金融時報:讓人捉急的寫作能力

讓人捉急的寫作能力

一位美國名校MBA的教授布置了寫作作業(yè)，沒想到學(xué)生們竟紛紛跑到院長那兒哭訴：我們平時用電郵、Twitter和Facebook交流就夠了，教授他這不是要人命嗎？學(xué)生們的語法、標(biāo)點(diǎn)和拼寫能力堪稱"兇殘"，別提完整而有邏輯地表達(dá)了。這讓人反思：家長們拼命讓孩子學(xué)繪畫、學(xué)外語，還不如讓他們扎扎實(shí)實(shí)學(xué)好母語寫作呢。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

memorandum [mem?'rænd?m] n.備忘，既要

prose [pr??z] n.散文

rote [r??t] n.死記硬背

Paul Klee 德籍瑞士畫家

Mandarin ['mænd(?)r?n] 漢語“滿大人”的音譯，即中國普通話

apostrophe [?'p?str?f?] n.撇號

Does it matter if students can’t write? (745 words)

By Michael Skapinker, FT columnist on business, language and society

A few weeks ago I received an email from a US professor whose dean had reprimanded him for trying to teach his students how to write.

The professor, who has been teaching business and law students at some of America’s top universities for 50 years, told an MBA class that clear writing would be essential in their careers.

Each week in his class, they would compose a one-page memorandum, which he would read and mark. The memos would answer a simple question from their textbooks. “I wanted the assignment to be more about conveying their analyses than testing their ability to get the analyses right,” he said.

Were they grateful? “The students complained so vigorously to the dean that the dean urged me to stop.” The students said that in business today they did not need to know how to write. “Emails and tweets are the medium of exchange. So, they argued, the constant back-and-forth gives one an opportunity to correct misunderstandings caused by unclear thinking and writing.”

The dean insisted that the professor make the writing exercise voluntary. By the end of the term, only one student, a non-native English speaker, was submitting the assignments.

The professor’s worry about writing is widely shared. According to 2008 research, 46 per cent of first-year California state university students needed writing help.

The deficiency is not confined to undergraduates. A study published in 2009 in the journal Current Issues in Education found that a group of 97 US masters and doctoral students did no better in a diagnostic writing test than the typical college-bound high school senior.

Teachers at even the UK’s top universities say the same. David Abulafia, a Cambridge history professor, said in a talk this year: “People do not know how to write. Command of grammar, punctuation and spelling is atrocious.”

There was a need, Prof Abulafia said, to recover “an art (I shan’t call it a skill) that has been lost and has to be instilled in first-year undergraduates even at Oxford and Cambridge: the ability to write continuous prose, clearly, elegantly, concisely, setting out an argument”.

Is students’ writing really worse, or are professors imagining a golden age of literacy that never existed?

People have been complaining about writing for a while. “If your children are attending college, the chances are that when they graduate they will be unable to write ordinary, expository English with any real degree of structure and lucidity,” Newsweek magazine said in a famous essay called “Why Johnny can’t write”.

That was in 1975. The experts blamed “the simplistic spoken style of television”.

Today, Prof Abulafia says poor writing “may reflect a society in which fewer young people read and much of their informal writing consists of Twitter and Facebook messages”. He does, however, also worry about rote learning in schools and that pupils receive no reward in examinations for having read more widely. He adds that many more students are now sitting school-leaver A-level examinations, which means teachers and examiners have less time to spend on each candidate.

Whether poor writing is new or old, it is odd that it persists at a time when parents are vying to provide their children with any possible advantage, exposing them to Paul Klee at the age of four, as the New York Times recently reported, and teaching them to sing “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in Mandarin.

If there is such a shortage of competent writers, why aren’t ambitious parents rushing to make sure their kids can compose an elegant English essay, and why aren’t MBA students scrambling to do the same?

One possible answer is that there really isn’t much of a demand and that being a decent writer commands no premium in the job market. Are the US professor’s students right in thinking that Twitter, Facebook and text messaging are all they need?

I doubt it. There are still jobs where good writing matters. It is hard to see those law students stepping up to the bench without being able to render a literate judgment. And I can’t be the only customer who assumes that a banker who doesn’t know where an apostrophe goes is going to be equally careless with my money.

There’s a gap in the market and the smarter parents and students should get on to it. Good writing is far easier to master than Mandarin.

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

1.Why the MBA professor's story is alarming?

A. He would read and mark the memorandums he assigned.

B. The students were ungrateful and even complained.

C. Clear writing is essential in those students' careers.

D. The dean insisted that the writing should be voluntary.

答案(1)

2.Are professors "imagining a golden age of literacy that never existed?"

A. No, students are doing worse and worse.

B. No, that problem did not exist until 1975.

C. Yes, there never was a time when students' writings were not atrocious.

D. The author does not answer it.

答案(2)

3.Narrowly speaking, it is what kind of writing that matters so much?

A. Argumentative writing.

B. Narrative prose.

C. Diagnostic writing.

D. Descriptive prose.

答案(3)

4.What is the most possible economic explanation to this phenomenon?

A. Being a decent writer commands no premium in the job market.

B. Twitter, Facebook and text messaging are economically superior.

C. Writing skill does not make much difference except for lawyers and bankers.

D. Parents find out that training children writing is too expensive.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：C.Clear writing is essential in those students' careers.

解釋：這是最值得人們警醒和反思的地方，非常需要書寫表達(dá)能力的MBA名校學(xué)生，竟然不會寫作，也不愿練習(xí)。最后只有個母語非英語的學(xué)生交了作業(yè)。

(2) 答案：D.The author does not answer it.

解釋：A不正確，教師們擔(dān)憂學(xué)生寫作能力，可有段時間了，至少在1975年Newsweek雜志還專門做了個報道。但1975并非一個轉(zhuǎn)折點(diǎn)，所以B也不對。C在文中并未提到，因此作者并未回答。

你怎么看這個問題呢？

(3) 答案：A.Argumentative writing.

解釋：這里所說的寫作能力主要是指議論文寫作，這是最能體現(xiàn)一個人的邏輯思維能力和清晰表達(dá)能力的，文中幾次將寫作重要性的時候，都是在說議論文。 比如開頭MBA教授說寫作是要鍛煉他們conveying the analyses.再比如劍橋大學(xué)的Prof Abulafia強(qiáng)調(diào)了，the ability to write continuous prose, clearly, elegantly, concisely, setting out an argument. 而一些學(xué)生認(rèn)為，推特這種方式可以很快的back-and-forth，講的不清楚也可以馬上補(bǔ)充和更正。

(4) 答案：A.Being a decent writer commands no premium in the job market.

解釋：這是第三段的原話。所以最后一段作者寫道 There’s a gap in the market and the smarter parents and students should get on to it.既然市場上寫作能力與收入之間有條缺口，那聰明的家長和學(xué)生就該自己努力了。 BCD都是不對的。