经济学人社论||英语学习中的误区
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Samantha，女，不吃米饭，邓伦未婚妻
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The perils of learning in English
英语学习中的误区
英文部分选自经济学人Leaders版块
Education
教育
The perils of learning in English
英语学习中的误区
Young children should be taught in their mother tongue instead
儿童应当接受母语教育
When Winston Churchill was at Harrow School, he was in the lowest stream. This did not, he wrote in “My Early Life”, blight his academic career, for “I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that...We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English...Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence—which is a noble thing.”
温斯顿·丘吉尔在哈罗公学念书时，成绩处于下游，但这并未影响到他的学业，他在《我的早年生活》中写道，“与其他更聪明的男孩们相比，我有一个巨大的优势，他们全都去学习拉丁语、希腊语或者其他一些了不得的事物……而我们被认为是只能学习英语的笨蛋……但也因此普通英语语句的基本结构融入到我的骨子里，这是件很美妙的事。”。
Partly thanks to Churchill and the post-war Anglo-American ascendancy, English is these days prized, not despised. Over a billion people speak it as either their first or second language; more still as a third or fourth language.
如今人们对英语推崇备至，而不是厌恶鄙弃,部分得归功于丘吉尔和战后美国的崛起 。超过十亿人以英语作为母语或第二语言，还有更多的人将其作为第三语言或第四语言。
English perfectly exemplifies the “network effects” of a global tongue: the more people use it, the more useful it is. English is the language of international business, law, science, medicine, entertainment and—since the second world war, to the fury of the French—diplomacy. Anybody who wants to make their way in the world must speak it. All of which has, of course, been of great benefit to this newspaper, which has floated on a rising linguistic tide.
英语完美地诠释了作为一种全球化语言的“网络效应”，即使用英语的人越多，英语变得越有用。英语是国际贸易、法律、科学、医药和娱乐行业的通用语言，二战后，外交也多使用英语，这让法国人大为恼火。任何想在世界上有所建树的人必须讲英语。也因为顺应这样的潮流，本刊也水涨船高，受益颇多。
It is not surprising that there is a surge in “English-medium” education all over the world. In some regions—such as East Asia and Latin America—the growth is principally among the rich. In others—Africa and South Asia, where former colonies never quite escaped the language’s grip—it is happening at all income levels. Parents’ desire for their children to master English is spurring the growth of private schooling; parents in the slums of Delhi and Lagos buy English-medium education in the hope that their children will gain a university degree, obtain good jobs and even join a glittering world of global professionals.
全世界兴起了“英语教学”的教育热潮并不让人诧异。在一些地区——例如东亚和拉丁美洲——这股潮流的增长在富人间尤为显著。在其他地区——如非洲和南亚这些前殖民地则从未完全摆脱英语的控制——这种情况发生在各个收入阶层。父母们对孩子掌握英语的渴望刺激了私立学校的发展；德里和拉各斯贫民区的父母们期冀着他们的孩子能获得大学学位、找到好工作，甚至成为万众瞩目的全球人才的一员，以至于对“英语教学”信心满满。
Where the private sector leads, governments are following. Some countries have long chosen to teach in English as a political expedient, because a local language would prove contentious. But even where public schools teach children in their mother tongue, or a local language, education authorities are switching to English medium, in part to stem the outflow of children into the private sector. That has happened in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan; many Indian states have started large or small English-medium experiments. In Africa most children are supposed to be taught in a local language in the first few years, but often, through parental pressure or a lack of textbooks, it does not happen.
政府在私营教育机构后面亦步亦趋。一些国家长期以来将教授英语作为一种政治上的权宜之计，因为当地语言可能会引起争议。但是即使在使用母语或当地语言教育儿童的公立学校，教育当局也在改用英语授课，部分原因是为了阻止儿童流入私立教学机构。在巴基斯坦旁遮普邦和开伯尔-普赫图赫瓦邦已经发生了这种情况；许多印度邦已经开始了或大或小的英语教学试点。在非洲，大多数儿童本应在最初几年里接受当地语言教学，但往往由于来自父母的压力或缺乏教科书而没有落实。
Teaching children in English is fine if that is what they speak at home and their parents are fluent in it. But that is not the case in most public and low-cost private schools. Children are taught in a language they don’t understand by teachers whose English is poor. The children learn neither English nor anything else.
