北京拟下调中高考英语分值引热议

Xinhua was careful, however, not to trivialize the importance of English, which it said is important as China 'opens wider to the outside world.' It says that the new measures will simply shift the way English is taught, from a narrow focus on achieving high scores in tests to help students apply what they learn in real life.
但新华社较为审慎，并未否认英语的重要性。新华社的报道中说，在中国进一步向世界开放之际，英语具有重要性。新华社称，新措施只会改变英语的教授方式，从仅仅侧重在考试中取得高分向帮助学生将所学运用到实际生活中转变。

But any government-led attempts to play down the importance of English may not make much of an impact in China. It is, after all, a country where the thirst to learn English has spawned companies such as U.S.-listed New Oriental Education & Technology Group, which inspired the hit movie 'American Dreams in China'. Xinhua puts the value of China's English-learning industry at about 30 billion yuan ($5 billion).
但政府采取的任何弱化英语重要性的尝试都不大可能在中国产生太大的影响。毕竟在中国，对学习英语的渴望已经推动缔造了美国上市的新东方教育科技（集团）公司(New Oriental Education & Technology Group)这样的公司，热播电影《中国合伙人》(American Dreams in China)的灵感就来自于新东方。新华社称中国英语学习产业的价值高达人民币300亿元左右。

'I have a friend who is the same year as me, who went to work for Standard Chartered after graduating because his/her English is good...during the 2008 financial crisis my friend 'only' got a bonus of 500,000 yuan. I don't think there is any subject that is more important than English,' Zheng Chu, a columnist for China's Time Weekly magazine, wrote on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.
《时代周报》特约评论员郑褚在类似推特(Twitter)的新浪微博上说，我有个朋友，跟我同一届的，因为英语好，毕业去了渣打银行(Standard Chartered)。08年受金融风暴影响，年终奖“只”拿了50多万。比英语更重要的课我觉得是没有了。

Those who share a similar view to Mr. Zheng's may take comfort in the result of 'Chinese Characters Dictation Competition,' where the winner and the runner-up were two 14 year-old girls from the Hangzhou Foreign Languages School, which has a heavy emphasis on teaching English.
《汉字听写大会》的决赛结果可能会让那些与郑褚持相同观点的人感到安慰，大赛的冠亚军是两位来自杭州外国语学校的14岁女生，这所学校非常重视英语教学。