新视野研究生英语_读说写2课文加翻译.doc

College lectures: Is Anybody Listening? 大学课堂：还有人在听吗？ A former teacher of mine, Robert A. Fowkes of New York University, likes to tell the story of a class he took in Old Welsh while studying in Germany during the 1930s. On the first day the professor strode up to the podium shuffled his notes, coughed, and began, “ Guten Tag, Meine Damen und Herren”(“Good day, ladies and gentlemen”). Fowkes glanced around uneasily. He was the only student in the course. 纽约大学的Robert A Fowkes是我过去的一位老师。他喜欢讲在上世纪30年代他在德国上，古威尔士语课的故事。第一天上课，教授大步走上讲台，翻了翻笔记，咳嗽了一声，开始说道：“早上好，女士们、先生们。”Fowkes不安地扫视一番。他是上这门课的唯一学生。 Toward the middle of the semester, Fowkes fell ill and missed a class. When he returned, the professor nodded vaguely and, to Fowkes’s astonishment, began to deliver not the next lecture in the sequence but the one after. Had he, in fact, lectured to an empty hall in the absence of his solitary student? Fowkes thought it perfectly possible. 在学期中间，Fowkes因病缺了一次课。他回到课堂的时候，教授毫无表情地向他点了点头。接着令Fowkes大吃一惊的是，教授没有按照顺序讲下一课，而是讲了后面一课。难道他真的在他唯一的学生缺席的情况下对着空教室讲了一课？Fowkes认为这太有可能了。 Today American colleges and universities ( originally modeled on German ones) are under strong attack from many quarters. Teachers, it is charged, are not doing a good job of teaching, and students are not doing a good job of learning. American businesses and industries suffer from unenterprising, uncreative executives educated not to think for themselves but to mouth outdated truisms the rest of the world has long discarded. College graduates lack both basic skills and general culture. Studies are conducted and reports are issued on the status of higher education, but any changes that result either are largely cosmetic or make a bad situation worse. 今天美国的大学受到了各方面的严厉指责。人们指责老师没有教好，学生没有学好。美国的商业和工业饱受无进取心的，缺乏创造力的管理人员之苦，这些人受的教育是自己不要思考，而是说一些时时的、在世界上其他地方早已抛弃的陈词滥调。大学毕业生既没有基本技能也没有全面修养。有人对高等教育的状况做了研究并发表了报告，但由此引发的变化在很大程度上不是表面的，就是使已经糟糕的情形变得更糟。 One aspect of American education too seldom challenged is the lecture system. Professors continu