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No. 45  Dec. 2019
 
   
   
   
   

 

 

編輯報告
EDITOR'S REPORT

本期範文賞析(SPOTLIGHT),邀請就讀美國明尼蘇達大學的英文博士候選人劉仁洲,分享他於美國大學授課時,所採用的帶領討論方法以及教學經驗。人物專訪(STAR OF THE MONTH)的對象為本年度3MT學術英文簡報競賽優勝者周昀同學,與讀者分享她的英語學習之旅,如何培養英文表達的自信以及沉穩的臺風。讀者園地(PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS)則節錄本學期沈婉霖老師的演講,以科技論文的撰寫為題,探討學術中文寫作的要旨。
 
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省思醒語
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
 
 

“Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

 

by Oprah Winfrey

 

 
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範文賞析
SPOTLIGHT

 

(劉仁洲 博士候選人 撰文) (Jen-Chou Liu, Ph.D. Candidate in English, University of Minnesota)

Using Writing to Stimulate Class Discussion

 

The day after the 2016 US presidential election, I walked into my Literature and Public Life classroom with a heavy, uncertain heart. I had just had a long conversation with a Korean friend about what could have happened to immigrants and international students like us. We were scheduled to discuss Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things, a novel about trauma, guilt, colonialism, and discrimination against the untouchables in India. I knew I was expected to address the election results, because I had repeatedly asked my students to use our readings about race, immigration, gender, education, and globalization to think through Hilary Clinton's and Donald Trump's campaigns. As I stood in the front of the room and saw distress on many students' faces, I decided to turn the tables and let them talk first. I invited them to share their feelings and thoughts, and I promised I would not make any response. I just listened. After all who wanted to speak had their turns, I reminded them of the importance of conversation, the model on which I designed every aspect of the course from reading, class discussion, to writing.
 
As a scholar of eighteenth-century British literature and history, I am fascinated by how London's coffeehouses created a public space for people to have meaningful conversations about current events, issues, and ideas, and form opinions. I model my classroom on the London coffeehouse to create an inclusive and democratic learning environment in which students could experience and join what literary critic Kenneth Burke calls "the unending conversation" about ideas, a conversation where "you listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar."Good writing is just such a conversation: one must listen closely to what others say and use it as a launching board to develop his or her own arguments.
 
I used to think that if I could design good questions, students would organically have good discussions. After having taught in both Taiwan and the US, I have realized that good discussion questions alone are simply not enough. Sure, I could always count on a handful of extroverted students to speak in front of the whole class, but I also want to involve the shy, introverted students whose ideas are just as valuable. To encourage everyone to join the conversation, I use frequent, low-stakes, completion-based writing assignments to help students generate ideas that can be shared with the class. Before every class meeting, my students complete annotations or worksheets to practice different cognitive skills: identifying references, making analyses, and asking research questions. Then every two to three meetings, they review their annotations and worksheets to identify one idea and expand it to a one-paragraph argument in a blog post, which is also completed before class. These low-stakes assignments allow students the space to try and fail, to write a lot and badly before they can write well. It also helps them get into the habit of making arguments on a regular basis and incorporating critical thinking into their daily workflows. Before class, I read everything the students wrote and select comments for class discussion. In class, I "invite" (as if they had a say) students to share and elaborate on their comments as a curator. Without the pressure to come up with something smart to say on the spot, they are more comfortable and willing to speak in front of their classmates.
 
The American essayist Joan Didion thus explains the purpose of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." As a heuristic tool, writing helps us generate and develop ideas. When purposefully implemented in the classroom, writing provides scaffolding for students to think critically and join the unending conversation.
                                      
 
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人物專訪
STAR OF THE MONTH

   受訪者:周昀同學 (Interviewee: Yun Chou, 2019 3MT Competition Champion)

Yun Chou, a graduate student from Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering of National Taiwan University (NTU), wins the championship of 2019 Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition held by Academic Writing Education Center at NTU. She readily accepts AWEC Newsletter interview invitation, sharing with us the story of her English-learning journey.

When she reached her senior year in elementary school, she took the initiative in asking her parents to send her to a private institute for learning English—unlike normal teenagers who are often forced to attend the extracurricular English class in much earlier ages, Yun Chou was given enough time and freedom to allow the desire to grow naturally. She kept her learning there for several years in a row as she enjoyed the small-size class environment along with a conversation teacher who, as a native speaker of English, could not be approached anyway in Chinese. Since then, Yun Chou has been constantly "encouraged" to deliver her ideas and requests in English, thereby gradually integrating the usage of this language into her daily habit. This habit is further enhanced by her one-and-half-year stay in San Francisco area as Yun Chou went there to be a full-time missionary in a visitor center of The Church of Jesus Christ during her undergraduate years. Young as a sophomore student, Yun Chou has already learned to communicate with visitors from different countries for taking care of their needs and introducing the Church. Taking one step further, throughout her work in San Francisco area, Yun Chou and other missionaries would seize every opportunity to share their Christian belief with all walks of life encountered right on the street. Not only to preach, Yun Chou gets deeper into the core of communication via a foreign language that becomes so integral to her daily life after all these days of frequent usage.

It is through this extent of familiarity with English that Yun Chou succeeds in taking the 3MT stage and standing out as the champion. While trying to give the reader a take-home message, she humbly points out, "Just take the presentation contest as having a sincere dialogue. Show your real passion for your own research. Don't try to impress your audience by being too dramatic. Do it as naturally as you originally are."

