高级医学英语阅读与写作Chapter Six
2012-07-14 11:04:45 来源：37度医学网 作者： 评论：0 点击：
— English Work-formation by L. Bauer
Another example:
.... The words listed below are all from recent sources, and must be assumed to be productive uses of the suffix.
Pattern I: Direct object
blackmailes (B)
congratulee* (M)
curee (B)
deferee (B) 'person who is not drafted to the army'
designee*¹ 'designated hitter'
franchisee (B) [to franchise also listed in (B)]
huggee (F)
kidnapee² educatee (M)
holdupee (M) [cf. somebody was held up]
pumpee³
retardee (B)
rushee (M)
seducee (L,M)
slanderee (M)
squeezee (M)
----------------------------------
¹ American Speech. 46 (1971) 294.
² Alistair Maclean. 1977. 1977 Goodbye California. London: Collins, p. 25. Spelling as original.
³ Ben Bova. 1977. The Multiple Man. London: Gollancz, p. 66. ‘someone who is pumped for information’: “I decided to be the pumper not the pumpee.”
—English Word-formationby L. Bauer
Writing an endnote
An endnote is required in a research paper in three different situations: when you directly quote a passage, when you paraphrase a passage, and when some additional information, which is not essential, is added.
To cite a source by means of a note, put a slightly raised number in your text and, at the foot of the page or on a page of endnotes, a corresponding number followed by your identification of the source. The following format should be followed though it is varied in some books.
Endnotes: Continuous order throughout the paper
TripleSpace
10 Page no.
Aaron He Author
Ling. 484 Course
Triple
Space
Notes
Triple
Indented space
5 spaces ¹ Allen Maley, “Xanadu — ‘A miracle of
and rare device’: the teaching of English in China,” 
numbers Language Learning and Communication 2 (1), raised ( , 1983), p.104
² L. Carrell and Patricis, et all,Interactive
--1"-- Approaches to Second Language Reading
(London: Longman Group Ltd., 1988), p. 165.
IV. Some Advice on Style
When you have revised and finalized your draft, there are still some points you have to give careful consideration of before handing in your paper. An expressive writer must select an appropriate style for his or her subject, try to write a fine paper in accordance with the cultural beliefs, customs, thoughts and behaviors, and guard against too much redundancy, flowery language and plagiarism.
1. Paying attention to intercultural differences between Chinese and the target language.As Robinett says “In the early stages of language learning, students should be encouraged to use the language (appropriately or not) just to establish the fact that they can use it. Too much emphasis on appropriateness may result in an oversensitivity to what is considered correct and produce a fear of speaking at all.”¹ But as learners of English at intermediate and advanced levels, they have to pay proper attention to the cultural differences between Chinese and native speakers because culturally unacceptable language and behavior are often worse than linguistic mistakes and tend to create ill feeling between natives and Chinese writers. As Wofson tells us, “In interacting with foreigners, native speakers tend to be rather
----------------------------------
¹ B.W. Robinett. 1978. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Substance and Techniques. University of Minnesota Press and McGraw Hill International Book Co. pp.151-152.
tolerant of errors in pronunciation or syntax. In contrast, violations of rules of speaking are often interpreted as bad manners since the native speaker is unlikely to be aware of sociolinguistic relativity....”²
Though he talks about the rules of speaking, the rules also appeal to the rule of writing, or you write according to Chinese ways of writing or thinking, which is usually termed as Chinglish or Chinese English.
2. Avoid redundancy. Make your language clear, straightforward and smooth when you are writing. But Chinese writers of English tend to create some redundant sentences. By redundancy is meant the quality of containing additional parts that will make the system work if other parts fail. Any language has this redundancy. So is the English language.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. (Without redundancy)
I hold that he is an honest man. (With redundancy: that)
Am I really and truly Queen? (With redundancy: and truly)
But some redundancy is allowable and necessary, such as the second and third sentences in the above because “that” functions as a grammatical role and “and truly”, as emphasis. Excessive redundancy, however, should be avoided in writing.
For example:
The history of human flight is full of histories of failures on the parts of those who have tried flight and were failures. (With unnecessary redundancy: histories of failures)
It is improved like this:
The history of the flight recounts many failures.
Again:
May I take the liberty to introduce myself to you.
(with unnecessary redundancy)
Improved:
My name is Chang Hua. ...
Again:
She found conditioneven much worse than she could have imagined.
(With unnecessary redundancy: even or much
---------------------------------
² N. Wofson. 1983. “Rules of Speaking”, in Language and Communication, ed. by Jack C. Richard and Richard W. Schmidt. Longman.
)
Improved:
She found conditions even worse (much worse) than she could have imagined.
