Teaching Rereading
Posted by Michael Arnzen at 12:11 in Praxis and Theory.
In my literary criticism course, we read one title -- Tim O'Brien's fantastic work of metafiction, In the Lake of the Woods -- and then apply a different school of theory to it about every week. The novel lends itself well to this analysis, and while we also study a film after midterms, it serves as the centerpiece of the course, freeing up the student to spend more time on reading criticism itself. I expect that students will reread it from a new perspective each week.
Structured as an "unsolved mystery" the book is so open to multiple interpretations that it was practically written for my course. This is something like the fifth time I've taught this course, and every year I read the entire book again, on top of the numerous readings I performed on the text after I first received it (as a review copy for the Eugene Weekly newspaper back in the 90's). Never mind that the novel has been made into a Lifetime Movie -- it's really one of the best books you'll ever read.
Or reread.
Although I'm happy to reread O'Brien's book again and again (because I always discover something new), I've been thinking about how many time literature teachers must necessarily reread the works they teach. Spending so much time living inside a book is one of the joys, in fact, of teaching lit, but there also comes a point, inevitably, when you resist rereading it for the umpteenth time. Once you've got the book "nailed," it feels like there's no need to hammer at it any more. You can even teach some titles without bothering to reread it at all. But you also always feel a little guilty about doing so and realize that you must try to reread the text you're teaching -- especially if you hope to have meaningful discussions -- no matter how many times you've read it before. The longer you neglect to review your book, the more you'll forget about it, and the more mistakes you might make in lectures or quizzes. Or worse: if you miseducate students based on false assumptions grounded in failed memories.
At the same time, we also need to teach students the value of rereading a work. But I find this notion -- rereading -- extremely difficult to "sell" today's harried and stressed-out students. I beg them to reread pieces, especially if we're going to discuss the same text for more than one period. But so few of them do. The root of this problem lies in consumer culture, of course, which trains us to swallow texts like chocolate bars, bank them in our brains, and move right along. Clearly, the arts don't work that way and literature is not a commodity the way that a Hershey bar is. A student might be able to absorb primary details or even pick up common interpretations of a piece (from something like Sparks Notes) but she'll never truly be reading for meaning if she isn't rereading. The first time we read we react, as though to stimulae. It's the second time through where we are at greater liberty to contemplate, to analyze, to interpret -- in ways that are less under the guidence of the author and more under the guile of the reader.
But there are also pragmatic reasons why students won't reread. Time constraints. And brain constraints. You can only do so much at once. College students who major in English often take three or four lit classes at the same time, which, under some circumstances, can translate into reading up to four novels during the same week of assignments. This is usually an institutional problem, grounded in the way the major curriculum is shaped and when courses are offered. Granted, English professors are partially to blame -- since they feel they must cover a lot of ground in each course, "surveying" breadth as much as "digging" any one of them for depth, they will rarely sacrifice a book (and if you're not a lit teacher, you don't know how hard it is to whittle down to a few select representative choices!). In the process, students must cut corners wherever they can (skipping reading altogether for some classes where they know they won't be quizzed, for example -- to be a literary professor is to become an expert of detecting when students don't read!), and it's hard enough to get a student to read in the first place, let alone reread. Assigning research papers which require mining the text for passages for analysis can accomplish this...but I wonder how much of this process is rereading in the way that I think of it.
On the flip side of the coin, often there are overlaps of material across a student's lifetime that solicit rereading. Like, say, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which many students read in junior high school (when they know absolutely nothing about the adult issues in that book -- adultery at fifteen?), which they later then encounter in American Literature courses in college (where adultery finally means something a little more concrete). Rereading at a later date like this can open up so much of the text that was "missed" the first time through and -- like any book we read several years later -- we discover that as we change, the books change as well.
But sometimes college classes will overlap texts so close together, however, that it's unlikely that the students will really reread the work in question. Even short stories. It's wishful thinking to assume a student who reads "Hills Like White Elephants" in an Introduction to Ficton course will then reread it closely in a 400-level seminar in Hemingway. I think, too, I would be somewhat devestated if another professor on my campus chose to use a book that I am very dependent on -- like In the Lake of the Woods -- in a course before I got the majors as seniors in their Literary Criticism course. And it's frustrating to encounter students who are cocky with set interpretations they picked up from another class -- and it's as if you're arguing with another teacher, through the medium of the student's brain, just to get them to think again about what they assume to be true. To me, reading literature is a way of challenging assumptions. Rereading makes that possible.
