词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Lida Baker: Listener Questions

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": November 14, 2002
Rebroadcast on VOA News Now: November 17, 2002

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster, English teacher Lida Baker¹ answers some of your questions.

RS: Starting with this from "Sunny," He Hong Feng, who asks: "May I say I am an English teacher or should I say I am a teacher of English, as I am a Chinese."

BAKER: "If he says that he is an ENGLISH teacher, with the stress on the word English, it means that he is a teacher of the English language. So he is an ENGLISH teacher. Now, on the other hand, if you say 'I am an ENGLISH TEACHER,' notice that both of the words there are stressed equally, an ENGLISH TEACHER. That means that you are a teacher whose nationality is English. Now I just want to throw out a parallel² case, quite a well-known one, which is: Where does the president of the United States live?"

AA: "The White House."

BAKER: "The White House. And you stressed the first word, WHITE House. Now, one the other hand, if you stressed both words equally and you say WHITE HOUSE, how would you use that?"

AA: "I live in the white house."

RS: "As opposed to the blue house or the green house."

BAKER: "Correct."

AA: "Moving on, Rick Ming is a junior majoring in English in China, and he would like to know how to get his classmates more interested in current affairs. He says: 'Unfortunately, not all my classmates care about current affairs. So the point is, how I am able to motivate them to express the views on news freely³ in class?'"

BAKER: "People are interested in something or they're not. Most people are interested in things that are of some kind of relevance⁴ to their lives. So I would say if you want to discuss current events with your classmates, try to select topics or issues that affect their lives in one way or another.

"But I suspect that a larger problem is, it's not that they're not interested in current events, but rather it may be that his classmates just feel that they don't have enough English to be able to do this competently⁵. So some ideas that come to my mind are, instead of talking about, for example, Voice of America news headlines, to select the feature stories, which have the scripts⁶, posted on the Internet.

And before having the discussion⁷ with his classmates, each person could read the scripts and that would give them the opportunity to spend some time learning⁸ the vocabulary and thinking about the background of the topic involved. So that's one thought that I had.

"Another one that I had was to give some thought to the linguistic⁹ skills that are necessary in order to sustain¹⁰ a conversation or a discussion in English. If you're talking about current events with somebody, you would need to know how to express an opinion. You would need to know how to agree with somebody or to disagree with somebody. You would need to know how to ask questions. You would need to know how to ask somebody to repeat what they have just said, or to explain what they have just said.

"Now all of those how-to's that I've just mentioned are called language functions. And it might be useful for this student to approach his English teacher and ask the teacher to help him and his classmates learn some of these functions."

RS: "It might also be a good idea for him to start a separate study group."

BAKER: "I thought of that."

RS: "A group that perhaps looks at an English language newspaper or looks at the VOA Web site, or -- "

BAKER: "Or a club."

RS: "Or a club, exactly, where interested people come together for this particular purpose."

BAKER: "Sure. One other idea that I had is to make use of the Internet. There is a Web site, for example, called Dave's ESL Cafe. And there are all kinds of discussion forums¹¹. But if you went to a search engine and you typed in something like 'ESL discussion groups' I suspect you would find others as well. So I think it's very worthwhile to make use of the Internet, you know, via an online discussion group."

RS: "And make new friends."

BAKER: "That's right."

AA: Lida Baker teaches in the American Language Center at the University of California at Los Angeles -- that is, when she's not writing books for English learners. Lida can't answer questions personally, but send them to Rosanne and me.

RS: Write us at VOA Wordmaster, Washington, DC 20237 USA or。。。。 And our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

Related Articles
 

1 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

2 parallel   

n.相似处；平行线；纬线；adj.平行的；类似的

参考例句：

• This is the parallel points in the characters of different men.这就是不同人物间个性上的类似之处。
• The growth of the two towns was almost parallel.这两个城镇的发展几乎相同。

3 freely   

adv.自由地，随便地，无拘无束地

参考例句：

• She was unable to keep back her tears,and wept freely.她抑制不住泪水，痛痛快快地哭了起来。
• A liquid flows freely and has no fixed shape.液体能自由流动，无固定形态。

4 relevance   

n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性

参考例句：

• Politicians' private lives have no relevance to their public roles.政治家的私生活与他们的公众角色不相关。
• Her ideas have lost all relevance to the modern world.她的想法与现代社会完全脱节。

5 competently   

ad.称职地；胜任地

参考例句：

• Both the actors and actresses in the play are competently filled. 这出戏，男女演员配搭得很和谐。
• The center was competently staffed. 中心配备着干练的人员。

6 scripts   

剧本( script的名词复数 )； 文字； 笔迹； （一种语言的）字母系统

参考例句：

• Many felt he was prostituting his talents by writing Hollywood scripts. 许多人觉得他给好莱坞写剧本是滥用自己的才华。
• The scripts had a rather tired plot. 这部陈旧的剧本的情节是非常俗套的。

7 discussion   

n.讨论，谈论；论述

参考例句：

• It is certain he will come to the discussion.他肯定会来参加讨论。
• After months of discussion,a peace agreement is gradually taking shape.经过几个月的商讨，和平协议渐渐有了眉目。

8 learning   

n.学问，学识，学习；动词learn的现在分词

参考例句：

• When you are learning to ride a bicycle,you often fall off.初学骑自行车时，常会从车上掉下来。
• Learning languages isn't just a matter of remembering words.学习语言不仅仅是记些单词的事。

9 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

10 sustain   

vt.保持，供养，维持，支持，经受

参考例句：

• During the war we had just enough food to sustain us.战争期间，我们的食物仅够维持生活。
• These four posts sustain the entire building.这四根柱子支撑着整座建筑物。

11 forums   

讨论会； 座谈会； 广播专题讲话节目； 集会的公共场所( forum的名词复数 )； 论坛，讨论会，专题讨论节目； 法庭

参考例句：

• A few of the forums were being closely monitored by the administrators. 有些论坛被管理员严密监控。
• It can cast a dark cloud over these forums. 它将是的论坛上空布满乌云。