词汇大师-- Teacher Sees 'Big Push' to Promote English

　　AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: meet an English teacher in the United Arab Emirates. She stopped by the VOA Special English booth at the recent TESOL convention, for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. It took place in Denver, Colorado.
AA: "Tell me your name and a little bit about yourself."

　　LEILA MOUHANNA: "My name's Leila Mouhanna. I'm a teacher at a foundations program at a university in the U.A.E, of Lebanese background, raised in Australia."
AA: "And what age do you teach?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "Nineteen-, twenty-year-old girls."
AA: "Tell me a little bit about English teaching in the Emirates right now, the state of English teaching."
LEILA MOUHANNA: "There's a big push by the government to promote English as a foreign language. So eighty percent of the U.A.E.'s population are foreigners, so there's a big push to get English just for communication purposes. Also, it's becoming -- it's a globalized country, they need it for economic reasons. So it's very important."
AA: "And what about the resources you have, Internet or educational materials, what do you find works? What do you personally have the most success with in teaching English?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "Possibly the best way is probably having an eclectic approach to the resources, the kinds of resources that you use with your students. I don't just focus on using one textbook. It's a variety of different materials from all over the place -- you know, YouTube or Internet resources, textbooks from a variety of places. So, yeah, pretty much everything."
AA: "You mentioned YouTube, the video-sharing Web site. How can English teachers use YouTube in the classroom?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "I've just used it just to build field knowledge about different topics that students need to write about. So, for example, they had to write an essay about nuclear power. So we'd look at different video footage of catastrophes¹ that have happened all over the world using nuclear power and things like that. And that gets them to build their vocabulary, to build knowledge about the field, and then to transfer that knowledge and get them to write about it."
AA: "So it's interesting, you're using video -- it sounds like mostly for listening comprehension, although also for the material. But it occurs to me, you've got sites now obviously like YouTube, millions of videos available. I wonder if the fifth skill would now be visual comprehension. There's reading, writing, listening and speaking, and now, when you have video, does that add kind of a fifth dimension to teaching?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "Well, [there's] critical literacy, the visual literacy, but there's always the time constraints², so you can't really get into it. But I've never really had a big issue with it. My students really love television, really love using the Internet, so they're very technologically³ savvy⁴."
AA: "And I'm assuming -- do some of your students use Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and sites like that?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "Yes, yes. But I don't venture into any of these Web sites. I think it's a bit iffy, I think it's a bit problematic."
AA: "Well, let's talk briefly⁵ about social media sites. I know a lot of teachers use those for English teaching. What do you see as the sort of pluses and minuses of using social media sites as a teaching resources?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "Well, I personally would steer⁶ clear away from it, because it can cause a lot of potential problems, especially coming from a very traditional society, working with females. So it could cause a lot of issues to arise that I wouldn't even contemplate⁷ initially⁸."
AA: "But do your students, though, find it useful to them in their own learning?"
LEILA MOUHANNA: "I don't think they use it for learning. I think they use it as a social utility."
AA:    Leila Mouhanna from the United Arab Emirates is one of the teachers we're introducing you to, from the recent TESOL convention in Denver, Colorado. Tell us what you think about using social networking sites as an English teaching resource. Your comments are welcome at voanews.com/wordmaster.
And you can now follow our weekly segments through Twitter, at twitter.com/voalearnenglish, all one word. And that's WORDMASTER for this week. I'm Avi Arditti.

1 catastrophes   

n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难

参考例句：

• Two of history's worst natural catastrophes occurred in 1970. 1970年发生了历史上最严重两次自然灾害。 来自辞典例句
• The Swiss deposits contain evidence of such catastrophes. 瑞士的遗址里还有这种灾难的证据。 来自辞典例句

2 constraints   

强制( constraint的名词复数 )； 限制； 约束

参考例句：

• Data and constraints can easily be changed to test theories. 信息库中的数据和限制条件可以轻易地改变以检验假设。 来自英汉非文学 - 科学史
• What are the constraints that each of these imply for any design? 这每种产品的要求和约束对于设计意味着什么？ 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

3 technologically   

ad.技术上地

参考例句：

• Shanghai is a technologically advanced city. 上海是中国的一个技术先进的城市。
• Many senior managers are technologically illiterate. 许多高级经理都对技术知之甚少。

4 savvy   

v.知道，了解；n.理解能力，机智，悟性；adj.有见识的，懂实际知识的，通情达理的

参考例句：

• She was a pretty savvy woman.她是个见过世面的漂亮女人。
• Where's your savvy?你的常识到哪里去了？

5 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

6 steer   

vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶

参考例句：

• If you push the car, I'll steer it.如果你来推车，我就来驾车。
• It's no use trying to steer the boy into a course of action that suits you.想说服这孩子按你的方式行事是徒劳的。

7 contemplate   

vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视

参考例句：

• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate.战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。
• The consequences would be too ghastly to contemplate.后果不堪设想。

8 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。