One reason why I enjoy teaching popular fiction and film is because more often than not, it involves texts that students think they already know quite well, but haven't yet analyzed or read critically before. They find they want to reread popular texts, but sometimes you run into different problems: resistence to criticism, rather than rereading.
Writing is one of the reasons why I value rereading so much. Writers must reread their own work if they hope to revise it well. Writers have to anticipate and predict multiple responses from various readers to their work, and take care of those potentialities in their revisions. There are also texts that are "retellings" of various earlier texts -- revisions that perform a sort of rereading.
In my creative writing courses, students will sometimes write very entertaining work -- usually humor or adventure narratives -- which are very successful in terms of generating emotional reactions, but which do very little to stimulate the intellect. I usually tell the student that there's nothing really wrong with "fun" fiction or poetry -- with writing for entertainment -- but if the piece "doesn't invite rereading" it probably isn't as good as it could be. For one thing, because rereading is a part of revision, I'm asking the student to spend more time with their own language. But beyond that, I value texts which beg to be reread. A good piece of writing really demands to be read again, because it either creates a world that the reader wants to return to and spend more time inside, or because it raises issues that are worth reconsidering -- or else it simply is open to multivalent interpretations that one can only 'see' upon rereading. The works we treasure tend to be those we want to keep on our bookshelves and reread. Although I'm no salesman for the literary canon, as I get older and more experienced teaching literature, that the canon serves a grand purpose in terms of rereading. The literary "canon" is -- at base -- a group of texts that scholars believe it is important for audiences to return to again and again. Works worth rereading over a lifetime -- or even more than one's own lifetime. Indeed, some scholars commit their whole academic lives to rereading one or a handful of classics by the same author over and over again, teaching and writing about them in hopes of keeping those classics "alive" -- read and reread -- in perpetuity.
So how can we encourage students to reread? One way is to talk about our own pleasures of rereading and have students journal about their own experiences. Another is to craft assignments that require rereading while not making it an act that seems like more work to the student: pull out passages or assign specific chapters with guided interpretive questions. In our freshman composition courses, we use a book called Rereading America, which asks students to rethink assumptions about cultural myths and invites rereading. You can also teach a unit on literary parody, adaptation, or retelling -- there are even textbooks available, like Retellings, which incorporate literary revsionism as an archetecture for the course. And literature teachers can also craft assignments using methods mined from Reader Response Theory; perhaps even teach the criticism itself in upper division courses. (I invite you to share your own methods by leaving a comment below.)
A final point worth considering: How do (or can) online materials invite rereading? Sure, we can bookmark and return to pages, but I bet most people do so for information rather than for rereading a literary work online. (And there's a degree of serialization and deletion to online texts: how often do you reread, say, a blog entry?) There's a good article by Marcel Cornis-Pope and Ann Woodlief
on the University of Virginia Commonwealth site, called "The Rereading/Rewriting Process: Theory and Collaborative, On-line Pedagogy," which you might find of interest if computer mediated teaching is of interest to you.
Teaching Rereading
Posted by Michael Arnzen at 12:11 in Praxis and Theory.
In my literary criticism course, we read one title -- Tim O'Brien's fantastic work of metafiction, In the Lake of the Woods -- and then apply a different school of theory to it about every week. The novel lends itself well to this analysis, and while we also study a film after midterms, it serves as the centerpiece of the course, freeing up the student to spend more time on reading criticism itself. I expect that students will reread it from a new perspective each week.
Structured as an "unsolved mystery" the book is so open to multiple interpretations that it was practically written for my course. This is something like the fifth time I've taught this course, and every year I read the entire book again, on top of the numerous readings I performed on the text after I first received it (as a review copy for the Eugene Weekly newspaper back in the 90's). Never mind that the novel has been made into a Lifetime Movie -- it's really one of the best books you'll ever read.
Or reread.
