Thursday, August 02, 2007

訪舊半為鬼,驚呼熱中腸……

我前幾天人不在台北,開車帶著我那高齡 91 歲的阿嬤(加上小姑媽、照顧阿嬤的菲傭),回故鄉虎尾重遊舊地,探親訪友,燒香拜拜。作為跟她最親的「金孫」,我在一旁看著她與親戚舊識的互動,腦中揮之不去的卻是杜甫〈贈衛八處士〉的名句「訪舊半為鬼,驚呼熱中腸」……

這幾天由於沒有上網,沒有看報,不知今夕是何夕,回來才知道我最近在 Taipei Times 的那篇 English scores low in college test 竟然意外地在報上引起了激烈的論戰,一個禮拜內針對我的文章所做的回應與再回應共有 4 篇,而攻擊和防衛的主角就是首先點評我文、目前在台灣做短期講座、來自 USC (南加大) 的英語教學大師 Stephen Krashen。

許多台灣學生積重難返的老問題我在該文中刻意略而不談,因為我一年前早已在《英文台北時報》為文探討。今為了呈現出問題更完整的面貌,茲將尚未在「語國一方」露臉的那一篇轉貼於下,給有興趣格友參考:

Exams reveal nation's bad English

By Hugo Tseng 曾泰元
Taipei Times, Saturday, Jul 15, 2006, Page 8

I've been an examiner of the English writing section of university entrance examinations for a number of years now. Poring over test sheets completed by high school graduates with six years of English study under their belts is a frustrating enterprise, full of sighs and head-scratching.

The business of correcting tests is like operating a factory assembly line: Incoming tests are stacked in an in-box, where they wait to be read and checked, after which they are placed in an out-box. As for the actual checking, that process is divided into initial readings, re-readings and final readings to ensure quality control.

In fact, come to think of it, the whole process is akin to raising chickens on a chicken farm -- there are designated reading rooms, desks and seats, where we sit among our stacks, clucking and pecking furiously at our "feed," which in this case is students' chicken scratches on exam sheets. Of course, if the feed is tasty then fine. Oftentimes, however, it's yucky, and the content seems to repeat itself in paper after paper.

The part of the tests that must be checked and corrected by hand are the translation and composition sections. Examinees often perform poorly in the categories of spelling, grammar, punctuation, structure and creativity. To give an example of spelling deficiencies: Despite the fact that No Smoking signs in both Chinese and English are ubiquitous in Taiwan, examinees routinely misspell "smoking," often writing "smorking" or "smolking" on their tests.

In terms of common punctuation mistakes, students will often put punctuation marks in blatantly wrong places or use Chinese punctuation. Grammar-related mistakes are even more plentiful -- a proper understanding of singular and plural forms of nouns, verb conjugation, appropriate word usage and articles and prepositions, is rare among examinees.

With regard to structure, the themes of most students' compositions are unclear -- oftentimes, there is none. Their narrations, for example, are prone to digression, leaving compositions without a focus or pace. Feeble structures are too often further weakened by misspellings and grammar and punctuation-related problems.

And as for the crux of their content -- if there is one -- it is often dry and boring; I suspect this is a reflection of the uninteresting lifestyles of high school students and their aversion to risk, which is something that teachers reinforce by rewarding students' use of cliches or other hackneyed or fluffy language.

The writing topics this year focused on experiences of being misunderstood or wrongly blamed. A good many students jabbered about their parents blaming them for stealing cash or eating something they shouldn't have; others yacked about mom and dad tongue-lashing them for watching TV or playing video games instead of doing homework. The list goes on.

In this sea of drab, cookie-cutter stories, if we chance upon a composition with a unique storyline, we relish it like a diamond. For example, one student wrote about his chucking a few rocks at what he thought was a mean stray dog walking next to a pedestrian, only to discover that it was actually not a stray, but the pedestrian's pet, which prompted a juicy confrontation.

Of course, every year, a certain percentage of students simply leave the translation and composition sections blank. I don't know if they do that because they run out of time, or are utterly unable to write and so abandon the section altogether. Many people say that Taiwanese people's English levels are the highest right around when they take the joint university entrance examination. Well, if that's really the case, then Taiwan is in trouble.

And in the light of students' performances in this regard, we have to ask if perhaps the government's proposal a few years back to designate English as a semi-official language of Taiwan was not a bit half-baked and naive.

Hugo Tseng is an associate professor of English at Soochow University and secretary-general of the Taiwanese Association for Translation and Interpretation.

Translated by Max Hirsch

2 comments:

曾泰元 said...

昨天某大出版社的總經理請我吃飯,順口問我帶阿嬤回虎尾老家的種種,讓我心頭一驚──他,他,他也看我的部落格啊!這下我更要好好寫了,否則面子可就掛不住囉。

說到格友,不曉得你們有沒有點兩下放大那「語國人口分佈圖」,語國一方的格友可是來自世界各地呢。大家不妨拿張世界地圖比對比對,挺有趣的呦!

Anonymous said...

一ㄡˋ
現在英國多一隻 哈哈哈