浅谈英语阅读中长句难句的理解技巧

英语阅读中,长句难句的理解往往是困扰学习者的一大难题。这些句子大都包含两套以上的主谓结构,同时又有较多的修饰成分,因而常常使学习者感到无从入手。但是通过充分理解文章及长句、难句所在段落的主旨大意,充分利用句中的关联词组,注意句中某些起决定作用的词语或词缀,用语法知识对句子进行结构分析,以及加强文化背景知识的学习,则可以较轻松地解决这一难题。     

谈英语写作中的简洁问题

英语写作常常受到汉语思维和表达方式的影响,因而增加了遣词造句的难度。但是,克服写作中的问题不乏方法可寻,如果避免重复,以少胜多,巧妙使用词的特殊用法、固定结构以及被动表达法,就会使英语表达精炼简洁、通畅易懂。     

从语境层面破解英语长句的翻译

英语长句的翻译历来都是英语翻译中的难点。而语境的基本理论在翻译学的地位是举足轻重的。在理解英语、汉语的语言特征的基础上,从语词的场合、逻辑、语序以及时代背景等语境层面把握长句的翻译十分必要。     

Sentence context and meaning frequency effects in children's processing of ambiguous words

Nine- and twelve-year-old children named target words which were preceded by sentences ending in words having more than one meaning. Sentences biased the ambiguous word toward its dominant (more frequent) or subordinate (less frequent) meaning. Targets were related to the same meaning as that biased by the sentence, the other meaning, or were unrelated. Targets were presented 0, 300, or 700 ms following the sentence. For both ages, dominant sentences facilitated responses only to the contextually appropriate target. However, subordinate sentences led to facilitation of the appropriate meaning only for the younger group. Older children showed greater facilitation for the inappropriate (but more common) meaning. These results indicate that younger children are more sensitive to the sentence context in which an ambiguous word appears, while the processing of the older children is determined more by the relative frequencies of the words meanings.     

Phonological involvement in the processing of Japanese at the lexical and sentence levels

The present study examined whether Japanesereaders activate phonological information whenreading kanji compound words and sentences andif so, how they do it. Experiment 1 usedtwo-kanji compound words in a lexical decisiontask to study phonological processing at thelexical level. When nonwords werepseudo-homophones (/roR hi/ in placeof the real word /roR hi/), reactiontimes were longer and more errors occurred thanwith nonwords in the control group(/saku hi/). Experiment 2required participants to detect misspellings(i.e., incorrect kanji combinations) oftwo-kanji compound stimuli embedded insentences. In the detection task of misspelledkanji, no homophonic effect was apparent. Experiment 3 used a semantic decision task. Included in this task were semantically similarbut incorrect kanji compound words used asfillers in sentences (e.g.,meaning `The building you can see over there was facilitated by my friend' instead of designed) as well as the sentences used inExperiment 2. Results from Experiment 3indicated that participants could reject asentence as incorrect more quickly whenpseudo-homophones were embedded in thesentences rather than nonwords. These resultssuggest that readers activate phonologicalinformation of two-kanji compound words whenreading for comprehension but not for simpleproofreading.     

Reading Comprehension and Predictability Effects on Sentence Processing: An Event‐Related Potential Study

Electrophysiology studies have identified two event‐related potentials that are modulated by predictive processes during language comprehension: the N400 and a frontal positivity. The N400 is smaller when words are presented within highly restrictive sentences, indicating reduced lexical retrieval costs. Violations of strong predictions generate larger frontal positivities, possibly reflecting inhibitory processes. More skilled comprehenders may exhibit enhanced predictive processing, but this possibility has seldom been investigated with event‐related potentials (ERPs). We analyzed the association between predictability ERP modulations and reading comprehension abilities. Twenty‐four undergraduate students were exposed to strongly and weakly constraining sentences, ending with an expected or unexpected final word. Their comprehension skills were assessed with a cloze task. Better comprehenders showed smaller N400s for expected words, and larger posterior positivities for unexpected endings, in strongly constraining contexts. These effects correlated with reading comprehension scores. The results suggest that better comprehenders take more advantage of predictions to reduce retrieval costs, and allocate more resources to postlexical integration processes.     

