中国近代初期外语译才培养策略考探

鸦片战争以来,中国渐怵于外患。为维护专制统治,清政府采取一系列改革措施。然而,囿于外语方面的弱势,受教于传统教育的人才难担改革之重任。为此,清政府以日本为鉴,通过选派留美学生与创建外语学堂两大策略并举,竭力培养社会改革亟须的外语译才。两大策略相继实施,不仅拉开了中国近代官派留学运动与官办外语学堂的序幕,而且有力推动了中国近代外语教育事业的发展,更为中国探索救亡图存之路以及近代化改革做出了不可磨灭的贡献。

Appraisal of the Production-Oriented Approach： An Introduction

The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, the writed states. He responds to POA from the perspective of an expert researcher and teacher of L2 writing. Charlene Polio is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Linguistics ＆ Germanic, Slavic, Asian ＆ African Languages atMichigan State University, the writed states. She conceptualises POA as a useful method to address some issues in pre-service teacher development. Overall, the articles in this section are insightful and reader-friendly. They are not only useful for the development of POA in particular, but may also be valuable to a broad range of researchers as they touch upon pertaining issues, as well as emerging topics, in the field of applied linguistics. We therefore find it necessary to make them accessible to a wide readership.

大学英语口语考试评分信度研究——以北外保送生口语考试为例

本文以北外保送生招生英语口语考试及其改革为背景,考查考生在两个口语任务中的总体表现,并通过每个考场中两位考官对考生每个任务的评分计算斯皮尔曼相关系数研究考官间的评分信度。研究结果显示,考生英语水平普遍较高,绝大多数考场中考官之间具有较高的评分信度。本研究结论对后续考试中的考官培训具有重要指导意义,为今后ESP教学提供数据参考。