【英语入门必读】《Word Power Made Easy》作者Norman Lewis简介

网上有人说，《Word Power Made Easy》作者是为了卖书而故意夸大需要掌握的单词量。这主要是他们根本不了解作者的基本情况。

Norman Lewis是一位精通语法学、语源学的英文词典编纂者和作家，书中对如何有效地增长英文词汇知识和对英文的真正掌握，细致而全面地分专题进行了论述。

2万单词是本书出版时调查的资料。作者提供的新资料显示：母语是英语家庭长大的10岁的孩子的单词在3.5万以上。而美国普通的大二学生（sophomore）的词汇量是20万左右。而且作者一再强调：孩子们是在获取的知识的同时顺便掌握单词的。根本没有人为了学英语而背单词。强烈建议中国学生以《Word Power Made Easy》为入门教材（一开始可以借助中文版的参考学习）。

其实您只要上维基百科查一下就能了解到相关的资料，前提是能读懂英语文章。

Early life

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1912, Lewis was orphaned at five and raised by an older sister and her husband. At eleven, he published his first article, a book report that appeared in the now-defunct New York World Telegram.

Early career

Lewis sold his first non-fiction work--a quiz on the varieties of manias--to Leisure magazine for $1 in 1939. A fifteen-year magazine writing career followed.

A self-confessed "terrible student," Lewis spent nine years dropping in and out of City College of New York before earning a master's from Columbia University. While a student at Columbia he wrote his first book: a sixth-grade textbook entitled Journeys Through Wordland in 1941.

Publishing success

In the early 1940s, Lewis wrote a monthly column for Your Life magazine that led to a contract with Funk & Wagnalls Co. -- and the promise that Funk would lend marquee value by collaborating on a book.

Eventually Funk "did two or three chapters," Lewis said. "I did the rest. I realized I was being had, but I thought it was a way to get started." With Funk's name on the cover of 30 Days and an advertising budget behind it, the book took off. It is considered one of the most widely used and popular how-to books of its kind. First published in 1942, the latest edition was published in 2003. The book was one of sixty-three that Lewis had written or edited.

Other better-known titles included Word Power Made Easy, a vocabulary builder published in 1949, and Roget's New Pocket Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, published in 1961.

Lewis told The Times in 1978 that the revised Roget's sold "like mad." At the time, more than five million copies of the pocket thesaurus had been purchased.

Despite his publishing success, Lewis often said that "writing is my job, but teaching is my recreation."^[1]

Much of Lewis’s work is still in print, including Word Power Made Easy (Pocket Books, 1979); 30 Days to Better English (Signet, 1985); and 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary (Pocket Books, 1971), written with Wilfred Funk. Lewis also edited several editions of Roget’s Thesaurus, including The New Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form (Berkley, 1976).^[2]

Teaching

Lewis started his teaching career at New York University and the City College of New York. From 1964 to 1995, he taught English--including grammar, etymology and vocabulary--at Rio Hondo College, a two-year community college in Whittier, California. For more than a decade, he was also the chairman of Rio Hondo's communications department.

He died in 2006 in Whittier, California at the age of ninety-three of natural causes.^[1] Besides his daughter Debbie of Los Angeles, Lewis is survived by his wife, the former Mary Goldstein, another daughter, Margie of Whittier, two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.^[3]

Works

Word Power Made Easy

• 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary (with Wilfred Funk)
• Dictionary of Word Power
• How to Read Better and Faster
• Dictionary of Correct Spelling
• Speak Better, Write Better
• Correct Spelling Made Easy
• Better English
• Instant Word Power
• Instant Spelling Power
• Dictionary of Pronunciation
• Rapid Vocabulary Builder
• R.S.V.P - Reading Spelling Vocabulary Pronunciation