Unexpectedly Poor Spelling and Phonological-Processing Skill

This study investigated the phonological skills of university students who were unexpectedly poor spellers relative to their word reading accuracy. Compared with good spellers, unexpectedly poor spellers showed no deficits in phonological memory, selection of appropriate graphemes for phonemes in word misspellings and nonword spellings, and phoneme awareness. In contrast, poor readers–poor spellers performed worse than the other groups at all but the last of these tasks. Although unexpectedly poor spellers misread nonwords more often than good spellers and took longer to begin pronouncing long, difficult-to-spell words, they took no longer to begin pronouncing shorter words and the names of corresponding pictures. The difficulty with reading nonwords and long words was thus interpreted as arising at the stage of identifying and parsing the orthographic input rather than phonological retrieval. The findings indicate that unexpectedly poor spellers of the type studied here do not have a mild phonological deficit.     

论英汉介词与介词短语的异同

英汉介词与介词短语有相似之处：介词在句法中都起定位、粘着作用;介词短语的主要句法功能都是用作状语。不同之处是：在句法结构方面,英语介词与介词短语的句法特征说明英语语法以形统意;汉语介词与介词短语的句法特征说明汉语语法以意治形。在句法功能方面,英语介词短语的语序不影响句子的语意;汉语介词短语的语序决定句子的语意。英汉表示时间与地点的介词短语的语序反映了两个民族认知方式的差异。     

从动物熟语看日汉熟语中的词语错位现象

熟语是人们在长期的语言使用中提炼出来的固定短语或句子,蕴含着丰富的文化内涵。通过日汉熟语中与动物有关的词语错位现象,总结出词语选用上存在词语缺失、词语增补和词语偏离,并阐述了词语使用出现错位现象,与各民族的地理环境、风土人情、文化背景、思维方式等因素密切相关。     

基于语料库的《论语》二译本对比研究

基于自建的《论语》中英文平行语料库,利用语料库技术将《论语》两个英译本在词汇和句子层面进行了数据统计和量化分析。结果发现二译本的译语特征明显,同时又体现出各自独有的特点。对我国传统典籍英译的启示为:短词短句可以降低文本阅读难度,利于争取更大的读者群;意译或阐释策略易于读者接受并理解译文;在上述基础上考虑最大限度地保留原文特征,以达到弘扬中国文化的目的。     

从语域理论看外贸英语信函的文体特征

语域是指在特定的语言环境中使用的、有一定的语言特征的语言变体。韩礼德认为语域由语场、语旨和语式三方面的因素决定。外贸英语信函是一种语言变体,其使用的情景因素,即语场、语旨和语式,决定了其文体特点。不论在词汇上,还是在句法上,外贸英语信函都表现出独特的文体特征。在词汇上,外贸英语信函频繁使用专业术语、礼貌词语、情态动词、大词和古体词语;在句法上。外贸英语信函常用复杂句、长句和被动语态。     

近代汉语"被"字句的语义色彩及相关问题

近代汉语＂被＂字句表示的语义色彩有＂如意＂与＂不如意＂,两者有对立也有共性;＂被＂字句跟＂得＂字句等存在互补关系;＂被＂字句表示的色彩跟表达＂不幸＂、＂意外＂的词汇与＂如意＂、＂预料之中＂的词汇有关。     

Lexical and Syntactic Features of Insurance English

With the fast development of Chinese insurance market and the quickening process of globalization of the world economy,more and more English policies and wordings are coming up and the communication with the international insurance companies is much closer.Undoubtedly,to realize the insurance texts accurately and to manage the language features is very important to the insurance industry.Through the analysis of some English insurance policies and wordings,the stylistic characteristics of Insurance English are generalized at lexical and syntactic levels.At lexical level,Insurance English is mainly demonstrated with the following characteristics:the frequent use of archaic words,loan words,official words and technical words.Their characteristics at syntactic level are more complex,which are analyzed in terms of complicated long sentences,conditional adverbial clauses,restrictive attribute clauses,sentences with modal verbs and passive voice.     

