托福口语题中，大家经常会被问到的一个问题：说说谁是对你影响最大的人

　　* Describe a person that influenced you the most.

　　今天跟大家分享的这篇文章what makes a teacher？作者是美国小说家约翰·斯坦贝克（1962-1968）诺贝尔文学奖获得者。代表作品：《愤怒的葡萄》（1939）《伊甸之东》《人鼠之间》

　　It is customary for adults to forget how hard and dull and long school is. The learning by memory of all the basic things one must know is a most incredible and ending effort. Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don’t believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it. （给你看大师如何举例子）School is not easy and it is not for the most part very much fun, but then, if you are very lucky, you may find a real teacher. Three real teachers in a lifetime is the very best of my luck. My first was a science and math teacher in high school, my second, a professor of creative writing at Stanford, and my third was my friend and partner, Ed Ricketts. （开门见山说清楚，作者所遇到的好老师都是谁）

　　I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

　　My three had these things in common: they all loved what they were doing. They did not tell, they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and precious.

　　I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery.

　　She aroused us to shouting, book-waving discussions. She had the noisiest class in school and she didn’t even seem to know it.（为什么女神如此特别，这里是细节） We could never stick to the subject. Our speculation ranged the world. She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths shielded in our hands like captured fireflies.

　　She was fired and perhaps rightly so, for failing to teach fundamentals. Such things must be learned. But she left a passion in us for the pure knowable world and she inflamed me with a curiosity which has never left.  I could not do simple arithmetic but through her I sensed that abstract mathematics was very much like music. （像爱音乐一样爱数学）When she was relieved, a sadness came over us but the light did not go out. She left her signature on us, the literature of the teacher who writes on minds. I have had many teachers who told me soon-forgotten backs but only three who created in me a new thing, a new attitude and a new hunger. I suppose that to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of the high school teacher. What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person. I can tell my son who looks forward with horror to fifteen years of drudgery that somewhere in the dusty dark a magic may happen that will light up the year…if he is very lucky.

　　作品点评：

　　我们都曾经有过许多老师，但我们是否都像斯坦贝克那样幸运呢？要知道良师就像大艺术家一样可遇而不可求。 斯坦贝克用纯正而优美的英语，揭示了为师之道的精髓所在。良师们的共同之处是：他们全都热爱自己的工作；他们并不灌输知识，而是激起学生求知的热望，教会学生如何去发现。他们用自己的思想和精神，把教书变成一门伟大的艺术。良师是照亮黑暗的明灯，拥有良师是人生最大的幸福之一。愿所有的老师都变成良师，愿所有的学生都遇见良师。