【原】聊一聊听VOA学英语

张海露Eric 2020-11-02

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From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm Eric Z reporting...

和大多数英语学习者一样，刚开始学英语的时候我的听力材料仅仅是VOA和BBC -- 我是商务英语专业，老师说多听听VOA对考专四专八听力有帮助，老师说BBC语速比常速VOA还要快，可以用来泛听。

从大二下学期开始我开始听BBC，每天听着起床，听着睡觉，听了一年 -- 还是听不懂，听听就困。

后来我反思这件事：

“听VOA和BBC为专四专八考试做准备”这个学习动机不够强烈，因为专八中有关新闻部分的听力也就5分（记不清了，可能是10分），而且这几道新闻听力题根本算不上新闻，语速还有内容上都“收敛”了很多。
听VOA和BBC的动力应该来自于你对它的内容感兴趣，通过听它们来掌握全球发生的事情，顺便练习英语。
我开始这样做的原因是“老师告诉我这样对我可能有帮助”，是因为“身边的同学也在这样做”，我忽略了“我是否对它感兴趣” “它是否适合我”这两个问题。一想到听力，脑袋里就是VOA和BBC，好像是这有这两个选择一样。

经过这样一分析我就不听VOA和BBC了 -- 不是否定它们的价值，我从这两个节目中学到了很多东西，听了和英文表达能力都有提升，是我发现其实有很多其它的可以更有趣的东西听。

听VOA和BBC就像是在听新闻联播，操着皇帝的心，却和我没什么关系，我没有参与感。我对哪个国家打起来了哪个国家又暴乱了之类的没什么兴趣，我的兴趣是听一个有趣的故事，涨点姿势（VOA上也有一些此类的节目，但是这里说的VOA指的是它的新闻频道）。

于是我开始听一些播讲类材料，例如ESL Podcast，彭蒙惠英语等。后来去美国读书听的种类比较多，开车的时候听WNYC(纽约的一个电台，做的很好），开长途的时候听This America Life，60-second系列，还有一个辩论的podcast记不得名字了，时不时地听台湾的ICRT，还有我们的CRN中的频道（摩天轮，RoundTable）等 -- 我不是在推荐你也去听这些频道，我建议的是你去找找你感兴趣的话题去听。

如果你对VOA/BBC中的内容感兴趣也可以去听，它的频道和种类还是很多的，而且出了很多针对英语学习的节目。判断一个材料好不好要看它是否适合你，你听起来跟听中文是的，说明它难度太低；听起来完全听不懂，难度太高。为了学英语着目的，我们要听那些大部分能听懂，有些地方不太清楚的，而且它最好有靠谱的文本 -- 这一点VOA和BBC做的就很好，还有一个CNN Student News也不错，只是它的文本有时候有些地方有错误。

好久没有听VOA，昨天在读Peter Hessler的 Oracle Bones (51-52页)的时候又碰到了这位老朋友，我才发现原来它是这么回事。

Peter Hessler写道他的学生利用VOA学英语的现象。

In the evenings, he distracted himself by listening to the Voice of America on his shortwave radio. Originally, the station had been a wartime creation of the American government; the first broadcast had been in German in 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Since then, the station had expanded to provide programming in fifty-five languages. According to its charter, the Voice was dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative news, and it described itself as “American” in a general, nonpolitical sense. But relatively few Americans had ever actually listened to it. U.S. law forbade the station from broadcasting domestically, because of a fear that any government-funded news source would become propaganda. It seemed a distinctly American paradox: create a Voice and then protect your own citizens from hearing it.

读到这里我才知道“原来美国人不怎么听VOA”！

Overseas, however, there were an estimated ninety million weekly listeners. In China, the Voice of America had always been hugely popular—during the pro-democracy demonstrations of 一个敏感时间, the station claimed that as many as sixty million Chinese tuned in every week. A decade later, Chinese in the big cities often had access to the Internet and cable television, but the Voice remained an important source of information in smaller places such as Yuhuan. It broadcast in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan.

