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教案 | John McWhorter: 4 Reasons to Learn a Language

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学习一门外语的四个理由

John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a language
学习一门外语的四个理由

难度级别：★★★

燕山大学刘立军宋葳编写

◆INTRODUCTION

English is fast becoming the world's universal language, and instant translation technology is improving every year. So why bother learning a foreign language? Linguist and Columbia professor John McWhorter shares four alluring benefits of learning an unfamiliar tongue.

◆BEFORE VIEWING

TASK 1: VOCABULARY PREVIEW

1. alluring adj. attractive and exciting in a mysterious way 诱人的；迷人的；有吸引力的。例如：an alluring smile迷人的微笑

2. enticing adj. something that is enticing is so attractive and interesting that you want to have it or know more about it 有诱惑力的；诱人的；有吸引力的。例如：The offer was too enticing to refuse.这提议太有诱惑力，使人难以拒绝。

3. fraught n. (especially British English) causing or feeling worry and anxiety 焦虑的；忧虑的；担心的。例如：
○She looked/sounded fraught. 她愁容满面；她的话音显出忧虑。
○There was a fraught silence. 有一阵令人焦虑的沉默。
○Things are as fraught as ever in the office. 办公室的情况和往常一样令人担心。

4. illustration n. a story, an event or an example that clearly shows the truth about sth.（说明事实的）故事，实例，示例。例如：
○The statistics are a clear illustration of the point I am trying to make. 这些统计数字清楚地阐明了我要陈述的要点。
○Let me, by way of illustration, quote from one of her poems. 作为说明，让我援引她的一首诗。

5. husk n. the dry outer covering of nuts, fruits and seeds, especially of grain（尤指谷类、果实和种子的）外壳，外皮

6. consonant n. (phonetics 语音) a speech sound made by completely or partly stopping the flow of air being breathed out through the mouth 辅音

7. vowel n. a speech sound in which the mouth is open and the tongue is not touching the top of the mouth, the teeth, etc., for example |ɑ:, e, ?:| 元音。例如：Each language has a different vowel system. 每种语言都有不同的元音系统。

8. tingle n. an exciting or uncomfortable feeling of emotion 激动感；兴奋感；震颤。例如：to feel a tingle of excitement感到一阵激动

9. blow your mind: (informal) to produce a very strong pleasant or shocking feeling 使某人兴奋（或吃惊）。例如：Wait till you hear this. It'll blow your mind. 等着听听这个吧。它会让你大感意外的。

TASK 2: TOPIC PREVIEW
Work in pairs and discuss the following question.

Why learning English is so important?

◆VIEWING

TASK 3:
Read the table. Then watch the video and fill in the blanks with the information you hear.

Topic		4 reasons to learn a language
Introduction		l English is everywhere.
		l English is taking over.
		l Why should we learn _________________ - other than if English happens to be foreign to one? Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one?
Body	Reason 1	l A language channels your _____________________. l The _________________ and the ____________ of different languages gives everybody a different kind of acid trip. l The language channels the _______________.
	Reason 2	l If you speak two languages, ____________ is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker.
	Reason 3	l Languages are just an awful lot of _____________.
	Reason 4	l We live in an era when it's never been ______________ to teach yourself another language.
Conclusion		l I highly _______________ that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking, because there's never been a better time to do it. It's an awful lot of fun. It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly _______________________.

TASK 4:
Read the statements. Then watch the video and check (√) the true or (×) false statements.

1. The speaker argues that Chinese will overtake English as the global language.

2. The speaker wants to explore why learning foreign languages is good.

3. Bilingualism is fun, but it has drawbacks to our health.

4. The speaker suggests that learning a language is easier nowadays.

5. At the end of the speech, the author encourages people to learn English only.

◆AFTER VIEWING

TASK 5:
Work in group and discuss the following question.

What is the most difficult part of learning a language?

SUGGESTED ANSWERS

◆BEFORE VIEWING

TASK 2

Learning English is important and people all over the world decide to study it as a foreign or second language. Many countries include English as a second language in their school syllabus and children start learning English at a young age. However, do you know why learning English is so important? Here are ten good reasons to take an English language course.

