The standardized educational or psychological test that are widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in congress. (31) The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention form the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. (32) How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount , reliability , and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.
Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. (33) Whether to use tests. other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.
(34) In general, the tests work most effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. (35) For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality, and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.
31. 把标准化测试作为抨击目标是错误的,因为在抨击这类测试时,批评者未考虑其弊病是来自人们对测试不甚了解或使用不当。
32. 这些预测在多大程度上被后来的表现证实,这取决于被采用信息的数量、可靠性和适宜性以及解释这些信息的技能和才智。
33. 因此,究竟是采用测试还是其他种类的信息,或是在某一特定情况下两者同时使用,须凭有关相对效度的经验依据而定,也取决于诸如费用和现有条件等因素。
34. 一般地说,当被测定的特征能够被很准确的界定时,测试最为有效;而当被测定或被预测的东西不能够被明确地界定时,测试的效果则最差。
35. 例如,测试并不弥补明显的社会不公;因此,它们不能说明一个物质条件差的年轻人,如果在较好的环境下成长,会有多大才干。
According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked force in expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge. (31) Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. (32) “In short”, a leader of the new school contends, “the scientific revolution, as we call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions.”
(33)Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo,
The centerpiece of the argument of a technology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo’s role at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the center of all heavenly motions. (34) Galileo’s greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the Earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eye-glasses.(www.yygrammar.com)
Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute. (35)Whether the Government should increase the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa (反之) often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.
31. 他们(新学派科学家们)说,科学的发展与其说源于天才伟人的真知灼见,不如说源于改进了的技术和工具等等更为普通的东西。
32. “简言之”,新学派的一位领袖人物主张:“我们所称的科学革命,主要是指一系列器具的改进、发明和使用,这些改进、发明和应用使科学向各个方向发展发展。”
33. 工具和技术本身作为根本性创新的源泉多年来在很大程度上被史学家和哲学家忽视了。
34. 伽利略最光辉的业绩在于他在1609年第一个把新发明的望远镜对准天空,旨在证实行星围绕太阳旋转而不是围绕地球旋转。
35. 政府究竟是以减少对技术的经费投入而增加对纯理论科学的经费投入,还是相反,这往往取决于把哪一方看作是驱动力量。
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. (15 points)
(31) The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about and given precise and exact explanation. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graded weights. (32) It is not that the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but that the latter is a much finer apparatus and of course much more accurate in its measurement than the former.
You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar examples. (33) You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction (归纳法) and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from Nature certain natural laws, and that out of these, by some special skill of their own, they build up their theories. (34) And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your lives.
There is a well-known incident in one of Motiere’s plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose (散文) during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. (35)Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena.
31. 科学研究的方法不过是人类思维活动的必要表达方式,也就是对一切现象进行思索并给以精确而严谨解释的表达方式。
32. 这并不是说面包师或卖肉者所用的磅秤和化学家所用的天平的构造原理或工作方式上存在差别,而是说与前者相比,后者是一种更精密的装置,因而在计量上必然更准确。
33. 你们都多次听说过,科学家是用归纳法和演绎法工作的,他们用这些方法,在某种意义上说,力求从自然界找出某些自然规律,然后他们根据这些规律,用自己的某种非同一般的本领,建立起他们的理论。
34. 许多人以为,普通人的思维活动根本无法与科学家的思维过程相比,认为这些思维过程必须经过某种专门训练才能管理。
35. 在座的诸位中,大概不会有人一整天都没有机会进行一连串复杂的思考活动,这些思考活动与科学家在探索自然现象原因时所经历的思考活动,尽管复杂程度不同,但在类型上是完全一样的。
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. (15 points)
“Intelligence” at best is an assumptive construct―the meaning of the word has never been clear. 31) There is more agreement on the kinds of behavior referred to by the term than there is on how to interpret or classify them. But it is generally agreed that a person of high intelligence is one who can grasp ideas readily, make distinctions, reason logically, and make use of verbal and mathematical symbols in solving problems. An intelligence test is a rough measure of a child’s capacity for learning, particularly for learning the kinds of things required in school. It does not measure character, social adjustment, physical endurance, manual skills, or artistic abilities. It is not supposed to―it was not designed for such purposes. 32) To criticize it for such failure is roughly comparable to criticizing a thermometer for not measuring wind velocity.
