【话匣子英语】采访亨利

亨利是一位对语言学习有浓厚兴趣的人，他取得了语言学硕士学位，来看看亨利是怎样谈语言学习这门艺术的？

Andrew:             Hi Henry. Welcome to the Culips podcast.

 

Henry:                Thank you, Andrew. It’s great to be on. Thank you for having me.

 

Andrew:             Hey, no problem. So we’ve got you on the podcast today to talk about your app, Spoken. But just before we get into that, I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, where are you from, what you do, that sort of thing.

 

Henry:                Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland. That’s about 40 minutes northeast of Washington, DC. And I went down to college in North Carolina, at a small school called Davidson College, where I was an English major. And from there, I finished, and as an English major, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do.

 

Andrew:             Mmhmm.  And I ended up going over to China with a friend to teach English at a college in Jiangxi Province.

 

Andrew:             OK.

 

Henry:                Which is inland and in the south of China.

 

Andrew:             OK.

 

Henry:                And there I was teaching Chinese college students, who were learning business English. And that was a great year for me. I really enjoyed teaching, and I really enjoyed also trying to learn some Mandarin¹. And I enjoyed the challenges of teaching English.

 

Andrew:             Yeah, it’s a big challenge, isn’t it? In a foreign country where you’re not too comfortable with the language. It can be difficult.

 

Henry:                That’s very true. And you know, I learned a lot because I had to try to learn the language, being immersed² in an environment where there were not many native speakers of English. So I needed to try to learn Mandarin.  And I think my own experiences there helped me teach English to Mandarin speakers trying to learn English.

 

Andrew:             Right. It’s really important, I think, as an English teacher to have that perspective of your students, right, of trying to learn a foreign language. Because if you don’t know that struggle, then it’s hard to connect with your students, I think.

 

Henry:                I think that’s very true. And the nice thing was my students also recognized that I was trying to learn, and sometimes they would teach me just as much as I would teach them.

 

Andrew:             Yeah, so true. It happens that way for sure.

 

Henry:                Yeah. And after that year, I became more and more interested in language learning and instruction, and I came back to the United States and got a graduate degree, a master’s degree in linguistics³.

 

Andrew:             OK.

 

Henry:                Which is the study of language. And it’s not something you hear of every day. It’s not a very, very common master’s degree to get, but for me, it was a field of study I really liked and was passionate⁴ about. And after earning that degree, I continued to teach English, this time in the United States.

 

Andrew:             OK.

 

Henry:                And from there, I spent a few years teaching English, and I got interested in education technology.

 

Andrew:             Education technology. What is that?

 

Henry:                Using technology to help people learn or help teachers teach.

1 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

2 immersed   

浸入的，沉入的，沉思的

参考例句：

• She immersed herself in her work. 她埋头工作。
• When a body is immersed in a fluid, it apparently loses weight. 身体浸入水中就会明显减轻重量。

3 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

4 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。