3. Avoid flowery language. Flowery language is wordy or artificial. It is often misplaced or inappropriate attempts at elegance or grandeur. It calls attention to itself and as a result, diverts the reader's attention from the main issue. Such an essay results in lack of naturalness and sincerity. So a beginning writer should try to use plain, direct and simple language instead of flowery language. He should bear in mind that effective speech and writing is that which is simple and direct, that it is the meaning that gives power to a sentence and that it is the facts that convince the reader. Let's read the following composition which is typical of this kind of faulty writing in English:
I walked joyfully along the path that was lit up with the golden rays of the morning sun. Beautiful flowers of many colors were blooming. How fragrant they smelled! Little birds were singing in the trees, as if greeting me “Good morning! Good morning!” ... My heart was bursting with happiness. ...
One of the common faults in the above paragraph is to use too many adjectives which make it flowery. Adjectives, of course, are necessary in good writing. They are like the paints that brighten and bring scenes and events to life. But if not used with care, they can have the opposite effect. Let's make some comparison:
Plain language Flowery language
now at this point in time
lawn verdant ward
shovel simple instrument for delving into
Mother Earth
a teacher my fellow's toiler in the arduous labors of pedagogy
reading a text book following the lamp of knowledge in a
textual tome
going overseas traversing the ever-galpitating deep
Of course the expressions on the right should be avoided unless you lack the plain words to express yourself or you attempt to use them as a certain rhetoric device.
4. Avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism is the dishonest act of using the words or thoughts of another writer without indicating that you have used it. In its sordid form, plagiarism is outright theft or cheating. Of course, we can take facts, opinions or language from other books or magazines, but you must do the following jobs or you will commit plagiarism.
If you take anything at all, even a phrase, you must put quotation marks around it, or set it off from your text; if you summarize or paraphrase an author's words, you must clearly indicate where the summary or paraphrase begins and ends; if you use an author's idea, you must say you are doing so. Remember that the facts or opinions in your paper must either be your own or a direct quote from the other author's.
But it is not enough just to put quotation marks around what you have taken. You have to credit the source by footnoting or endnoting it or placing notes within the text. And a bibliography is also necessary at the end of the paper. (For the detail information, read pp.140-144.) But this may frighten students because they assume that they will have to footnote or endnote almost every sentence in their papers. That is not the case. They should footnote or endnote all direct quotations, summaries and paraphrases. As for some common knowledge, they should not footnote or endnote it.
This chapter shows you how to use sources honestly, and how to draw the line between what is your own and what you have taken from others so as to guard against plagiarism. An example is provided here for the analysis of various kinds of plagiarism. This example is taken from p. 104 of Allan Maley's “Xanadu —‘A miracle of rare device’: the teaching of English in China”, in Language Learning and Communication 2 (1). First, here is the original source from the book.
“The foreign teacher tends to find this obsessive concern with the fine detail of this language somewhat irritating since, for him, reading is something else, namely, it is teaching students to extract meaning and information from texts as rapidly and efficiently as possible, and to apply it to their current concern.”
And here are four ways of plagiarizing this source.
Student version Comment
The foreign teacher tends to Obvious plagiarism: word
find this obsessive concern for-word copying without
with the fine detail of this quotation marks or
language somewhat irritating mention of the author's
since, for him, reading is
something else, namely, it is
teaching students to extract
meaning and information from
texts as rapidly and efficiently
as possible, and to apply it to
their current concern.
The foreign teacher tends to Still plagiarism: The
find this obsessive concern footnote alone does not
with the fine detail of this help. The language is the
language somewhat irritating original author's and
since, for him, reading is only quotation marks
something else, namely, it is around the whole passage
teaching students to extract plus a footnote would be
meaning and information from correct.
texts as rapidly and efficiently
as possible, and to apply it to
their current concern.1
The foreign teacher is apt to Still plagiarism: Copying
find this distressed concern many words and phrases
with this detailed language without quotation marks
somewhat irritating since for or mention of the author's
him, reading is something name.
else, namely, it is teaching
students to learn something
from texts as rapidly and
efficiently as possible, and
to apply it to their current
concern.
The foreign teacher is apt to Still plagiarism: Para-
find this puzzled concern phrasing without mentioning
with this detailed language the author's name.
somewhat distressing since for
him, reading is nothing else
but teaching students to learn
from textbooks efficiently and
to use what they learn in their
business.
To avoid plagiarism, you must put quotation marks around the source and it must be footnoted or endnoted or noted within the text if you directly take it; you have to acknowledge the source and it must be footnoted or endnoted or noted within the text if you paraphrase it.
V. Reading Practice
The following are two sample term papers. A term paper means a required essay for a course in a school term. When you read each of them, please notice its format —its title page, footnotes, or bibliography (a list of references), etc.
