新视野研究生英语读说写2英语原文加翻译
1大学课堂:还有人在听吗?
1纽约大学的Robert A.Fowkes是我过去的一位老师。他喜欢讲在上世纪30年代他在德国上古威尔士语课的故事。第一天上课,教授大步走上讲台,翻了翻笔记,咳嗽了一声,开始说道:“早上好,女士们、先生们。”Fowkes不安地扫视一番。他是上这门课的惟一学生。
vaguely2Toward the middle of the semester,Fowkes fell ill and missed a class.When he returned,the professor nodded vaguely and,to Fowkes’s astonishment,began to deliver not the next lecture in the sequence but the one after.Had he,in fact,lectured to an empty hall in the absence of his solitary student?Fowkes thought it perfectly possible.
2在学期中间,Fowkes因病缺了一次课。他回到课堂的时候,教授毫无表情地向他点了点头。接着令Fowkes大吃一惊的是,教授并没有按照顺序讲下一课,而是讲了后面一课。难道他真的在他唯一的学生缺席的情况下对着空教室讲了一课?Fowkes 认为这太有可能了。
3Today American colleges and universities(originally modeled on German ones)are under strong attack from many quarters. Teachers,it is charged,are not doing a good job of teaching,and students are not d
oing a good job of learning.American businesses and industries suffer from unenterprising,uncreative executives educated not to think for themselves but to mouth outdated truisms the rest of the world has long discarded.College graduates lack both basic skills and general culture.Studies are conducted and reports are issued on the status of higher education,but any changes that result either are largely cosmetic or make a bad situation worse.
3今天美国的大学(原本是以德国的大学为模型的)受到了各方面的严厉指责。人们指责老师没有教好,学生没有学好。美国的商业和工业饱受无进取心的、缺乏创造力的管理人员之苦,这些人受的教育是自己不用思考,而是说一些过时的、在世界上其他地方早已抛弃的陈词滥调。大学毕业生即没有基本技能也没有全面修养。有人对高等教育的状况做了研究并发表了报告,但由此引发的变化很大程度上不是表面的,就是使已经糟糕的情形变得更糟。
4One aspect of American education too seldom challenged is the lecture system.Professors continue to lecture and students to take notes much as they did in the thirteenth century,when books were so scarce and expensive that few students could own them.The time is long overdue for us to abandon the lecture system and turn to methods that really work.
4美国教育中很少被挑战的方面是讲课制度。教授不停地讲,学生不停地记笔记,就想十三世纪时的情
形一样,那时因为课本缺乏又昂贵,很少有学生买得起。我们早就该舍弃讲课制度,开始使用真正有用的方法。
5想要了解现行体制的不足只要跟着一个假设的一年级学生就行了。我们暂且称她为玛丽(虽然任何其他的课都行)我们还是跟她去上一个学期的心理学导论。她到的第一天环顾巨大的课堂,看到班级这么大有些吃惊。一旦一百或一百多个注册的学生发现教授从不点名(他怎么能点名呢?点名会占用太多的时间),班级就缩小到不那么吓人的规模了。
6Some days Mary sits in the front row,from where she can watch the professor read from a stack of yellowed notes that seem nearly as old as he is.She is bored by the lectures,and so are most of the other students,to judge by the way they are nodding off or doodling in their notebooks.Gradually she realizes the professor is as bored as his audience.At the end of each lecture he asks,“Are there any questions?”in a tone of voice that makes it plain he would much rather there weren’t.He needn’t worry—the students are as relieved as he is that the class is over.
6有几天玛丽坐在前排,她可以看到教授在读一叠几乎和他年纪一样老的发黄的讲义。她听课听烦了,其他大部分同学也听烦了,这从他们的行为中可以做出判断:他们要么在打盹,要么在笔记本上涂鸦。渐渐地她意识到教授和他的听众一样感到无聊。每次课结束时他都问道:“有问题吗?”他的语气明显表明他更希望没有问题。他不必担心,学生和他一样感到下课是一种解脱。
7Mary knows very well she should read an assignment before every lecture.However,as the professor gives no quizzes and asks no questions,she soon realizes she needn’t prepare.At the end of term she catches up by skimming her notes and memorizing a list of facts and dates.After the final exam,she promptly forgets much of what she has memorized.Some of her follow students,disappointed at the impersonality of it all,drop out of college altogether.Others,like Mary,stick it out,grow resigned to the system and await better days when,as juniors and seniors,they will attend smaller classes and at last get the kind of personal attention real learning requires.