Although I'm happy to reread O'Brien's book again and again (because I always discover something new), I've been thinking about how many time literature teachers must necessarily reread the works they teach. Spending so much time living inside a book is one of the joys, in fact, of teaching lit, but there also comes a point, inevitably, when you resist rereading it for the umpteenth time. Once you've got the book "nailed," it feels like there's no need to hammer at it any more. You can even teach some titles without bothering to reread it at all. But you also always feel a little guilty about doing so and realize that you must try to reread the text you're teaching -- especially if you hope to have meaningful discussions -- no matter how many times you've read it before. The longer you neglect to review your book, the more you'll forget about it, and the more mistakes you might make in lectures or quizzes. Or worse: if you miseducate students based on false assumptions grounded in failed memories.
At the same time, we also need to teach students the value of rereading a work. But I find this notion -- rereading -- extremely difficult to "sell" today's harried and stressed-out students. I beg them to reread pieces, especially if we're going to discuss the same text for more than one period. But so few of them do. The root of this problem lies in consumer culture, of course, which trains us to swallow texts like chocolate bars, bank them in our brains, and move right along. Clearly, the arts don't work that way and literature is not a commodity the way that a Hershey bar is. A student might be able to absorb primary details or even pick up common interpretations of a piece (from something like Sparks Notes) but she'll never truly be reading for meaning if she isn't rereading. The first time we read we react, as though to stimulae. It's the second time through where we are at greater liberty to contemplate, to analyze, to interpret -- in ways that are less under the guidence of the author and more under the guile of the reader.
But there are also pragmatic reasons why students won't reread. Time constraints. And brain constraints. You can only do so much at once. College students who major in English often take three or four lit classes at the same time, which, under some circumstances, can translate into reading up to four novels during the same week of assignments. This is usually an institutional problem, grounded in the way the major curriculum is shaped and when courses are offered. Granted, English professors are partially to blame -- since they feel they must cover a lot of ground in each course, "surveying" breadth as much as "digging" any one of them for depth, they will rarely sacrifice a book (and if you're not a lit teacher, you don't know how hard it is to whittle down to a few select representative choices!). In the process, students must cut corners wherever they can (skipping reading altogether for some classes where they know they won't be quizzed, for example -- to be a literary professor is to become an expert of detecting when students don't read!), and it's hard enough to get a student to read in the first place, let alone reread. Assigning research papers which require mining the text for passages for analysis can accomplish this...but I wonder how much of this process is rereading in the way that I think of it.
On the flip side of the coin, often there are overlaps of material across a student's lifetime that solicit rereading. Like, say, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which many students read in junior high school (when they know absolutely nothing about the adult issues in that book -- adultery at fifteen?), which they later then encounter in American Literature courses in college (where adultery finally means something a little more concrete). Rereading at a later date like this can open up so much of the text that was "missed" the first time through and -- like any book we read several years later -- we discover that as we change, the books change as well.
But sometimes college classes will overlap texts so close together, however, that it's unlikely that the students will really reread the work in question. Even short stories. It's wishful thinking to assume a student who reads "Hills Like White Elephants" in an Introduction to Ficton course will then reread it closely in a 400-level seminar in Hemingway. I think, too, I would be somewhat devestated if another professor on my campus chose to use a book that I am very dependent on -- like In the Lake of the Woods -- in a course before I got the majors as seniors in their Literary Criticism course. And it's frustrating to encounter students who are cocky with set interpretations they picked up from another class -- and it's as if you're arguing with another teacher, through the medium of the student's brain, just to get them to think again about what they assume to be true. To me, reading literature is a way of challenging assumptions. Rereading makes that possible.
One reason why I enjoy teaching popular fiction and film is because more often than not, it involves texts that students think they already know quite well, but haven't yet analyzed or read critically before. They find they want to reread popular texts, but sometimes you run into different problems: resistence to criticism, rather than rereading.
Writing is one of the reasons why I value rereading so much. Writers must reread their own work if they hope to revise it well. Writers have to anticipate and predict multiple responses from various readers to their work, and take care of those potentialities in their revisions. There are also texts that are "retellings" of various earlier texts -- revisions that perform a sort of rereading.