Cover page
Dreams and Waking life Title of
the paper
Anthony Walsh Name of
the author
Professor Hoyt Shepherdson Name of
the tutor
Philosophy 163 Course
May 4, 1980 Date of
handing-in
|
Dreams and Waking Life
Dreams are universal. Though we sometimes forget our dreams, each of us has at least one dream virtually every time we sleep, and without much difficulty, each of us could probably remember a dream in some detail. Over literally thousands of years, dreams have been treated by poets and studied by psychologists. Yet certain basic questions about dreams remain to be settled: Where do they come from? What do they mean? Do they serve any purpose? This paper will consider how those questions have been answered by a variety of psychologists and experimenters. By analyzing their statements on the origin, meaning, and function of dreams, it will attempt to explain the relation between dreams and waking life.
I
In ancient times, dreams were thought to come from God or some mysterious source outside the dreamer. In modern times, the search for their origin has focused much more on the mind and natural experience of the dreamer than on anything supernatural. Erich Fromm, for instance, says that nearly every dream we have is prompted by our reaction to some occurrence of the preceding day.¹ I suspect that each of us has had such dreams. I myself have dreamed about driving a car across the ocean soon after a day at the beach, and about getting swallowed up by a lion after a visit to the zoo. But not every dream can be readily traced to an experience of the previous day, and even if it could. The memory of an experience cannot explain why and how a dream transformed it, why and how a day at the beach becomes a drive across the ocean. The gap between dreams and remembered experience is sometimes so wide, in fact, that at least one modern psychologist locates their origin in something outside of experience. Carl G. Jung writes:
One cannot afford to be naive in dealing with dream. They originate in a spirit that is not quite human, but is rather a breath of nature. If we want to characterize this spirit, we shall certainly get closer to it in the sphere of ancient mythologies, or the fables of the primeval forest, than in the consciousness of modern man.²
Fromm and Jung represent two poles of thought in modern theorizing about the origin of dreams. While Fromm traces the dream to a specific occurrence, Jung seeks its origin in something mystical, something “not quite human,” something outside dreams — especially children's dreams — indicates that any search for their origin must at the very least begin with that experience. If dreams come from outside the dreamer's experience, children's dreams should be as Jung describes them: rich, complex, and full of strange, frightening archetypes (Jung, pp. 69-75). But after five years of study, David Foulkes has found that young children's dreams are in general
2
A. Walsh
Phil.163
“rather simple and unemotional,”that the complexity of children's dreams grows as the
child does, and therefore that the content of a dream is closely linked to the development of the dreamer in the waking world.³ Clearly, then, the dreamer's waking experience must provide at least part of the answer to the question of where dreams originate.
Yet the whole answer involves much more than the experience of the day which precedes the dream. For one thing, the memories reworked in a dream may come from any part of the dreamer's life. Citing evidence gathered by Rechtschaffen, William C. Dement says that dreams move backward in time as the night progresses, that they gradually turn from the contemporary world to childhood and “stored images.”4 Furthermore, dreams come not just from particular memories but from the whole personality of the dreamer. After analyzing thousands of dreams into their constituent elements, Calvin S. Hall and Vernon J. Nordby concluded that the dreams of individuals are “amazingly consistent in subject matter from one year to the next,” that dreams originate from habitual ways of feeling and thinking, from “the wishes and fears that determine our actions and thoughts in everyday life,”5 Hall and Nordby thus emphasize the continuity between dreams and waking life. Yet even though they trace dreams to the personality of the dreamer, they also say that the source of a dream may lie far beneath the surface. The " wishes and fears" behind our dreams, they say, may have their roots not only in childhood but in “prenatal experiences and racial history” (Hall and Nordby, p. 146).
II
These contemporary findings about the deep-rooted origin of dreams take us back to the single most important modern study of their meaning — Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1900. Freud explains dreams as the expression of certain drives within the dreamer, and he specifically states that “a dream is the fulfillment of a wish.”6 A brief paper such as this one can hardly do justice of Freud’s theories, but they may be summarized as follows: Dreams gratify desires that we repress in waking life, usually because of taboos against them. Since some of these desires would offend us even in sleep, the imagery of our dreams symbolizes the fulfillment of them in disguised form.7
Freud's theories about the meaning of dreams have been widely influential. According to Foulkes, modern dream researchers now accept the principle that dreams express “profound aspects of personality” (Foulkes, Sleep, p. 184). But the idea that a dream is the disguised fulfillment of a wish has been challenged by a number of writers in different ways. Citing dreams in which the wish to be free or to be alive is threatened, Fromm contends that such dreams express “not the fulfillment of the wish but the fear of its frustration” (Fromm, pp. 185-88). Other researchers
3
A. Walsh
Phil. 163
have argued that dreams are physiological as much as psychological. According to Foulkes, dreams vary as the sleeper moves from a state of rapid eye movement (REM). When the eyes move rapidly under the eyelids, to a state of deep sleep (non-REM), in which the eyes do not move (Foulkes, Sleep, pp.1-40). The meaning of a dream may therefore depend on the state in which it occurs. Noting, for instance, that nightmares occur primarily during non-REM sleep, Foulkes speculates that a nightmare may be “a kind of unconscious 'panic' response to the slowing of life functions that occurs during the profound non-REM state” (Foulkes, “Dreams”, P. 88).
