Is there a grammatical error in the following sentence? "Toni Morrison' s geniusenables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americanshave endured. "
The answer is no, according to the Educational Testing Service, which included theitem on the preliminary College Board exams given on October 15 of last year. But KevinKeegan, a high-school journalism teacher from Silver Spring, Maryland, protested that anumber of grammar books assert that it is incorrect to use a pronoun with a possessiveantecedent like "Toni Morrison' s": that is, unless the pronoun is itself a possessive, as in"Toni Morrison' s fans adore her books. "
After months of exchanges with the tenacious Mr. Keegan, the College Board finallyagreed to adjust the scores of students who had marked the underlined pronoun "her" asincorrect.
That' s only fair. When you' re asking students to pick out errors of grammar, youought to make sure you haVen' t included anything that might bring the grammarati out ofthe woodwork.
But some read the test items as the token of a wider malaise. "Talk aboutstandards, " wrote David Skinner, a columnist at the conservative Weekly Standard. Notonly had the example sentence been "proven to contain an error of grammar, " but thesentence' s celebration of Ms. Morrison, a "mediocre contemporary author, " betrayed the"faddish, racialist, wishful thinking that our educational institutions should be guardingagainst. "
It was revealing how easily Mr. Skinner' s indignation encompassed both thegrammatical and cultural implications of the sentence. In recent decades, the defense ofusage standards has become a flagship issue for the cultural right.
进入21世纪,我国高等教育呈现快速扩展的趋势。为适应社会、经济的快速发展,人才的培养问题已经比我国任何一个历史时期都显得更为重要。当今,人才的能力和素质的衡量越来越多地采用国际标准,人才的外语水平自然地也越来越受到培养单位和用人单位的重视,由此引发了对大学外语教学模式、教材和检测机制的新一轮讨论,掀起了新一轮的大学英语教学改革。作为外语师资队伍和外语专业人才培养的高等学校英语专业,相比之下,在教学改革思路、新教材开发和新教学模式探讨等诸方面均显得滞后。尽管高等学校外语专业教学指导委员会英语组针对当前高校发展的新形势和外语专业人才培养的新规格、新模式和新要求,修订出了新的《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》,并结合21世纪外语人才培养和需求的新形势,制定了由教育部高等教育司转发的《关于外语专业面向21世纪本科教育改革的若干意见》,就英语专业的建设提出了指导性的意见,但在实际工作中这两个文件的精神尚未落实。
为此,重庆大学出版社和外语教学界的专家们就国内高等学校英语专业建设所面临的新形势作了专题讨论。专家们认为,把"大纲"的设计和"若干意见"的思想和理念变为现实的一个*直接的体现方式,就是编写一套全新理念的英语专业系列教材;随着我国教育体制的改革,特别是基础教育课程标准的实施,适合高等学校英语专业教学需要的教材也应作相应的调整,以应对中小学英语教学改革的新要求;高等学校学生入学时英语水平的逐年提高和就业市场对外语人才需求呈多元化趋势的实际,对高等学校英语专业的人才培养、教学模式、课程设置、教材建设等方面也提出了严峻挑战,应对这些挑战,同样可以通过一套新的教材体系来实现。
迄今为止,国内尚无一套完整的、系统的英语专业系列教材;目前已有的教材出自不同的出版社,编写的思路和体例不尽相同;现有的教材因出版时间较早,内容、知识结构、教学方法和手段已经不能适应新的发展要求;传统的教材设计多数基于学科的内在逻辑和系统性,较少考虑学习者的全面发展和社会对人才需求的多元化。