Профессиональное чтение на английском языке = Professional Reading in English. Учебное пособие

V. ADDITIONAL READING

higher than pupils with the same prior results at other schools. The new “Progress 8 measures” record pupils’ progress across eight subjects from age 11 to 16.

Education secretary Justine Greening said the statistics gave the government “even more reason to make more of these good school places available in more areas”.

Rebecca Allen, director of Education Datalab and an expert in the analysis of large scale administrative and survey datasets, warned that ministers should be cautious in latching on to “crude” performance tests. Allen said that the Key Stage 2 scores used to test the progress of pupils in the years up to their GCSEs was a poor indicator of academic potential, as indicated by the fact that many with low scores passed the 11-plus. She said that it would be better to examine progress across the board in local authorities that are selective. Those results show a marginally positive set of results in terms of progress of all pupils.

However, Allen said that even then the potential of a cohort of pupils in areas where grammars exist may well be higher in the first place because pupils could have been drawn from outside the area, distorting any analysis on a local authority by local authority basis. Allen added that the statistics also did not take into account the distorting effect on the figures produced by those who would have otherwise stayed in private education and who have moved into state grammar schools where they are available.

“These calculations are made only for those in the state sector, yet the presence of grammar schools changes the type of pupils in private schools,” she said. “About 12 per cent of those in grammars were in the private sector at age 10 and may well have stayed there had stateselection not been available. “Moreover, large numbers who fail the 11-plus exit the state sector for non-elite private schools. It is very hard to assess how these private sector transfers affect local authority Progress 8 figures, so we must be cautious before using crude performance table measures to make claims about policy effectiveness.”

Questions:

•How many grammar school pupils are from poor backgrounds?

•What barriers does selective education create?

•Whatnumberofdisadvantagedchildrenpassthe11-plusexamination?

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И. И. ИГНАТЕНКО. ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

EMI and globalisation: a good thing?

It is important to consider the forces driving the use of English in higher education in order to engage with the opportunities and pressures that our students and colleagues experience, and to understand the impact we can have both positively and negatively.

Globalisation

Globalisation involves a compression of time and space resulting from technological developments and increasing connections between people. Researchers emphasise that this involves a greater degree of interdependence, as we become more reliant and influential on each other; commodification, as trade becomes a major articulation of power and identity; and disembedding, as practices, symbols and language travel to new areas, adopt new functions and develop renegotiated meanings. We can see these processes around us in higher education in many ways, including the following:

Compression of time and space: Faster networked communication; a wider global outreach for research and impact; global and national academic networks; online platforms for learning, teaching and collaboration; and staff and students from wider geographic areas within universities.

Interdependence: International competition driving change; policies mirroring other institutions and international agendas; standardised measurements of teaching and research; greater collaboration and engagement on a global scale; greater funding for international and interdisciplinary output; and national events affecting the international higher education sector.

Commodification: Metaphors of the university as a market and the students as customers; market driven promotion of courses and practices; business management models and benchmark processes applied to academic output and workloads; increasing numbers of conferences, courses and publications; wider publicity and market reach; greater emphasis on intellectual property rights and branding; occasional prioritisation of qualifications over experience; and popular and profitable disciplines and languages receiving more resources (often responsible for the dramatic rise in EMI).

Disembedding: English taking on new roles and forms (being negotiated and used flexibly in the process); shifts in status and rankings (with some regions becoming more attractive sites of learning and research); greater

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diversity in perceived learning outcomes and teaching approaches; new forms of symbolic capital related to roles, opportunities and power relations around programmes and languages studied; and shifts in identities and symbolic values attached to people, places and languages.

EMI and globalisation processes

Position 1: The sceptic. EMI in higher education is reinforcing power relations and encouraging new forms of global elitism and inequality, especially by replacing other languages with English. Whether students choose EMI or are forced into a difficult and disadvantageous choice is similar to questions over whether educators choose to switch parts of their practice to English in order to engage more globally or whether this is something forced upon them. Overall, neo-liberal ideologies and processes are dominating the higher education ‘market’, and we are contributing to global inequality and imperialism.

Position 2: The optimist. EMI in education is helping to create a dialogical space for global citizens to connect and make the world a more peaceful and interconnected place. Having a shared language through which to do this, normally but not exclusively English, presents an opportunity for people from different backgrounds to engage, rather than a challenge to other languages. People will adapt their language and express themselves in a way that is right for them, so English is inclusive and multicultural enough to be the lingua franca of higher education without major issues.

Position 3: The negotiator. EMI is operating in a space where change and negotiation occurs. Institutions and educators might not be operating in “circumstances of their own choosing”, and they might be subject to performance measures and scales that they do not control, but internationalisation is a transforming process where agency and negotiation is present. Therefore, despite pressures and struggles, educators will always adapt and shape our methods, measures and expectations to meet the changing global landscape, just as students will resist unreasonable impositions where they can. Power relations and institutional pressures, therefore, do happen and are unavoidable, but human action is transformative, and we are in a position to engage in education in a critical and adaptive way that will always be changing the environments we work in.