7玛丽清楚的知道她应该在每次上课前阅读布置的作业。但是,因为教授不做小测验也不提问,她很快就认识到她不必准备。
学期末她只要看看笔记,再记记一些事件、年代就可以跟上进度。期末考试后她会立刻忘掉她背下来的大部分内容。她的有些同学对这种无人情味的学习很失望,干脆辍学。其他人像玛丽一样坚持下来,无奈地接受了这种制度,等待着到大三大四时的好日子,那时他们就会有较小的班级,最终也会得到真正的学习所需要的那种针对个人的关注。
8I admit this picture is overdrawn—most universities supplement lecture courses with discussion groups,usually led by graduate students;and some classes such as first-year English and always rela
tively small.Nevertheless,far too many courses rely principally or entirely on lectures,an arrangement much loved by faculty and administrators but scarcely designed to benefit the students.
8我承认上面的描述言过其实。大多数大学有讨论课来补充听力课,通常讨论课是由研究生主持的。而且有些班级,如一年级的英语课,也总是相对较小的。但是,还有太多的课主要或者完全依赖于讲课,这种安排受到教师和管理人员的青睐,但绝不是为学生的利益而设计的。
9One problem with lectures is that listening intelligently is hard work.Reading the same material in a textbook is a more efficient way to learn because students can proceed as slowly as they need to until the subject matter become clear to them.Even simply paying attention is very difficult;people can listen at a rate of four hundred to six hundred words a minute,while the most impassioned professor talks at scarcely a third of that speed.This time lag between speech and comprehension leads to daydreaming.Many students believe years of watching television have sabotaged their attention span,out their real problem is that listening attentively is much harder than they think.
9听课存在的一个问题是:会听是件很难的事。阅读课本中的相同内容是更有效的学习方法,因为学生可以根据其需要慢慢阅读直到他们理解这些内容,甚至仅仅做到专心听课都很难。人听的速度可以达到每分钟400---600个词,而最富有激情的教授说话的速度也很难达到这个速度的1/3。讲课和理解之
间的时间差异导致开小差。很多学生认为多年来看电视已经削弱了他们保持注意力的能力。但是他们真正的问题是专心听课比他们认为的要难得多。
10Worse still,attending lectures is passive learning,at least for inexperienced listeners.Active learning,in which students write essays or perform experiments and them have their work evaluated by an instructor,is far more beneficial for those who have not yet fully learned how to learn.While it’s true that techniques of active listening,such as trying to anticipate the speaker’s next point or taking notes selectively,can enhance the value of a lecture,few students possess such skills at the beginning of their college careers.More commonly, students try to write everything down and even bring tape recorders to class in a clumsy effort to capture every word.
10更糟的是,听课是被动学习,至少对没有经验的听众如此。主动学习时学生些文章或做实验,然后由教师评价他们的作业,因此主动学习对那些还没有完全学会如何学习的学生来说益处要大得多。的确,积极听讲的技巧,如设法预测说话人的下一个要点或有选择的记笔记,能够提高听课的价值,但是很少有学生在大学学习的开始阶段就已经掌握了这些技巧。更为常见的是学生试图写下所有的内容,甚至还带着录音机去听课,以这种笨拙的方式来记录每个词。
11Students need to question their professors and to have their ideas taken seriously.Only then will th
ey develop the analytical skills required to think intelligently and creatively.Most students learn best by engaging in frequent and even heated debate,not by scribbling down a professor’s often unsatisfactory summary of complicated issues.They need small discussion classes that demand the common labors of teacher and students rather than classes in which one person,however learned,propounds his or her own ideas.
11学生需要向教授提问,也需要别人重视他们的想法。只有这样他们才能开发出聪明的、创造性的思考所必需的分析能力。大多数学生通过参加频繁的、甚至激烈的辩论才会学的更好,而不是通过胡乱记下教授对复杂事件所作出的常常不能令人满意的总结,他们需要小型讨论课,这种课需要教师和学生的共同努力,他们不需要那种让一个人提出自己观点的课堂,无论这个人多么有学识。
12The lecture system ultimately harms professors as well.It reduces feedback to a minimum,so that the lecturer can neither judge how well students understand the material nor benefit from their questions or comments.Questions that require the speaker to clarify obscure points and comments that challenge sloppily constructed arguments are indispensable to scholarship.Without them,the liveliest mind can atrophy.Undergraduates may not be able to make telling contributions very often,but lecturing insulates a professor even from the beginner’s naïve question that could have triggered a fruitful line of thought.
