Talk about English - The Reading Group - Part 3 | Текст песни

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• Talk about English
• The Reading Group - Part 3

This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript of the programme.
Группа Learning English. Продолжение транскрипта:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/readinggroup_prog3.pdf

ANNOUNCER:
You’re listening to “The Reading Group” from the BBC World Service. In this series we bring
together listeners, students of English, literature teachers and other contributors from the
world of books to share their enthusiasm for reading. We hope that following this series will
encourage your own interest in reading books in English as a foreign language.
Gary: Hello. In The Reading Group today we hear reasons to read the books of the
young British novelist Zadie Smith. Her recently published second novel, The
Autograph Man, is all about fame - and her first novel, White Teeth, written
when she was only 21, made her famous. Later in the programme, a Reading
Group member from Iran tells us why she’s a fan…
In Zadie Smith’s novels, the characters come from many different cultural
backgrounds. And we focus first today on what it’s like for students of English
to read books containing cultural references that may be strange and unfamiliar.
With me to identify some of the difficulties of reading books set in different
cultures, and to offer ways of improving your understanding is Sheila Dignen.
Sheila is a lexicographer and a teacher. Sheila, welcome to The Reading
Group.
Sheila: Thank you. Hello. I’m a passionate lexicographer - I’ve been working on
dictionaries for 20 years! And I especially enjoy working on dictionaries for
children and students of English.
Gary: You were the original driving force behind and editor of the first “cultural
dictionary” – The Longman Dictionary of Language and Culture. What is a
cultural dictionary and how can they help students to read books in English?
Sheila: Native speakers share a body of knowledge which they have because they’ve
grown up in the same culture. Writers draw on this body of knowledge and tap
into it to convey meaning. For example, eleven plus, unemployment benefit,
Woolworths, Marks & Spencer's; references to literary characters - Scrooge,
Peter Pan: For a non-native speaker, they can fail to understand what a writer is
trying to convey.
Gary: How do you go about choosing the words and cultural references to include in a
dictionary? We heard in our last programme that Samuel Johnson included
40,000 entries in his dictionary of the English language - each one written out
on a separate sheet of paper …
How do you choose which cultural references to include?
Sheila: Firstly, by reading texts. Then newspapers; teaching experience; and writing
standard dictionaries - we are very aware of the information we were leaving
out. A good example is 'ladder'. In a standard dictionary you would define it as
a structure. But it is often used in expressions like 'walk under the ladder' which
means bad luck. It is a shame to leave this information out, and in this book we
were able to include it.
Gary: Let's put your dictionary to the test and look up 'ladder'…
Sheila: OK, there is a standard definition, “a structure consisting of two bars or ropes
joined to each other by steps, rungs and used for climbing” – and underneath we
have a cultural note – “there is an old superstition which says it is unlucky to
walk under a ladder”.
Gary: So you put your standard definition and cultural note in capital letters. Next one?
Sheila: Let's look at the word “pirate” – “a person who sails the seas stopping and
robbing ships at sea”. But what we share as native speakers of English is a
cultural stereotype of a pirate. If I asked you to draw me a picture of a pirate,
what would you draw?
Gary: I would draw a picture like here: a scarf on his head and a sword in his hand.
Sheila: Also, “pirates often speak roughly, drink a lot, especially rum and have a parrot
on their shoulder...

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