○English is the most commonly spoken language in the world. One out of five people can speak or at least understand English!

○English is the language of science, of aviation, computers, diplomacy, and tourism. Knowing English increases your chances of getting a good job in a multinational company within your home country or abroad.

○English is the official language of many countries.

○English is spoken as a first language by around 400 million people around the world.

○English is the language of the media industry. If you speak English, you won't need to rely on translations and subtitles anymore to enjoy your favourite books, songs, films and TV shows.

○English is also the language of the Internet. Many websites are written in English - you will be able to understand them and to take part in forums and discussions.

○English is based on a simple alphabet and it is fairly quick and easy to learn compared to other languages.

○English is not only useful - it gives you a lot of satisfaction. Making progress feels great. You will enjoy learning English, if you remember that every hour you spend gets you closer to perfection.

○Since English is spoken in so many different countries there are thousands of schools around the world that offer programmes in English. If you speak English, there're lots of opportunities for you to find an appropriate school and course to suit your academic needs.

○Because it's fun! By learning English, you will also learn about other cultures. Few experiences will make you grow as a person more than learning the values, habits and way of life in a culture that is different from yours.

◆VIEWING

TASK 3

1. foreign languages
2. thoughts
3. vocabulary
4. grammar
5. culture
6. dementia
7. fun
8. easier
9. recommend
10. blow your mind

TASK 4

×1. The speaker argues that Chinese will overtake English as the global language.
(Notes: English is taking over.)

√2. The speaker wants to explore why learning foreign languages is good.

×3. Bilingualism is fun, but it has drawbacks to our health.
(Notes: Bilingualism is healthy.)

√4. The speaker suggests that learning a language is easier nowadays.

×5. At the end of the speech, the author encourages people to learn English only.
(Notes: I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking)

◆AFTER VIEWING

TASK 5

I think speaking is the most difficult part of learning a language. Now, let's take my English learning as an example. I am a college student but I still can't speaking English fluently because when I start to speak English, I can't decide which structure or words I will use and also I am nervous while talking, sometimes I even can't remember easy words, like newspaper or key. I try to overcome this obstacle. I watch English films without subtitles or listen to English music, but unfortunately, I don't have any opportunity to practice my speaking.

