据调查表明 中国会说英语人数多于印度

The FT doesn’t usually publish total nonsense, but there’s a story today which made me choke on my cup of tea.

According to a new study by the British Council, China is supposed to have more English speakers than India.

David Graddol, the author, puts the number of English speakers in India at five per cent, or 55 million, and says China is turning out 20 million new English speakers each year.

The FT says if this is true, India has lost one of its “clear economic advantages” over China and will find it harder to compete, given China has superior infrastructure and a more flexible supply of labour.深圳翻译服务

Anyone who has been to both countries, however, can see that this survey is bogus. Barely anyone in China speaks English.

By contrast, almost every Indian has a basic English vocabulary. And the Indian middle class, the politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, are all fluent.

Students in China are forced to rote-learn English in school, sometimes for years, but it is a rare person who can actually speak the language. Even the foreign sales managers of export businesses, who depend on business from American and English companies, are often oddly tongue-tied.

It is easier to rub by in Beijing and Shanghai, which are both fairly touristy, but simple things, like taking a taxi, remain nearly impossible without a bit of Mandarin. And I always worry about the tourists who backpack around China. If they cannot speak Chinese, I imagine they have an intensely lonely, difficult and unpleasant time.

China, because of its size and its centuries of isolation, rivals the US and the UK as a nation of monoglots.

Unlike the US and the UK, however, China does have a grand ambition to transform itself, and mastering English is part of the plan. There is a great piece here, from the New Yorker, about the drills in English before the Olympics last year.

Meanwhile, my favourite story about learning English comes from Factory Girls, by Leslie Chang. At the “Assembly Line Learning Machines” school in Dongguan, one of China’s biggest factory cities, students paid 600 yuan (£52) a month to sit in front of oval metal machines. As the students look at the machines, they rotate a series of words past their eyes.深圳翻译服务
Mrs Chang writes: “A column of words floated past me. CLEAN, RUDE, PIZZA, CREEP.”

She explains: “The guiding principle was that treating people like machines was the key to mastering English. After learning the alphabet and the phonetic sounds of the language, a student sat at a machine while columns of English words rotated past. The student read aloud each word and wrote it down without knowing what it meant, week after week, until he attained the highest speed. He then proceeded to another machine that showed Chinese definitions of words; next he advanced to short sentences. When a student achieved the top speed – able to write six hundred English sentences in one hour – he graduated to basic grammar. Only then did he learn the meaning of the words, phrases and sentences he had been repeating for months.”

She goes on to speak to the inventor, Mr Wu. “‘On the assembly line, people can sit and work for eight or ten hours without rest,’ he said. ‘If only we could learn that way, how good it would be!’”. Needless to say, Mr Wu didn’t prosper.

《金融时报》（FT）并不经常发表一些无厘头的文章，但今天一篇文章差点让手里的茶把我噎死。

这篇文章说，根据英国文化协会的一项新的研究，中国会说英语的人数应该已超过印度。深圳翻译服务

这篇文章的作者大卫·葛拉多尔（David Graddol）认为印度懂英语的人数占总人口5%，而中国每年新增2000万懂英语的人。

《金融时报》认为，如果英国文化协会的数字属实的话，印度的一项“明显经济优势”将被中国超越，印度与中国的竞争将更为艰难，尤其在中国拥有更好的基础设施及更具弹性的劳动力供给的情况下。深圳翻译服务

不过，去过中印两国的人都知道，这项调查是假的。中国很少有人会说英语。

反而，几乎每个印度人都了解基本的英语词汇。印度的中产阶级，政治家，商人和知识分子英语都很流利。

中国学生在学校里被迫死记硬背英语单词，有时一背就是数年。但事实上，很少有人真正会说英语。即使依赖英美企业订单的出口行业外贸经理，英语都结结巴巴。深圳翻译服务

很容易考察一下北京和上海，北京和上海均是旅游目的地。举个简单的例子，如果不懂点普通话的话，打的都成问题。我经常担心那些在中国旅游的背包客。如果他们不会说汉语，我猜测他们在中国旅游时就会非常孤独困难，旅游生活也会非常不爽。

中国，由于其幅员辽阔及几个世纪的孤立，与美国和英国对抗，是个只说一种语言的国家。深圳翻译服务

不过，与美国和英国不同的是，中国有改变自己的博大雄心，掌握英语是其计划的一部分。根据《纽约人》报道，去年奥运会前，有大量的人学习英语。
同时，我有一个中国人学习英语的精彩故事，故事源于张墀言（Leslie Chang）的书《工厂女工》。在中国东莞的“装配线学习机器”学校，学生每月交600元钱，坐在一椭圆的机器前。盯着机器看，机器上会闪过一系列英语单词。

张墀言写道：“一栏单词从我眼前闪过。CLEAN, RUDE, PIZZA, CREEP.”深圳翻译服务

她解释说：“把人当机器对待的指导原则是掌握英语的关键。掌握了字母和音标后，学生就坐在一台能闪现英语单词栏的机器前。学生在不理解单词意思的情况下大声朗读并默写这些单词，一周复一周，直到他们能快速的朗读默写。之后，他们就开始在另外一台显示单词汉语注释的机器前学习；之后再升级到闪现短句的机器。当学生达到最高速度——能在一小时内默写600个英语短句——就开始学习英语语法，直至此时，才开始学习他们反复学习了几个月的单词，词组和句子的意思。”

她之后采访了这种机器的发明人吴先生。“他说，‘在产品装配线前，工人可以在不休息的情况下连续工作八个小时，如果我们可以用这种方法学习，多好的一件事啊！’”勿须说，吴先生不会成功。

原创文章如转载请注明©转载自译雅馨深圳翻译公司转载请以链接形式标明本文地址深圳翻译网址全国统一热线：400-8808-295