大学英语高级写作教程Unit 8.pptVIP

IV. Sample Writing 1. Read the following passages and sample summaries. Passage 1 Dropping the Sat? By George Will WASHINGTON — God, it has been said, is less exacting than General Motors because He floods the world with factory rejects. Because mankind is flawed, and because the United States has decided that as many people as possible — an extremely elastic concept, “possible” — should go to college, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, now known as the SAT, has been central to the college admissions process at the most prestigious schools. Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, wants his university to drop the SAT, partly to improve the student body’s racial and ethnic diversity. However, in any society, be it Periclean Athens or Elizabethan England or modern America, the question is not whether elites shall prevail, but which elites shall prevail. So something must perform the predictive function assigned to the SAT. The modern, democratic ideal was pithily expressed by the modern but undemocratic Napoleon — “careers open to talents.” In the 1950s that ideal led two unlikely subversives, Harvard’s President James B. Conant and a Harvard administrator, Henry Chauncy, to seek an aptitude test of verbal and quantitative reasoning to shatter the grip that an elite of inherited wealth had on elite institutions. In 1946 there were 2.4 million students on four-year campuses. That number grew slowly through 1960, when there were 3.2 million. Then came the explosion: by 1970 there were 7.5 million. Today there are 9.3 million. The problem of sorting through such numbers, and connecting colleges with suitable talents, is complicated because America does not have, and probably should not have, a uniform national achievement test for high school seniors. That would require something else America does not have, and probably should not have, a national curriculum. ??? The vast majority of America’s 2,300 four-year