Unit 1 - A Kind of Sermon
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 level of ability and fluency.
Does it encourage you to know that you are not the only one who is struggling at this level of language acquisition?
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 to point out that the teacher, too, becomes frustrated 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.
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, may take refuge in quoting proverbs to his colleagues such as: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, " or, more respectfully if less grammatically: "It ain'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 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."
参考译文——权进一言
作者不是说教者，但这儿他确实在说什么教。他的听众是谁？有趣的是，他的听众是教你们高级英语的外语老师。作者想要帮助他们完成教学生学好高级英语的困难任务，引导学生提高英语能力和流利程度的任务。
如果你知道在语言习得的这一水平上，不是唯独你学得如此费劲，你会感到鼓舞吗？
权进一言
W·S·福勒
一旦了解了英语的基本结构和句型，再往下学似乎就越来越难了，个中原因，也许教师比学生更容易理解。当学生们发现一个本该变得更为简单的进程似乎并未变得简单时，他们自然会感到惊讶和失望。
即使向学生们指出，教师在其努力所产生的效果似乎不及原来明显时也会灰心丧气，似乎也不会给他们带来多大安慰。学生们最初很容易教，因为他们能把教给他们的所有东西付诸实践。现在教师却发现他们面对着大量未曾接触过的英语词汇和惯用法而踌躇起来。因为这些词汇和惯用法都是基础教科书中所没有涉及的内容。他看到他们在挣扎，因为他们本以为已经熟悉的语言现在看上去竟是由种种令人困惑不解、在不同上下文中有着不同意义的习语、 陈词滥调和成语组成的。很难让学生们相信：他们仍在朝着流利的目标前进，而且只要花上时间和精力，他们的英语一定会有所提高。
在这种情况下，有些学生厌恶地放弃了学习并不出人意表，而另外一些学生则仍然满怀希望地等待着老师像最初那样给他们以充满自信的指导。就教师来说，由于经常被迫设法去解释一些无法解释的东西，他们就可能对同事们引用一些谚语来聊以自慰，如：“引马河边易，逼马饮水难。”或者引用一句虽不太合乎语法却比较尊重学生的话：“重要的不在于你说什么，而在于你怎么说。”对这些话，学生们也许很想反驳说：“我学得越多，懂得越少。”
当然，这话并不正确。因为不管是学生还是老师，他们现在都经历着这样一个认识过程，即我们在某种语言中所碰到的比较复杂的结构，对于表达自己的意思来说并不是那么不可或缺，因此它们的应用范围也就不那么直接。由于同样的原因，以教师的观点来看，选择适当的教材就成了一项更为困难的任务。比起在某个特定的日子从一份丰盛的菜单中选出你最想吃的一道菜来，随便准备点吃的东西毕竟要容易得多。
把问题讲清楚是容易的，而要提出解决办法可就难了。有人可能会建议让学生到一个讲英语的国家去住两三年，这等于把他们甩掉，不再管他们，因为有时间或有钱出国的学生为数并不多。人们常说，大量阅读是可供选择的最佳方案，但即使在这一方面，也需要进行某些选择。只告诉学生到图书馆去，拿起第一本见到的书就读是没有用的。我对学生的建议是：“要读不需要查词典就能看懂的东西（但并非一看就懂的东西）；要读使你感兴趣的东西；要读有时间读的东西（报纸和杂志而不是长篇小说，除非你能在一个星期左右的时间里把整本小说读完）；要读当代写的英文，而不是两百年前写的英文；要尽量多读并设法记住各种表达方式，而不是那些让你费解的个别单词。”这里的“读”，换成“听”也无妨。
我对教师的建议也有几分类似。我要说：“认为什么教材都行或者任何语言都有用，这种想法是没有好处的。不教给学生正确的表达方法而依靠学生自己表达他们的思想是没有好处的。在接近山顶时为学生们选择最佳的攀登路线仍然是你的责任，正像在山麓丘陵处为他们建议一条离开众人踏平的山路而又走得通的捷径曾是你的责任一样。如果你所选择的那条路因草木丛生而难以继续延伸，整队人马就只得原路折回，而你就得选择另一条路。你仍然是花钱雇来的向导和专家，而在某个地方总有一条通往山顶的路。”
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