调物理学习环境对我们学习效果的影响，尤其是对很多正在学英语的中国人语言学习效果的影响。

Many people think that studying a language is very hard, but the space we decide to study in has a very big impact on our study outcomes. As a matter of fact, a proper physical environment can increase learning outcomes up to 25%, thus next time you face difficulties learning English, just take a closer look at the space you are in. What environmental factors should you look at? 

很多人认为学习一门语言是件很困难的事情，但是忽略了他们学习语言时所在的环境对学习效果有很大的影响。事实上，合适的物质环境可以让学习效果增加25%。因此，当你以后学习英语遇到困难时，需要仔细观察你所在的环境。那么要看哪些环境因素呢？

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