2000年基础英语试卷
I. Reading Comprehension. (32 points)
1. Read the following article and paraphrase the underlined parts:
The twenty-first century will mark the era of tertiary and lifelong learning for everybody－or almost everybody. Thus the West Report from Australia, echoing a key theme of the immediately preceding Dearing Report in the UK1. (National Committee f Inquiry into Higher Education [NCIHE],1997).
The notion of lifelong learning has pervaded higher education around the world as governments have increasingly come to recognize a link between their education systems and national economic performance. However, policy relating to the actual making of the link needs deeper consideration. The development of “key skills” has been seen in the UK as an important way in which higher education can contribute to economic development, but it can be argued that to focus on these skills represents a narrow and insufficient response to what employers —— and the wider interest —— really need (see Stephenson’s [1998] argument for a “capability” approach to higher education and, more broadly, the discussion in part 2 of Barnett [1994]. However the contested nature of this aspect of higher education might be resolved, current discussions have left relatively unexplored the broader implications for curricula2 and, in particular, for fist-cycle provision.
In earlier times many took the view that a first degree3 was a sufficient basis for lifetime career. The accelerating pace of knowledge development has undermined this conception, and increasing attention is now being given to the provision of degree programs and other opportunities for professional development. This raises a serious question: what function does the first degree serve in the context of lifelong learning?
Logically, it makes no sense in today’s world to try to pack first degree curricula with all the knowledge, understanding and skills need for the rest of a lifetime. There simply is not the time available, and anyway curriculum-packing runs the risk of superficiality of learning4. A first degree should, if they have not already acquired it, development in students the ability to learn how to learn, as well as enhance their subject-specific expertise and other relevant skills. Te old saying is valid here: giving individual each a fish might feed them for a day, but teaching them the skills of fishing could feed them for a life.
There is a need to think of the first degree in terms of the quality, rather than the quantity, of students’ learning. In today’s world the first degree becomes more of a foundation qualification, upon which graduates will expect to build during their lives. Some might react by saying that to make such a shift implies a dilution of academic standards —— but the counter is that standards relate primarily to the quality and not the quantity, of students’ learning5. The reconstructed first degree need be no intellectual poor relation: academic rigor can be built into curricula of widely differing focus. The standards may well be different, but they do not have to be inferior.
Some reduction in the volume of discipline-specific content will require an adjustment of thought6 —— in particular, on the part of employers and professional bodies. The professional accreditation of some first degree programs is seen by some as an essential condition. However, there seems no necessary reason for this to be the case —— and it might well be to professions’ longer-term advantage if first degree curricula were to pay particular attention to developing in graduates the ability to learn to learn7, leaving subsequent professional and developmental activities to provide the “topping-up” that would cohere with the professional bodies’ expectations.
A strategic vision for higher education in the next millennium requires more than a muttering of the mantra of lifelong learning. Making lifelong learning “work” demands a sustained commitment t fitting together the pieces of the multi-dimensional jigsaw whose components include educational purposes, values and practicalities. Academics are among the people who ought to relish this jigsaw’s challenge.
1 echoing a key them of the immediately preceding Dearing Report in the UK.
2 However the contested nature of this aspect of higher education might be resolved, current discussions have left relatively unexplored the broader implications for curricula
3 first degree
4 curriculum-packing runs the risk of superficiality of learning
5 but the counter is that standards relate primarily to the quality and not the quantity, of students’ learning
6 Some reduction in the volume of discipline-specific content will require an adjustment of thought
7 it might well be to professions’ longer-term advantage if first degree curricula were to pay particular attention to developing in graduates the ability to learn to learn.
II. Read the following passage and answer the following questions: (28 points)
When the Grand Old man of Victorian England, William Ewart Gladstone, was in his 85th year, he was steering the second home-rule bill for Ireland through a recalcitrant parliament and going home to translate the odes of Horace at night. When Ronald Reagan reached the tender age of 73, he was fighting his second presidential election campaign. Alan Greenspan, the world’s most successful central banker, is also 73. Politics and economics are plainly jobs that the old can do well. They are not alone. The boardrooms of the world’s big companies are full of non-executive sages, telling whippersnapper 40-somethings how to run their firms.1
Why, then, are so few of the rich world’s old folk in employment? They live longer and enjoy better health than their parents did. Most jobs have become less physically demanding; most people in late middle age are well educated; most evidence suggests that training older workers, if done sensibly, is no harder than training the young. Bu the figures show an astonishing and long-drawn-out retreat from the job market. As recently as 1960, men could expect to spend 50 of their 68 years of life in paid work. Today, they are likely to work for only 38 of their 76 years. Fewer than two-thirds of men in their late 50s and early 60s ate in the rich world’s labor force. Indeed, by the time they celebrate their 55th birthday, more than half of Europe’s men have gone home to translate Horace. 2
For most, that is something to celebrate. Never before have so many people been able to look forward to so many years of healthy leisure. Two-thirds of people say that they like being retired and have no desire to go back to work. There are grandchildren to enjoy, foreign countries to visit, books to read and golf games to play. The pleasures of old age are less expensive, and more widely available, than ever before. 3
The big question is whether all of this retirement is voluntary. It is worthy asking for its own sake; in a liberal society, the old, too, should be free to choose. But, in addition, the stampede to retire has consequences not merely for the old themselves. And it is often being encouraged by perverse public policy.
