2022年经济学人 语法学习之争（1）

Culture

文化

Johnson -- More than the sum of its part

约翰逊语言专栏——整体大于部分之和

Teaching grammar is useful if not principally in the way you may think

教语法是有用的，如果不是主要用你以为的那种方式

Absence of evidence is not, as the saying goes, the same thing as evidence of absence.

正如俗话所说，没有证据不等于证据不存在。

But if you continue looking for something intently, and keep failing to find it, you can be forgiven for starting to worry.

但如果你持续专注地寻找某样东西，却总是找不到，那么你开始担心这东西不存在也是情有可原的。

And so it is with the vexed¹ -- and in Britain, highly politicised -- subject of explicit² grammar teaching in schools, and its link or otherwise with improved writing ability.

学校里的明晰语法教学这一令人为难的——在英国，它也是高度政治化的——学科，以及它与提高写作能力之间的联系或别的什么，就是这种情况。

Another study, in this case a large randomised controlled trial, has recently been added to the expansive literature on the subject.

另一项研究，这回是一项大型随机对照试验，最近加入到有关这个学科的海量文献中。

Like nearly all its predecessors³, it found that teaching kids how to label the bits and pieces in a sentence does not make them better writers.

和几乎所有之前的研究一样，该研究发现，教会孩子们如何标记句子中零碎的单词短语，并不能让他们成为更好的写作者。

It was novel in that it tested six- and seven-year-olds who used a digital platform called Englicious to take grammar lessons, alongside the rote⁴ classroom teaching of grammatical particulars and their functions.

这项研究的新颖之处在于，它对两组6-7岁的儿童进行了测试，一组使用一个叫作Englicious的数字平台学习语法，另一组接受惯常的教授语法细节及其功能的课堂教学。

The Englicious group did no better than those receiving ordinary instruction when it came to writing narrative⁵ passages.

在写作记叙文方面，Englicious组并没有比接受普通教学的那组儿童表现得更好。

(The extra help slightly improved their performance on a task called "sentence combining", which requires pupils to turn two sentences into one in logical ways, such as the addition of "because". But even this effect was not statistically⁶ significant.)

（教学的额外帮助略微提高了他们在“句子组合”任务中的表现，这项任务要求学生按照逻辑将两个句子合并成一个句子，比如加上“因为”。但即使是这一影响，在统计学上也不显著。）

Bas Aarts, one of the researchers on the project and one of the scholars behind Englicious, holds out hope that with longer exposure, or a study of older students, an improvement in writing skills might be detected.

巴斯·阿尔茨是该项目的研究人员之一，也是Englicious背后的学者之一。他希望，通过增长接触时间，或对年龄较大的学生进行研究，能够检测到写作技能的提升。

Other observers may begin to wonder whether the National Curriculum in England, which since 2014 has made grammar such a central part of its English programme, might have gone down a blind alley⁷.

一些观察人士可能会开始怀疑，自2014年以来一直将语法作为其英语课程核心部分的英国国家课程是否已经走进了死胡同。

The force behind the reforms, Michael Gove, a Conservative former secretary of education, is sometimes maligned⁸ for other political reasons (especially among opponents of Brexit, which he championed).

这些改革背后的力量，保守党前教育大臣迈克尔·戈夫，有时会因为其他政治原因而遭到中伤（尤其是他支持英国脱欧，成为了反派的一份子）。

He is said to have insisted on the insertion of personal bugbears into the grammar curriculum, notably⁹ the subjunctive form, "If I were".

据说，他坚持在语法课程中加入一些难点，尤其是虚拟语气“If I were”。

Mention of his name alone wrinkles many teachers' noses -- partly because some of them were hardly prepared to teach the new material themselves, after decades in which grammar was largely absent from classrooms.

单是提到他的名字就让许多老师感到不快——部分原因是他们中的一些人自己都还没有准备好要教授的新材料，因为几十年来，语法基本上不出现在课堂上。

1 vexed   

adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论

参考例句：

• The conference spent days discussing the vexed question of border controls. 会议花了几天的时间讨论边境关卡这个难题。
• He was vexed at his failure. 他因失败而懊恼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

2 explicit   

adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的

参考例句：

• She was quite explicit about why she left.她对自己离去的原因直言不讳。
• He avoids the explicit answer to us.他避免给我们明确的回答。

3 predecessors   

n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Will new plan be any more acceptable than its predecessors? 新计划比原先的计划更能令人满意吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 rote   

n.死记硬背，生搬硬套

参考例句：

• Learning by rote is discouraged in this school.这所学校不鼓励死记硬背的学习方式。
• He recited the poem by rote.他强记背诵了这首诗。

5 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

6 statistically   

ad.根据统计数据来看，从统计学的观点来看

参考例句：

• The sample of building permits is larger and therefore, statistically satisfying. 建筑许可数的样本比较大，所以统计数据更令人满意。
• The results of each test would have to be statistically independent. 每次试验的结果在统计上必须是独立的。

7 alley   

n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路

参考例句：

• We live in the same alley.我们住在同一条小巷里。
• The blind alley ended in a brick wall.这条死胡同的尽头是砖墙。

8 maligned   

vt.污蔑，诽谤（malign的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• She feels she has been much maligned by the press. 她觉得她遭到了新闻界的恣意诽谤。
• We maligned him dreadfully when you come to think of it. 回头想想，我们狠狠地中伤了他。 来自辞典例句

9 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。