In my creative writing courses, students will sometimes write very entertaining work -- usually humor or adventure narratives -- which are very successful in terms of generating emotional reactions, but which do very little to stimulate the intellect. I usually tell the student that there's nothing really wrong with "fun" fiction or poetry -- with writing for entertainment -- but if the piece "doesn't invite rereading" it probably isn't as good as it could be. For one thing, because rereading is a part of revision, I'm asking the student to spend more time with their own language. But beyond that, I value texts which beg to be reread. A good piece of writing really demands to be read again, because it either creates a world that the reader wants to return to and spend more time inside, or because it raises issues that are worth reconsidering -- or else it simply is open to multivalent interpretations that one can only 'see' upon rereading. The works we treasure tend to be those we want to keep on our bookshelves and reread. Although I'm no salesman for the literary canon, as I get older and more experienced teaching literature, that the canon serves a grand purpose in terms of rereading. The literary "canon" is -- at base -- a group of texts that scholars believe it is important for audiences to return to again and again. Works worth rereading over a lifetime -- or even more than one's own lifetime. Indeed, some scholars commit their whole academic lives to rereading one or a handful of classics by the same author over and over again, teaching and writing about them in hopes of keeping those classics "alive" -- read and reread -- in perpetuity.
The Old Man and the Sea is a novella (just over 100 pages in length) by Ernest Hemingway, written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.It is noteworthy in twentieth century fiction, reaffirming Hemingway's worldwide literary prominence as well as being a significant factor in his selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Background and publication：Most people maintain that the years following Hemingway's publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1940 until 1952 were the bleakest in his literary career. The novel Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) was almost unanimously disparaged by critics as self-parody. Evidently his participation as an Allied correspondent in World War II did not yield fruits equivalent to those wrought of his experiences in World War I (A Farewell to Arms, 1929) or the Spanish Civil War (For Whom the Bell Tolls).
Inspiration for character：Gregorio Fuentes is one possible model for Hemingway's eponymous "Old Man".While Hemingway was living in Cuba beginning in 1940 with his third wife Martha Gellhorn, one of his favorite pastimes was to sail and fish in his boat, named the Pilar. General biographical consensus holds that the model for Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea was, at least in part, the Cuban fisherman Gregorio Fuentes.
Fuentes, also known as Goyo to his friends, was born in 1897 on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, migrated to Cuba when he was six years old and met Hemingway there in 1928. In the 1930s, Hemingway hired him to look after his boat. During Hemingway's Cuban years a strong friendship formed between Hemingway and Fuentes. For almost thirty years, Fuentes served as the captain of the Pilar; this included time during which Hemingway did not live in Cuba.
Fuentes at times would admit that the story was not exactly about him. He related that the true inspiration of the old man and the boy did exist but they never knew who they were. The story goes that in the late 1940s, upon return from an early morning fishing trip, Fuentes and Hemingway saw a small rowboat 10 miles out to sea. Hemingway asked Fuentes to approach the vessel to see if they needed help. Inside the boat was an old man and a boy. As the vessels closed in the old man began yelling at them with insults including telling them to go to hell, indicating that they had scared away the fish. According to Fuentes, he and Hemingway looked at each other in surprise. Just the same, Hemingway asked Fuentes to lower them some food and drinks while the old man and boy glared at them. Without another word exchanged, the two boats parted ways. According to Fuentes, Hemingway began immediately to write in his notebook and later asked him to find the old man. According to Fuentes, he never was able to find the fisherman that had made such an impression on Hemingway. Fuentes recounts that this was the real origin of the lore. A few years after The Old Man and the Sea was published, residents of Cojimar believed that the old fisherman that Fuentes and Hemingway ran into at sea was a humble local fisherman they called el viejo Miguel; some described his physical appearance as a wiry Spencer Tracy.
Fuentes, suffering from cancer, died in 2002; he was 104 years old. Prior to his death, he donated Hemingway's Pilar to the Cuban government.
Hemingway had initially planned to use Santiago's story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of a random intimacy between mother and son and also the fact of relationships that cover most of the book relate to the Bible, which he referred to as "The Sea Book." (He also referred to the Bible as the "Sea of Knowledge" and other such things.) Some aspects of it did appear in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream. Positive feedback he received for On the Blue Water (Esquire, April 1936) led him to rewrite it as an independent work. The book is a novella because it has no chapters or parts and is slightly longer than a short story.
The novella first appeared, in its 26,500-word entirety, as part of the September 1, 1952 edition of Life magazine. 5.3 million copies of that issue were sold within two days. The majority of concurrent criticism was positive, although some dissenting criticism has since emerged. The title was misprinted on the cover of an early edition as The Old Men and the Sea
[edit] Plot summary
The Old Man and the Sea recounts an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a giant marlin said to be the largest catch of his life. It opens by explaining that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling back his fishing gear, feeding him and discussing American baseball — most notably Santiago's idol, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.
