VOA慢速英语2010年-Education Report - Need Help With Your

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Many colleges and universities in the United States have writing centers to help students improve their skills. Some materials are available free at Web sites like the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL¹. The site is connected to the Writing Lab at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Writing Lab at Purdue

It includes resources that can help non-native English speakers. VOA's Art Chimes recently spoke² with the director, Linda Bergmann.

LINDA BERGMANN: "The Purdue Online Writing Lab is a sizeable collection of workshops, worksheets, instructional materials in both English language and in various genres³ in which students and people working in the world are expected to write."

For instance⁴, even native speakers are often not sure when to use "lie" and when to use "lay." The site gives these example sentences: "After laying down his weapon, the soldier lay down to sleep." "Will you lay out my clothes while I lie down to rest?"

The problem is that "lie" also means to not tell the truth, as in "I lied to my mother." So you would say in the past tense "I lay on the bed because I was tired."

The Purdue Online Writing Lab also explains how to use an apostrophe correctly in possessives and other cases. People often add an apostrophe to "its" in a sentence like "The group made its decision." There should be no apostrophe because what you mean is that the decision belongs to the group. "It's" with an apostrophe is short for "it is," as in "It's raining."

The Purdue Online Writing Lab also explains how to organize papers and avoid plagiarizing⁵ other peoples' work. And it provides a guide to higher education in the United States, including explanations of commonly used terms.

Director Linda Bergmann says the goal is to provide as many tools as possible.

LINDA BERGMANN: "Everything from basic language skills of agreement of subject and verb, use of commas and other punctuation⁶, complete and incomplete⁷ sentences, so that we can move from basic writing/language skills to the more sophisticated⁸ skills that graduate students, upper level undergraduates⁹ and people in the work world use."

The Web site was started in nineteen ninety-four and has plenty of fans.

LINDA BERGMANN: "We get a lot of thank you notes from people around the world. And also some schools in other countries use it as a writing handbook¹⁰, as do some schools in the United States."

In all, the Purdue Online Writing Lab offers over two hundred free resources for writing and research. The address is owl.english.purdue.edu. For a link, and to learn more about higher education in America, go to our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Bob Gotkin.

 

1 owl   

n.猫头鹰，枭

参考例句：

• Her new glasses make her look like an owl.她的新眼镜让她看上去像只猫头鹰。
• I'm a night owl and seldom go to bed until after midnight.我睡得很晚，经常半夜后才睡觉。

2 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。

3 genres   

（文学、艺术等的）类型，体裁，风格( genre的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Novel and short story are different genres. 长篇小说和短篇小说是不同的类别。
• But confusions over the two genres have a long history. 但是类型的混淆，古已有之。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

4 instance   

n.例，例证，实例

参考例句：

• Can you quote me a recent instance?你能给我举一个最近的例子吗？
• He's a greedy boy,yesterday,for instance,he ate all our biscuits!他是个贪吃的孩子――比如，他昨天把我们的饼干都吃了！

5 plagiarizing   

v.剽窃，抄袭( plagiarize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was accused of plagiarizing his colleague's results. 他被指控剽窃同事的成果。
• Moderates are plagiarizing his ideas in hopes of wooing voters. 温和派为讨好选民在盗用他的观点。 来自辞典例句

6 punctuation   

n.标点符号，标点法

参考例句：

• My son's punctuation is terrible.我儿子的标点符号很糟糕。
• A piece of writing without any punctuation is difficult to understand.一篇没有任何标点符号的文章是很难懂的。

7 incomplete   

adj.不完全的，不完善的

参考例句：

• The building was left incomplete.那座楼没有完工就停下来了。
• His novel was incomplete when he died.他死的时候他的小说没有写完。

8 sophisticated   

adj.老练的，精密的，尖端的，高雅的

参考例句：

• She has become very sophisticated since she went to live in London.移居伦敦后她变得世故多了。
• This is a very sophisticated machine.这是一台非常精密的机器。

9 undergraduates   

（未获学士学位的）大学生，大学肄业生( undergraduate的名词复数 )； 本科生

参考例句：

• All undergraduates reading English attend a turtorial group each week. 所有攻读英语的本科生每周上一次导师辅导课。
• This is a course for undergraduates. 这是为本科生开的一门课。

10 handbook   

n.手册，便览，指南

参考例句：

• Her mother bought a handbook of English grammar for her last Sunday.上星期天她母亲给她买了一本英语语法手册。
• None of them has got a handbook to tourists.他们谁也没搞到旅游指南。