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A response to the anonymous commenter

ceciliachiu 2012-5-6 10:23:31 显示全部楼层 阅读模式 打印 上一主题 下一主题 来自: 澳大利亚
本帖最后由 ceciliachiu 于 2012-5-6 11:14 编辑

This is a response to a comment by an anonymous reader on my journal titled “Catch 22”: http://www.youtas.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=64744&page=1#pid378258

Now that my recent translation and editing tasks are behind me and the next project is yet to start, I have time up my sleeve to provide a response in depth.

Bemused as I am, I hardly appreciate an act like this.  What I find most scornful lies not in the content but the act that this person is concealing his/her identity and engages himself/herself in a mudslinging exercise.

Putting yourself in the limelight posting such provocative comments while trying to stealth yourself, what sort of character are you? The following is an attempt to pry into the psychology:
  • A sour grape mentality.
  • If you think by hiding yourself, you will stay clean in this mudslinging exercise, that is self deception.  You fool only yourself, not others.
  • It could also be an act out of self defence. I might have inadvertently stepped on your toes in my journals or on other occasions. As I have no idea who you are, I cannot tell. If this is the case, my apologies.

The beauty of the internet is that it offers a forum for people to share and exchange information, ideas and anecdotes. Everyone has a freedom to publish.  While I respect your freedom to post a comment, please come forth and identify yourself so that we can have a good debate on what good English is.

On another note, I would like to use this space to talk about attitudes of Chinese students towards learning English.  An article with flamboyant phrases and lexicons is considered superb. This fallacy is particularly rampant among Chinese students, I find.  I have had contacts with Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Japanese students, not as many as Chinese students though. They are more concerned about how well or how efficiently they express themselves in English. Many Chinese students are more concerned about showing off the quantity of difficult words they can memorise. I am not a pedagogist. This is only a summary of my limited encounters with students from different nationalities and background.

That I choose to write my journals in a simple and concise style has no bearing on the level of English I am capable of commanding. To me, language is a communication tool.  The crux is to accurately express what I want to say. An obsessive focus on how flashy an article looks is skin deep and to a certain extent pathetic.

Last but not least, below is an interpretation of my earlier response to this anonymous commenter:

Why did you not disclose yourself? Out of a lack of courage, a peculiar behaviour or a wrong state of mind?

“Why hast thou not thyself divulged? Out of cowardice, idiosyncrasy or lunacy?” is written in Shakespearean English or some call it old English.

The attached is an official IELTS Academic Writing teaching material. This student got a band score of 7. The writing is clear and easy to understand and please note the examiner's comments.
IELTS_AC_Writing_Task_2_band_7_script.pdf (320.2 KB, 下载次数: 356)

Compared to other languages (such as Chinese), English is not very hard to learn.  Keep an open mind and persevere.



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