When you read a story in English, do you read it for the story or for the English? This is a question that is not so foolish as it may seem. For I find that many learners of English pay far more attention to the story than to the English. They read and enjoy and for a long time afterwards remember the story, but do not care to study the use of words and phrases in it. For instance, they keep in the memory how the mystery of the eternal triangle is solved, but do not remember a single sentence in the story and cannot tell what preposition is used before or after a certain word in the speech of a certain character. Of course, it is all right to read and enjoy and remember a story, and so long as one wants to know the story only, one need not bother about the language. But the case is quite different with a learner of English. I mean a student of English as distinguished from a student of stories or what is called the general reader. Whatever a learner of English reads, he should, in my opinion, regard the language as the main thing. For instance, on reading this preceding sentence, besides understanding its meaning, he should notice such points as the concessive use of “whatever”, “in my opinion”, ”regard…as…” and “the main thing”. In this way, he does learn some English though what he reads may happened to be otherwise uninteresting or uninstructive. It may safely be said that this is a far better way of learning English composition than to read and consider the so-called principles of the subject. Incidentally, I would advise teachers of English to question their pupils on points of diction and construction as well as on facts and thoughts. 作者简介:葛传槼(1906~1992),男,复旦大学教授,上世纪50年代复旦大学英语语言文学系“三巨头”之一,中国研究英语惯用法的先驱,著有久负盛名的《英汉四用词典》,《新英汉词典》(主要编纂者之一),以及《英语惯用法词典》。 (复旦外语) |
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