Because in a foreign company for two years, so the frequency of English is relatively high, but always felt that my English is still very general. Recently a friend gave me that there was a BEC Business English exam can consider it, so I back the word for some time.
This two-day thought, Ted can see a day, then the word back, one hand on their English listening and benefits, it can also look at the way the pro forma PubMed English.
Professor Shi Yigong have seen before writing this two blog posts, I feel good, so specifically to find out, documented here, turning out for yourself more often to learn about.
Recently, his plan:
1. Ted at least one report a day;
2. scallop word back every day;
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How to improve research and writing skills in English
As a research worker, research papers published in international academic journals and peer exchange, the only way to achieve international influence. Some domestic scientists, experiments done very beautiful, but often plagued by inadequate writing paper, has become a major obstacle to international exchange. From the blogger's experience starting to doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and young PI provide a reference. Finally, a brief summary.
My classmate in college all know, when my English is not good (CET only "good"), written especially bad. When it first arrived in the United States, poorly adapted to the English environment, JBC read an article to be five or six hours, and often do not understand the meaning of some key words, psychological pressure is enormous.
Luckily, when I was studying for a doctorate, in April 1991 and met Xuexiong teacher John Desjarlais at Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University). After listening to my distress, John told me, "Spend 45 minutes every day reading Washington Post, and you will be cruising with your written English in two years" (spend 45 minutes a day reading "Washington Post", after two years you writing skills will be handy). This recommendation Zhenghewoyi - I was just interested in news! So, I've finished the first day after the experiment, will spend an hour at ten o'clock reading "Washington Post", mainly to see the A version (news section). At first, I only read one hour two or three short message or a lengthy report, in the middle also often have to look up to see the new words. But I knew it, my reading was significantly improved, with the 1992-year-old Bush Clinton ran for president, I followed the news, often one hour can read a few pages of news or four or five lengthy report, sometimes also just see to tell the news vivid senior senior sister apprentice to listen.
Read directly enhance my English writing skills. After reading some news, I often have the urge to start writing their own feelings of. 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the Chinese swimming team achieved good results in four gold five silver, the major US media have accused the Chinese athletes taking banned drugs, but there is no evidence of any detected, entirely based on the feeling of American athletes. Matter makes me very angry, for the first time in my life, "Washington Post" and the "Baltimore Sun" (The Baltimore Sun) each wrote a letter to comments reported unfair. I did not expect two days after the "Baltimore Sun" was actually intact to my letter published in the "Letters" section, congratulate my colleagues, and I triumphantly. Encouraged by this matter, I am in the next day more than three years, often to write some articles published in the press (most of the contribution came to nothing), also on behalf of Chinese students write a letter to the school fight over the interests of Chinese students. Sometimes there are surprises. 95 One day, a friend called to tell me: I have a comment on the article published today, "Baltimore Sun"! I hurriedly rushed to the street to buy 5 newspapers, and sure enough, the A version of the penultimate page, in order to 15x15 cm in length published I sent the newspaper a week ago, I thought not published an article attacking Wu Hongda .
These are the brief period of English writing process my personal improvement. However, research papers different from the letters from readers, has its professional features, and even fixed format. In 1994, my first full write research papers, I feel bad. Finally finished the article, even I do not want to read a second time; after barely modified, to the boss Jeremy Berg. He dragged three weeks did not see my article, I could not bear it, to urge him, 9:00, Jeremy told me: Look today! 11:00, I went to his office urging, the secretary stopped me and said Jeremy was handling important issues, not to disturb two ago. I was anxious, I do not know in what Jeremy. Half past one pm, Jeremy hurried over to me, took a stack of paper, "This is the draft. Please let me know what you think. We can aim for a Science report." (This is a first draft, you see how we you can try the "science") I look closely, my God! A total of seven, more than four hours the whole article, Jeremy has finished, but the lack Method and references. Let me depressed, he did not use my first draft.
