評論
打印
The author is not a preacher, and yet he does deliver a kind of sermon here. Who is his audience? Interestingly, his audience is your teachers of Advanced English as a foreign language. The author seeks to help them in their difficult task of teaching advanced students，their task of leading their students to a higher level of ability and fluency.
作者不是說教者，但這兒他確實在說什么教。他的聽眾是誰？有趣的是，他的聽眾是教你們高級英語的外語老師。作者想要幫助他們完成教學生學好高級英語的困難任務，引導學生提高英語能力和流利程度的任務。
Does it encourage you to know that you are not the only one who is struggling at this level of language acquisition ?
如果你知道在語言習得的這一水平上，不是唯獨你學得如此費勁，你會感到鼓舞嗎？
A Kind of Sermon
權進一言
W. S. Fowler
W·S·福勒
It is probably easier for teachers than for students to appreciate the reasons
一旦了解了英語的基本結構和句型，再往下學似乎就越來越難了；
why learning English seems to become increasingly difficult once the basic structures and patterns of the language have been understood.
這其中的原因，也許教師比學生更容易理解。
Students are naturally surprised and disappointed to discover that a process which ought to become simpler does not appear to do so.
當學生們發現一個本該變得更為簡單的進程似乎并未變得簡單時，他們自然會感到驚訝和失望。
It may not seem much consolation to point out that the teacher, too, becomes frustrated when his efforts appear to produce less obvious results.
即使向學生們指出，教師在其努力所產生的效果似乎不及原來明顯時也會灰心喪氣，似乎也不會給他們帶來多大安慰。
He finds that students who were easy to teach, because they succeeded in putting everything they had been taught into practice,
學生們最初很容易教，因為他們能把教給他們的所有東西付諸實踐；
hesitate when confronted with the vast untouched area of English vocabulary and usage which falls outside the scope of basic textbooks.
現在教師卻發現他們面對著大量未曾接觸過的英語詞匯和慣用法而躊躇起來。因為這些詞匯和慣用法都是基礎教科書中所沒有涉及的內容。
He sees them struggling because the language they thought they knew now appears to consist of a bewildering variety of idioms, clichés and accepted phrases with different meanings in different contexts.
他看到他們在掙扎，因為他們本以為已經熟悉的語言現在看上去竟是由種種令人困惑不解、在不同上下文中有著不同意義的習語、 陳詞濫調和成語組成的。
