新视野大学英语第三版第二册Units1-8课文原文+翻译.docxVIP

PAGE PAGE 1 Unit 1 An impressive English lesson If I am the only parent who still corrects his childs English, then perhaps my son is right. To him, I am a tedious oddity: a father he is obliged to listen to and a man absorbedin the rules of grammar, which my son seemsallergic to. I think I got serious about this only recently when I ran into one of my former students, fresh from an excursion to Europe.How was it? I asked, full of earnestanticipation. She nodded three or four times, searched the heavens for the right words, and then exclaimed, It was, like, whoa! And that was it. The civilization of Greece and the glory of Roman architecture were capturedin a condensednon-statement.My students whoa! was exceededonly by my head-shaking distress. There are many different stories about the downturn in the proper use of English. Surely students should be able to distinguish betweentheir /there/theyre or the distinctive difference betweencomplimentary and complementary. They unfairly bear thebulk of the criticism for these knowledgedeficits because there is a sense that they should know better. Students are not dumb, but they are being misled everywhere they look and listen. For example, signs in grocery stores point them to the stationary, even though the actual stationery items — pads,albums and notebooks — are not nailed down. Friends and loved ones often proclaim theyve just ate when, in fact, theyve just eaten. Therefore, it doesnt make any sense to criticize our students. Blame for the scandal of this language deficit should be thrust upon our schools, which should be setting high standards of English languageproficiency. Instead, they only teach a little grammar and even less advanced vocabulary. Moreover, the younger teachers themselvesevidently have little knowledge of these vital structures of language because they also went without exposureto them. Schools fail to adequatelyteach the essential framework of language, accurate