久久亚洲国产成人影院-久久亚洲国产的中文-久久亚洲国产高清-久久亚洲国产精品-亚洲图片偷拍自拍-亚洲图色视频

您現在的位置: Language Tips> Columnist> Zhang Xin  
 





 
Slippery slope?
[ 2007-09-28 11:24 ]


One of the fears facing English learners in reading news in English is new words – ugh, so many of them, I hear you groan. The prospect of having to look up one word after another is so daunting that many people simply give up reading altogether. Need not be so.

One sophisticated cure for this fear of new words pertains to psychology. Fear is an idea in your head. It's ok to address it head on, pardon the pun. In other words, feel the fear and do it. Face the fear and look words up anyway. Don't be daunted. Don't focus just on hardship – Don't recall and count the number of words you looked up yesterday. Instead, enjoy your accomplishments today. Or better, you can borrow the bright future by basking in the glories of success you'll achieve as a result of your reading on a daily basis. Bright future because by going through the daily toils, you're making sure of getting some spoils – making sure that your future will be nothing but a bright one. Think about it.

Or if this argument is too sophisticated for you, never mind. It's tossed up for free. You can drop it at no extra charge.

Joking aside, there is a simpler argument in assist and that is, you don't have to look all of them words up anyway. As you go along, you'll soon realize that you don't look as many words up as you think you will. A lot of times, you can guess their meaning through context.

If it doesn't happen today, never mind, either. It will happen some day. Keep plugging away. All in good time.

Without further ado, I'll give you an example. It's the term "slippery slope", which appeared twice in an article (Is torture ever justified?) in this week's edition (September 22, 2007) of the Economist.

It says:

One objection to allowing moderate physical pressure is the difficulty of knowing where to draw the line. If stress positions and sleep deprivation do not work, do you progress to branding with red-hot irons and beating to a pulp? And can you rely on interrogators to heed such distinctions? It is the danger of a slippery slope that makes opponents of torture insist on a total ban.

Then, in the next paragraph, it adds:

Israel is the only country in modern times to have openly allowed "moderate physical pressure" as a "last resort". Since interrogators used such methods anyway, it was argued, passing an explicit law would at least make it possible to set out some limits. But in 1999, citing the slippery-slope argument, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that torture could never be justified, even in the case of a ticking bomb. It went on to outlaw techniques such as sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of hot and cold, prolonged stress positions, hooding and violent shaking.

Guessed it?

Well, in the physical sense, imagine a slippery slope in a landslide, with mud and rocks sliding down the valley in much of a free-fall.

The "slippery-slope argument", on the other hand, works like the camel's nose, a metaphor from an Arabian tale which cautions people against allowing a small, insignificant problem to deteriorate into something large, terrible and out of control. If you see a camel roaming round your tent, so goes the story, you'd better chase it off now. If you don't, the camel will poke his nose into your tent. If you do nothing about that, sooner or later it'll stick his head into the tent as well, then the neck and then the torso. Before you know it, the whole camel is in the tent, lock stock and barrel, plundering and already making a mess of things...

In the torture argument, the slippery slope theory works like this: if you allow even the slightest forms of torture ("moderate physical pressure", e.g. sleep deprivation), soon you'll witness the worst (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay).

That's all for today. I'll be on vacation for two weeks, taking advantage of the extra days off during the National Day holiday. I'll be back in mid-October.

Happy holiday.

我要看更多專欄文章

 

About the author:
 

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

 

 
 
相關文章 Related Stories
 
         
 
 
 
 
 
         

 

 

 
 

48小時內最熱門

     
  英國:外國留學生要學學排隊
  小心別“泄密”
  WAGS 太太和女朋友
  揭密為何一吻定情
  “天知地知,你知我知” 怎么說

本頻道最新推薦

     
  Slippery slope?
  “酒后駕車”還是“邊開車邊喝酒”?
  A case of overlooked talent
  Cut no ice?
  此肉非彼肉

論壇熱貼

     
  “凈臉聯盟”兩周年——迎國慶特別活動啟動
  how to translate“三局兩勝”
  知青 農民工 怎么翻譯
  "魅力城市" 英文怎么說?
  請教:統一口徑的譯法
  Mountain Story 大山的故事






主站蜘蛛池模板: 国产小片| 国产在线观看网址在线视频 | 亚洲成a人片| 精品国产欧美一区二区三区成人 | 国产在线视频专区 | 国内精品九一在线播放 | 白白在线观看永久免费视频 | 成人性动漫高清免费观看网址 | 久久精品免观看国产成人 | 亚洲欧洲国产成人精品 | 在线观看的黄网 | 黄视频欧美 | 久久tv免费国产高清 | 99re久久精品国产首页2020 | 亚洲美色综合天天久久综合精品 | 国产成人成人一区二区 | 国产成人欧美视频在线 | 国产在线观看精品香蕉v区 国产在线观看免费人成小说 | 就草草在线观看视频 | 一级毛片免费观看不卡的 | 一级黄色欧美片 | 精品视频 九九九 | 中文乱码字幕午夜无线观看 | 国产区一区二区三区 | 久久99国产精品亚洲 | japanese 色系 tube日本 | 亚洲欧美日韩精品久久亚洲区 | 亚洲一区二区精品 | 精品一区二区影院在线 | 国产日韩欧美一区二区 | 国产精品毛片在线大全 | 国产大陆亚洲精品国产 | 色久激情| 久久精品亚洲综合一品 | 国产在线精品观看 | 亚洲视频 在线观看 | 国产成人精品亚洲777图片 | 欧美特级视频 | 男女午夜免费视频 | 国产精品黑丝 | 国产aⅴ片 |