What do college teachers think of high school English teachers’English teaching? And how should we see it? Let’s read the following. A teacher from a community college addressed a sympathetic audience. Heads nodded in agreement when he said, “High school English teachers are not doing their jobs.” He described how weak his students were—all high school graduates who can use language only at a Grade 9 level. My topic is not standards nor its decline（降低）. What the speaker was really saying is that he is no longer young; he has been teaching for sixteen years, and is able to think and speak like a mature adult. My point is that the frequent complaint of one generation about the one immediately following is natural. It is also human nature to look for the reasons for our dissatisfaction. Before English became a school subject in the late nineteenth century, it was difficult to find the target of the blame for language deficiencies（缺陷）. But since then, English teachers have been under constant attack. The complainers think they have hit upon an original idea. As their own command of the language improves, they notice that young people do not have this same ability. Unaware that their own ability has developed through the years, they assume the new generation of young people must be hopeless in this respect. To the eyes and ears of sensitive adults, the language of the young always seems inadequate. Since this concern about the decline and fall of the English language is not seen as a generational phenomenon but rather as something new and peculiar(特有的) to today’s young people, it naturally follows that today’s English teachers cannot be doing their jobs. 小题1:The speaker believed that ________.
|