ATTACHMENT: John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a language

John McWhorter: 4 reasons to learn a language

0:11
The language I'm speaking right now is on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse. Let's face it, it's the language of the internet, it's the language of finance, it's the language of air traffic control, of popular music, diplomacy - English is everywhere.
0:33
Now, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people, but more Chinese people are learning English than English speakers are learning Chinese. Last I heard, there are two dozen universities in China right now teaching all in English. English is taking over.
0:52
And in addition to that, it's been predicted that at the end of the century almost all of the languages that exist now - there are about 6,000 will no longer be spoken. There will only be some hundreds left. And on top of that, it's at the point where instant translation of live speech is not only possible, but it gets better every year.
1:16
The reason I'm reciting those things to you is because I can tell that we're getting to the point where a question is going to start being asked, which is: Why should we learn foreign languages - other than if English happens to be foreign to one? Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one?
1:41
I think there are a lot of reasons, but I first want to address the one that you're probably most likely to have heard of, because actually it's more dangerous than you might think. And that is the idea that a language channels your thoughts, that the vocabulary and the grammar of different languages gives everybody a different kind of acid trip, so to speak. That is a marvelously enticing idea, but it's kind of fraught.
2:12
So it's not that it's untrue completely. So for example, in French and Spanish the word for table is, for some reason, marked as feminine. So, "la table," "la mesa," you just have to deal with it. It has been shown that if you are a speaker of one of those languages and you happen to be asked how you would imagine a table talking, then much more often than could possibly be an accident, a French or a Spanish speaker says that the table would talk with a high and feminine voice. So if you're French or Spanish, to you, a table is kind of a girl, as opposed to if you are an English speaker.
2:56
It's hard not to love data like that, and many people will tell you that that means that there's a worldview that you have if you speak one of those languages. But you have to watch out, because imagine if somebody put us under the microscope, the us being those of us who speak English natively. What is the worldview from English?
3:17
So for example, let's take an English speaker. Up on the screen, that is Bono. He speaks English. I presume he has a worldview. Now, that is Donald Trump. In his way, he speaks English as well.
3:34
(Laughter)
3:38
And here is Ms. Kardashian, and she is an English speaker, too. So here are three speakers of the English language. What worldview do those three people have in common? What worldview is shaped through the English language that unites them? It's a highly fraught concept. And so gradual consensus is becoming that language can shape thought, but it tends to be in rather darling, obscure psychological flutters. It's not a matter of giving you a different pair of glasses on the world.
4:13
Now, if that's the case, then why learn languages? If it isn't going to change the way you think, what would the other reasons be? There are some. One of them is that if you want to imbibe a culture, if you want to drink it in, if you want to become part of it, then whether or not the language channels the culture - and that seems doubtful - if you want to imbibe the culture, you have to control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in. There's no other way.
4:48
There's an interesting illustration of this. I have to go slightly obscure, but really you should seek it out. There's a movie by the Canadian film director Denys Arcand - read out in English on the page, "Dennis Ar-cand," if you want to look him up. He did a film called "Jesus of Montreal." And many of the characters are vibrant, funny, passionate, interesting French-Canadian, French-speaking women. There's one scene closest to the end, where they have to take a friend to an Anglophone hospital. In the hospital, they have to speak English. Now, they speak English but it's not their native language, they'd rather not speak English. And they speak it more slowly, they have accents, they're not idiomatic. Suddenly these characters that you've fallen in love with become husks of themselves, they're shadows of themselves.
5:38
To go into a culture and to only ever process people through that kind of skrim curtain is to never truly get the culture. And so to the extent that hundreds of languages will be left, one reason to learn them is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code. So that's one reason.
6:02
Second reason: it's been shown that if you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker. And these are factors that set in early, and so that ought to give you some sense of when to give junior or juniorette lessons in another language. Bilingualism is healthy.
6:25
And then, third - languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic. That's fun.
7:05
Or languages have different word orders. Learning how to speak with different word order is like driving on the different side of a street if you go to certain country, or the feeling that you get when you put Witch Hazel around your eyes and you feel the tingle. A language can do that to you.
7:24
So for example, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," a book that I'm sure we all often return to, like "Moby Dick." One phrase in it is, "Do you know where I found him? Do you know where he was? He was eating cake in the tub, Yes he was!" Fine. Now, if you learn that in Mandarin Chinese, then you have to master, "You can know, I did where him find? He was tub inside gorging cake, No mistake gorging chewing!" That just feels good. Imagine being able to do that for years and years at a time.
7:55
Or, have you ever learned any Cambodian? Me either, but if I did, I would get to roll around in my mouth not some baker's dozen of vowels like English has, but a good 30 different vowels scooching and oozing around in the Cambodian mouth like bees in a hive. That is what a language can get you.
8:21
And more to the point, we live in an era when it's never been easier to teach yourself another language. It used to be that you had to go to a classroom, and there would be some diligent teacher - some genius teacher in there - but that person was only in there at certain times and you had to go then, and then was not most times. You had to go to class. If you didn't have that, you had something called a record. I cut my teeth on those. There was only so much data on a record, or a cassette, or even that antique object known as a CD. Other than that you had books that didn't work, that's just the way it was.
8:54
Today you can lay down - lie on your living room floor, sipping bourbon, and teach yourself any language that you want to with wonderful sets such as Rosetta Stone. I highly recommend the lesser known Glossika as well. You can do it any time, therefore you can do it more and better. You can give yourself your morning pleasures in various languages. I take some "Dilbert" in various languages every single morning; it can increase your skills. Couldn't have done it 20 years ago when the idea of having any language you wanted in your pocket, coming from your phone, would have sounded like science fiction to very sophisticated people.
9:36
So I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking, because there's never been a better time to do it. It's an awful lot of fun. It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly blow your mind.
9:53
Thank you very much.
9:54
(Applause)

时长：10.1分钟

来源：刘立军宋葳 2017-09-27

教案 | John McWhorter: 4 Reasons to Learn a Language

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