朋友们：
上周五，本系列文章未能按时发出，很抱歉！为什么呢？真不是我不想发，是我遇到了这个问题：
这是上周四下午遇到的新情况。因我周四晚上另外有事，就没办法发出来了。翻译都翻译好了，就这样憋死了一期。向朋友们再次致歉！今后一定早做准备，避免这样临时出问题的情况再发生。
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下文选自上海外语教育出版社出版的《英语阅读技巧教学》（Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language，作者Christine Nuttall）第一章“What is Reading?”，选文翻译：武太白
Reading for meaning
为了意义而阅读
Whatever your reasons for reading (excluding any reading for language learning), it is not very likely that you were interested in the pronunciation of what you read, and even less likely that you were interested in the grammatical structures used. You read because you wanted to get something from the writing. We will call this the message: it might have been facts, but could just as well have been enjoyment, ideas, feelings (from a family letter, for instance).
不管你阅读的原因是什么（除非是为语言学习而进行阅读），都不太可能是你对所读的东西的发音感兴趣，更不太可能是对所使用的语法结构感兴趣。你阅读，因为你想要从作品中获得点什么。你阅读，是因为你想从作品中获得什么。我们把这个“什么”叫做“主旨”：这可能是事实，但也完全可能是欣赏，观点，情感（如来自家信）等。
Whatever it was, you probably wanted to get the message that the writer intended. You were interested in what the writing meant; hence the sort of words found in group c on p2 turn out to be the important ones if we are trying to make a definition that covers most authentic reasons for reading. (By authentic I mean reasons that are concerned not with language learning but with the uses of reading in our daily lives outside the classroom.)
不管是什么，可能你都想要获取作者意图中要传达的主旨。你对作品的意图感兴趣；这样，如果我们在试着下定义涵盖绝大部分阅读的真实原因的话，第2页上c组单词就确证都是很重要的。（我所说的“真实”是指跟语言学习无关、与我们课堂教学以外的日常生活相关的语言运用。）
The view of reading offered in this book is essentially concerned with meaning, specifically with the transfer of meaning from mind to mind: the transfer of a message from writer to reader. As we shall see, it is not quite as simple as that, but we exclude any interpretation of the word reading in which meaning is not central. We shall explore how we get meaning by reading, and how the reader, the writer and the text each contribute to the process.
本书中提出的阅读观本质上与意义相关联，具体地说，是与意义从头脑到头脑的传递有关：主旨从作者到读者的传递。我们将看到，并不完全像说的那么简单，但如果有什么对于“reading”这个单词的解读不把“意义”作为中心，那我们就把这种解读排除出去。我们将探讨我们怎样通过阅读获取意义，而读者、作者和文本又怎样各自在这个过程起作用。
Why do people read foreign languages?
人们为什么要读外语？
Perhaps the advantages of knowing a foreign language are clear to your students - better jobs, access to literature or whatever. Reading is usually recognized as a necessary part of these activities. However, if the only foreign language items you have read recently (your list in Activity 1.2) were directly concerned with your teaching, it may be that you, and your students too, do not really need to read that language except for classroom purposes.
也许懂外语的好处对你的学生来说都是很清楚的——更好的工作、看得懂文学作品，如此等等。阅读通常被认为是这些活动的必须成分之一。然而，如果最近你只读过与教学直接相关的外语文本（参见活动1.2中你的列表），那么可能是你和你的学生除了课堂教学的目的以外，就不需要读那种语言了。
If this is the case, we must not be surprised if student motivation is low. This is a major problem for many language teachers: the motivation of needing to read is powerful. However, you can also motivate students by making their foreign language reading interesting in itself. The language is alive - its users have the same variety of purposes for reading as anybody has when reading their mother tongue - and this fact can be used by teachers to increase motivation.
如果情况如此，我们就完全不必吃惊，说学生的学习动力不足。这对许多语言教师来说都是一个大问题：需要阅读的动力要强大才是。然而，可以采用使外语阅读本身富有兴趣的办法来激发学生的积极性。语言是活的——语言的使用者的阅读目的和母语使用者的阅读目的一样五花八门——而这一事实可以由教师用来调动学生的积极性。
I contend that by treating reading as a purposeful activity, we can make teaching more purposeful and classes livelier, even in the difficult circumstances just outlined. If you teach in such circumstances, please suspend your disbelief for the moment; we are going to discuss the way reading works when it is used for real life purposes, and this should give you a better understanding of it. Later (mainly in Part Three) we shall explore ways of using this understanding to help students read better, whether this is a matter of real necessity or just an examination requirement.
我认为，我们可以把阅读当作有目的的活动来看待，从而使教学更加有的放矢，课堂更加活泼生动，即便是在刚刚所勾勒出的困难情况下也可以做到这一点。如果你在这样的情况下教学，请暂时收起你的疑虑；我们准备探讨阅读在用于真实生活目的时是怎样起作用的，而这应该能使你对阅读有更好的理解。稍后（主要是在第三部分）我们会探讨如何利用这样的理解来帮助学生更好地阅读，不管是真实的必需，还是考试的需求。
Getting a message from a text
从文本中获取要旨
We shall assume, therefore, that reading has one overriding purpose: to get meaning from a text. Other ways of looking at reading will not concern us. Our business is with the way a reader gets a message from a text. So we will begin by establishing what we mean by a message.
因而，我们要假定，阅读有一个总的目的：从文本中获取要旨。我们不关心看待阅读的其他方式。我们的任务是弄明白读者怎样从文本中获取到要旨。所以我们要先明确“要旨”是什么意思。
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