12讲课制度最终也会危害到教授们。反馈减少到了最低点,因此讲课者既不能判断学生对材料的了解程度,也不能受益于学生的提问或评论。学生要求说话者澄清模糊论点所提出的问题,以及挑战结构松散的论据的评论,这对于学术是必不可少的。没有这些,最活跃的头脑也会萎缩。大学生也许还不能够常常做出显著的贡献,但是讲课把教授同新生天真的问题阻隔开了,
而这些问题很可能会引起一系列思考。
13If lectures make so little sense,why have they been allowed to continue?Administrators love them,of course.They can cram far more students into a lecture hall than into a discussion class,and for many administrators that is almost the end of the story.But the truth is that faculty members,and even students,conspire with them to keep the lecture system alive and well.Lectures are easier on everyone than debates.Professors can pretend to teach by lecturing just as students can pretend to learn by attending lectures,with no one the wiser, including the participants.Moreover,if lectures afford some students an opportunity to sit back and let the professor run the show,they offer some professors an irresistible forum for showing off.In a classroom where everyone contributes,students are less able to hide and professors less tempted to engage in intellectual exhibitionism.
13如果说讲课如此不同情理,为什么还一直允许继续下去呢?当然是因为教学管理者喜欢了。他们可
以把更多的学生塞进演讲厅,而无法把这么多学生塞进讨论班。对许多管理者而言,这基本上就是他们所关心的了。但是,事实上,教师,甚至学生和管理者联合起来使得这一制度继续存在,且运行的很好。对任何人来说,讲课都比辩论容易。教授可以通过讲课假装在教,就像学生可以通过听课假装在学,这一点没有人意识到,包括参与者(指老师和学生)。此外,如果听课给某些学生袖手旁观,而让老师唱主角的机会,这也给一些教授提供了炫耀其才学的不可抗拒的舞台。如果课堂上人人参与,学生就无法躲藏,教授也不太会被吸引去进行学识上的自我表现。
14Smaller classes in which students are required to involve themselves in discussion put an end to students’passivity.Students become actively involved when forced to question their own ideas as well as their instructor’s.their listening skills improve dramatically in the excitement of intellectual give-and-take with their instructors and yellow students.Such interchanges help professors do their job better because they allow them to discover who knows what—before final exams,not after.When exams are given in this type of course, they can require analysis and synthesis from the students,not empty memorization.Classes like this require energy,imagination,and commitment from professors,all of which can be exhausting.But they compel students to share responsibility for their own intellectual growth.
14如果班级较小又要求学生参加讨论,这就会消除学生的被动性。学生被迫对他们自己和老师的思想
表示怀疑时,他们就变得主动参与了。他们听的技巧在与老师和同学的学术交流所带来的刺激中大大得到提高。这种交替互动能够帮助教师做得更好,因为他们会发现谁知道什么---在期末考试前,而不是之后。这种形式的课程考试要求学生分析和综合,而不是空洞的记忆。这样的课程需要教授们的活力、想象力和投入,所有这些都会令人精疲力竭的。但是,这也使得学生为他们自己的学术成长分担责任。
15Lectures will never entirely disappear from the university scene both because they seem to be economically necessary and because they spring from a long tradition in a setting that values tradition for its own sake.But the lectures too frequently come at the wrong end of the students’educational careers—during the first two years,when they most need close,even individual,instruction.If lecture classes were restrictod to juniors and seniors,who are less in need of scholarly nurturing and more able to prepare work on their own,they would be far less destructive of students’interests and enthusiasms than the present system.After all,students much learn to listen before they can listen to learn.
15讲课这一方式不会完全从大学消失。一是因为讲课似乎从经济角度考虑是必需的,二是讲课起源于悠久的传统,而且人们又把传统本身看得很重。但是,讲课通常出现在学生接受教育生涯的错误的那一端------在大学的第一和第二年。那时他们最需要密切是甚至是针对个体的辅导。如果讲课这一形式
局限于三、四年级的学生,则对学生的兴趣和热情的破坏力会比目前的制度小得多,因为三、四年级的学生不太需要学科上的指导与帮助,而且更有能力自己制定学习计划。毕竟,学生在能够从听讲课中学到知识之前必须先学会去听。
2家与旅行
Margaret Mead
1、For many people,moving is one kind of thing and travel is something very different.Travel means going away from home and staying away from home;it is an antidote to the humdrum activities of everyday life,a prelude to a holiday one is entitled to enjoy after months of dullness.Moving means breaking up a home,sadly or joyfully breaking with the past;a happy venture or a hardship,something to be endured with good or ill grace.