Widespread and early retirement will increasingly affect the lives of everyone else, for two reasons. The first is a familiar one: as the share of old folk in the population rises, so will the burden on the young of paying or their pensions and health care. The second is less discussed: the rise of the grey-headed leisured class has consequences for economic growth because of its impact on the supply of labor and of capital.
Many governments, their eyes focused on the impact that future pensions claims will have on public finances, have embarked on reforms —— but not always reforms that give pensioners a freer choice. For their eyes are also trained, in the shorter term, on high unemployment.4 Governments, especially in Western Europe, are pressing more people to retire early, on the mistaken view that this will provide jobs for the young, even as they try to trim pensioners’ entitlements in order to reduce the burden on public finances. This is unforgivable from a liberal point of view. It is also foolish from the perspective of public policy.
The sheer size of the baby-boom generation that starts to teach retirement age over the coming decade me4ans that there will be a simple, but huge imbalance: too few people in work, paying taxes and pension contributions; too many in retirement, drawing on pensions and running up health costs. In that he main alternatives will be to renege on the pensions that workers thought they had been promised, or to raise taxes. It would be far better for the health of economies if more older people went on working instead. Quite small rises in the ages at which people retire have large effects. 5 As long as older folk stay in the job market, they pay taxes (helping one side of the fiscal balance) and draw either no pension, or a smaller one (helping the other).
Governments should recognize that people (like politicians) would prefer to decide for themselves when to retire. As present, the choice is, perversely, biased in favor of retirement. For example, in many countries, the opportunity cost of working beyond the minimum retirement age is high: workers must often leave the job market in order to receive a state pension, and even where this is not the case, they rarely earn any extra pension for their additional taxes and contributions. If they claim disability benefit, as many in their late 50s and early 60s do, their pension rights are rarely affected. Such perverse incentives should be replaced with neutrality.
Employers, often urged on by trade unions, also put obstacles of their own in the way of older workers. Pension schemes based on defined benefits make it disproportionately expensive to offer jobs to older people. Pay schemes that reward long service more than merit and productivity make it disproportionately costly to keep older workers on the payroll.6 And sheer discrimination, formally banned in the United States but flourishing in most countries, persuades many older folk to go home rather than risk probable rebuff.
Would such changes coax 60-year-olds off the golf course? In America, where jobs for older workers are plentiful and the government is scrapping the tax disincentives for older folk to work, early retirement has begun to fall. Gie people a choice, and they might surprise you.
l Whipper-snapper: an insignificant, esp. young, person who appears impertinent.
Answer the following questions.
1. The boardrooms of the world’s big companies are full of non-executive sages, telling whippersnapper 40-somethings how to run their firms.
(1) What is the meaning of “boardroom” in this sentence?
(2) What is meant by “non-executive sages”?
(3) What is meant by “whipper-snapper 40 somethings”
2. By the time they celebrate their 55th birthday, more than half of Europe’s men have gone home to translate Horace.
Do they really go home to translate poetry?
What do they do?
3. The pleasures of old age are less expensive, and more widely available, than ever before.
Explain the idea of this sentence in your own words.
4. For their eyes are also trained, in the shorter term, on high unemployment.
What is the meaning of this sentence? Explain in your own words.
5. Quite small rises in the ages at which people retire have large effects.
Explain in your own words.
6. Pay schemes that reward long service more than merit and productivity make it disproportionately costly to keep older workers on the payroll.
(1) Why is it very costly to keep older workers on the payroll?
(2) What is meant by “to keep…on the payroll”?
7. Does the author of this article advocate that workers reaching retirement age should stay on their jobs? If so, why? If not, what does he advocate?
I. Translate the following Chinese passage into English (40 points)
从诞生的那天起，人类就开始一刻也不停地创造着他的文明。从埃及的金字塔到中国的万里长城，从达·芬奇名画中蒙娜丽莎那微笑到梵高那色彩斑斓的向日葵，从撼人心魄的英雄交响曲到动人的天鹅湖，从《荷马史诗》到《红楼梦》，无一不是前人留个后世的宝贵财产。
就中国人而言，对秦始皇兵马俑，我们有无限的赞叹，对于万里长城，我们有无限的自豪。但对于我们的无形遗产、曾经塑造了我们民族精神的——儒家、道家文化，我们却知之甚少。传统中的视个人道德为人生的最高价值所在，已在“现代生活”中成为笑谈。我们不仅在生活方式上盲目追求西方，不仅说着写着已经欧化的句子，而且在文学、历史、哲学这些人文学科领域里，到处用着西方的理论、术语。我们这里并不是反对西方的东西，西方的这些理论都是世界文化遗产的一份子，我们也应该加以保护和继承。但是，一个民族之所以成其为一个民族，必须有其自身的东西。我们应该认真地研究和思考本民族的文化典籍，在继承与更新中把其中所铭刻的文化脉络延续下去。
