My teachers, either in high school or in university, always emphasize the importance of grammar. I still analyze the article sentence by sentence even after I have graduated for more than 8 years. I am clear about the sentence structure, but I can make little progress. Would you show me the right way please?
不论我的中学老师，还是我的大学老师，都经常强调语法的重要性。毕业八年多了，我仍然是逐句分析文章。我其实对句子结构很清楚，但我却进步很小。您能给我讲授正确的方法吗?
It’s totally pointless learning grammar for its own sake. Grammar is indispensable as a support system to communication because most of the questions we have about a foreign language have grammatical answers. For example when to use some or any, when to use a/an or the, and so on. If by ‘analyze the article sentence by sentence’ you mean ‘read word by word’, you are going about reading in the wrong way. In order to understand difficult English, we have to grasp the syntax of each sentence: that is, the way each sentence is put together. Here, for example, is a difficult sentence from an article on George Soros, which appeared recently in the Financial Times:
Even before arriving in England at the age of 17 to study under him at the London School of Economics, Soros had felt the influence of Sir Karl Popper, the Viennese philosopher of science whose Open Society and its Enemies denounced Plato, Hegel, Marx and all historical determinism.
To understand this sentence (apart from the difficult references), you have to observe that him refers to Karl Popper and not to Soros. You have to break the sentence down in your head into the following sequence of ideas:
—Soros went to England to study at the London School of Economics under Sir Karl Popper.
—Before that, Soros had been influenced by Karl Popper’s ideas.
—Karl Popper taught at the London School of Economics but originally came from Vienna.
—Popper was a philosopher of science who wrote a book called the Open Society and its Enemies.
—This book denounced Plato, Hegel, Marx and all historical determinism.
In other words, understanding what we read is a matter of constant analysis and synthesis of text and we have to do this at high speed. If you want to improve your skills, I strongly recommend my Longman Advanced English Gramma, which will train you to analyze and synthesize difficult texts in a way that will help you to understand them.
纯粹为学习语法而学习语法是毫无意义的。对交流来说，语法只是一种不可或缺的辅助系统，因为我们在学习外语中所遇到的大多问题可在语法中寻求答案。例如，什么时候用some或者any，什么时候用a/an或the，等等。如果你说的“逐句分析文章”是指逐词阅读的话，那么你的阅读方式则走上了一条歧途。要理解较难的句子，我们必须掌握每个句的句法：就是说，每个句子是怎么组成的。例如，最近在Financial Times刊登的关于乔治•索罗斯的一篇文章，里面有这么一个难句：
Even before arriving in England at the age of 17 to study under him at the London School of Economics, Soros had felt the influence of Sir Karl Popper, the Viennese philosopher of science whose Open Society and its Enemies denounced Plato, Hegel, Marx and all historical determinism.
要更好地理解这个句子(除了引用上的难点)，你必须首先注意到him指的是Karl Popper,而不是Soros。你必须在脑海里把句子断成以下几个意思：
——Soros 去伦敦经济学院学习，拜师于Karl Popper。
——在此之前，Soros就受Karl Popper的理论影响。
——Karl Popper任教于伦敦经济学院，但他来自维也纳。
——Popper是一个哲学家，他写的著作是Open Society and its Enemies。
——这本书批判了柏拉图、黑格尔、马克思的思想和所有的历史宿命论观。
换句话说，理解我们所读的文章是一个不断对文章进行分析与综合的过程，我们必须快速完成。如果你想提高你的应用技巧，我热切地向你推荐由我编著的Longman Advanced English Grammar，它在分析和综合文章方面将助你一臂之力，这将有助于你对文章的理解。
文：路易亚历山大 新概念英语作者