中国大学应该使用英文原文教科书.doc

中国大学应该使用英文原文教科书 这不仅仅是对物理系的学生而言。十年前，我妻子那时候还在人大读国际企业管理的本科，她和她的同学们都觉得教材很令人费解。那些教材不过是国外英文书的翻译加工作品，然而因为社会科学和所处社会背景有关，而翻译显得词不达意，他们这些学生很快就对教材失去了兴趣。这些是十年前的事情，但是我相信现在对大多数大学而言，教材还是翻译过来的，因为没有老师可以教原文的。对物理学科来说情况好点，因为学的东西多数时候和社会背景没有关系。但是，尽管学生在学习基本的知识的时候没有什么问题，一旦开始作研究，就会碰到困难因为通行的交流语言是英文，而且，当别人列出参考文献时，一般也都是英文的经典教材。除了要重新熟悉本学科的英文之外，另外导致的一个问题就是作交叉学科的研究非常困难。比如说我是作凝聚态物理的，如果我想作一些有机薄膜材料，或者生物相关的研究，我就需要花很多时间去从新学习这方面的专业英语。当然，如果是下定了决心要作这方面的研究，那么最后可能还是可以学好的，但是作为一个科技工作者，时间总是很紧张的。另外一个例子，一个朋友是作生物试验的博士生，他的仪器里面有一些特殊的放大器，他想多了解一些相关的参数等等。可是看英文的说明书，那些放大器有关的专业术语他都不太熟悉，这就影响到他作试验。虽然大学或者中学学过的那些中文的电子学，如果这个仪器的说明书是中文的，可能他还能够看明白一些，但是英文的他就没有功夫去仔细弄明白了。当然，我并不是说中文都不好。中文有她自己的特点，比如说我觉得中文比字母文字更能够表达感觉。可是，就历史来说，当科学的中心从欧洲转到美国之后，通用的科技工作语言也从德文法文变成了英文。我们要迎头赶上的话必须要熟悉当前的工作语言和最新的进展。对中国人来说，用中文来教学当然是一个容易的选择，但是学生今后接触新东西的困难就大了。其实，很多中国的教科书不过是简写版的老的英文或者俄文的教科书，虽然内容都差不多，但是往往没有原著的那种品味。很多时候，原著里面有关历史背景都被删减调了，学生往往就不知道科学知识是如何得来得，而只学到一些公式原理等等。我上次回国是2005年，期间我注意到了现在有些新的辅助教材会介绍一些物理历史背景，英文的姓名也加在中文音译的人名后面，这对学生今后看英文文献还是非常有用的。但是，我个人认为，还是应该使用现在国外流行的原版教材，如果教授有自己的想法可以配合使用一些笔记或者附录。有时候，一些老师是为了评职称而出教材，这不是一个好事。更进一步，是利用现代的手段比如网上资源。比如MIT有网上的教学录像linear algebra /18.06/www/Video/video-fall-99.html 我们就可以使用，这样老师的责任也可以轻一些，可以解答学生的问题，更加因材施教。当然这样的话，课堂变化很大，也可能会碰到一些问题，我个人认为是利大于弊。（美国高教相关网站也有讨论这种方式的）早一些使用英文原文教材，学生对学习会更感兴趣，他们今后对知识的贡献可能更大。另：有关写外语论文可以参见王鸿飞老师的博文：/blog/user_content.aspx?id=23476下面是我写的英文博文：China should use textbooks in English This is not only for students in physics major. 10 years ago, my wife was studying international corporation management in a prestigious University, she and her classmates had problem reading those Chinese Textbooks, which are no more than just translation and editing of standard textbooks in English. However, the translation is very difficult to understand and most of the students were just confused and lost their interest. That was 10 years ago but I am pretty sure the same thing happens now as long as there are no enough professors who can teach with the textbooks in English. The situation probably is better for physics major because it is somewhat dissociated from the society context. However, although students had no problem learning most of the fundamental courses in the undergraduate level, but later on it is a big obstacle when they start doing research since English is the communication language, and mostly people will refer to textbook in English if they need. Not only that affects the learning process, it also makes interdisciplinary research quite difficult. For example, I am doing condensed matter physics, if I want to do something related organic thin films, or bio-related experiments. Reading related literature will be difficult since I do not know the specific terms in English. Of cause you can say if I am very determined I should spend time to re-learn these, but everyone knows the life of a researcher nowadays is busy. Another example, Ive a friend in biology department doing some research with stem cell project and he uses some equipment with amplifiers, and he found it a problem to understand all the electronics since he already forgot those things learned in college. If the manual is in Chinese, probably he can still understand something, but since it is in English he felt it is too time consuming to understand it at all. I am not saying I do not like Chinese language. In fact, I do believe Chinese characters have their own beauty and can express much more feelings than alphabet characters. However, as when the center of science moved from Europe to American, the communication language is changed from German to English, the only way to catch the progress is to learn as much as possible with the current communication language. For China, it is an easier choice to teach things in Chinese, but later on the students have to pay more to be able to do real research. Many Chinese textbooks are just a concise version of the English textbook (or Russian textbook), although similar but lost the favor of original text. And sometimes, the historic context is omitted which makes the book very technical and the students do not know where the stuff comes from. Recently, when coming back to China in 2005, I noticed improvements that new “auxiliary” books with more historic backgrounds are available, and the English names of the theories are included within parentheses. This helps since at least students can recognize the corresponding English names of the theory. But I still prefer to use the current original textbooks, and if the professors do have their opinions they can publish some notes. The bad thing is some professors just consider publishing a textbook as a big achievement and used that to get higher salaries etc.One more step ahead, is to utilize the resource in this Internet era. There are online videos courses taught by some first-class scholars (e.g. linear algebra /18.06/www/Video/video-fall-99.html ). I cant see any reason why not use this as the standard “class material” and the professors are just responsible to answer questions and provide more specific guidance to the students. That would be a big c