Yet the very fact that Foulkes is speculating here illustrates the difficulty of explaining dreams by means of the body alone.7 If we cannot always interpret dreams as the fulfillment of wishes, neither can we interpret them as simply the products of physical stimulation. For all the research that has been done on the physiology of dreaming, for all the monitoring of dreamers' brain waves, eye movements, heartbeats, and breathing patterns, researchers cannot fully explain dreams without some reference to the dreamer's personality. Robert W. McCarley, for instance, says that dreams originate from the activity of the sensory system — especially the eyes — during REM sleep, and that this activity sends messages to the higher levels of the brain, where the messages are “synthesized... into a coherent story.”8 But to explain the story, McCarley has to move beyond physiology. Contributions to “the ultimate synthesis,” he says, may include the “motivational state, memories, drives, and personality of the dreamer.”9
To know what a dream means, then, we have to know something about the personality of the dreamer — which is to say, something about the dreamer's waking life. In fact, as Dement notes, one of the difficulties of understanding anyone else's dream is that we can learn of it only after the dreamer has waked up and reported on what he or she remembers of it (Dement, pp. 59-65). Some knowledge of the dreamer's waking life is therefore essential to any understanding of a dream, and no single formula will explain all dreams. To interpret the content of a dream, says Fromm, we must know the dreamer, his or her emotional state at the moment of going to sleep, and the elements in the dream that correspond with reality as he or she ordinarily sees it (Fromm, pp. 36-38).
III
If the meaning of a dream depends on the personality of the individual dreamer, then dreams must be individually interpreted, and any generalization about the meaning of all dreams is suspect. We cannot say that every dream is a prophecy, or a reincarnation of ancient myth, or — as Freud says — the fulfillment of a wish. But the problem of saying anything universal about the meaning of dreams should not keep us from asking questions about their function, about what they contribute to our lives.
4
A. Walsh
Phil. 163
And the question I wish to raise now is simply this: to what extent do dreams help us
cope with the world we live in when we are awake?
One answer is that dreams restore our psychological balance by putting us in touch with our instincts. According to Jung, the world around us threatens our individuality by tending to make us lead “a more or less artificial life” (Jung, P. 49). Dreams give us an alternative to this life: a world of vivid, seemingly ridiculous images, of disrupted time, and of commonplace things with a “fascinating or threatening aspect” (Jung, P. 39). These strange images, says Jung, are " the essential message carriers from the instinctive to the rational parts of the human mind, and their interpretation enriches the poverty of consciousness so that it learns to understand once again the forgotten language of the instincts” (Jung, P. 52). For this reason some dreams may tell us of important dreaming events. By putting us in touch with our instincts, they show us a pattern in our actions which our conscious mind misses and thus they indicate where our actions may be leading (Jung, P. 51).
Jung's account of what dreams do for us is suggestive but vague, for it seems to presuppose that we know how to interpret our dreams, how to understand the messages and predictions they bring us from the unconscious. But without mysterious messages, some dreams can help the dreamer solve a particular problem. Fromm cites the example of Friedrich Kekule, who had been seeking the chemical formula for benzine and discovered it one night in a dream (Fromm, p. 45). Dement cites other examples: a dream led Hermann Hilprecht to the translation of the Stone of Nebuchadnezzar, and Otto Loewi's dream of an experiment with a frog heart led to research rewarded with a Nobel Prize (Dement, p.98). Dreams of this kind serve a clear and definite purpose. Unlike the mysterious messages that Hung speaks of, they provide the dreamer with a specific solution to a specific problem.
Yet very few dreams serve so specific a purpose. Instead of solving particular problems, dreams more often leave the dreamer with a general sense of liberation and power. Dreams, says E. R. Dodds, allow us to “escape the offensive and incomprehensible bondage of time and space.”10 Such an escape invigorates the dreamer. Erid H. Erikson writes that in dreams, a mass of unfulfilled infantile wishes and present dangers can turn into something manageable. Instead of feeling helpless before the evidence of weakness and limitation, the dreamer's ego experiences a sense of power, an ability to produce and progress.11 Likewise, Rosalind Cartwright says that dreaming “seems to provide the energy space for the repair of self-esteem and competence.”12
Even dreams we regard as “bad” may help us to come to terms with threatening situations in the outside world. In a study cited by Cartwright, subjects who had dreamed after viewing a stress-producing film showed less strain on a second viewing than subjects who had not. According to Cartwright, such a study suggests that
5
A. Walsh
Phil. 163
“ dreaming helps to 'defuse' anxiety-provoking material so that it can be experienced in the waking state with less disruptive effect. This might be expected to lead to more rational and perhaps efficient handling of previously upsetting experiences.”13 Cartwright's conclusion is tentative and limited. She does not say that all bad dreams have good affects, or that frightening dreams will necessarily prepare us to face frightening experiences. She merely opens our eyes to one of the ways in which dreams may help us to cope with the waking world.