Thus on the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far into the Gulf. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. Though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that because of the fish's great dignity, no one will be worthy of eating the marlin.
On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, thereby ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish.
Santiago straps the marlin to his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.
While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But by night, the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head, the latter still bearing the giant spear. The old man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, he struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and enters a very deep sleep.
A group of fishermen gathers the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be eighteen feet from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of lions on the African beach.
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British Business Culture. It is already clear that any reliance on socio-cultural explanations for Britain’s ... In particular, Chandler and Lazonick were. only too ready to reinforce the claims that the British business culture lacked ...
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还有对比：
"The British are much more formal than the Dutch – they would never ever utter direct criticism but would graciously package their comments," says Edwin Welman, a Dutch banker working for ABN-AMRO in London, who also worked for several years in the US. "Dutch people just tell you what they think and would never opt for polite phrases to explain a situation."
Margaret Moes, Managing Director of LSS Relocation Limited, who is also Dutch, observes, "the biggest difference in doing business with the Brits compared to doing business with Dutch people is the total lack of directness with the Brits. We are in the UK now for 24 years and the Dutch straightforward mentality is completely opposite to the refined, considerate, and well-mannered way of doing business here in the UK. In business dealings the Brits refuse to commit themselves right away. In fact they are quite inscrutable."
The Japanese of Europe?
Are the British the Japanese of the North? Not many Dutch people would argue they do not understand the Brits, but maybe that is one of the problems, as Moes explains.
It can take quite a long time to actually reach an agreement. However, decisions are always well-considered.
"I've seen many Dutch people making the mistake of assuming they understand the English language. Many however seem to forget that most of their familiarity with the English language is American-based.
"If a British person says 'very interesting', they mean in fact the opposite. For a Dutch person this is very confusing as we are not used to playing with language in such a manner," says Moes.
To help you understand the real meaning behind some statements commonly used by the Brits, refer to our quick reference guide table within this article.
British humour
The British sense of humour is another striking difference and humour is very evident in all areas of life, on every level and at every occasion. It is not considered flippant or disrespectful to use biting humour in a business situation.
In fact, humour may be used more or less constantly. As an outsider you do not have to take part in this, but you should not be surprised either when jokes seem to land on you.
Hierarchy
Although British companies are becoming less hierarchical, the power clearly lies with the board of directors, and compared to the Dutch organisational structure the British organisational structure is a traditional pyramid, consisting of many layers and a strong vertical hierarchy.
Meetings with extensive agendas are an essential management tool
Often the hierarchy is based on which meetings you are invited to attend and less on your job title. The British seem to be fond of committees and commissions and prefer working with a group of people they know, and can rely on and identify with.
They do not seem to like taking individual initiative or to be tied down when they are not sure if the group supports them. This implies a strong sense of duty and personal dedication to the group and there is little automatic respect for authority. Consensus is important, and if you try to achieve it you will be respected.
My home is my castle
Be aware that the British are masters in recognising someone's social status. Foreigners have to keep in mind that there are large perceived differences between social classes in the UK.
British people observe status in nuances, such as the way someone talks, someone's manners and the way someone dresses. The school someone has attended still remains important in British business and social life. School and university form the basis of networks that often sustain people through their working lives.
Moes remarks, "Although the Brits are very open and friendly to foreigners, we are still 'from abroad' after 24 years in this country!"
Welman adds, "There is a clear distinction between work and private life – 'my home is my castle' makes it for foreigners difficult to become part of the British way of life. British people are standoffish."
British Heidi Philippart-Alcock and Annie Cox, who together run a bi-lingual kindergarten in Amsterdam, confirm this impression. "Brits seek out Brits. An English-speaking environment abroad is essential for many British people. That's why we started several years ago with Two Voices, a school for young children from families where two languages are spoken.
"And let's be clear about this; Britain remains an island with not too many foreign languages around you, so it is not strange for British people to look for people that understand their language."
When asked for a clear distinction between doing business between British and Dutch people both Philippart-Alcock, who has been in the Netherlands for 11 years and Cox for 13 years, refer to the difference in work ethic.
It is not considered flippant or disrespectful to use biting humour in a business situation.