The other thing we have to notice is that the assessment of the intelligence of any subject is essentially a comparative affair.
33) Now since the assessment of intelligence is a comparative matter we must be sure that the scale with which we are comparing our subjects provides a “valid” or “fair” comparison. It is here that some of the difficulties which interest us begin. Any test performed involves at least three factors: the intention to do one’s best, the knowledge required for understanding what you have to do, and the intellectual ability to do it. 34) The first two must be equal for all who are being compared, if any comparison in terms of intelligence is to be made. In school populations in our culture these assumptions can be made fair and reasonable, and the value of intelligence testing has been proved thoroughly. Its value lies, of course, in its providing a satisfactory basis for prediction. No one is in the least interested in the marks a little child gets on his test; What we are interested in is whether we can conclude from his mark on the test that the child will do better or worse than other children of his age at tasks which we think require “general intelligence”. 35) On the whole such a conclusion can be drawn with a certain degree of confidence, but only if the child can be assumed to have had the same attitude towards the test as the other with whom he is being compared, and only if he was not punished by lack of relevant information which they possessed.(www.nmet168.com)
31. 人们对智力这个词所指的各种表现意见比较一致,而对这些表现的解释或分类则有不同的看法。
32. 批评智力测试不反映上述情况,就犹如批评温度计不测风速一样。
33. 既然对智力的评估是比较而言的,那么我们必须确保,在对我们的对象进行比较时,我们所使用的尺度能提供有效的或公平的比较。34. 如果从智力方面进行任何比较的话,那么对所有的被比较者来说,前两个因素必须是一样的。
35. 总的来说,得出这种结论是有一定把握的,但前提是必须两个假定成立:这个孩子对测试的态度和与他相比较的孩子对测试的态度相同;他没有因为缺乏别的孩子已掌握的有关知识而被扣分。
Directions: Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. (15 points)
The fact is that the energy crisis, which has suddenly been officially announced, has been with us for a long time now, and will be with us for an even longer time. Whether Arab oil flows freely or not, it is clear to everyone that world industry cannot be allowed to depend on so fragile a base. (31) The supply of oil can be shut off unexpectedly at any time, and in any case, the oil wells will all run dry in thirty years or so at the present rate of use.
(32) New sources of energy must be found, and this will take time, but it is not likely to result in any situation that will ever restore that sense of cheap and plentiful energy we have had in the times past. For an indefinite period from here on, mankind is going to advance cautiously, and consider itself lucky that it can advance at all.
To make the situation worse, there is as yet no sign that any slowing of the world’s population is in sight. Although the birth-rate has dropped in some nations, including the
(33) The food supply will not increase nearly enough to match this, which means that we are heading into a crisis in the matter of producing and marketing food.
Taking all this into account, what might we reasonably estimate supermarkets to be like in the year 2001?
To begin with, the world food supply is going to become steadily tighter over the next thirty years―even here in the
It seems almost certain that by
In fact, as food items will tend to decline in quality and decrease in variety, there is very likely to be increasing use of flavouring additives. (35) Until such time as mankind has the sense to lower its population to the point where the planet can provide a comfortable support for all, people will have to accept more “unnatural food”.
31. 石油供应可能随时会被切断;不管怎样,以目前这种消费速度,只需30年左右,所有的油井都会枯竭。
32. 必须找到新的能源,这需要时间;而过去我们感觉到的那种能源价廉而充足的情况将不可能再出现了。
33. 食品供应的增加将赶不上人口的增长,这就意味着我们在粮食的生产和购销方面正陷入危机。
34. 这种困境将是确定无疑的,因为能源的匮乏使农业无法以高能量消耗这种美国耕种方式继续下去了,而这种耕种方式使投入少数农民就可获得高产成为可能。
35. 除非人类终于意识到要把人口减少到这样的程度:使地球能为所有人提供足够的饮食,否则人们将不得不接受更多的“人造食品”。