[In fact, I write articles in one go. I also followed Jeremy style. In October 2006, we are at a disadvantage in the competition, there are two subjects at risk scoop, I have twice, a night to catch an article. October 15, the evening around 8:00 started writing, all night, the next day 10:00 to complete a follow magazine "cells" format papers, including abstract, introduction, results, discussion, read it again after 16:30 complete the online submission. The article published in the December final "natural" child published on "Structural and Molecular Biology" (electronic version published in the November 10). Another article, October 18, 6 pm start writing, overnight, to complete the next 8:00, 9:30 to complete the submission, eventually published in the "cell" of 15 December. Of course, an article can be done overnight, there is an important premise that the research field is very familiar, probably thinking the whole article has been well thought out, all of the Figures are well in advance. These preliminary work even threw himself into the need 3-4 days. ]
从1994年自己写第一篇科研论文的艰难到现在写起来得心应手、驾轻就熟，我总结出如下经验：
1．要写好科研论文，必须先养成读英文文章的习惯，争取每天30-60分钟。刚开始可以选择以读英文报纸、英文新闻为主，逐渐转为读专业杂志。我会在近期专门写一篇博客文章介绍一套行之有效的增强读专业杂志能力的办法。
2．写科研论文，最重要的是逻辑。逻辑的形成来自对实验数据的总体分析。必须先讨论出一套清晰的思路，然后按照思路来做图(Figures)，最后才能执笔。
3．具体写作时，先按照思路（即Figures）写一个以subheading为主的框架，然后开始具体写作。第一稿，切忌追求每一句话的完美，更不要追求词语的华丽，而主要留心逻辑（logic flow），注意前后句的逻辑关系、相邻两段的逻辑关系。写作时，全力以赴，尽可能不受外界事情干扰（关闭手机、座机），争取在最短时间内拿出第一稿。还要注意：一句话不可太长。
4．学会照葫芦画瓢。没有人天生会写优秀的科研论文，都是从别人那里学来的。学习别人的文章要注意专业领域的不同，有些领域（包括我所在的结构生物学）有它内在的写作规律。科研文章里的一些话是定式，比如 “To investigate the mechanism of …, we performed …”, “These results support the former, but not the latter, hypothesis …”, “Despite recent progress, how … remains to be elucidated …” 等等。用两次以后，就逐渐学会灵活运用了。在向别人学习时，切忌抄袭。在美国一些机构，连续7个英文单词在一起和别人的完全一样，原则上就被认为抄袭（plagiarism）。
5．第一稿写完后，给自己不要超过一天的休息时间，开始修改第二稿。修改时，还是以逻辑为主，但对每一句话都要推敲一下，对abstract和正文中的关键语句要字斟句酌。学会用“Thesaurus”（同义词替换）以避免过多重复。第二稿的修改极为关键，再往后就不会大改了。
6．第二稿以后的修改，主要注重具体的字句，不会改变整体逻辑了。投稿前，一定要整体读一遍，对个别词句略作改动。记住：学术期刊一般不会因为具体的语法错误拒绝一篇文章，但一定会因为逻辑混乱而拒绝一篇文章。
