Function words analysis — A reading comprehension aid for Chinese engineers

Generally speaking. Chinese college graduates in the fifties and sixties took Russian as their second language, and those who graduated in the seventies had no second language to speak of. Now, in the years of our Open Door Policy, they find they have to learn some English and learn it quickly. They try to learn from radio and TV and many take English courses of 4 to 6 months, with varying degree of success. Their chief stumbling blocks are the longer English sentences — those with 30 words or more — which abound in technical literature, appearing even in some instruction manuals. They know the meaning of every word in the sentence, yet fail to comprehend it as a whole.