から与ので

接续助词是在句子中间起接续作用的助词。接续可以是顺接,也可以是逆接和并列。其中表示因果顺接关系的“から”和“ので”均可译为“因为……所以……”,表示原因、理由。但二者在具体使用上还存在着很大差异,如各自所具有的作用和接续方法均有所不同。     

Communication competence in reading and learning disabilities

Conclusion The evidence indicates that learning-disabled children show pervasive and enduring language problems across a wide variety of language tasks. The studies suggest that the problems experienced by learning and reading-disabled children may fall into the categories of phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as nonverbal communication. In terms of nonverbal communication, these children are less accurate in interpreting nonverbal auditory and visual cues. In phonology, it appears that they are less skilled in detecting the segments of single words and thus have difficulty establishing phoneme to grapheme correspondence. In the area of syntax, learning-disabled males are less skilled in dealing with inflection and the comprehension and creation of complex sentences. In semantics, they are less adequate than nondisabled children in defining words, creating sentences, and classifying objects into categories. They show less adequate sentence production, are less skilled at recognizing their errors, and are significantly slower in generating verbal responses. Finally, there is one study that suggests that learning-disabled children may be discriminated by their use of language in social situations. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.     

Use of Contextual Information and Prediction by Struggling Adult Readers: Evidence From Reading Times and Event-Related Potentials

We employed self-paced reading and event-related potential measures to investigate how adults of varying literacy levels use sentence context information when reading. Community-dwelling participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences that ended with expected or unexpected target words. Skilled readers showed N400s that were graded by the cloze probability of the targets, with larger N400s for more unexpected words. Moreover, it took these participants longer to read unexpected targets in strongly than weakly constraining sentences, suggesting a processing cost for revising predictions. Among less skilled readers, a reliable N400 difference was found between expected and unexpected targets only for the strongly constraining sentences. They also took longer when targets were unexpected, regardless of the context. These findings suggest that lower literacy readers could only immediately take advantage of strongly constraining context information to facilitate word processing and that they do not make as much use of predictive processing during comprehension.     

浅析UCP600的语言特点

新国际惯例UCP600具有词汇专业性、准确性强和书面语、情态动词使用较多等特点，与UCP500相比较，某些条款出现了增词、换词、删词的现象；较之普通英语，UCP600大量使用陈述句、完整句、长句及平行并列结构。了解UCP600的语言特点，有助于熟练掌握和运用UCP600，以利于国际交流与合作。     

Young and Older Adults' Reading of Distracters

Eye-tracking technology was employed to examine young and older adults' performance in the reading with distraction paradigm. Distracters of 1, 2, and 4 words that formed meaningful phrases were used. There were marked age differences in fixation patterns. Young adults' fixations to the distracters and targets increased with distracter length. This suggests that they were attempting to integrate the distracters with the sentence and had more and more difficulty doing so as the distracters increased in length. Young adults did have better comprehension of the sentences than older adults, and they also had better recognition memory for target words and distracters.     

Syntactic complexity measures: variation by genre,grade-level,students’ writing abilities,and writing quality

Syntactic complexity has been recognized as an important construct in writing research, and for the past five decades, many syntactic complexity measures (SCMs) have been examined in numerous studies. This systematic review is the first study of its kind to synthesize 36 studies spanning from 1970 to 2019 by identifying and cataloging all SCMs examined during this period. An analysis was performed on how the use of SCMs varied by genre, grade level, students’ writing ability, and writing quality. Five online databases (Academic Search Premier, ERIC, PsycINFO, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, and PsycARTICLES) were searched. A total of 48 SCMs were grouped into six categories: T-units and sentences, clauses, phrases, words, combined measures, and other measures. Most studies examined three common SCMs: mean T-unit length, mean number of words per clause, and mean number of clauses per T-unit. The argumentative genre had the highest values for T-unit length and mean number of clauses per T-unit, which could indicate greater sentence complexity. Higher-grade-level students generally construct sentences that are syntactically complex, but comparison between studies was difficult because different studies investigated different SCMs. Although students with higher writing abilities generally construct sentences that are syntactically more complex compared to students with lower writing abilities, the findings are not conclusive, as only a few studies examined this relationship. A similarly inconclusive relationship was found between syntactic complexity and writing quality because only a few studies examined this relationship. More research is needed to examine the relationship between SCMs, writing quality, and genre.

     

英语实词磨蚀特征的实证研究

采用问卷调查和词汇测试相结合的方法,对非英语专业在校大学生进行为期三个月的跟踪研究,旨在探讨其在英语系统课程学习结束后的英语实词磨蚀的特征,为大学英语教学提供相应参考。研究发现,在汉语语境下,实词磨蚀非常显著,但并未表现出词性效应;就词长而言,单词越长越容易磨蚀,但复合词虽长却相对不易磨蚀;从词频效应看,高频词并未出现显著磨蚀,低频词磨蚀显著,低频词较高频词更易发生磨蚀。