我研究出一個降低香港學生對GCSE English恐懼的方法。我首先會問學生，對甚麼題材感興趣。
因題材是學生本來就感興趣的，所以他們書看起來就沒甚麼負擔，
對英國皇室感興趣的學生，可以嘗試做做下面這個閱讀理解題目，
QUESTION:
BELOW IS THE FIRST PARAGRAPH FROM TINA BROWN’S BOOK ON THE BRITISH MONARCHY. WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE？
“In the first years of the twenty-first century, a damp melancholy seemed to hang over the British royals that extended to their friends, servants, and hangers-on. Research for my biography of Princess Diana in 2006, almost ten years after her death, took me to the fading walk-up flats in far-flung London postal codes of former courtiers and retainers. The smell of their stair carpets always filled me with gloom, a waft of downward mobility and pointless, genteel sacrifice. The light always seemed to go out on the third-floor landing because of the time switch. The door would open to a small, heavily book-lined one-bedroom apartment full of tasteful knickknacks, a world of remnants from a life of palace duty. What had any of these courtiers got, really, out of all their loyalty and discretion toward the institution of monarchy? The Queen’s “regard,” a Seago watercolor, a few courtly thank-you letters signed in royal cursive.”
Answer:
Brown’s opening paragraph is a fitting start for a book that seeks to uncover unflattering aspects of the still-vaunted institution that is the British monarchy. By zooming in on a few details of the living conditions of retired palace staff (“walk-up flats in far-flung London postal codes”; “smell of their stair carpets”; the presence of time switches in their cramped apartments), Brown is encouraging her readers to think along these lines: if serving royalty isn’t as glamorous as is generally assumed, then perhaps the royals themselves aren’t that glamorous either. She sets out to prove this thesis in the rest of her book.
Michelle Ng
英國牛津大學畢業，前《蘋果日報》和《眾新聞》專欄作家，現在身在楓葉國，心繫中國大陸和香港。
聯絡方式： michelleng.coach@proton.me
個人網站： https://michellengwritings.com
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