英语单词大师：Formal Writing

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: an example of how English teachers at one high school are trying to get students to keep the language of the Internet where it belongs.

Jodi Schenck teaches at Rothberg Comprehensive High School in the Israeli city of Ramat HaSharon.

JODI SCHENCK: "What we call netspeak in our English team is basically the habit that kids have of writing on formal exams and essays exactly as they write on the Internet -- the number four instead of the world f-o-r, the letter U instead of y-o-u. Phrases that they use, idioms like LOL, laugh out loud, and this kind of thing. And it's been very hard for us to train them not to do that.

"And of course they lose massive amounts of points on their matriculation exams and final exams when they write like this. And for them they don't understand why it's not acceptable, since they use it every day to write internationally."AA: "Well, how do you try to break them of the habit?"JODI SCHENCK: "Well, obviously, first of all, to make them aware of it. I mean, I give them a whole list of phrases from the Internet and I say, 'All of these things? No, you can't use them. They're not common usage. They are slang.'

"And I give them examples. The same way that they wouldn't use hip-hop speak when they're having an interview for IBM, or the same way they wouldn't go in sandals and a torn pair of jeans to an interview, they can't use this kind of English in their writing. That it's formal writing and they have to write formally. They have to have a different set of informational values."AA: "So what advice do you have for other English teachers who are hearing this and maybe facing the same problem, what advice do you have for them?"JODI SCHENCK: "This is a Sisyphean task, it's an uphill task, it is. I try to do it lightheartedly with them, I try to give them funny examples of why it doesn't work and why people don't understand. But I am stringent¹ about it. After they've been warned and after we've discussed it, if I receive an essay with something like this on it, I will remove five points or ten points each time, until they get the idea that they simply can't do it. And it sounds very Draconian², but there's no choice for it."AA: "Well, couldn't someone argue that, let's say they're writing an essay or a story, a made-up story, and they're using it to represent how kids speak today? Are there appropriate uses for netspeak in their writing?"JODI SCHENCK: "When the kids write e-mails, and we allow them to write internationally to pen pals³ and stuff, I don't edit them. In that sense they're allowed to use it. If they're using it in character, like they're writing a fictional⁴ story, then like any character dialect it's in quotation⁵ mark and it's obvious that it's character dialect and not their own writing. That's fine. But in terms of writing a formal essay or some sort of answer to a question that's formal English, no."AA: "Is it that they think it's acceptable? I mean, why are they doing it? Is it just to bother you?"JODI SCHENCK: "No, no. I think it's because, I mean especially where I teach, in Israel, most of the kids learn English from the popular media. They learn it from the TV, from movies, from MTV and from the Internet -- in great part from the Internet because these are kids who from, practically from birth are on the Internet, chat rooms, e-mails. And this is what they've learned from the people they write to internationally, back and forth⁶, and they think it's absolutely normal. They don't see it as something unusual.

"Most of my kids unfortunately don't read a lot, which is a worldwide problem. Paper is out and computer is in. And, as a result, they don't have the cultural background of reading the way I did when I was a kid, where I read full novels and stuff for fun. They don't do that. For fun, they go onto the Internet, and on the Internet this is acceptable."AA: Jodi Schenck is an English teacher at Rothberg Comprehensive High School in Ramat HaSharon, Israel. She was recently in the United States at the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages convention in Seattle, where I spoke⁷ with her.

And that's it for Wordmaster this week. If you'd like to hear other interviews from the TESOL convention, go to voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is [email protected]. I'm Avi Arditti.

1 stringent   

adj.严厉的；令人信服的；银根紧的

参考例句：

• Financiers are calling for a relaxation of these stringent measures.金融家呼吁对这些严厉的措施予以放宽。
• Some of the conditions in the contract are too stringent.合同中有几项条件太苛刻。

2 draconian   

adj.严苛的；苛刻的；严酷的；龙一样的

参考例句：

• You can't expect the people to obey such draconian regulations.你不能指望人民服从如此严苛的规定。
• The city needs a draconian way of dealing with robbers.这个城市需要一个严苛的办法来对付强盗。

3 pals   

n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙

参考例句：

• We've been pals for years. 我们是多年的哥们儿了。
• CD 8 positive cells remarkably increased in PALS and RP(P CD8+细胞在再生脾PALS和RP内均明显增加(P 来自互联网

4 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

5 quotation   

n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情

参考例句：

• He finished his speech with a quotation from Shakespeare.他讲话结束时引用了莎士比亚的语录。
• The quotation is omitted here.此处引文从略。

6 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。