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網誌日期:2008-05-06 00:28
一段新聞說香港畢業生英語差,誘發我寫這一篇英語blog,
and so my story begins , although I far too remote from being as a fresh graduate.
But as it was ,the time when I first entered into my secondary school life, I found out my english was barely up to standard even for a normal secondary school ( not an elite one) .
I endeavour to read more novels , memorising words from Oxford Dictionary, quotations and speeches of famous people, watching BBC ( CNN was not the prevalent channel in my school days).At that ages, i always related difficults vocabulary and clumsy phrases with good english and i was so complacent with my bookworking. Indeed I was wrong .
Thanks to the mentorship of my english teacher ..: " You must not only learn to write in english , but to think in english as well"
Also, I felt gratitude to my school principal , who was a foreigner priest and a native english speaker. The great deal of unequivocally english dialogue with him accomplished me not only " think in english, but able to speak fluently as well"
Of course it take time, for you can never apprehend what Shakespeare , Goethe,or Dostoevsky think of even you look up for every words in u dictionary. For these masterpieces, you can hardly read between the lines ....until u grow old enough.
Nowaday, you can hardly find any youngster in HK to do the above tiresome bookworks. .Talking with a foreigner become a nightmare to them , often with lisp and stammer. Like as what the newspaper says , simple wording like " fantastic ", " ironic" is not known by these fresh graduates. Playing with their PSP, NDS, X Box360 or Wii become a substitute for masterpiece novels. Online casual chatting with freinds , using " Mars Language " instead of face to face scrupulous conversation with native english speakers. Words and languages replaced by animation. Lord know how they can practise better english themselves.
Lack of common sense is also one of the major drawback of youngster, for instance, they dont know Alan Greenspan is 格林斯潘 cause they seldom tune to english news channel. Never heard of Churchill, mistake 丘吉爾 a relative of 丘凱敏,王爾德(Oscar Wilde) become brother of 王敏德,of course, they cannot distingish Monet 莫內from Manet馬奈。
I always consider languages a piece of art. Be it grandiose русский язык , romantic français,callous Deutsch or fusion Italino and grandiloquence chinese. Even years after my graduation, i never feel content with what i learn and never halt myself in learning, dreaming one day I can make wisdom speeches like those celebrated parliamentarian eg Winston churchill, Martin Luther King, Chris Patton.........
Awful chinglish in china is something i can never live up with . It sends shiver up my spine. However, phrases below I find out are more laughable than disguising.
" Care for life. Do not fun water=珍惜生命,切勿嬉水","Slip carefully =小心滑倒"," If you are stolen , call the police at once=如有失竊,請即報警","The visitor stop =遊客止步"," Enter the mouth=入口","the front not opened section road=前面路段仍未開放". "expensive sun multiples by a duty a police to pay=貴陽乘警支隊"," strictly forbid toward window to throw to throw a product=嚴禁向外拋扔物品", " please take good personal luggage請你帶好隨身物品".............Jesus christ!!!!
Here come more teasing phrases like "do not touch yourself=請勿碰店內物品"," Prohibit against penetration =封路改道". For God's sake , do not ask me the exact meaning of the phases if u do not know.
So one suggestion I can give to fresh HK graduates is if they intent to improve their english standard , you need to use the language to learn the language . Reading, writing , arguing, speaking, talking-anyway you can use the language.Godspeed you all!
Thanks to the creation of blogging. Beside expressing my feeling, I also can have the opportunity to use it to write all kind of sentimential essays, literatures, arts , cats etc and thereby polishing my writing skill which I can hardly come across in my daily business correspondence.
Last but not least, I owe a compliment to those who have patience in finsh reading this blog, In return , i recommend a few books i adore . 1) Not quite a diplomat, by Chris Patten , although the EC politics maybe a bit far too boring for Hongkongnese.2) Empire of Word by Nicholas Ostler , talking about language history 3) A prisoner of Birth by Jeffery Archer . facscinating adventure novel like Monte Cristo of Dumas, Jeffery almost became British Prime Minister if not for his scandal, and a better novel than Harry Potter as recommended by 陶and concurrent by me.4) The Shakespeare Secret by J L Carrell , a book yet to be deliver from amazon , the only available source in HK .
Time up! 30 minutes elapse before i finish this blog..
One inspiration make me write this english blog is , from newspaper , candidates of HK take more than 2 hours to write less than 200 words. If this is the case, it may prehap need a few thousand years for them to finish off writing the whole series of Harry Potter.










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♡Joanne♡ 2008-05-11 15:28
泡泡 2008-05-09 18:01
我記得我用得最多時間睇0既一本英文小說係joy luck club...
0個陣我都仲係讀緊a-level...我係需要一路查字典一路睇...
可能我d英文都係麻麻地
妙妙喵 2008-05-09 15:07
李光耀話齋要兩文三語,IQ要120以上,自問"無"
睇見咁長篇大論
其實不但英文差,好多人中文都好差,
以前曾在小學做義工講故事,看了很多獲獎的外國的兒童故事
雖然故事只有很少文字,當翻譯成中文版時,一樣覺得很古怪,同時不通順,
無論在故事的結構,遣詞用字,以及舖排都有問題,
我覺得問題主要是英文就是英文,中文就是中文.
硬把英文譯成英式中文,中文譯成中式英文.只會不論不類.
學不好英文的,先把中文學好,也不要把中文弄成英式中文.
秘密流浪貓 2008-05-09 14:06
雅文.卡西火 2008-05-09 12:47
小混混 2008-05-08 22:42
孖T姐姐 2008-05-08 18:14
而家d大學好似要學生通過英文試先可以畢業,應該會對提高英文水平有少許幫助嘅~
獅子 2008-05-08 10:56
You spent 30 minutes to write this English articles , but some people may spend double of time to read ...or maybe they'd already given up after first minutes , haha .
I agree that agruing by English is a good way for partise of spoken English . I did not graduate from any U. study , indeed my English was trained during the job . Therefore , I don't know too many complicated words ..........
The fresh graduates would not like to spend too much time on reading and writing , instead they rather to spend most of time to stay with computer for any purposes .
bookforest 2008-05-07 13:15
Thanks for your recommandations. Although my English is also not "up to standard", I can still write proper Chinese when I was "fresh graduate". However, seems students cannot wirte both English and Chinese properly now.