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发表于 2008-10-29 14:36:44
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Advice and Comments on English Discourse
Advice and Comments on English Discourse
There are several aspects of language and spoken writing that I would like to focus on today for considerations to allow you to improve moving forward.
First category of feedback is I want to talk very briefly about lexicon and vocabulary. As I see , I felt that mostly your use of lexicon in today's presentation was quite sophisticated and showed a lot of preparation. Most of you may have noticed that in the contemporaneous, spontaneous remarks and questions, the level of vocabulary came down a notch or two. That's very natural: some- thing that we all have to work on. But there were a couple of I think. there's three examples that I'd like to share with you to take home to work on. Number one, for instance, since the writing topic was ecology, when you talk about living in harmony with da za ren(大自然), is it "the nature" or "nature'? Nature! I's not "the nature"! so, that was like one of those errors that. umm, came up because of the theme of the speech, but that's something you can remember right now, "Live in harmony with...nature."' Second, some small things that I noted, some of you messed up "emphasized" with "emphasis"---it's a common mistake. And, when one of you was talking about how important it was to be aware of the environment and that we should generate awareness of environment to help us think of ways to improve it, and she, I think it was she, said "we should get a consensus of the environment," I think she probably meant "sense." "get a sense of the environment" as an awareness. So, little things like that. Be careful semantically. If you reach the upper levels of language, it's very easy to choose a wrong word and I guess my advice for you would be, "When in doubt, check a dictionary for nuance and proper usage." because when you're in the lower levels you're not using those fancy words. But when you get up in the upper levels, like today, they're very important.
my last category of feedback for you is in the area of discourse and organization. This is very important in speaking contests, it's very important when you're translating at the upper levels, and it's important in adult life when you're working in the world of work where you're no longer talking simply about yourself and your family, but other things, issues. Today's contestants demonstrated a wide variety of rhetorical styles in their prepared speeches. Many of the candidates showed a sophisticated use of linguistic register, and register is, as you know. using language that is appropriate for a specific purpose for a specific social context. The reason l mention register is that for learners of English as a second language, the higher the register, the more difficult it is to speak accurately, coherently, and persuasively. Right? So, today, one of the contestants made a very insightful remark and said, I quote, "The higher level of English I speak, the more mistakes I make." Remember that'? Actually. What she meant by this was that she was having trouble communicating sophisticated ideas and arguments in English without making errors in grammar or usage. University students learning English can improve their ability to speak naturally in high registers and high level of discourse and can sustain a high level of discourse by doing a few things and these are the three pieces of advice I will leave for you before I conclude my remarks. So, this is advice teachers and students for how to build that competency and high level of discourse.
Number one: Read texts that represent a high level of discourse. Soak up that language. But, remember that written text has a discourse that is separate from spoken discourse. Some of you were speaking today in very. kind of written-prose language, and you may not want to do that in the future.
Number two, piece of advice: Make a tape recording of yourself talking about abstract topics or complex topics and then go back and listen to it and listen to how it sounds: if it's cohesive and coherent'? Are there errors? Then go back, practice again, and do it a second time like editing a written text but, in fact, it's a spoken text. You will hear what you're doing that could be improved, even you, and of course if you have teachers, that's even better, but you, yourself will hear.
Finally, my last piece of advice for you is that you should practice building. If language, if spoken language, was like a house you should practice building the house brick by brick, storey by storey, so you all can do basic sentences now, clearly. And, most of you are pretty good at building paragraphs, but some of you are not yet perfect house builders in terms of discourse and organization. So you want to practice writing compound and complex sentences, and then weave those together into paragraphs and you'll weave those paragraphs into the full spoken text. Weave them together, push yourself to go for the discourse and woven nature so that not only the thought flows, but it's coherent. And. I think you'll agree with me, that some of the most compelling speeches that we heard today displayed this type coherence and sort of natural progression of ideas, lf you do that, there's no doubt in my mind that you can progress at this area. |
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