词汇大师(Wordmaster)--English Teachers Convention, Part 1

TAPE: CROWD NOISE

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER -- a visit to Baltimore, Maryland, for the ninety-first annual convention of N-C-T-E -- the National Council of Teachers of English.

These teachers take American kids through reading and writing, speaking and literature. I was curious to find out what's new in the field, but also how teachers have been addressing what's happening in the world right now.

TAPE: CUT ONE -- SZYMBORSKI

"My name is Renuka Chander Szymborski and I teach middle and upper school English at a small private school in Gastonia, North Carolina. Gastonia is a town close to Charlotte, and our population is predominately Caucasian; we do have a few minority students. I teacher primarily world literature. We found a need for that at our school mainly because we have a lot of focus on the British and the American and some of our students were lacking the understanding that there were other literatures and other cultures that perhaps we needed to be aware of. So that was a new course that was created about two years ago."

AA: Then with September eleventh, and several thousand dead at the hands of terrorists, the name of Osama bin¹ Laden² was suddenly all over the news and on the minds of her students.

TAPE: CUT TWO -- SZYMBORSKI/ARDITTI

SZYMBORSKI: "One of the interesting things was, we were working on Middle Eastern literature at that time, and so we did stop and many of the students did ask questions about, well, what is Islam and who is this guy and why do they hate Americans? So we did talk about the religious aspects and how that relates to the Koran and some of the literature. And they did seem to have more of an interest in global issues after the attack, as to what does literature have to say about the thoughts and feelings of people of those cultures."

AA: "And now, two months later?"

SZYMBORSKI: "They do bring up some things that are on the news and try to see how that connects. They understand that war and oppression have existed for a very long time, and that people have used religious doctrines³ to further their own causes. And so that kind of allows them to realize this is not the first time, and that perhaps we are not alone in this problem."

AA: Renuka Chander Szymborski wasn't the only English teacher at her school to find her curriculum suddenly overshadowed by events.

Jill Kazmierczak had her upper grade students analyze⁴ a speech by Osama bin Laden.

TAPE: CUT THREE -- KAZMIERCZAK/ARDITTI

KAZMIERCZAK: "We wanted to look at and to answer the question, well, why do they hate Americans. What is it at least that they are saying, how do they perceive rationalizing such an attack."

AA: "And how have the students reacted?"

KAZMIERCZAK: "It was fascinating. They really dug into the material. They started saying, 'He makes a reference to "eighty years ago" three times in that speech. What WAS going on, and what was America's role in creating Palestine and Israel, what is this League of Nations, how were we a part of this?' And so they got interested in it."

AA: "How is this considered English?"

KAZMIERCZAK: "We can analyze it not only for the content, but for the rhetoric⁵. And so what kinds of arguments, what kinds of modes of arguments, do we have going on here. What rhetorical manipulations. So when you call Bush 'the head of all infidels in the world,' what does that really mean? What is the depth of that kind of statement?"

AA: I also spoke⁶ to Sawsan Jaber, a 21-year-old American-born Palestinian who is in her second year of teaching English at an Islamic school in Teaneck, New Jersey⁷. A tan scarf covers her hair and neck.

The township of Teaneck, New Jersey, is close to New York and Ground Zero, site of the ruins of the World Trade Center. Sawsa Jaber says her students have been victims twice -- first of the attack on September eleventh, then of a backlash in their own community.

TAPE: CUT FOUR -- JABER/ARDITTI

JABER: "You can't leave out current events. It's happening in our neighborhood. I mean, we have [graffiti] spray-painted all over our building and comments from our neighbors."

AA: "As their teacher how are you using these events?"

JABER: "I actually did a novel with them -- 'Fahrenheit⁸ 451' -- about censorship in media and how the media has like a one-sided point of view sometimes and that's the point of view that they want the people to accept. So it fit in perfectly⁹ with what was going on, because I personally feel -- and they also feel -- that the media has taken a one-sided point of view on this whole issue and sort of stereotyped¹⁰ a lot of, you know, Muslims. And we see all of this negative stigma¹¹ from the Middle East. So the novel that we did with my honors ninth-grade class was "Fahrenheit 451" which covers all of these points about media and representation and all of that."

AA: "Fahrenheit 451" is a novel by American science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury. Published almost fifty years ago, it's about a society that burns books. The title refers to the temperature at which paper catches fire. And, it's the same book my wife uses to teach her schoolchildren about censorship.

Over the years, some teachers have taken heat from parents for using this book in class. But when you're an English teacher, that sort of challenge comes with the territory.

Next week, more from the National Council of Teachers of English convention in Baltimore. (If you have a question about American English, send it to [email protected] or VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20237 USA.) That's WORDMASTER for this week. I'm Avi Arditti.

1 bin   

n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件

参考例句：

• He emptied several bags of rice into a bin.他把几袋米倒进大箱里。
• He threw the empty bottles in the bin.他把空瓶子扔进垃圾箱。

2 laden   

adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的

参考例句：

• He is laden with heavy responsibility.他肩负重任。
• Dragging the fully laden boat across the sand dunes was no mean feat.将满载货物的船拖过沙丘是一件了不起的事。

3 doctrines   

n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明

参考例句：

• To modern eyes, such doctrines appear harsh, even cruel. 从现代的角度看，这样的教义显得苛刻，甚至残酷。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His doctrines have seduced many into error. 他的学说把许多人诱入歧途。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

5 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

6 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。

7 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

8 Fahrenheit   

n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的)

参考例句：

• He was asked for the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit.他被问到水的沸点是华氏多少度。
• The thermometer reads 80 degrees Fahrenheit.寒暑表指出华氏80度。

9 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

10 stereotyped   

adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的

参考例句：

• There is a sameness about all these tales. They're so stereotyped -- all about talented scholars and lovely ladies. 这些书就是一套子，左不过是些才子佳人，最没趣儿。
• He is the stereotyped monster of the horror films and the adventure books, and an obvious (though not perhaps strictly scientific) link with our ancestral past. 它们是恐怖电影和惊险小说中的老一套的怪物，并且与我们的祖先有着明显的（虽然可能没有科学的）联系。

11 stigma   

n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头

参考例句：

• Being an unmarried mother used to carry a social stigma.做未婚母亲在社会上曾是不光彩的事。
• The stigma of losing weighed heavily on the team.失败的耻辱让整个队伍压力沉重。