"When a Dutch person is not feeling well they will not show up—the Brits will come in even when feeling really sick. The Dutch are so aware of their rights— maybe also due to the good social system—that they sometimes forget about their obligations," say Philippart-Alcock and Cox.
"We see the differences in our teachers; the British teachers are more responsive to unexpected events, whereas the Dutch are more bureaucratic; a 30-minute break is a 30-minute break."
Moes agrees that she was surprised by the way the Dutch handle part-time working. "If someone works three days in the Netherlands, there is no one that takes over the tasks - you just have to wait in getting an answer till that person is back in the office again," she says.
Decision making
History is very important to the British, both in terms of the myths and the reality. Because of this, the British business culture is sometimes seen as being rooted in the past and disliking change and risk.
If you want to initiate change, be prepared to be patient and attend a lot of meetings. Meetings are the essential and yet time-consuming management instrument.
All somewhat important decisions and instructions will be brought up, negotiated, approved, passed through and to some extent implemented during the meeting.
Meetings are not experienced as an interruption of the real work. Most meetings are set long in advance and there is an extensive agenda.
The Netherlands
They may speak English, but it's not your English
Comparing British and German management styles
Planned meetings are altered with meetings planned on a short term in which specific business is handled. However, the decision-making authority lies with the board of directors.
Even decisions that can be made at a lower level need the approval of the entire board of directors. It can take quite a long time to actually reach an agreement. However, decisions are always well considered.
The concept of time
At meetings the British are always on time, but they have also formalised being too late in a social sense. It is almost impolite to be dead on time!
People are often up to ten minutes late for work, lunch and so forth. But never later than around ten minutes. Appointments and meetings are set well in advance. Because people are regularly not in their offices due to the high number of meetings, email memos are frequently used. The British seem to prefer using the phone than meeting up face-to-face.
