时间:2018-12-07 作者:英语课 分类:英语散文阅读


英语课

The author is not a preacher, and yet he does deliver a kind of sermon here. Who is his audience? Interestingly, his audience is your teachers of Advanced English as a foreign language. The author seeks to help them in their difficult task of teaching advanced students, their task of leading their students to a higher lever of ability and fluency 1.


Does it encourage you to know that you are not the only one who is struggling at this level of language acquisition?


A Kind of Sermon by W.S.Fowler


It is probably easier for teachers than for students to appreciate the reasons why learning English seems to become increasingly difficult once the basic structures and patterns of the language have been understood. Students are naturally surprised and disappointed to discover that a process which ought to become simpler does not appear to do so.


It may not seem much consolation 2 to point out that the teacher, too, becomes frustrated 3 when his efforts appear to produce less obvious results. He finds that students who were easy to teach, because they succeeded in putting everything they had been taught into practice, hesitate when confronted with the vast untouched area of English vocabulary and usage which falls outside the scope of basic textbooks. He sees them struggling because the language they thought they knew now appears to consist of a bewildering variety of idioms, clichéd and accepted phrases with different meanings in different contexts. It is hard to convince them that they are still making progress towards fluency and that their English is certain to improve, given time and dedication 4.


In such circumstances it is hardly surprising that some give up in disgust, while others still wait hopefully for the teacher to give them the same confident guidance he was able to offer them at first. The teacher, for his part, frequently reduced to trying to explain the inexplicable 5, may take refuge in quoting proverbs to his colleagues such as: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't what you say. It's the way that you say it." His students might feel inclined to counter these with: "The more I learn, the less I know."


Of course this is not true. What both students and teachers are experiencing is the recognition that the more complex structures one encounters in a language are not as vital to making oneself understood and so have a less immediate 6 field of application. For the same reason, from the teacher's point of view, selecting what should be taught becomes a more difficult task. It is much easier to get food of any kind than to choose the dish you would most like to eat on a given day from a vast menu.


Defining the problem is easier than providing the solution. One can suggest that students should spend two or three years in an English-speaking country, which amounts to washing one's hands of them. Few students have the time or the money to do that. It is often said that wide reading is the time or the money to do that. It is often said that wide reading is the best alternative course of action but even here it is necessary to make some kind of selection. It is no use telling students to go to the library and pick up the first book they come across. My own advice to them would be: "read what you can understand without having to look up words in a dictionary (but not what you can understand at a glance); read what interests you; read what you have time for (magazines and newspapers rather than novels unless you can read the whole novel in a week or so); read the English written today, not 200 years ago; read as much as you can and try to remember the way it was written rather than individual words that puzzled you." And instead of "read", I could just as well say "listen to."


My advice to teachers would be similar in a way. I would say "It's no good thinking that anything will do, or that all language is useful. It's no good relying on students to express themselves without the right tools for expression. It's still your duty to choose the best path to follow near the top of the mountain just as it was to propose a practicable short-cut away from the beaten track in the foothills. And if the path you choose is too overgrown to make further progress, the whole party will have to go back and you will have to choose another route. You are still the paid guide and expert and there is a way to the top somewhere."



1 fluency
n.流畅,雄辩,善辩
  • More practice will make you speak with greater fluency.多练习就可以使你的口语更流利。
  • Some young children achieve great fluency in their reading.一些孩子小小年纪阅读已经非常流畅。
2 consolation
n.安慰,慰问
  • The children were a great consolation to me at that time.那时孩子们成了我的莫大安慰。
  • This news was of little consolation to us.这个消息对我们来说没有什么安慰。
3 frustrated
adj.挫败的,失意的,泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 );挫败;使受挫折;令人沮丧
  • It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
  • The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》
4 dedication
n.奉献,献身,致力,题献,献辞
  • We admire her courage,compassion and dedication.我们钦佩她的勇气、爱心和奉献精神。
  • Her dedication to her work was admirable.她对工作的奉献精神可钦可佩。
5 inexplicable
adj.无法解释的,难理解的
  • It is now inexplicable how that development was misinterpreted.当时对这一事态发展的错误理解究竟是怎么产生的,现在已经无法说清楚了。
  • There are many things which are inexplicable by science.有很多事科学还无法解释。
6 immediate
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的
  • His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
  • We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。
学英语单词
-orexia
abrasive hardness test
absorption current of dielectric
accommodation land(s)
Aconchada
apex point
Ba Ria
baby killers
baradar
be prepossessed by
begaumed
block floating point
cell division cycle gene
centrally planned economy
cermet of life-saving appliance
coarse-filter
combined air force
computer security verification
concrete tubular pile
cone-bearing tree
counterpropagandizing
cycloid curve
deffontaines
diethyl dichlorosilane
double-cup insulator
dresioside
ensors
estres
ethyl myristate
fingernail clam
flash light buttery
frequentflier.com
Fuirena ciliaris
genus Leucaena
half cross belt
hand-pull
have worms
hillside hitch
hook cant
hypercritic
interpretation of data
kayser-fleischer rings
leadership styles
leuco-
line telegraphy
low politics
lung fish
Luzula spicata
Manglietia conifera
market gardeners
mesocycle
microlepia marginata
Mignano
MINIA
moko-moko
mouse-deer
mousquetaire cuff
multidiameter boring cutter
multinomially
naming container
neatresse
Nicoya, Pen.de
nonactivated
nonperishable cargo
Obergriesbach
oconee bellss
optical density of cloud
over-and-over
ovula Nabothi
pall-bearer
planar growth
power density profile
programme step
re-imposed
resenteth
riyaq (rayak)
Sahelian
sake-cake
satellite telecommunication with automatic routine
Severo-Baykal'skoye Nagor'ye
sheet casting
sitherope
solar cell connection
staff light
statisitic reception
sulfide ion
supplicants
Sǒnch'ǒn
tablet
testing medium
tiemaker
to the manner born
trip coil
true equinox
undulated fibrous texture
unoriented crystalline polymer
value expressive function
vanadium tribromide
vapour diagram
versatile pulse shaper
Waleys