common language

Centuries and more have been spent on trying find a common language so that people of the world can communicate and understand one another. But even after spending years learning and communicating with the same language, its still possible for people not to understand one another.

Its like how I've seen students read a whole passage fluently but are unable to get a simple question like "what did the main character do?". Even tho they can read every single word in the passage, and they can read the question without problem, they can still have no idea how to answer.

Today, my bf and I were reading up on an article about insurance. And there was this sentence in the passage. "Term insurance is a pay-as-you-go, no frills insurance." And it states that because of that, it is a better bargain than life insurance. Maybe I really am an idiot or something, but for the life of me I just do not understand what kind of insurance term insurance is by that statement.

Please dun try and explain what term insurance is to me, cas my bf already did. But it took quite a few mins and got both of us rather frustrated.

But what gets me is we are both reading English, which we have spent more than a decade on, and he can understand from that one statement and I cant. Sigh... Maybe its really just because I'm stupid or something, and perhaps I shd quit my job and study some more. Anyone noes a gd place to take an "English for dummies course"?