What then is the overall relation between dreams and waking life? I believe that each is needed to help us understand the other. We cannot adequately explain dreams by saying that they come from God or some mysterious source beyond the dreamer — such as Jung's “breath of nature.” But neither can we explain them by saying simply that they come from the body, like the dreamer's heartbeat and rapid eye movements. Researchers can measure those things while the dreamer sleeps, but the only way they can get to the dream itself is to wake the dreamer up, and in order to understand the dream, they must know something about the dreamer's waking life and waking mind. I do not think anyone can make sense out of a dream without some reference to the waking, walking, observable personality of the dreamer.
Yet just as we need our lives to interpret our dreams, we need dreams to make sense out of our lives. Though dreams seem to turn things topsy-turvy, they tell us things about ourselves that we may be able to learn in no other way. They may remind us of things long forgotten; they may expose us to things we repress; above all, they may reveal to us the naturally creative powers of our own minds. Perhaps, after all, that is the most important thing dreams do for us. More than fulfilling our wishes, predicting the future, or solving a specific problem, dreams show us what the mind can do with all that we experience in the waking world.
6
A. Walsh
Phil.163
NOTES
¹ The Forgotten Language (New York: Rinehart, 1951), pp. 156-57. This book is cited hereafter as Fromm.
² “Approaching the Unconscious,” In Man and HisSymbols, ed. Carl G. Jung and M. -L. von Franz (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), p. 52. This essay is cited hereafter as Jung.
³ “Dreams of Innocence,” Psychology Today, 12 (December 1978), 78, 86-88. This article is cited hereafter as Foulkes, “Dreams.”
4 Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep (San Francisco: San Francisco Book Co., 1976), p. 71. This book is cited hereafter as Dement.
5 The Individual and His Dreams (New York: New American Library, 1972), pp. 82, 94, 102. This book is cited hereafter as Hall and Nordby.
6 The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic, 1972), pp. 154.
7 I am here paraphrasing an account of Freud's theories given in David Foulkes, The Psychology of Sleep (New York: Scribner, 1966), pp. 182-84. This book is cited hereafter as Foulkes, Sleep.
8 “Where Dreams Come From: A New Theory”, Psychology Today, 12 (December 1978), 54-62. This article is cited hereafter as McCarley.
9 McCarley, p. 54. Likewise, Richard M. Jones says that the cause of dreaming is not psychological but physiological the activity of REM sleep; yet what REM sleep activates, he says, are wish-fulfilling dreams, and these cannot be understood without reference to the dreamer's mental life. See The New Psychology of Dreaming (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1970). pp. 120-21.
10 The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951; rpt. Boston: Beacon, 1957), p. 102.
11 Insight and Responsibility: Lectures on the Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight (New York: Norton, 1964), pp. 185-201.
12 “Happy Endings for Our Dreams,” Psychology today, 12 (December 1978), 76.
13 “Problem Solving: Waking and Sleeping,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83 (1974), 451.
7
A. Walsh
Phil. 163
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cartwright, Rosalind. “Happy Endings for Our Dreams.” Psychology Today. 12 (December 1978). 66-67.
______. “Problem Solving: Waking and Sleeping.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83 (1974), 451-55.
Dement, William C. Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep. San Francisco: San Francisco Book Co., 1976.
Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley, 1951; rpt. Boston: Beacon, 1957.
Erikson, Erik H. Insight and Responsibility: Lectures on the Ethical Implications of Psychoanalytic Insight. New York: Norton, 1964.
Foulkes, David. “Dreams of Innocence.” Psychology Today, 12 (December 1978), 78-88.
______. The Psychology of Sleep. New York: Scribner, 1966.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Basic, 1972.
Fromm, Erich. The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths. New York: Rinehart, 1951.
Hall, Calvin S., and Vernon J. Nordby. The Individual and His Dreams. New York; New American Library, 1972.
Jones, Richard M. The New Psychology of Dreaming. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1970.
Jung, Carl G. “Approaching the Unconscious.” In Man and His Symbols. Ed. Carl G. Jung and M. -l. von Franz. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964, pp. 18-1033.
McCarley, Robert W. “Where Dreams Come From: A New Theory.” Psychology Today, 12 (December 1978), 54-65, 141.