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英国商业礼仪文化内涵
慧聪网 2004年12月23日8时6分 信息来源：亚商
随着我国进入世贸组织步伐的加快和对外经贸事业不断蓬勃发展，全方位的对外开放格局已在逐步形成。我国各类经贸组织、协会、机构、公司和企业都将有机会在当前和未来与英国商业人士进行面对面直接交往。但因中英两国的商业文化和礼仪不同，我国又是具有礼仪之邦美誉的国度，重视和掌握英国商业文化对开展和建立双方良好的经贸合作关系是十分重要的一环。本文将就最基本的12个方面浅析英国商业文化内涵。
一、迈出商务联系的第一步
当中国公司、企业、商务机构计划与英国商界、公司、企业建立贸易关系时，我方采取的第一步工作应以书信、传真、电子邮件的文字形式或寄送公司、企业、机构的宣传小册子作为商务联系的起点；而且应尽可能以对方个人姓名收最为恰当。其原因是英国商人很喜欢突出个人声誉，同时收件人会对收件很负责、并进行恰当的处理。当然，一般情况下我方公司、企业、机构很可能不知道英方公司、企业、商务机构中具体人员姓名，但可以打电话询问英方公司、企业、商务机构应与何人联系最为合适。当我方发出书面信息后，不要等待对方答复，过几天便可以给对方以电话形式做自我介绍，并同时提议与对方见面。按一般常规，对方会容易接受建议，安排会见日期、地点。第一次商业性会见，我方一定不能建议在机场候机室、火车站，或者要使对方作出带有旅途性质的见面地点，除非对方提议在上述地点见面。我应主动提出到对方办公室拜会较为恰当。其含义是我方第一次与对方见面，如邀对方出来见面英国商人认为有失他的商业信誉的含义，引伸讲，他感情上不易接受这种方式。英国商界人士内有句谚语：“The first step of proper behaviour is half business done.”即第一次举止得当会见乃是商业成功的一半。由此可见，在建立贸易关系中，我方迈出开始第一步做法得当对英国商人来说是至关重要的。当然，这对我从商人员来说可能是言过其实，但是，我们起码我们应该从中可以得到一点警示：要仔细周到的考虑与英国商人打交道的第一步，从而展示我经贸人员的风度和商业文化素养。
二、会见与问候
如果我方经贸人员到英国访问英国商人，不要期待或强行要求对方到机场去迎接。如果与您会见的英国商人询问您如何到达所议定的会见地点时，除非对方主动提出到机场、车站等迎接外（我方也不要过分推辞），一般情况下，都是由您自己负责准时到达预约聚会地点。近年来，英国商业文化也有所变化，不再局限第一次商业见面在办公地点，可以经双方协商第一次商业聚会地可以选择在某某俱乐部、传统酒吧或者饭店。
第一次与英国男士或者女士商人见面时，可以以问候和握手同时进行，也可以先问候后握手。而后直接提及拜会的目的。
三、选择商业活动住地
一般情况下应该选择较好一点旅馆并在出入旅馆时注意个人的着装，按英国商业文化的习惯，我方应着黑色西服套装、领带（颜色不限）和黑色皮鞋。不要选择机场附近的旅馆，避免招引英国商人在与我方进行商务交往中对我方的承诺不负责任以及我方没有建立长期业务关系之嫌。
四、称呼
当今，英国商界对姓与名的称呼已经不太十分介意，可以说已经处于北美国家习惯称呼对方的名字和欧洲国家称姓的称呼之间。但为保险起见，第一次与英国商人见面时还是称对方姓或者联姓带名为好。随着业务关系深入发展，逐步称对方名字更为普遍。
值得注意的是，英国是一个非常着重礼节、仪式的国家，特别在商业圈内，依然对着装取人是非常普遍。所以出席商业圈的任何活动都要装束职业或高贵典雅服装是非常必要的。
五、重业务关系，轻人际关系
在英国的商业圈中，正经的商人不愿意接受浪漫的动作和姿态以及带有任何指手划脚的讲话方式，尤其是刚刚开始的业务关系时，这对以后的业务发展是非常重要的。如果按我们中国人的话说，不管贵公司与英国商人的业务关系“多铁”，千万不要期待和要求英国商人邀请您到英国商人家里去作客。英国商人着重并喜欢愿意和外国商人建立的是商业业务关系，而非是人际关系。
六、守时
英国人做事情已经习惯於程序化，特别在商界就更为重要。在英国商人的心目中，守时与否直接联系到您在将来与其业务的信誉和承诺兑现的问题。但近年来由于交通带来的麻烦，似乎人们对守时都持谅解的态度。但作为从商者来说，自我要求不能放松，尽力在约定的时间前提早几分钟到达会见地点；万一迟到，应表示道歉。一般来讲，英国商人对于议定的时间、地点、人员很少有随意性。
七、一般商业会见开始时所谈论的话题
和英国商人第一次接触时，为减轻双方紧张，谈话题目往往是以谈论天气开始，进而谈论您喜欢到英国访问感受程度如何等等，而后进入正式会见话题。一般讲，在预约的时间内结束会谈，不要过多延迟时间，特别是第一次商业性会见就更应掌握好时间；但也不能在会谈中总看手表，以免引起对方对您的来访产生轻率、来去匆匆，不具发展长期业务关系的疑虑。
八、做好商业演讲