若是儿童家长英语流利且家中日常用英语交流，那么英语教学也无可厚非。但是大多数公立及低成本私立学校的情况并非如此。这些学校的儿童对英语一窍不通，里面的老师英语水平也不尽如人意，孩子们既学不好英语，也学不到其他知识。
Research demonstrates that children learn more when they are taught in their mother tongue than they do when they are taught in any other language (see article). In a study of children in the first three years in 12 schools in Cameroon, those taught in Kom did better than those taught in English in all subjects. Parents might say that the point is to prepare children for the workplace, and that a grasp of English is more use than sums or history. Yet by year five the children taught in Kom outperformed English-medium children even in English. Perhaps this is because they gain a better grasp of the mechanics of reading and writing when they are learning the skills in a language they understand.
研究表明，儿童在母语授课模式中的学习效果比在非母语授课模式中要更好（见文章）。一项对12所喀麦隆学校的初入学三年的儿童的研究表明，用喀麦隆当地语言（Kom）教授的儿童在各科表现上比用英语教授的儿童都要出色。家长也许会辩驳道英语教学能够使孩子日后更好地适应工作环境，而且掌握英语比会算数和历史有用多了。但是，入学5年后，母语教学环境下的学生甚至在英语水平上都超过了用英语教学的学生。也许这是因为在用一种听得懂的语言学习时，他们能更好的掌握阅读和写作方法。
English should be an important subject at school, but not necessarily the language of instruction. Unless they are confident of the standard of English on offer, parents should choose mother-tongue education. Rather than switching to English-medium teaching, governments fearful of losing custom to the private sector should look at the many possible ways of improving public schools—limiting the power of obstructive teachers’ unions, say, or handing them over to private-sector managers and developing good curriculums and so on.
在学校，英语应该是一门重要的课程，但没必要成为教学语言。除非学校对提供的英语教育水平有足够自信，否则父母应该给孩子选择母语教育。政府若担心学生流失到私立机构，就不应该转向英语教学，而是关注一些可能有助于提高公立学校教学质量的方法，如限制刁难教师工会的权力，或者把他们交给私立机构进行管理以及开发好的课程等等。
Pakistani Punjab has decided to end the English experiment; Uganda has introduced mother-tongue instruction in 12 different languages in the first four years of schooling. More should follow. After all, it was a good education in his mother tongue, rather than in the classics then favoured by the British aristocracy, that won Churchill the Nobel prize for literature.
巴基斯坦的旁遮普省已决定停止英语教学实验，乌干达已经在孩子入学的头四年采用12种不同语言的母语教学，其他地方应该效仿。毕竟，丘吉尔获得诺贝尔文学奖得益于其在母语上获得的良好教育，而不是英国贵族们偏好的古希腊语或拉丁语。
注：https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab,_Pakistan
翻译组：
Yao，男，英专本科生，北大苗子
Aileen，女，研究僧，经济学人粉丝
Charlotte，女，子瞻太白本命 经学粉
Eva ，女，经贸翻译学生，经济学粉丝
校对组：
Wesley，男，自由职业，经济学人铁粉
VeRy，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者
Yuki，女 ，MPA专业大三，CATTI二笔 ，智性恋晚期
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观点|评论|思考
评论
Rena，女，国际学校老师，经济学人爱好者
这篇文章的立场还是比较新颖的。从中国国内来看，一直有股出国热，而文章的观点倒是给了我们一些启发，也能更冷静地想清楚利弊。
如果在学校老师和家长英文水平有限的情况下，用英文作为教学语言，的确会造成不小的问题。从我的教学观察，拿国际学校为例: 某些中国家长为了给孩子更好的教学环境，不惜重金供孩子去国际学校，殊不知，国际学校也是良莠不齐，某些地区的国际学校请的老师只是外国人的面孔，其实压根没有什么教学背景，英语水平也是马马虎虎，而中国家长的英文水平也是有限，在这样的环境中学习，孩子的英文水平和其他学科知识的水平也就可想而知了。所以我特别赞同文章观点，在条件不成熟的情况下，贸然用英语来教学，还不如用母语来的好。英语作为国际流通的语言，地位毋庸置疑，要好好学习也无可厚非，但把它当媒介来学习其他知识，还是需要慎重考虑。我认为，作为学习口语交流来说，有条件的偶尔去国外游学，尽早开始还是不错的。但其他学科来说，最好还是用母语来学习，避免一些误解引起理解的偏差。等到英语水平足够好了，可以作为工作语言了，再去作为工具或媒介来学习更多的知识，因为有些时候，翻译出来的毕竟是会造成一些信息的偏差，这个不可避免。所以学好英语，来作为一门打开世界大门的钥匙，让我们更好的去和世界沟通。但不建议在英语水平还不够时，用它去学习其他学科。
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