阅读理解
Sometimes it is difficult to talk to taxi drivers. They must give all their attention to the road as they work out the shortest way to the place where you are going. However, passengers from Wangfujing were in surprise when they took a taxi. The driver just would not stop talking in English.
Organized by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy, “Dare to Speak” examines if Chinese people will speak English in “real-life” situations.
Matthew Knowles, an acting student from South Carolina at Beijing Film Academy, acted the part as the “driver”. He collected six passengers on Saturday morning, most of whom were female white-collar （白领）workers.
“Of course they were surprised at first, wondering why I'm driving a taxi, and wondering whether this is a real taxi, but then most of them were pretty willing to speak,” he said. Knowles said he was also surprised by his “passengers”. “Apart from my first ‘passenger', who could speak very little English, all the rest spoke English very well, and it was fun to communicate with them,” he said, adding that some “passengers” were quite talkative.
The “foreign taxi driver” project was just one of the “Dare to Speak” activities, which have been going on since the end of October. Other projects included a foreign store owner near a high school in Beijing, a cook in a Shanghai university canteen. They were testing the willingness of Chinese people, especially students and white-collar workers, to speak to foreigners in English.
Rong Xin, senior manager of IELTS （雅思） with the British Embassy, said they hoped to let IELTS takers in China know that communication is the ultimate goal of IELTS.
“We hope that more and more IELTS takers in China can realize the importance of communicating in English in real life, instead of just getting high test scores,” she said.