 

 

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讀者園地
PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

講題:學術中文寫作科技論文常見問題

講員:沈婉霖老師

日期:2019/12/04(三) 15:00-17:00

整理:謝巧薇

本場演講的目的主要是探討論文中經常出現的各種謬誤。沈婉霖老師由字到句至段落的寫作,逐步引導聽眾寫作的要點和需要避免的錯誤,並且搭配實際案例的分析與練習,希望能讓聽眾提高句式邏輯的敏感度,培養自我修正論文的能力。
 
演講一開始,老師先介紹了學術文體的特色。首先,字詞的使用務求精準,所引用的概念或術語內涵必須一致,句子的語意也要完足且合乎語法。其次,文句順序與承接位置也要注意,並且需扣合段落主旨。最後,段落的承接需要合乎文章事理的邏輯,傳達出中心意念。針對這部份,老師建議大家可以從最簡單的口語表達開始,有機會就對著同儕練習,說明問題意識是甚麼,也讓自己試著使用一張投影片,就能將論文中較為複雜的概念,向同儕清晰簡要的解釋出來。簡言之,就是將語言和思考的緊密聯繫,並把握住文字運用的精準力。
 
針對字、句和段落,老師也逐步說明。首先在字詞的選擇上,主要有三種類型,包括一般用詞、專名翻譯詞、以及數量時間詞。一般用詞的使用必須嚴謹,不可籠統含糊或者過於生僻,同時也要考慮各字詞間的配合與相符程度;專名翻譯詞必須在文章中前後一致、定義明確,並且符合學科領域的慣例;數量時間詞則要精確,避免模擬兩可。老師提到,許多科技論文的前言和第一段常使用「經過這幾年」、「這幾年來」等不精確的用詞,不僅無法凸顯時間重要性也不構成學術嚴謹性,因此可以刪略。
 
其次,老師介紹了敘述、描寫、說明和議論四種寫作類型。敘述往往是書寫一段經驗或歷程,描寫則召喚感官知覺,而說明和議論是科技論文中較常使用的類型。說明涉及了對於某種事物、概念或行動的詮釋。通常使用判斷句,以「是、用、在、把、能夠、可以、所以」這些字眼,作為斷言或肯定。推衍說明文脈的主要關係是因果。議論則是對已經存在的陳述、意見或現象提出增補、修正或質疑。它也是以判斷句為主,多用因果關係連貫句子和段落,但轉折的使用較說明文更強烈,經常選擇設問句或遞進句來推展議論。常使用的字眼有:「不過、但是、雖然、儘管」等。
 
再來,老師談到表達知識採用的語文特徵。在表達個人立場、強調定位時,會使用「不同於以往」、「本文旨在」、「我們認為」等詞。而在事理強弱的選擇上,由強至弱依序有:「一定」、「應該」、「才能夠」、「有可能」、「也許」等。另外,表現主觀評價或判斷則會使用「固然」、「當然」、「不可避免的」、「絕對」、「無可選擇的」等詞。在選擇用詞時,老師特別提醒,選擇的標準取決於「證據有多少」,要配合證據下之強弱標記,否則用錯了,很容易被反駁。
 
接著介紹兩種段落的組織方式,包括說明式段落和推論式段落。在說明式段落中,一種是句意順承關係,這可根據時間的連續性、層次的推移,以及話題或主張的銜接而構成。另一種則是事況平行排列,這又分為相似的並列關係,以及一正一反的對照關係。這種說明式段落往往是由三段結構所組成:先引述理論或概括說明,接著呈現實例、文獻資料、數據等,最後再分析數據或聚焦說明。老師認為,三段結構中,最後的分析與說明往往是最重要也可能最具貢獻之處,但許多論文卻經常少了這一部分,只停留在數據或資料的呈現。在推論式段落中,主要包括因果和轉折這兩種銜接段落,老師也都透過實例逐一帶領大家分析、討論。
 
經過以上講解與實作練習後,老師在演講的後半段,舉出八種常見的病句和大家一起討論。這八種病句主要可以分為「焦點不明」、「條理不清」、「翻譯不當」和「冗贅」等四大問題。首先,就焦點不明的問題來看,主要是因為訊息過度凌亂。其次,條理不清則包含了事理標誌使用不當,又或者事理標誌使用與條理關係不符、語序條理失當等問題。再者,語序錯亂或錯誤使用被動標記則是翻譯時常見的兩大謬誤。最後,談到曾一度引起廣泛討論的語言癌問題,老師也舉出論文中常見語意模稜的動詞如「做結合」、「做使用」的「做」,以及浮泛使用單一類型的介詞組,像是句中包含三個層次卻都用並列結構等,這些情形都會讓文句顯得冗贅。針對上述問題,老師也提出了病句的修改策略。例如針對訊息混亂不清的句子,老師便建議將句子切分,先看出它的結構關係,然後依訊息的相關性與層次組織句子,加以整併和刪減。
 
在短短兩小時的演講中,沈婉霖老師一步步解析學術中文論文的層次與要點,精準銳利地切除各種文句謬誤和邏輯病灶。相信觀眾也在實例的探討與練習中,磨練了自己的筆鋒,進而獲得修正完善論文的能力。
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