对许多人来说,搬家和施行是截然不同的两回事,施行意味着离开家外出一段时日。它是摆脱日常单调生
活的一种手段,是经过数月乏味的生活之后一个人应该开始享有的度假生活。面对于搬家,有人喜爱有人厌恶,因为它意味着破坏一个家园,或悲伤或兴高采烈地摆脱过去而踏上也许幸福也许艰难的历险征途。
对我来说,搬家和待在家里,旅行和到达某处是一样的。世界各处都有我的家,可能我住过一天,一个月,一年或更长的时间。我在一个家居住的时间长短并不是衡量我是否喜欢它的标准。在一个有跳跃火苗的房间里仅住一晚带给意义也许远远大于在一个没有壁炉的房间里生活数月,因为在这样的房间里我的生活节奏会缺少一些刺激。
从我记事时起,我就知道,我们全家并不是一直住在当时居住的地方——新泽西州的啥蒙顿。我们搬到那里是为了让母亲能撰写博士论文。我知道我的第一个夏天是在一个叫的避暑胜地度过的。到了l7岁时我才故地重游,而且海浪拍岸的声音让我惟一一次真切地感受到想家的滋味。我还知道,我们曾经在费城的圣马可广场居住过,因为第二年冬天我们住在圣马可广场附近的时候,还认识住在那里的人们。
4、Every winter we went to live in or near Philadelphia so that Father would not have to travel too far or stay in the city on the nights that he lectured at the University.From the time I was seven years old,we went somewhere for the summer,too.So we moved four times a year,because for the fall and spring we returned to the house in Hammonton.
4每年冬天我们都会去费城或附近居住。这样父亲到大学讲学就不必走很远的路。也不必在城里过夜。从我7岁起,每年夏天我们也会去其他地方居住。这样,我们一年要搬4次家,因为秋天和春天我们会搬回到哈蒙顿的家。
5除了哈蒙顿的家外,其他的家都很陌生。我们要尽快把它们变成像自己的家一样,这样就不会再有陌生感了。这并不是说这些房子有多可怕,而是我们要了解房子的每个角落以便我们孩子玩捉迷藏。每到一处,我都会先跑进去为自己挑一间尽可能远离大家的房间,如果能在顶层就最好了。这样,如果有人来,脚步声就能提前告诉我。之后,我就会一直忙于四处考察,以建立自己的新领地,直到我们大家都安顿下来。等我l4岁后,我已开始负责打开行李,铺床,把食物放进冰箱,并在夜降临前加油点灯。
6接下来就是考察周边的情况了。我得了解附近住着什么样的小孩,周围有没有小树林呀,野花丛呀,蔓草或丛林之类的任何隐蔽的地方,而且这种地方可以变成一个小型的原始森林,能让人迅速融入一个幻化的世界。
7、In Hammonton we had five whole acres,a good part of which was second-growth bush,studded with blueberries,which the little Italian children who were our neighbors picked and sold back to us.In Lansdowne and Swarthmore there were bits of woodlot.But in Philadelphia there was nothing,only stone walls of different heights on which to walk.Nothing,except for the winter when we lived at the edge of the park near the zoo.
7在哈蒙顿,我们拥有整整5英亩土地,其中很大一部分是再生灌木丛,里面点缀着蓝莓。邻居的意大
利小孩会采摘蓝莓的果实再卖给我们。在Lansdowne和Swartthmore我们有些植林地。但在费城却什么也没有,只有高高矮矮的石头墙,上面可以走路,其它什么都没有了。不过冬天当我们住在动物园附近公园边上的时候是要除外的。
12、There were treasures on Mother’s dressing table,too—a Wedgwood pin dish,a little porcelain Mary and her lamb,the pale green,flowered top of a rose bowl that had broken,and Mother’s silver-backed comb and brush and mirror.All these things held meaning for me.Each was—and still is—capable of evoking a rush of memories.
母亲的梳妆台上摆放着一些珍藏的物品—一个韦奇伍德的放别针的小碟,一个小小的“玛丽和她的小绵羊”的瓷器制品。一个里面镶花但己破碎的浅绿的玫瑰碗,以及母亲那把镀银的梳子,刷子和镜子。所有这些对我都深有含义,每件东西都曾经并且仍然能够勾起我串串回忆。
13、Taken altogether,the things that mattered a great deal to me when I was a child are very few when I compare them to the overloaded tables and overcrowded shelves through which children today have to thread their way.Only if
they are very fortunate will they be able to weave together into memories the ill-assorted mass of gadgets,toys,and easily forgotten objects,objects without a past or a future,and piles of snapshots th
at will be replaced by new,brightly colored snapshots next year.