Questions:

•What trends does globalisation involve?

•What are three possible attitudes to EMI in higher education?

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И. И. ИГНАТЕНКО. ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

“Too common for telly”

BBC presenter lashes out at Corporation

BBC Breakfast’s business presenter Stephanie McGovern has said that people inside the BBC once treated her as “too common for telly” and complains that viewers judge her by her accent. Writing in this week’s Radio Times, the presenter, who has been the main business presenter on BBC Breakfast for nearly a year, said that she was overlooked for promotion because of the way she spoke. McGovern, who comes from Middlesbrough, wrote: “Despite being a business journalist at the BBC for ten years, working behind the scenes on our high-profile news programmes, I was viewed by some in the organisation to be “too common for telly”.

She said viewers can also be cruel when commenting on her accent. “The first question I get will be, “What are Bill and Susanna like in real life?” – I’m happy to report they’re lovely – and then it’s, “Where’s your accent from?”, which I like to chat about. But, unfortunately, there are quite a few people out there who are nasty about the way I talk. “You would think that after nearly two years in the job, people would be used to my Teesside tones. To be fair most are, but there are still some viewers who can’t accept that someone with my accent can have a brain. It means that I regularly get abuse about it. I’ve had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.”

McGovern also used her spot in this week’s Radio Times to rail against the ignorance of people who assume she cannot use English properly because of the inflexions of her voice.

“The other misconception that comes through in my “fan mail” is that people with regional accents can’t use the English language correctly. I, like many annoying pedants, will wince when someone says “less” when they should have said “fewer”. But my “poor” sounds like poo-ah, not pore; and my “grass” rhymes with mass, not farce. What’s wrong with that? “It’s inevitable that not everyone will like me, and that some will find me annoying. That’s fine. All presenters deal with that. What’s scary is the ignorance about what having a regional accent means, or indeed doesn’t mean. It certainly doesn’t equal ignorance “She said she was heartened to read the thoughts of actress Lesley Sharp who earlier this month in Radio Times “expressed her fury at the frequent association of northern accents with ignorance”.

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She also said she was inspired by the example of her editor Alison Ford who died earlier this month from cancer. “She was the woman who took a gamble on me when other managers thought she was mad. Despite being a business journalist at the BBC for ten years, working behind the scenes on our high-profile news programmes, I was viewed by some in the organisation to be “too common for telly”. I remember at the end of one BBC job interview being told by the manager: “I didn’t realise people like you were clever.” Sad, but true.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “Steph does a fantastic job on BBC Breakfast. If her accent was an issue for some in the past during her career then it certainly isn’t now.”

Questions:

•Why was BBC business presenter Stephanie McGovern viewed by some in the organisation to be “too common for telly”?

•Would you agree with the people who assume she cannot use English properly because of the inflexions of her voice?

•If her accent was an issue for some in the past during her career why isn’t it certainly now?

The English. A Portrait of a People

Once upon a time the English knew who they were. There was such a ready list of adjectives to hand. They were polite, unexcitable, reserved and had hot-water bottles instead of a sex life: how they reproduced was one of the mysteries of the western world. They were doers rather than thinkers, writers rather than painters, gardeners rather than cooks. They were class-bound, hidebound and incapable of expressing their emotions. They did their duty. Fortitude bordering on the incomprehensible was a word: ‘I have lost my leg, by God!’ exclaimed Lord Uxbridge, as shells exploded all over the battlefield. ‘By God, and have you!’ replied the Duke of Wellington. A soldier lying mortally wounded in a flooded trench on the Somme was, so the myth went, likely to say only that he ‘mustn’t grumble’. Their most prized possession was a sense of honour.

They were steadfast and trustworthy. The word of an English gentleman was as good as a bond sealed in blood.

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И. И. ИГНАТЕНКО. ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

When you are surrounded by the sea you are as cut off from your nearest neighbor as your farthest trading partner and the sea which separates you from your nearest neighbor also links you with your remotest. Any planned invasion of England would be a matter of vast organization, the provision of ships, and calm weather: there was no border just to be marched across. Isolation also gave the opportunity to enter wars, alliances and intrigues, selectively. The island idea has a special place in the English imagination. Seabound security gave the English an early self-confidence and their relative isolation promoted the growth of an idiosyncratic intellectual tradition. It produced some very odd geniuses, like Blake or Shakespeare. It probably has something to do with the fact that England has produced so many very good travel writers. Freedom from the fear of sudden invasion also promoted individual freedoms: more vulnerable countries justified strong, top-down systems of government which could summon an army at days’ notice. The fact of being an island even dictated the shape of English cities: when there was a natural defence in the sea, there was no need for towns to be contained within walls; the consequence was that they grew higgledy-piggledy. There was no organizing plan for a city like London; it just grew as villages joined up. On the other hand, because there was no need for encircling walls, when they chose to do so, the city fathers could incorporate large open spaces near its heart.