Aaron He
Prof. J.S. DeCarrico
Ling. 486
Dec. 21, 1990
Prospective Renewal of our EFL Teaching
My visit to the U.S.A. makes me fully aware of the language ability of application and the big gap of Chinese students studying there in language applications. The general impression is that they know a lot about English but apply little of it, and they score high but do little with it. They suffer a lot from their poor ability. I have an example in mind. Two students went to apply for a bookstore clerk position one day. One was a post-graduate from China and the other was a freshman student from Germany. They were interviewed at the same time by the manager with the result of the employment of the latter because of his strong competence of English application though the freshman's pronunciation was a little poorer than the Chinese.
I cannot claim the status of a linguistic expert, having stayed there for just more than a year; yet, my experience both at home and abroad urges me to appeal to the public that no time should be lost to make change in our teaching strategies and students' studying habits. Also my professional prerequisition requires me to write the article because I feel it is worth the effort to try to present some of the issues or problems in teaching reading which might attract much disputation or refutation. It should be said that my presentation on the subject must be open to discussion, modification or refutation because there is a diversity of opinion and attitude toward the EFL teaching methodology. This article then is an attempt to find a handhold on the slippery slopes of the mountain that is EFL teaching.
Problems in teaching reading
I will just pick several commonly-concerning problems out of many controversial issues but they appear to be among the more important.
1. Reading. As is known to all English language workers in China, reading is divided into intensive reading and extensive reading, the former is taken by foreigners with some surprise but attracts much attention from Chinese language workers. It consists of taking students through a text on a word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase basis, explaining points of vocabulary, syntax, style and content along the way without losing any points the teacher might think baffling to students under the proposition of “intensive”. The text is used as a piece of land for both the teacher and student to cultivate finely with the aim of getting a harvest from it.
As Allen Maley made the following comments from her experience in China: The foreign teacher tends to find this obsessive concern with the fine details of his language irritating since, for him, reading is something else; namely, it
2
Aaron He
Ling. 486
is teaching students to extract meaning and information from texts as rapidly and efficiently as possible and to apply it to their current concern.¹
However, this principle doesn't take hold though some of us accept it — reading for information, and learning a language for application. Indeed, intensive reading concentrates attention on a necessarily small number of texts, rather than equipping the student with tools to deal with a wide range of texts. And students spend hours on the learning of abstruse vocabulary items and idioms which they will rarely be capable of using appropriately. They are often besieged with the differences between gerunds, participles and infinitives without being able to answer simple questions about themselves and their lives.
2. Textbooks. Many Chinese students and teachers think of books as the embodiment of knowledge, wisdom and truth. Knowledge is “in” the book and can be taken out and put inside the students' heads. Hence teachers chew and digest every bit of a textbook first and then feed it to their students. The "containers" try to take hold of what they pour and what the book contains.
Books contain knowledge but they may contain facts, opinions and ideas. The facts are open to interpretation, the opinion to dispute and the ideas to discussion. “There is nothing sacred about books, which are regarded as tools for learning, not the goal of learning” (Maley, p. 103)
Different attitudes towards textbooks give rise to different strategies to deal with them. If the textbook and teaching were compared to two circles, the two circles would be completely overlapped the way we deal with them as in fig. 1, whereas the circles would be partly overlapped the way the Westerners deal with them, as in fig. 2.
fig.1 fig.2
-------------------------------------
¹ Allen Maley, “ Xanadu – ‘A Miracle of rare device’: the teaching of English in China,” Language Learning and Communication 2 (1), p.104.
3
Aaron He
Ling; 486
The piece of land in fig. 1 was cultivated wholly by teachers and students while the land in fig.2, cultivated partly. The rest is to be cultivated by the students themselves, thus bringing about different abilities and characteristics.
3. Tests. Tests are to be given in every school and in every country. Taking account of overgeneralization, it does appear that, to the Chinese, a test is something a student passes or fails. Such a view is very difficult to accept. According to Maley, “Increasingly tests are being used to diagnose the learner's language profile and assess his progress.” (Maley, p. 104) The views of testing are different and compositions of tests are particularly different. Laying emphasis on testing the students remembrance, knowledge, and precision, we usually make up a test requiring much learning by heart, a wide range of knowledge or a strong and systematic ability to discern very subtle difference in a small language item, which is most probably confusing even to a language professor. For example:
There are more than one hundred ______ in this school.
(A) woman teachers
(B) women teachers
(C) women teacher
(D) teachers women
The use of “woman teachers” or “women teachers” is perhaps confusing to a language worker but either use makes no difference in conveying one's information. Considering another example:
There was a knock at the door. It was the second time someone _______ me that evening.
(A) had interrupted
(B) would have interrupted
(C) interrupted
(D) have interrupted
In the above example, choice (A) is of course the appropriate answer to the original but choice (C) would make sense if it were used in it though inappropriate in grammar. Here, two B.A. American teachers working here were consulted. They insisted that choice (C) be appropriate , not "inappropriate". Since the natives thought both choice (A) and choice (C) are acceptable, the difference in choices (A) and (C) is insignificant, if any. Thus the student's attention is not directed to his application but
4
Aaron He
Ling. 486
to his distinguishment between some minute differences or to his memorization of rules about some language items which are labeled as precision. These misguiding tactics lead them to be too precise about small language items to apply them properly in the daily life. And again, the thought must be established that the precise use of a language item can be obtained only through practice.
