梅仁毅教授：英语阅读方法谈6

The third is to arouse your interest in the texts. I would say “interest” in learning a language, is very important.

Now in taking up the intensive reading pieces, one of the jobs of the teacher is to make you feel that “Oh, English can be used in this way." Engl- …Well, a simple sentence can express so much.” If you have that feeling, you’ll find that the piece is interesting. It’s useful. And that is part of goal of intensive reading. I think that might be the tragedy of Chinese education. That is after so many years of recitation, from primary school on, you are required to recite, to recite and to recite. And finally, this method has killed the interest of the students. They don’t have any interest in the things, and that’s most unfortunate. So when you read things and you find that they are so interesting, they tell … they tell you so much, and you can express ideas in such a vivid way by using very simple English, then you’ll become interested in the thing.

Once you have the interest, you’ll go ahead and do the reading, and don’t need to worry about it. You’ll go ahead and you will do more reading, because you find reading is so interesting.

So the third is in class, the teacher will help you to arouse your interest. Certainly, if after the class, the teacher kills your interest, now then it is a failure, it’s a failure on my part. If I can arouse your interest, then it is a success.

Finally, the goal is to help you develop an independent ability to solve problems by yourself. I usually said to my students that the teacher is a stick, a walking stick, sometimes when you are just limping, you need a stick. And you throw away the stick as soon as possible, and walk on yourself. Then what does that mean? It means you learn the way to solve problems by yourself. Once you have that, you will be able to go ahead, because you can’t always have a teacher by your side. So to cultivate, to build up this ability is very important. Now these, I will say these are the four very important goals of intensive reading. Of intensive reading.