这套方法行之有效，我对所有的学生和博士后都会如此教导。我的第一个博士后是柴继杰，1999年加入我在普林斯顿大学的实验室。继杰当时的英文阅读和写作能力很差。我对他的第一个建议就是，“每天花半小时读英文报纸”。难能可贵的是：他坚持下来了！经过几年的努力，2004年继杰已经能写出不错的grant proposal，2006年他的第一篇独立科研论文发表在《Molecular Cell》上，随后相继在《自然》发表两篇、在其它一流学术期刊发表十多篇论文。写作能力开始成熟。
发表论文是一件值得高兴的事情，但要明白：论文只是一个载体，是为了向同行们宣告你的科研发现，是科学领域交流的重要工具。所以，在科研论文写作时，一定要谨记于心的就是：用最简单的话表达最明白的意思，但一定要逻辑严谨！其实，中文和英文论文皆如此！
学生如何提高专业英文阅读能力
【 序：此文针对本科生和一、二年级的博士、硕士生，对高年级的博士生和博士后也应该有参考价值。该文的一些背景可以参考我此前关于提高英文写作能力的博文： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=349932】
从小到大，我感性思维多一些，不善于读书。85至89年在清华生物系读本科期间，从未读过任何一种英文专业期刊。我受到的与英文阅读相关的训练一共只有两个。一是我在1986年暑假期间选修的时任系主任的蒲慕明老师开设的《生物英语》系列讲座，隐隐约约记得蒲先生让我们阅读一些诸如DNA双螺旋发现之类的科普性英文文章，很有意思。但时间较短，暑假过后也没有养成读英文文章的习惯。二是《生物化学》这门课。与现在的清华生命学院形成鲜明对比，我上大学期间的所有基础课和专业课都是采用中文教材、中文讲课，只有郑昌学老师讲授的《生物化学》采用了Lehninger的《Principles of Biochemistry》，而且郑老师要求我们每个学生每次课后阅读10-20页教材。我们同学大多感觉到专业英文阅读有所提高。
1990年4月至7月初，我在依阿华州Ames小镇的Iowa State University度过了初到美国的前三个月，其中大部分时间在Herbert Fromm教授的实验室做轮转（rotation），跟随刘峰和董群夫妻两人做研究（刘峰现在University of Texas Health Science Center做教授）。当时感觉最困难的就是读专业论文。有一次，Fromm教授要求我在组会上讲解一篇《Journal of Biological Chemistry》的文章，我提前两天开始阅读，第一遍花了足足六个小时，许多生词只能依靠英汉词典，文章中的有些关键内容还没有完全读懂，当时的感觉是JBC的文章怎么这么长、这么难懂？！真有点苦不堪言。为了能给Fromm教授和师兄师姐留下好印象，第二天又花了好几个小时读第二遍，还做了总结。第三天我在组会上的表现总算没有给清华丢脸。但是，前前后后，真搞不清楚自己为了这一篇文章到底花了多少时间！
90年7月我转学到约翰霍普金斯大学以后，与本科来自北大的虞一华同在IPMB program。虞一华大我一岁，来巴尔地摩之前已经在夏威夷大学读了一年的研究生，对于科研论文的阅读比我强多了。他常常在IPMB的办公室里拿着《科学》和《自然》周刊津津有味地阅读，看得我很眼馋，也不理解其中那些枯燥的文章有什么意思。他告诉我：他在读很有意思的科学新闻。科学新闻能有什么意思？虞一华给我讲了好几个故事：洛克菲勒大学校长诺贝尔奖得主David Baltimore如何深陷泥潭、人类基因组测序如何争辩激烈、HIV病毒究竟是谁发现的，等等。我还真没有想到学术期刊上会有这么多我也应该看得懂的内容！从那时起，每一期新的《科学》和《自然》一到，我也开始尝试着阅读里面的新闻和研究进展介绍，这些内容往往出现在“News & Comment”“Research News”“News & Views”“Perspectives”等栏目，文笔平实，相对于专业的科研论文很容易读懂。有时，我还把读到的科研新闻讲给我的同事朋友们听，而同事的提问和互动对我又是更好的鼓励。除了《科学》和《自然》，我也常常翻看《科学美国人》(“Scientific American”)。
与《细胞》(Cell)、《生物化学期刊》（JBC）等非常专业的期刊不同，《科学》和《自然》里面有相当一部分内容是用来做科普教育的。《科学》周刊的“Perspectives”和《自然》周刊的“News & Views”栏目都是对重要科学论文的深入浅出的介绍，一般1-3页，读起来比较通俗易懂，较易入门。读完这些文章后，再读原始的科学论文，感觉好多了！而且可以把自己的体会与专家的分析比较一下，找找差距，有时甚至也能找回来一点自信！
从1998年在普林斯顿大学任职到现在清华大学做教授，我总是告诉自己实验室的所有年轻人（包括本科生、硕士生、博士生、博士后）下面这几点读科研论文的体会，也希望我的学生跟我学：
1．请每位学生每周关注《科学》和《自然》。（生命科学界的学生还应该留心《细胞》）。如果时间有限，每周花一个小时读读这两种周刊里的文章标题以及与自己研究领域相关的科研论文的abstract,即可！这样做可以保证一个学生基本上能够跟踪本领域最重要的发现和进展，同时开阔视野，大概知道其它领域的动态。
