~ 精读于泛读 ~
Intensive Reading and Extensive Reading
对于大部分学汉语的西方人说来,好像第一年、第二年的时候用中文任何的阅读材料读得都属于精度的任务了,老必用全注意力去念,但却用汉字的文章读得还是忒吃力, 既慢又苦。 这是为什么呢?不难得出个结论。那应该是因为在学习中文的过程当中,只有学会几千的汉字之后才能读得容易迅速,况且必须把每个新字的声调记住好,还得了解那个汉字的词性是什么。 有的时候一个字声调与词性不是只有一个的。 这一切也许在语言学界上是个无比的挑战。首先得辨认出字来,了解在出现的地方那个字有什么意义,接着记得怎么念它 (包括是不是得说轻声或者声调需要改声等),最后还要注意前后的字的声调怎么会影响你在念的字,比如要不要把第三声的字改到第二声等。 可以想象,在这些情况下,第一年学习中文的时候能采用“泛读”这个读法把中文文章读得顺利真不是个很可能的事儿了。不过为了扩大词汇量使用泛真是读特效的方法,不能用泛读增添词汇便让学习一门语言的过程更加复杂。说不定有的人例外,但是我认为不多。
To most westerners who study Chinese, it might be that the first and second year of reading chinese materials falls under the task of intensive reading, always needing complete concentration to read it out. But to read articles in chinese characters remains a strain, both slow and a toil. Why is this so? It is not hard to arrive at a conclusion. This is probably because during the course of studying Chinese, only when one has learned several thousand characters can one read easily and with speed. Add to that one must memorize the tone of each new character. And one must still understand the grammatical function of that character. At times one character can have more than one tone and grammatical use. Maybe all of this is a unique challenge in the linguistic world. First recognize a character, understand the meaning of that character in the place where it appears, right after that remember how to read it (including whether or not it is in neutral tone or whether there is a tone change), finally one needs to watch out how the preceding or following character influences the reading of the character you are on. For example does one need or not to take a 3rd tone and change it to 2nd tone. Imagine in this situation, to be able to utilize the technique of extensive reading in the first year of chinese studies to smoothly read through chinese text is probably not at all very likely. However, to enlarge one's vocabulary size, using extensive reading is a very effective method. If you can't use extensive reading to increase vocabulary, that makes the process of studying a language even more complicated. Maybe some people are the exception (to all this), but I don't think there are too many.
所以呢,我第一二年学汉语时的阅读往往不是泛读,而是精读的活动。其实至今看书看得还是有点儿精读的感觉。好消息是我现在可以泛读比较难的东西。我虽然得坦白如果文章尤其长的话,我还需要铆勇气去看它,但是一般不再畏惧看汉字文章和文件了。 近来我能想起来的词语的能力提高得很多。依我看,之所以能多想出生词以及成语来,就是因为我每天都泛读一遍甚至几篇文章。我不得不承认进步挺不错的,然而我目前的水平显然比理想的还差得遥远。我很期待看中文看得又快又容易那一天。
Therefore, reading during my first couple of years of studying chinese usually was not extensive reading, but rather intensive reading activities. Actually up to this day reading still has a bit of a intensive feel to it. The good news is now I can do intensive reading for complex things. Although I must admit if the text is particularly long, I still have to muster courage to read it (e.g. it's intimidating), I no longer dread reading chinese texts and documents. Lately I have gotten much better at being able to recall words and phrases. As I see it, I can think up more words as well as proverbs exactly because I extensively read one or even a few articles every day. I must admit progress has been quite impressive, nevertheless my current level is obviously not close to the ideal goal. I am looking forward to the day when I can read Chinese quickly and easily.
我现在非常困倦,好不容易写完这篇,只好我立刻去睡吧。
I am terribly somnolent now, it is quite hard to finish writing this text, so I better go to bed right away.