一般英国商界人士很有礼貌并保持安静出席商业演讲，不要期待英国商人对演讲人和演讲内容中的建议、贵公司的产品等表现出极大热情。即使他们可能对您的演讲、建议、产品等非常喜欢，他们依然倾向把这种个人情感保持在内心，同样如果对您的演讲、建议、产品不喜欢也不易言表，或者很可能表现出正在思考之中。假如您所演讲的是商品专利技术，可以直接要求签署秘密协议。
九、商业谈判
在比较与英、美两国商人交往中，英国商人性格会更具多一点保留和胆怯的色彩，这种英国商业文化个性和情调会更容易在商业性业务谈判中得以体现，其含义可以说，主导商业谈判的情调是平静和多具保留的走向，一般不会出现生硬顶撞的场面。
在与英国商人开始进行商业交往时，应该对来自英国商人的反面意见有所准备。事实上，直到今天英国社会依然是比较保守和传统思维社会形态。比如，您向英国的潜在客户推销产品时，英国商人对您的产品第一反应可能是：我公司已与该类产品的其他供应商有150年的业务关系，您将如何能使我们公司与您建立供求业务呢？处在这种情况下不能就此罢休，您必须给予对方耐心的解释，对您的产品新、优、特等方面作出耐心介绍等。英国商人也同样会非常耐心聆听您的讲解，当对方信服您的产品的确具有新、特、优等特点时，他们会很高兴表现出愿意与贵公司达成交易；因为英国商人十分精明并善于捕捉每一个商业机会。
在英国，对于商业活动中看来似乎不重要的小事而造成商业失败将难以容忍，因此，英国商业圈内强调责任感（或负责）是英国商业文化中非常重要的；如果在整个商业活动的交往过程中，出现任何一点差错都要追究公司、企业执行总裁的责任。从这一点考虑，英国的各类企业、公司总裁们在作出交易决定之前都要花费很多时间对每个商业细节进行研究、直到全部弄懂为止。他们在商业交往中有时宁愿回避一宗交易，也不可能匆忙草率处理商业业务。总裁们在作出决定之前，他们会就交易的实质问题要向同事、企业和公司董事会或咨询公司征求意见，中方公司、企业、机构等对于总裁们这些活动和过程不要认为是不礼貌的行为。当双方谈判进入准备签署书面合同的地步时，这在英国商业的活动中是极为重要的贸易环节；对于合同条款中的文字含义不能使用含糊不清、模棱两可的语言，若有任何不清楚的文字含义都应该在签字前询问清楚，或加以说明。与英国商人进行商业谈判中，不管出现多大的问题，只要中方公司、企业保持耐心，能维持着双方有继续谈判的可能，一般情况下，都能会有好的商业谈判结果。因为英国商业文化奠定和培育了英国商人超过任何其他国家商人对商业机会的忍耐性。
此外，在商业谈判中，中方出席谈判的人员一定要确定一个主谈人，其他人员尽量保持沉默、聆听和记录，始终保持谈判的主旋律，禁止七嘴八舌，冲淡谈判的实质内容和引起对方对中方工作没有步骤及杂乱无章的猜疑。
一旦贸易双方签署完合同，英国商人会对贸易伙伴采取非常信任和完全依照合同条款办事，而且对签署完的合同不在会有半点疑虑。因为英国人深知不履行合同条款所带来的法律责任将是非常严重的后果。
十、饮酒与款待
英国商人习惯在酒吧或饭店中进行商务磋商、会谈活动。特别是有些部门、公司、企业都是通过饮酒而完成某项商业交易。有些商人更喜欢把贸易伙伴邀请到他所加入的某某俱乐部作客，以此炫耀自己的绅士派头，这也是当今英国商界内最流行的会见商业伙伴的形式。在英国商人的心目中，对于款待中是重饮轻吃（一般英国男女商人都可饮葡萄酒），与我国的款待习惯有所不同。从这一点考虑，笔者认为我国涉外企业、公司和机构应该向西方，特别是英国商人学习；做到既体面，又不落俗套，同时可以节约大笔外事费用的开支。
十一、赠送礼品
在英国商业文化中没有必要必须赠送礼品，更不必赠送昂贵的礼品。但一般交易成功可以考虑赠送对方一些有意义的小礼品也就足矣（如一枝笔、小胸牌等）。如果在商业活动过程中向英国商人赠送昂贵礼品，他们会对赠送昂贵礼品表示惊讶和茫然，而且可能引起对所从事商业活动带来有收受贿赂之疑；因此对下一步商业活动不但不会带来益处，有可能起到负面作用。
十二、英国商人与政府和官员的关系
一般来说，英国商界人士不愿与政府或官员有过密的人际关系，更不为政府标榜某个企业、公司所动。在英国商业圈内人士心目中，无论是那个政党的官员都是政客，经商与从政完全是两股道上跑的车。因此，英国商人不愿意与政府官员有什么个人的人际瓜葛，政府官员的举止无非在国际贸易活动中起到只是一个礼仪的作用。
总之，上述英国商业文化及内涵对我多年从事对外贸易的人士看似都是小事，并对此这些文化内涵有深入了解；但在实际交往的活动中可能已经麻木不仁，而影响着中英双方经贸业务的深入发展，造成因小失大的结果。对于刚刚与英国商人有交往和联系的外经贸企业、公司、机构人员就更应该对此深入了解，会有利在今后与英国商人交往中作为规范自身举止，充分表现出中国乃是礼仪之邦，同时又是尊重异邦商业文化的国家
we should do reading comprehension, and speak a lot in class.before that ,we should form the habit of reciting words and phrases.listening to english every day is very important.of course, it is necessary for us to write a composition every week!
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