学科英语研究——高水平英语教育问题与对策述要

Disciplinary English study: Problem analysis of higher level English education and essentials for solution

本文从我国英语教育改革面临的问题及其成因出发,指出学科英语研究对于英语内容教改、尤其是高层次英语教改的必要性与可行性,说明学科英语研究的范围及其语料库途径,以便进行系统而深入的差异对比与共同点概括。行文在前人研究成果的基础上概述了学科英语的一些共同要素,包括连锁定义、专门分类、特殊表达、词汇密度、句法模糊性、语义非连贯性和语法隐喻,介绍了跟语法隐喻有关的三个基本特点:内容表述的平稳感、意义抽象性与潜在的英汉语思维方式差异等。这些要素都是中国学生学习高层次英语的重点和难点。这一基础工作不仅有助于我们全面认识英语语言本身,也能为我国的英语甚至外语教改提供内容参照依据。

Disciplinary English(DE) is English for systematic categorisation of the knowledge of each scientific discipline. In the past decades, EFL teaching in China has embraced the doctrine of teaching English of the common core: once Basic English is learnt, DE can be self-taught in a natural way. However, being lack of training in the advanced disciplinary varieties of English has driven EFL teaching in China into severe predicament. Some have appealed to EAP, but no substantial achievements have been attained for being in want of proper understanding of the study of DE, such as philosophy, economy, law, education, literature and art, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, military science and management. The present project aims to change the situation by addressing the issue vis. a corpus approach in terms of the Register Theory in systemic functional linguistics. So far, 7 "difficulties that are characteristic of scientific English" have been identified, among which grammatical metaphor is the most important of all in association with a set of further difficulties of EFL. Against that proposal, the scope and content of EFL teaching is laid out for the reform orientation in China.