2．在时间充足的情况下，可以细读《科学》和《自然》里的新闻及科研论文。如果该科研论文有“News & Views”或“Perspectives”来介绍，请先读这些文章，这类导读的文章会提炼问题，就好比是老师事先给学生讲解一番论文的来龙去脉，对学生阅读原始论文有很大帮助。
3．在读具体的科研论文时，最重要的是了解文章的主线逻辑。文章中的所有Figures都是按照这个主线逻辑展开描述的。所以，我一般先读“introduction”部分，然后很快地看一遍Figures。大概知道这条主线之后，才一字一句地去读“results”和“discussion”。
4．当遇到一些实验或结果分析很晦涩难懂时，不必花太多时间深究，而力求一气把文章读完。也许你的问题在后面的内容中自然就有解答。这与听学术讲座非常相似！你如果想每个细节都听懂，留心每一个技术细节，那你听学术讲座不仅会很累，而且也许会为了深究一个小技术环节而影响了对整个讲座逻辑推理及核心结论的理解。
5．对个别重要的文章和自己领域内的科研论文，应该精读。对与自己课题相关的每一篇论文则必须字斟句酌地读。这些论文，不仅要完全读懂，理解每一个实验的细节、分析、结论，还必须联想到这些实验和结论对自己的课题的影响和启发，提出自己的观点。
6．科学论文的阅读水平是循序渐进的。每个人开始都会很吃力，所以你有这种感觉不要气馁。坚持很重要，你一定会渐入佳境。当你有问题时或有绝妙分析时，应该与师兄师姐或找导师讨论。
7．科研训练的一个重要组成部分就是科研论文的阅读。每一个博士生必须经过严格的科研论文阅读的训练。除了你自己的习惯性阅读外，你应该在研究生阶段选修以阅读分析专业文献为主的一至两门课，在实验室内也要有定期的科研论文讨论（Journal Club）。如果你的实验室还没有这种讨论，你们学生可以自发地组织起来。
8．前面几条都是讨论如何提高科研论文的阅读能力，但是一旦入了门，就要学会critical reading。不要迷信已发表的论文，哪怕是发表在非常好的期刊上。要时刻提醒自己：该论文逻辑是否严谨，数据是否可靠，实验证据是否支持结论，你是否能想出更好的实验，你是否可以在此论文的基础上提出新的重要问题？等等。
天外有天，读科研论文是一件很简单、但也很深奥的事情。一般的学生常常满足于读懂、读透一篇好的论文，优秀的学生则会举一反三、通过查找references纵深了解整个领域的历史、现状，并展望该领域未来的可能进展。
我从1990年对学术论文一窍不通到96年博士后期间的得心应手，还常常帮助同事分析，自以为水平了得。但是有一件事让我看到了自己的严重不足，颇为羞愧。1996年，是SMAD蛋白发现及TGF-b信号转导研究的最激动人心的一年，哈佛医学院的Whitman实验室在十月份的《自然》杂志上以“Article”的形式发表了一篇名为“A transcriptional partner for MAD proteins in TGF-b signaling”的文章。读完之后，正好遇到TGF-b领域的著名学者Joan Massague,我对Joan评论说：I’m not so sure why this paper deserves a full article in Nature. They just identified another Smad-interacting protein, and the data quality is mediocre. 完全出乎我的意料，Joan马上回应我：I disagree! This paper links the cytoplasmic Smad protein into the nucleus and identifies a transcription factor as its interacting protein. Now the TGF-b signaling pathway is complete. It is a beautiful Nature article! 这件事对我触动极大：原来大师的视野和品位远远在我之上。从那以后，我也开始从整个领域的发展方面来权衡一篇文章的重要性，这件事对我今后为国际重要学术期刊审稿、自己实验室选择研究课题都起到了相当重要的作用。
如今，我阅读一篇本领域内的科研论文，非常顺利，而且常常可以看出一些作者没有想到或分析到的关键点。回想从前，感慨万千，感谢蒲慕明、郑昌学、虞一华、John Desjarlais、Jeremy Berg、Joan Massague等一批老师和同事对我的帮助。我很留心，也很用心。
希望所有的学生也能通过努力和坚持对英文科研论文的阅读得心应手！
Reference：
1.http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-46212-349932.html
2.http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-46212-350496.html