美国夢沃学校(上海)MVA SH独有的快速提高英语能力的工具

Reading Assistant: a Personalized Tool for Mastering English Reading and Pronunciation

阅读助手: 助力英语阅读及发音的专业工具

(by Michael Martell – English and ESL teacher at Montverde Academy - Shanghai 美国梦沃学校(上海)英语语言及英语作为第二语言教师)

作者简介：Michael Martell，芝加哥人，2014年8月开始在梦沃(上海)教英语。来梦沃之前，他先后在芝加哥的Harold Washington College和西班牙的乌特雷拉的Ponce de León高中教英语。最令他欣喜的事是他可以在帮助学生写出他们自己的有创意的作品的同时，也能向学生学习。

You need to present on a complex topic for your first history seminar at an American University, but you can’t understand most of the articles you’ve found, let alone pronounce so many difficult words…You’re living abroad and just received an important account notification that you don’t fully understand, but the bank only offers an English help line…You’re a Chemistry professor and need to give a lecture in English on a recent breakthrough in your lab, but you’re not confident speaking and fielding questions in English…

当你身处美国大学，被历史教授要求完成某个复杂课题的研究成果展示，但大部分的参考文献都晦涩难懂，更不必说诵读这些生僻词汇……当你独自置身异国收到一封重要账单却不甚了了，但银行只提供英语客服热线……若你是一位化学教授，受邀用英文介绍你实验室的近期科研突破，但你因需要用英语演说和回答提问而怯懦…

These three situations illustrate two of the greatest challenges of studying English as a foreign language: reading comprehension (due to the vast vocabulary of the English language) and pronunciation (due to the irregular patterns of vowel sounds, word stress, and spelling). These two difficulties are particularly important for beginners, such as the students of our level 1 ESL course, to overcome so that they can advance to higher-level courses conducted entirely in English.

从以上三个窘境中不难发现英语作为外语进行学习通常有两个挑战：阅读理解及发音，前者的难度是由于英语语言中蕴含大量词汇，后者的挑战来自元音发音、重音和拼写的不规则。克服这些困难对于英语初学者(比如我校英语等级一的学生)至关重要，只有这样他们才能提升等级以至完成所有层级的英语学习。

To help our students face these challenges, our partner school has offered us an exciting tool – Scientific Learning – Reading Assistant© – which our level 1 ESL students are currently using one period a day. A web-based program designed for individualized learning, Reading Assistant assesses each student’s reading comprehension and pronunciation accuracy, assigns a library of articles and stories based on reading level, and provides ample support as students work through the texts at their own pace. Once you pass the quizzes for one text, the program gives you a more challenging one to ensure that you are raising your English level.

梦沃美国总校为我们提供了一个卓有成效的工具------科学学习之阅读助手。目前我校英语等级一的学生每天使用这款软件学习一节课。这是一款基于网络的个性化学习软件，阅读助手帮助学生规正理解性阅读及发音。阅读助手还*含丰富的文章及故事，学生可以选择与自己能级匹配的材料进行阅读，同时还有很多支持性的功能辅助学生根据自身学习节奏完成课文学习。一旦学生通过了某篇课文的测试，系统会自动升级难度，以确保学生不断进步。

For each text, students complete three steps. First, they read through the text while listening to a native speaker’s pronunciation, using the English-to-English picture dictionary and the guiding comprehension questions for support along the way. Then, they record themselves reading the article aloud until they read through the article from start to finish with a high level of pronunciation accuracy. After each trial, the program highlights incorrectly pronounced words and makes them practice until they pass at a high level. Finally, the students complete a reading comprehension quiz on the text and receive instantaneous feedback on their mistakes.

每篇阅读学生都需要完成三个步骤。**步，边阅读文字边听一个英语为母语的人朗读文章的录音，当学生遇到生词，点击该单词，则会出现英文解释及图片帮助学生理解，同时也会有一些问题指导学生理解文章。第二步，学生朗读全文并被录音，阅读助手会进行评分，直至他们的发音准确性达到一定程度。每次朗读完成，软件都会标记出发音不准确的单词，并配合相应的练习，直到该生以高质量发出这些单词的读音。最后，学生完成文章的理解性测试，并且收到一份即时反馈。

Perhaps the greatest advantage of using the Reading Assistant program is that it is personalized to each student’s level and gives support and feedback to meet each student’s needs. Though many students struggle with the program’s strict requirements for pronunciation accuracy, they nonetheless benefit from the unique opportunity to engage with a wide range of texts tailored to their English level. As Andy Xu, an 8th grade student in the level 1 class, explains about the program: "I think it is good. The stories fit my level very well." He only wishes that there were more questions for each quiz. Although it isn’t perfect, we are confident that this dynamic tool can help our students make significant strides towards their goal of mastering English.

阅读助手的**优点即在于个性化，每个学生可以根据自身情况获得帮助及反馈。阅读助手在发音方面的严格要求学生们需要勤奋练习，很多孩子也因此获益匪浅，英语等级一的八年级许佳彬同学这样评价阅读助手："这个很棒，这些课文很符合我的英语水平。"他只想要课文后面测试的问题再多一点。也许阅读助手还不，但我们相信这个充满活力的工具能够帮助学生们更快速更稳健地实现他们的英语学习目标。

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