(65)
drill and exercises. Basically, the language teaching unit is the
(66)
sentence as a formal linguistic object. The language teacher's view of
what that constitutes knowledge of a language is essentially the same
(67)
as Chomsky's knowledge of the syntactic structure of sentences,
and of the transformational relations which hold them. Sentences are
seen as paradigmatically rather than syntagmatically related. Such a
knowledge provides the basis for actual use of language by the
(68)
speaker-hearer'. The assumption that the language appears to make
(69)
is that once this basis is provided, then the learner will have no
difficulty in the dealing with the actual use of language.
(70)

[H]

The changes in language will continue forever, but no one knows sure
(71)
who does the changing. One possibility is that children are
responsible. A professor of linguistic at the University of Hawaii,
(72)
explores this in one of his recent books. Sometimes around 1880, a
(73)
language catastrophe occurred in Hawaii when thousands of emigrant
(74)
workers were brought to the islands to work for the new sugar
industry. These people speaking different languages were unable to
communicate with each other or with the native Hawaiians or the dominant
English-speaking owners of the plantations. So they first
spoke in Pidgin English -- the sort of thing such mixed language
(75)
populations have always done. A pidgin is not really a language at
all. It is more like a set of verbal signals used to name objects and
(76)
without the grammatical rules needed for expressing thought and
ideas. And then, within a single generation, the whole mass of mixed
people began speaking a totally new tongue: Hawaiian Creole. The
(77)
new speech was contained ready-made words borrowed from all the
(78)
original tongues, but beard little or no resemblance to the
(79)
predecessors in the rules used for stringing the words together.
Although generally regarded as primitive language, Hawaiian Creole
(80)
had a highly sophisticated grammar.

[I]

The cinema has learned a great deal from the theatre about
presentation. Gone are the boys when crowds were packed on wooden
benches in tumble-down buildings to gape the antics of silent, jerking
(81)
figures on the screen, where some poor pianist made frantic efforts to
(82)
translate the drama into music. These days it is quite easier to find a
(83)
cinema that surpasses a theatre in luxury. Even in small villages,
cinemas are spacious, well-lit and well-ventilated places where one
can sit for comfort. The projectionist has been trained to give the
(84)
audience time to prepare themselves for the film they are to see. Talk
drops to a whisper and then fades out together. As soon as the
(85)
cinema is in darkness, spotlights are focused on the curtains which
are drawn slowly apart, often to the accompany of music, to reveal
(86)
the title of the film. Everything has carefully contrived so that the
(87)
spectator will never actually see the naked screen which will remind
him all too sharply that what he is about to see is nothing merely
(88)
shadows flickering on a white board. However much the cinema tries
to simulate the conditions in a theatre, it never fully succeeds.
Nothing can equal to the awe and sense of hushed expectation which
(89)
is felt by a theatre audience as the curtain is slowly risen.
(90)

共5页: 上一页 [1] [2] [3] 4 [5] 下一页