4. Classroom work. Though the situation is changing, most of the classroom work still focuses on translation, recall of a text, memorization of vocabulary and explanation of grammar structure disregarding the learning stages. Some teachers try to integrate all four skills, but classroom observation indicates that teachers talk 80-90% of the class time and the students just listen. They speak primarily to the teacher in response to questions, if they speak. Teachers talk so much because they are trying to input all they know to students who can take hold of all they input lest they should miss something in texts. They presume that their students would not learn it if they missed it.
Though there are many purposeful activities at their disposal, such as group work, role play, scrambled sentences and strip stories, the required input of contents and progress hinder them from planning those activities. Thus the classroom work is the least interesting and the students passively follow their teacher's instruction without their activity and creativity.
Resulting reading habits
It must be clear that we have had many good approaches to teaching a foreign language, such as stress on systematic knowledge, a very strict school curriculum and nation-wide outlines in some specific subjects. But the most prevailing view of teaching and learning is that it is memory-based rather than application-based, even at the advanced level, say, graduate level. Memorization is essential, especially at the initial period of learning; however, Maley made an ironic comments on the present teaching and learning of vocabulary:
There is likewise a heavy load of vocabulary learning (but without the range of contexts which would make it useful) and an attention to the fine points of grammar which transforms the language being taught into a series of conundrums to be solved, rather than a vehicle for communication.²
Those problems have brought our students lots of obstacles. It is very common that a student with 5000 words cannot understand news headlines; a graduate with a TOEFL score of 550 cannot write a so-so application letter, much less a beautiful one.
-----------------------------------
² Maley. p. 105
5
Aaron He
Ling.486
It also often occurs that an advanced learner reads a text with 500 words in five minutes and can understand every sentence in it literally, but they cannot pinpoint its main idea. This is what is said to be “they can only see trees but not the forest”.
Our teaching causes students to develop some bad habits:
1. Searching for unknown rather than known information. When they get seriously ready to read, they plunge themselves immediately into the text, searching for unknown things, such as unknown words, idioms, grammatical points or sentence patterns, which are usually underlined or highlighted. Rather than reading to comprehend the author's message, the reader searches for bits of details. As a result, what they have obtained is unknown things or fragmented information without focus.
2. No anticipation or prediction. When their eyes touch the first few words, they do nothing but muddle through the text with only high hopes that they will be able to understand it well. They don't have any anticipation or make any prediction or use their frame of knowledge whether they have it or not. In other words, they passively watch the words go by with their fingers crossed for good luck.
They don't know how to be aggressive in reading, to attack the passage to get the message. They are not taught how to use clues to anticipate the topic and activate their schema. Thus, they are swimming in the ocean of language without any direction.
3. No word context skills. When they come across new words while reading, they immediately underline them, stop to get their dictionary, always at hand (which is not a bad habit to some extent), and look it up at once. They usually ignore using the context to figure out the meaning of an unknown word even when the context is very apparent. For example:
“Technophobia, or fear of technology, is being a commonplace communication barrier.”
Several newly-enrolled graduates were tested on the meaning of “technophobia”. Almost all failed to give a satisfactory answer.
I might go on adding to this list of problems, such as slow reading rate, weakness in discerning what is the important sentence in a paragraph, what is the general topic and what is the detail, and ignorance of discourse knowledge such as paragraph organization. All this should be traced to our teaching strategies.
Both the teacher and students are assiduous in class and out of class. But given that, so often these study habits lead to knowledge about the language as an object rather than competence in using it as a tool. It is understandable that the student will be disappointed in learning the language. What we have done is lead them “to work hard at digging a hole. But all too often, it is dug in the wrong place” (Maley:1983).
6
Aaron He
Ling. 486
Rapid shifting in the methodology
In this connection, I earnestly appeal that we should make changes especially in our ideas for teaching English. We cannot teach them this way year after year. We should make change our friend.
1. Teaching reading strategies. The goal of reading is to obtain useful information from a passage. The information is classified as overall information and detail information. In teaching reading, details are always stressed but overall information, that is, the topic or main idea is overlooked, so students can see only trees but no forest.
To solve this problem, the schema theory proposed by Piaget and developed by Ausubel and Bruner can help us. According to them, the reading can be processed through a “top-down” approach and a “bottom-up” approach. The top-down process is used to deal from the textual discourse with the main idea, word context, background knowledge, discourse analysis and the others, while the bottom-up process deals with details, syntax, word usage, idioms and the others, i.e. laying the language foundation.³ The latter of the two is familiar but the former is somewhat new to us. At the graduate stage, it's time to make the shift from the bottom-up process to the top-down process -- teaching them reading strategies: skimming, scanning, faster reading, anticipation and prediction, keen awareness of main ideas and details in a passage and word attack skills, which prove to be applicable and useful at the advanced level (Obscurne: 89).