这可是199x年的时间，这个收听率是惊人的 -- 然后发现原来是因为它有多种语言频道。也就是说起初人们听VOA是为了了解信息，为中国之民主而听！然后他提到了VOA下的“慢速英语”。

The Voice of America also provided programming in English, including a form of the language known as “Special English.” The best description of the tongue can be found on the Voice Web site, which is also Special:

Three elements make Special English unique. It has a limited vocabulary of 1,500 words. Most are simple words that describe objects, actions or emotions. Some are more difficult. They are used for reporting world events and describing discoveries in medicine and science. Special English is written in short, simple sentences that contain only one idea. No idioms are used. And Special English is spoken at a slower pace, about two-thirds the speed of standard English.

Special English was a product of the cold war. In the late 1950s, when the Soviet Union frequently jammed the Voice of America, broadcasters decided that a simpler form of the language would be easier to understand through the static. It wasn’t intended as a teaching tool, but that’s what it quickly became. Millions of people around the world studied English through the Special broadcasts.

这个原以为是为英语学习者量身定做的“特别英语”的真相竟然是因为“信号干扰”（注意jam这个词的用法）问题。

In Fuling, my students listened religiously, mimicking the rhythms, and soon Adam and I learned to talk the same way whenever we needed to make ourselves understood. We were the only native English speakers in the city, and after a couple of months we began holding routine conversations in Special English without realizing it. During my first year in the Peace Corps, a friend from New York visited and wondered if Adam and I were losing our native tongue. He kept telling us to stop talking to him as if he were a child.

这段话让我想到了美音学习经典 Ammerican Accent Trainning中提到的，AAT这本书是用来教美音的，但是它的语速是"in a normal conversational tone"，这样做的原因是他们认为如果故意放慢速度，那听起来就不费力，可能会误以为“English-teacher English”是平时美国人交谈的语速 -- 这样听起来好像是把对方对方当成老年人或者弱智一样。AAT中说：

Native speakers often tell people who are learning English to "slow down" and to "speak clearly". This is meant with the best intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what what a student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly, with strong intonation and good voice quality, you will be understood more easily.

这就告诉我们讲英文快慢并不重要，重要的是要有节奏有调调 -- 用语调和音高来辅助自己的表达。我们讲英文的时候放慢速度确实是可以帮助我们更容易被听懂，但是这种方式依然是听起来很不舒服，我们需要做的是把一段话变得多样化：有轻重缓急，有强弱起伏，这样可以更容易被听懂，听起来更自然。

我们在听像VOA Special English这类材料的时候要注意这一点：平时说话并不是这样的。VOA Special English和很多材料一样是一个很好的模仿材料 -- 学英语的时候，如果确定这个作品（语音或者写作）出自于受过教育的native speaker之手，就值得去模仿和研习，处处都会有收获。

Peter Hessler这个会说中文的美国人这样说：

Sometimes I wondered if Special English was the linguistic equivalent of McDonald’s—a slow-paced fast-food language. But I was studying Chinese myself, and soon I realized that I was developing my own Special Chinese. It was a natural method for picking up a new language: First, you established basic sentence structures and vocabulary, the way a painter might initially outline a portrait’s fundamental elements. Over time, you acquired more sophisticated words and phrases, attaching them to the existing foundation. It felt like living in a rough sketch of the world where new details appeared day by day.

英文中有一个词叫eclectic, 意思是“兼收并蓄的”。我想我们无论是学习还是思考都要有这个综合的意识。VOA好还是BBC好？练美音还是练英音？一个最简单的解决方式是都听，都练。你或许会说那我搞混了怎么办？

就像车有手动挡和自动挡一样，你会开手动档的话，很快就会开自动挡了，an d vice versa。了解要学习内容的特点，然后沿着正确的方向做正确的事情即可 -- 我们大多数的问题都是凭空编出来的，去行动才能找到真正的问题。