Questions:

•What adjectives are used by the author to describe the English?

•What features of an English gentleman are shown in the given examples?

•How did the geographical position influence the English character?

Translation Issues

Translating and interpreting language is a challenging endeavor, but it becomes increasingly more complex when you need to translate what is not said. In many cultures, there is as much meaning to nonverbal cues as verbal ones, and in other cultures you never jump right into business without formality.

When presenting your work, research, or business information, a direct translation may technically relay the information, but did your

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readers understand it the way you meant it? Did the information fit within the reader’s culture; was the presentation glorious or, heaven forbid, offensive.

Are You Translating for a High-context or Low-context Culture?

In the 1970’s, anthropologist Edward T. Hall coined the phrases “highcontext culture” and “low-context culture.” In his work, “Beyond Culture”, Hall described these two different types of cultural relationships as they applied to information.

•High-context cultures: Much of the society’s communication takes place through contextual elements (body language, tone of voice, even a person’s position or standing) and not entirely the spoken or written word.

•Low-context cultures: Information is predominantly transmitted

through language, and the linguistic rules are clear and explicit. Translation services must understand that people in different countries

are going to decode information differently based on their cultural expectations.

Hall included most of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and South America in his list of high-context countries. In these countries, extra information is welcome and the language is often flowery. Topics are often less direct and more formal. The story is told of a Japanese business leader who complained to his American counterpart, “When we say one word, we understand ten, but here you have to say ten to understand one.”

In contrast, when dealing with North America and Western Europe, the low-context cultures, value getting right to the point. There is less formality and flowery language if frowned upon: simply set up the problem and solve it. Precise words with exact meanings are favored and are expected to be taken literally.

While no culture is entirely high or low-context, it is paramount to know your audience before you submit your material.

In short, translating across cultures involves a whole lot more than swapping out words. This is often where machine translation breaks down.

Questions:

•Why is translating and interpreting language a challenging endeavor?

•What two different types of cultural relationships did E. Hall describe?

•What countries did Hall include in his list of high-context countries?

•What is valued in low-context cultures?

•What does translating across cultures involve?

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VI. QUOTES FOR COMMENTING

•The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop (Mark Twain)

•When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do (Walt Disney)

•Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

•Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

•Be interesting, be enthusiastic... and don’t talk too much (Norman Vincent Peale)

•Every great human achievement is preceded by extended periods of dedicated, concentrated effort (Brian Tracy)

•Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever (Mahatma Gandhi)

•Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education (Martin Luther King)

•I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand (Chinese proverb)

•Research is to see what everybody else sees, and to think what nobody else has thought (Albert Szent-Gyorgy)

•Those who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read (Mark Twain)

•What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do (John Ruskin)

•The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes (Marcel Proust)

•Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is (Oscar Wilde)

•The important thing is never to stop questioning (Albert Einstein)

•The only way to have a friend is to be one (Emerson)

•Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Arthur C. Clarke)

•The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas (Linus Pauling)

•You might be disappointed if you fail, but you will be doomed if you don’t try (Ben Franklin)

•Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested (Francis Bacon)

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VI. QUOTES FOR COMMENTING

•We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing (George Bernard Shaw)

•Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter (Mark Twain)

•The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything (Oscar Wilde)

•Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late (Benjamin Franklin)

•The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle (Steve Jobs)

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VII. SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

1.American Stories / ed. by Thompson L. and Jones C. Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2009.

2.Crystal D. Language and the Internet. 2nd edition. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

3.Crystal D. Internet Linguistics. London: Routledge, 2011.

4.Delaney D., Ward C., Fiorina C. Fields of Vision. Literature in the English language. Longman, 2011.

5.Fox K. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. Hodder And Stoughton, 2005. 424 p.

6.Gilbert J. English for Academic Purposes. Innovations in learning technologies for English language teaching / ed. by Motteram G. British Council, 2013.

7.Jenkins J. Global Englishes. A resource book for students. 3rd edition. Abingdon, GB: Routledge, 2015.

8.Kirkpatrick A. World Englishes. Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP, 2007.

9.Paxman J. The English. A Portrait of a People. Penguin Books, 1998.

10.Twentieth-Century Stories / ed. by Jones C. Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2011.

11.BBC news presenter thought ‘too common for telly’ because of northern accent. URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ tvandradio/10185882/BBC-news-presenter-thought-too-common- for-telly-because-of-northern-accent.html (дата обращения: 26.06.2019).

12.BBC won’t employ ‘posh’ voices any more, says Charlotte Green. URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10174136/ BBC-wont-employ-posh-voices-any-more-says-Charlotte-Green. html. (дата обращения: 26.06.2019).

13.Defining EMI. URL: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/emiacademics/6/steps/532250 (дата обращения: 30.06.2019).

14.Do we need to teach children joined-up handwriting? URL: https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41927258 (дата обращения: 26.06.2019).

15.Douthat R. The Truth About Harvard. URL: https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2005/03/the-truth-about-harvard/303726/ (дата обращения: 30.06.2019).

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