2. Teaching word attack skills. A certain amount of vocabulary is important indeed. Our students have paid much attention to memorizing thousands of words. However, no matter how much vocabulary they have in mind, they can't avoid encountering new words. And again, new words tend to hinder their understanding in reading. Their comprehension can be powerfully improved by practicing some word attack skills, such as word-formation, word context clues: definition clue, example clue, explanation (association) clues, comparison-contrast clues. cause-effect clues. The good habit of using word context clues is fostered and thinking is encouraged when a dictionary is used only at the last resort.
3. Making the class more learner-centered. Usually, teachers' often expressed concern over the passive behavior of their students calls for them to try to make their class more learner-centered, but at the same time many believe that some class activities take time away from their primary goals of covering the text and accomplishing their required progress. At the advanced level, say, graduate level, don't push yourself and your students too much. Put more credibility and creativity on
-----------------------------------------
³A.G. Obscurne. 1989. “Situational leadership and teacher education,” System, 17.
7
Aaron He
Ling. 486
your students. What you should do is lead them to read, show them how to read and assign them reading materials. In other words, our job now is not to serve them with fish but with fishing.
The competence of Western learners' application of a language and the weakness of Chinese in this respect convince me that the only goal for EFL students is to learn to use a foreign language. Therefore, we should see ourselves more seriously on the one hand and make change our friend more openly on the other. An experiment is made on opening a language skill course among the graduates in our university. In the course, some newly-compiled textbooks embodying the language skills are used, the students' competence of application is reinforced and the idea of students as the main part of the classroom work is imposed. The experiment has shown its prominence and preliminary success, which is the reason for the change in our teaching ideas.
8
Aaron He
Ling.. 486
Bibliography
Burnaby, B. & Y. Sun. 1989. “Chinese teachers' views of Western Language teaching: Context in forms paradigms”, TESOL Quarterly 23.
Carrell, Patricis. L. et al., eds. 1988. Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. Longman Group Ltd.
Maley, Allen. 1983. “Xanadu —‘A miracle of rare device’: the teaching of English in China”,Language Learning and Communication 2 (1), pp. 97-104.
Osburne, A.G. 1989. “Situational leadership and teacher education,” System, 17.
VI. Writing assignments
Exercise 6-1 Writing questions about a topic
______________________________________________________________
Choose several of the following topics, and write two questions on each of the topics. Make the questions as pointed and specific as possible.
1. Solar energy
2. Divorce
3. The family planning in China
4. The one-child family
5. The human rights in China
6. Transportation
7. Crimes
8. China's reform and open policy to the outside world
9. Arms competition
10. Falungong Cult
Exercise 6-2 Using sources available
______________________________________________________________
Go to your library where encyclopedias, periodicals, magazines are kept, and pick one of the sources to read one or two of the articles, and jot down any questions that come to mind.
Exercise 6-3 Note-taking
______________________________________________________________
For a source that interests you, make a 3-by-5-inch source card. Then read three or four pages in the source and paraphrase or summarize them, or quote them on the 6-by-4 note card. Check your version against the original.
Exercise 6-4 Write your research paper
______________________________________________________________
Choose one topic in which you are interested in your profession or field. While writing, follow the writing process, and write your footnotes or endnotes and bibliography.
Exercise 6-5 Writing research papers
_____________________________________________________________
Choose one or two of the following topic to write your research papers. While writing, you must follow the writing process, and write your footnotes or endnotes, and bibliography.
* 1. Physical Effects of Marijuana Use
2. EFL Student's Writing in English
3. The One-Child Family
4. The Human Rights in China
5. Global Economy
6. How Do Children Learn to Read?
7. Chinese Reform and Open Policy to the Outside World
8. Television on Children's Education
9. Aged People in China
10. The Problem of Illiteracy in China
本文来自37度医学网，http://www.37med.com，转载请注明出处。
上一篇：高级医学英语阅读与写作Chapter Five
下一篇：高级医学英语阅读与写作Chapter Seven
频道总排行
医学推广
频道本月排行
热门购物
评论排行
- 2011年临床执业医师考试实践技能真...(13)
- 腋臭手术视频(12)
- 2008年考研英语真题及参考答案(5)
- 节食挑食最伤女人的免疫系统(5)
- 核辐射的定义和单位(5)
- CKD患者Tm与IMT相关(5)
- 齐鲁医院普外科开展“喉返神经监护...(5)
- windows7激活工具WIN7 Activation v1.7(5)
- 正常微循环(5)
- 美大学性教育课来真的 男女上阵亲...(4)
