TE精读| remote learning

今天的精读文章是China部分的remote learning：geting to konw your teacher.由于病毒的蔓延，全国中小学以及大学都启用了远程教育，停课不停学，全国掀起了一股线上学习的热潮。紧接着就是各种麻烦的暴露，无法监管学生呀，设备、网络都不合格、学习效率低下呀等等，但是这篇文章从teacher-student relationship方面带给了我们一些新的认识，冰冷的技术问题背后，还有一些向好的发展……

标题导读：

小标题remote learning点出了整篇文章都在讲什么，全篇都在讲远程学习，文章的主旨是远程学习将带给我们的teacher-student relationship的改变：让学生 getting to konwing your teacher（更了解老师）。

Disrupt: be prevent something from continuing in its usual way by causing problems.

be disrupted by:

Covid-19 means coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Google了一下才知道原来病毒名称已经简化成了covid-19

There are upsides：

此处安利一波朗文，比国内常用的翻译软件不知道好用多少倍。下图upside的意思看完之后就能明白这句话的意思是也有一些好的方面。同样的，也有一些坏的方面可以说there are downsides.

整篇文章一共有7段，我将它分为三个部分：

1、2段构成第一部分，作者通过林凯、刘卫华的例子引出远程教育，同时举了家长和老师的例子来叙述remote learning中监督的问题。

3、4段为第二部分，作者分两个维度讲了了城市家庭和农村家庭遇到网速慢时如何进行下去的故事。

5、6、7段为第三部分，讲了学生在家效率低下的现状，以一个老师的观点引出本文的主旨，remote learning带来了各种各样的坏消息，但是它客观上改善了传统师生交流不足的问题，打破了师生之间强烈的等级关系，这也算是epidemic的few happy了。

01

“Don’t delete your browser history,” Lin Kai warns his 11-year-old son, who is supposed to be live-streaming lectures delivered by his schoolteachers. Mr Lin has reason to be anxious. To curb the spread of covid-19, the authorities have closed schools and universities indefinitely. But “study must not stop”, says the education ministry. Under its orders, the country’s biggest exercise in remote learning is under way, watched over by parents. Mr Lin, who lives in the eastern city of Hangzhou, has caught his son being distracted by online games. He wants his son to know that he will inspect the browser for evidence of such naughtiness.

browser： 其实就是浏览器，用了苹果之后就是safari.

be supposed to:这个短语非常常用，中学时有学过，因为常用又把它拿出来查了一遍，一共有三个用法：

比较常用的是a用法，相当于should,此处应当是第二个用法，本应该做sth,但并没有做。文中指他11岁的孩子本应该正在看学校老师的现场直播（言下之意并没有看）。

live-stream:现场直播。live有一个现场直播的意思，比如苹果手机的live photo模式。

curb：to control or limit something in order to prevent it from having a harmful effect :  文中译为为了阻止病毒的蔓延

indefinitely：可以翻译为无限期的

Caught-catch  catch sb doing sth.

这个短语很有意思，是指别人发现了你正在做的你以为别人发现不了的事（也不想让别人发现）。文中指林凯的儿子正偷偷摸摸的趁着online learning打游戏，没想到爸爸已经发现了。

Be under way:文中指线上教育的实践已经开始了。

There are other ways to enforce discipline. Liu Weihua, who teaches at Wuhan University of Technology, cold-calls his students during live streams. With sit-down exams now impossible, his grading system places more emphasis on how students perform in classroom discussions, Mr Liu explains. These are conducted using video-conferencing platforms such as Dingtalk by Alibaba, a tech giant, and Ketang by Tencent, a competitor.

enforce discipline：我把它理解为强调纪律，同样作为一名尝试过远程教育的老师觉得这个词很有意思。

cold-call：to telephone or visit someone you have never met before and try to sell them something。一开始不理解这个词的意思，查了一下明白了，原来就是我们平日里所谓的打推销电话呀，Google一下发现都是什么cold call tips:how to cold call……这里是指老师为了监督学生学习直播时给学生打电话，而作者用上了cold call这个词，站在学生的角度讲真的是贴切极了。也让我想到了钉钉的一个功能，老师在直播中可以强制打开学生静音了的麦克，其实就是再给学生打cold call.

 sit-down exams：这里指的是现场面对面的考试。sit-down这个词很有意思，用作形容词：

places more emphasis on：强调的意思，作文中常用。

Slow internet speeds at home are no excuse for shirking, says Yue Qiu, a secondary-school teacher in Beijing. If connections are too wobbly for video calls, students can download audio files and assignments. Parental supervision is encouraged. The municipal government of Beijing has decreed that, in households with two working parents, one is entitled to stay home without any loss of pay.

shirk：

to deliberately avoid doing something you should do, because you are lazy :

eg:He was fired for shirking.

