英语学习漫谈（四）如何“阅”与“读”英文报纸 1

英文的学习，离不开大量的阅读（关于这个问题有机会我们在专门讨论。这里暂且大家先接受这个观点）。阅读的一个很好的材料就是各种英文报纸。那么我们如何进行“阅”与“读”英文报纸？今天就来给大家推荐一个“八步阅读法”。

第一步

选一篇自己感兴趣的新闻。如果觉得自己的兴趣很广泛，下面有二十四种类别的新闻可以供各位读者作为参考：

英语学习漫谈（四）如何“阅”与“读”英文报纸 1

我们选一份《英文中国邮报》（2016年年底）里由美联社提供的一篇有关印度淹水的报道来做“阅”与“读”的示范。

通讯社的correspondents（特派员）或报社的reporters（记者）都是写作高手，他们写的东西都很有逻辑和条理，很多记者都曾获得The Pulitzer Prizes（普利策奖），这个奖的地位相当于新闻界的诺贝尔奖。有些记者后来甚至还成为知名的小说家（包括1953年获得普利策奖的海明威），就是因为他们在写作时注重遣词用字的锻炼，但大家千万不要以为记者都是用一些big words（难度很高的词汇）在写文章。我要告诉大家的是，利用新闻英语学习英语，可以获得一个附加价值，就是当你懂得越多的新闻英语之后，写出来的英语文章就会越简明流畅，越懂得用简练的词汇去表达丰富的含义。

不过，我相信大部分人一听到英文报纸，脑子里马上就会想到密密麻麻的英语单词，而且还是好几大张的报纸。对于阅读，我是一段一段慢慢地攻克的，谨记我学英语的三个基本态度：善用零星时间；少就是多，慢就是快；持之以恒，永不放弃。

我现在就用以下美联社最近报道的印度水灾的文章作为范例：

India Flooding Kills 96, Displaces 1 Million

—Guwahati, India, AP

The death toll in flooding from heavy monsoon rains in India has climbed past 90, with about a million people taking shelter in government-run relief camps, officials said Tuesday.

Incessant downpours have damaged swaths of land, uprooted trees and snapped telephone cables in dozens of districts in the states of Bihar in the east, Assam in the remote northeast and Himachal Pradesh in the north.

A total of 96 people have been killed in the flooding in the three states over the past week, according to state officials.

At least 17 rare one-horned rhinos have been killed due to the flooding of vast tracts of Assam's Kaziranga National Park, said Pramilla Rani Brahma, the state's forest and environment minister."Most of the rhinos killed were calves, separated from their mothers during the massive flooding," Brahma said.

The park had 1.5-meter-high (5-foot-high) floodwaters in some places, forcing many of the park's animals, also including wild elephants, wild buffaloes and boars, to cross a highway to move to higher ground.

The heavy monsoon rains have come after two straight years of drought in India on monday, landslides and heavy rains blocked highways leading to Tibet and Manali, a tourist resort in Himachal Pradesh state, with hundreds of people stranded for several hours before rescuers cleared the way, the Press Trust of India news agency said. In Bihar state, around 260,000 flood victims were taking shelter in more than 400 relief camps set up by the state government. At least 400 medical camps have been set up as well to aid people who have spent several nights outdoors after their homes were submerged by rainwaters.

In Assam, where floodwaters started receding on Tuesday, some 3.8 million people have been affected by the floods, according to state authorities. More than 700,000 have taken shelter in 770 relief camps.

第二步

要求自己第一天看懂第一段新闻，第二天看懂第二段，以此类推，少就是多，一天看一段就好。

第三步

以极慢的速度念完第一段新闻，不能一遇到不懂的单词就立刻停下来查字典，这样只会造成pause（停顿），导致无法了解全段的大意。

下面就以这篇美联社报道古瓦哈提市新闻的第一段为例：

The death toll in flooding from heavy monsoon rains in India has climbed past 90, with about a million people taking shelter in government-run relief camps, officials said Tuesday.

The death toll、monsoon rains、taking shelter in、government-run、relief camps，对第一次尝试读新闻英语的同学来说，这些都是看不懂的单词或词组，但至少我们了解death（死亡）、rains（雨）、a million people（一百万人）、government（政府）、camps（营；营区）这几个单词，所以在不查字典的情况下，我也能以极慢的速度把这段新闻念完。由于我念得慢，也让我可以大概了解这段新闻的大意：

星期二有人声称，某地下大雨，造成高达九十人死亡，大约有一百万人待在政府相关的营区里。

记住：千万不要在第一次看文章时，一碰到不熟的单词就立刻查词典，这样会打断你的思路，文章的整体大意就会抓不准了，这就是为什么第一遍一定要先念完文章。大家想一想：我们在读中文书报时，有时也会遇到不懂的词语，但是我们懂得利用上下文来理解文章的大意，不会一看到不熟的词就马上去查字典。所以读英语时也一样，读第一遍时不要查字典。

……

——摘自《赖世雄英语学习法》