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       考研英语外刊阅读能力的提升，需要日积月累才能看得到效果。接下来，北京文都考研网为帮助2020考研学子，在英语水平上更上一层台阶，特意整理出考研英语外刊阅读精选:强迫移民学英语适得其反，供考生参考。

2020考研英语外刊阅读:强迫移民学英语适得其反

Lev Golinkin left Soviet Ukraine as a nine-year-old in 1990. With assistance from HIAS, a Jewish organisation that helps refugees, his family made its way to Indiana. In America, not having English felt “like having a massive stroke, only instead of being sent to the hospital and getting help you have to go out and get a job.” His experience suggests immigrants don’t have to be told how important it is to speak the language of a new country: they are more painfully aware of it than natives can ever know.

Yet they are often assumed to need coercion. On May 16th, for example, Donald Trump vowed to ensure that immigrants to America learn English and pass a civics exam before arriving.

Such strictures might seem to serve national cohesion. In fact, the wrong policies and tone do the reverse, as Vicky Fouka of Stanford University found in a study of German-Americans living a century ago. With its large German-immigrant population, Ohio was the first of several states to permit teaching in German alongside English. By 1900 some 4% of elementary-school pupils in America were taught at least partly in German. After the first world war anti-German sentiment led to the end of those programmes and, in Ohio and Indiana, even to a ban on teaching German as a foreign language to young children.

Ms Fouka compared German-American populations in border counties of Ohio and Indiana with their neighbours in adjacent states (who experienced no language ban). She found that those affected by the ban were more likely to marry another German and give their children German names, and less likely to enlist during the second world war. Forced assimilation backfired at every level, from the personal to the political.

Unless the intention was not assimilation at all. Sometimes language laws are mostly symbolic. For instance, numerous American states have declared English to be their official tongue (at a federal level, the country doesn’t have one). This seems intended to send a message — “We speak English here” — without doing much to change reality on the ground. Sometimes, though, laws seem designed to make life as hard as possible for immigrants.

Take Proposition 227 of 1998, whereby Californian voters eliminated almost all of the state’s bilingual education programmes. Bilingual teaching was always intended as a bridge to English, but in a polarising campaign it was portrayed as allowing kids to avoid English altogether. (A few years earlier, another vote had stripped illegal immigrants of state benefits.) A later analysis provided scant evidence that Proposition 227 made much difference to English-learning. But the Republican-led anti-immigration backlash of the 1990s led to a counter-backlash: California Latinos, though often religious and socially conservative, have been solidly Democratic since.

Just how permissive should receiving countries be? Corine Dehabey, a Syrian-American who helps immigrants learn English in today’s Ohio, thinks that, if policies are too accommodating, there is a risk that people don’t feel any pressure to acquire the language. But if she could make one change, it would be to give them more time to do so. Current policies push newcomers to find work as soon as possible. That leads to doctors and engineers driving taxis, because they have yet to requalify in America.

Adults often struggle to learn a new language, as Mr Golinkin’s mother did, going from being a psychiatrist in Ukraine to a security guard in America. Some pull it off, as Mr Golinkin’s father did by studying English for years before the move. But nearly all children master their adopted country’s language, as Mr Golinkin (now a writer) did quickly. Children are sponges for languages—and for attitudes, too. Their views of their new homes will forever be shaped by the way they are treated when they arrive.

 

【参考译文】

1990年，九岁的Lev Golinkin离开了乌克兰。在一家帮助难民的机构希伯来移民援助协会的协助之下，他们一家来到了印第安纳州。在美国，不会英语感觉就像得了一次严重的中风，不过不用将你送到医院获取帮助，你只要出门并找到一份工作就可以了。他的经验表明，移民并不需要人们告知，来到一个新国家说它的语言是多么的重要：他们比当地人更深切地意识到这一点。

但是，人们经常认为他们需要一点逼迫。例如，5月16号，唐纳德·特朗普发誓要保证美国移民在抵美之前要学习英语并通过公民考试。

这种制约或许看似服务于国家的团结。实际上，错误的政策和氛围却使情况恰恰相反，就像斯坦福大学Vicky Fouka在一项关于生活在100年前的德裔美国人的研究中所发现的那样。由于庞大的德国移民数量，俄亥俄在几个州当中率先允许在教学中同时使用德语和英语。到1990年，美国约4%的小学生至少部分是用德语接受教学的。一战之后，反德情绪导致这些项目的结束，在俄亥俄州和印第安纳州，甚至禁止向幼童教授作为外语的德语。

Fouka女士将俄亥俄州和印第安纳州边界各县的德裔美国人和相邻州(未经受语言禁令)的德裔美国人作了比较。她发现，受禁令影响的德裔美国人更可能与另外一位德裔结婚并给孩子取德国名字，且在二战期间不太可能参军。在各个层面，从个人上到政治上，强制同化都事与愿违。

除非意图根本不是同化。语言法规有时大多是象征性的。例如，美国许多州都宣布将英语作为他们的官方语言(在联邦级别，国家并无官方语言)。这似乎旨在放出一条信息——我们这这里说英语——但这却没有改变公众层面的现实。即使如此，法规似乎有时会让移民的生活相当艰难。

以1998年的227号修正案为例，加利福利亚的投票者借此关闭了该州几乎所有的双语教育项目。双语教育总是被视为通向英语的桥梁，但是在两极分化的运动中，人们认为双语教育完全阻碍了孩子们接触英语。(几年之前，另一项表决已将非法移民排除在该州的救济金之外。)后来的一项分析未能提供足够的证据说明227号修正案对在英语学习上起了很大作用。但是九十年代民主党主导的强烈抵制移民活动引发了反对浪潮：尽管加利福利亚的拉美裔笃信宗教，在社会上很保守，自此却成为了共和党的坚定支持者。

接受移民的国家应该多宽容呢?如今在俄亥俄州帮助移民学习英语的叙利亚裔美国人Corine Dehabey认为，若政策太过通融的话会有风险，人们在学习这门语言的时候不会感到任何压力。但是如果她能做出一项改变，那就是多给他们一点时间。目前的政策促使新来的移民尽可能地去找工作。这导致博士和工程师开起了出租车，因为他们在美国还没有得到再次承认。

成年人经常努力学习一门新语言，就像Golinkin先生的母亲那样，从一位乌克兰的精神病学家成为美国的一名保安。一些人掌握新语言，就像Golinkin先生的父亲那样在移民之前就学过多年英语。但是几乎所有的儿童掌握移民国家的语言，都像Golinkin先生(现在是一位作家)那样迅速。儿童就像海绵一样吸收语言——还有思维。他们到来时被对待的方式将会永远地塑造他们对新家园的看法。

       以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研英语外刊阅读精选:强迫移民学英语适得其反”，希望对2020考研者有所帮助!祝2020考研成功!

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