现在的孩子书桌和书架上都堆满了东西。和他们比起来,童年时对我有意义的东西加在一起也没有几件。但是只有当他们非常幸运的时候,他们记忆中才有可能出现那些杂乱无章的小玩意、玩具、容易被人遗忘的没有过去和未来的东西和一叠叠第二年就会被更新更好看的照片所取代的照片。
14、The difficulty,it seems to me,is not—as so many older people claim—that in the past life was simple and there were fewer things,and so people were somehow better,as well as more frugal.It is,rather,that today’s children have to find new ways of anchoring the changing moments of their lives,and they have to try to do this with very little help from their elders,who grew up in an extraordinarily different world.How many of the young people who are rebelling against the tyranny of things,who want to strip their lives down to contents of a rucksack,can remember and name the things that lay on their mother’s dress table or can describe every toy and book they had as a child?
我认为问题的症结并不是许多年纪大的人所认为的那样:认为过去生活很简单,物质也不够丰富,所以人们反而生活得比现在更好更简朴。关键是现在的孩子不得不到新的方式来适应他们生活中变化的时刻,而且他们还不得不尝试着在没有得到家长多少帮助的情况下做到这点,因为家长们的成长环境和他们现在的环境大相径庭。这些年轻人正在反抗着控制他们的专治。他们想把生活的内容简单到
只需一个帆布背包就能容纳。他们中有多少人能记得并说出他们母亲梳妆台上的东西,又有多少人能描绘孩提时所拥有的每一个玩具和每一本书呢?
15、It has been found that when desperate,unhappy youngsters are preparing to break away from a disordered, drug-ridden commune in which they have been living for months,they first gather together in one spot their few possessions and introduce a semblance of order among them.The need to define who you are by the place in which you live remains intact,even when that place is defined by a single object,like the small blue vase that used to mean home to one of my friends,the daughter of a widowed trained nurse who continually moved from one place to another. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert often build no walls when they camp in the desert.They simply hollow out a small space in the sand.But then they bend a slender sapling into an arch to make a doorway,an entrance to a dwelling as sacrosanct from invasion as the walled estates of the wealt hy are or as Makati,in Manila,is,where watchmen guard the rich against the poor.
人们已经发现,当绝望的不幸少年打算摆脱他们曾经生活过数月的毫无秩序、充斥着的社区时,他们通常会先把他们有限的财产聚集到某个地方并按顺序摆放起来。人们需要靠自己生活的地方来定义自己的身份的做法没有改变,即使那个地方只是用一件物品定义的。就比如我的一个朋友——她的母亲是一位经过专门训练的护,寡居但是需要经常搬家——一个小小的蓝花瓶对她的含义就是家。
卡拉哈里沙漠里的居民在沙漠中露营时通常是不建围墙的。他们仅仅是在沙漠中挖出一块小空间,然后把一棵小树弯曲起来做成拱形当作入口。这个入口是神圣不可侵犯的,就好比有钱人用墙围起来的地产或者是在马尼拉的马卡提,有保安人员为富人提防穷人一样。
17、Home,I learned,can be anywhere you make it.Home is also the place to which you come back again and again.The really poignant parting is the parting that may be forever.It is this sense that every sailing may be a point of no return that haunts the peoples of the Pacific islands.On the very day I arrived in Samoa,people began to ask,“When will you leave?”When I replied,“In a year,”they sighed,“Alas,talofai”—our love to you—with the sadness of a thousand partings in their voices.
我领悟到一点:家可以是在任何地方,家也是你一次次回来的地方。真正让人难过的分别是那种有可能的永远的分别。正是这种感觉一直困扰着南太平洋岛上的人们。对他们来说,每一次出海都可能不再回来。在我到达萨摩亚岛的当天,人们就开始问我:“你何时离开?”当我告诉他们:“一年后”,他们就会叹息道:“唉,talofai”,(意思是送上我们的爱),声音带着似乎告别无数次才会有的悲伤。因为住在这些岛的居民都曾是航海者,他们出发时只是为了一次短途航行,但大风却把他们的小船吹离了航线数百英里。然而即使是一艘打鱼船出海,它都有可能撞上危险的暗礁而使人溺水身亡,因此最短的航行都可能意味着永别。
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