UK university students lacking basic writing skills(24138)-英语教育-(37)-21英语网

本文作者： 21ST

　　英国皇家文学基金会近日公布了一份有关英国大学生英语写作能力的调查报告。该报告显示，学生英文写作能力普遍较低，表现为词汇贫乏、句法混乱、结构不合理等。造成此现象的原因是英国小学和中学对基础阶段的语法和写作教学缺乏重视。

　　THE UK Royal Literary Fund (RLF) has published a report on student writing in higher education - "Writing Matters". The author, Hilary Spurling, Chair of the RLF Fellowship committee, gave a short lecture at the UK Royal Society of Literature summarizing its findings. Spurling revealed that most contemporary British students arriving at university lack the basic ability to express themselves in writing.

　　The findings come from a scheme that the fund set up in 1999 to send professional writers, as RLF Fellows, into universities and colleges to help students with the basic skills of writing essays, reports or job applications. Since then, more than 130 writers have worked in over 70 higher education institutions in the UK. They worked with students, mainly through one-to-one consultations, focusing on academic writing skills.

　　The report found that considerable numbers of students are arriving at university without the skills necessary to make the most of their education. In many cases, the problems occur at a basic level: poor vocabulary, inaccurate phrasing, bad syntax, incorrect punctuation, an inability to form well-constructed sentences, and so on.

　　Alan Wall, a British novelist and senior lecturer in English and creative writing at the University of Chester, UK, says the causes may lie in many aspects: "a lack of teaching of grammar in schools, variegated linguistic environments where students do not acquire a comfortable facility with standard English, inattention to basic writing skills in primary and secondary education, and the different forms of modern mass communication where simply reading a book may no longer be commonplace".

　　The report argues that much greater emphasis needs to be placed on the teaching of writing skills as these are integral to the whole learning experience, and that intervention can be extremely effective as students are eager to acquire these skills.

　　Valerie Thornton and Yvonne Coppard, chapter authors of the report, propose a range of solutions, concentrating on the practical and the affordable. They suggest that students "be given guidance on how to write effectively and how this affects the assessment of their work". They believe that "improved links between schools and universities can ease students' transition to higher education". The report also argues that "in the longer term, higher standards in teacher training, specifically emphasizing writing skills, need to be achieved for those entering the profession both in the primary and secondary sectors".