很喜欢这个词，觉得这个词很精确，其实就是偷懒的意思。感觉这个词形容如今的很多人很贴切，包括我，因为懒而逃避工作和学习。

sth be  no excuse for shirking

这个句型，sth不是你偷懒的借口。

wobbly：这个词原本是用来形容桌子之类的不稳定的，或者是一些东西不够好。我认为此处应该取a意思，然后作者活用了这个词，用它来表达网络不稳定。

打电话时常常看到手机提醒poor connection or your network is unstable.以后写作可以用这个词了~

municipal government：市政府，记了好多遍都没有记下这个词。

decree：

1 an official order or decision, especially one made by the ruler of a country :

The Emperor  issued  the  decree  repealing martial law.

2 a judgment in a court of law

这个词只能用来指官方声明。

be entitled to：to give someone the official right to do or have something.要注意这个短语是有官方权利official。

In poor rural areas, where some households lack internet access, instruction by television fills the void. Since February 17th China Education Network, a state-run service, has been broadcasting classes every weekday from 8am to 10pm. The first lesson of the day is aimed at pupils in the first year of primary school. Programmes for older children air in the afternoon and evening. All core subjects, such as mathematics and Chinese, are covered.

fills the void：填了这个空。这里指那些没有网络的偏远地区由电视教学弥补。

state-run：国有的

这两段是写在线教学中遇到的网络问题是如何解决的。城市里网络慢不是借口，你可以下载下来作业或者文件，该做的作业还是得做。偏远乡村就用电视直播课程来弥补。我说我家电视上为什么还直播中小学课程，我还想着肯定没有人看呢，原来是为这些人准备的。

The disruption is felt most keenly by pupils in the final year of secondary school. That is the year leading up to the gaokao, the notoriously hard university-entrance exam. Many parents fret that online learning is a poor substitute for classroom instruction. Hou Kaixuan, who will sit the gaokao in the northern city of Zhangjiakou this summer, eagerly awaits the re-opening of his school. “I’m simply more productive in a physical classroom,” he says.

Not all his classmates agree. Kaixuan observes that some of them study just as hard at home as in school, and take perverse pleasure in the fact that others must be slacking off. (It helps that very little new material is taught in the last year of secondary school. The emphasis is on revision.)

The disruption is felt most keenly by pupils in the final year of secondary school.：此句是一个被动句，翻译为这个中学最后一年的学生最能感受到这种打乱。most keenly修饰felt.

lead up to:是为……做准备的意思，文中指这一年是为高考做准备的一年。

notoriously：famous or well known for something bad

eg:a notorious computer hacker

这个词是臭名昭著的意思，文中用这个词来形容高考，有一种幽默的意味。

fret ：/ fret /   verb

to worry about something, especially when there is no need

sit the gaokao：参加高考原来还可以这样说。令我很吃惊地是这篇文章的作者竟然用了拼音来表示高考……

await: to wait for something, formal, I will await your reply.

slacking off：

slack  ( also slack off ) verb

to make less effort than usual, or to be lazy in your work :

He was accused of slacking and taking too many holidays.

When schools and universities eventually re-open, classrooms may be different, says Mr Yue, the teacher in Beijing. The teacher-student relationship will become “less hierarchical”, he predicts. That is because China’s prolonged experiment with online learning is reducing the typical reserve between instructor and pupil. Teachers who were previously reluctant to give out their contact details on WeChat, a messaging app, now rely on it to respond to students’ queries. At Mr Yue’s school, students may even call their teachers to ask for feedback. If he is right, such a breaking-down of barriers could be one of the few happy byproducts of the epidemic.

hierarchical：阶级的

终于到了主旨，作者借这个老师的口说出：当学校重新开放时，师生关系将变得“不那么等级化”。这是因为中国长期的在线学习实验正在减少教师和学生之间的典型隔阂。以前不愿意在微信上公布联系方式的教师现在依靠微信来回答学生的提问。在岳先生的学校，学生甚至可以打电话给老师征求反馈。如果他是对的，这样打破壁垒可能是这场流行病少数令人高兴的副产品之一。

仔细思考中国老师和学生的关系就会发现这句话很有道理，中国一向崇尚尊师重道的文化，导致中国学生跟老师始终没办法很平等的交流，大多数的中国学生都会有一种怕老师的心态在，这一次的线上交流希望能够打破一些隔阂心态吧~