1、专业英语八级（作文）模拟试卷 108及答案与解析 一、 PART V WRITING 1 In todays competitive world when parents are busy accomplishing their career goals, more and more children are being brought up by their grandparents. It is reported that 90 percent of children under 3-year-old in Shanghai are being looked after by a gran
2、dparent. The following are opinions from different sides. Read the excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the opinions from different sides; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organ
3、ization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Parents RexTEC (China) : Id like to take care of my child by myself, but the reality is that my wife and I have to work in another city which is far away from our hometown. We have to leave our chil
4、d in the hometown with my parents before we have the ability to move our baby and parents to the city. I think most young couples who are working far away from home face a similar predicament. RAJEE (India) : Grandparents are indeed an important part of a growing childs life. But in my case they are
5、 so indulgent that it can really get very annoying. I am unable to discipline my daughter and inculcate good habits as they indulge her every whim and it is to them that she runs when she gets in trouble. Grandparents Austin (the UK) : As a grandparent in the UK of four, ages 12, 9, 8 and 4, I can s
6、ay that a fairly high percent of grandparents that have close contact with their own children do take steps to “day sit“ their grandchildren while their own children go to work. My children, two girls, live very close to me, both living on the same street. We do look after children very often, becau
7、se both my girls work in our business so we all pull together as and when needed. ROGERINCA (the US) : I think that whenever possible a child should be raised by his or her parents. This is what is most natural and what is best for the child. Taking me myself as an example, with advancing age I find
8、 I am not having enough energy or able to physically do all the things to my grandson that younger parents are able to do with their child. Experts Wyldsyde (Australia) : Grandparents raised their children and should not be the everyday parents of their grandchildren. Raising children is the parents
9、 job. I see people all too often dumping their children off on other people for no other reason than they want to go partying or for other reasons. You had the kids, now raise them. If it means that one of you works nights while the other works days then so be it. Stop pushing your duties off on oth
10、er people. Bex ( China) : It is not a good phenomenon that grandparents look after grandchildren. Grandparents have been working all their lives so they deserve a break. Most importantly, the parents should take more responsibilities of their own children. If you decide to have a kid, youd better be
11、 capable to look after him or her. SharkMinnow (Canada) : In Canada, children are not brought up by their grandparents. Young adults are taught to be independent and take care of their own kids. Grandparents can visit, but they do not live in the house or raise the children. If young people in Canad
12、a are not independent, financially stable to have children, then they are discouraged from doing so. Many Westerners think Chinese are immature and spoil this way in the fact that they just have their parents raise their kids. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. 2 It is estimated that China no
13、w has around 130 kinds of local languages, but 99 are used by fewer than 100,000 people, and 20 are used by less than 1,000 people. Most of them are disappearing from our map of language. So whether dialects should be allowed on air to preserve them? The following are opinions from different sides.
14、Read the excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instruction
15、s may result in a loss of marks. querist I think the main CCTV channels should remain in putonghua, but programmes can be shown in local dialects on local channels, ideally with subtitles or captioning available, especially in the case of news programming. Tyne While many people say that as a form o
16、f mass media, TV and radio broadcasters are obligated to take the lead in popularizing standard putonghua. It is not a move to oppress dialects; it is only to restrict irresponsible use of language in mass media such as slang, which is very unprofessional. maplerripple Apart from CCTV, all broadcast
17、ers should be commercially based. If people want programs in their own dialects and are willing to pay for them or companies are willing to buy commercials, why should the government intervene and lay down some crazy laws? PNP Putonghua is the national language of China, and it should be promoted ev
18、erywhere, particularly on TV and the radio! It is the lingua franca, the language that everyone in China is supposed to understand, a powerful unifying force among a nation of diverse dialectic groups! Dialects are localized languages, not widely used throughout China, just confined to the various d
19、ialectic groups, hence they should not be promoted via the mass media, certainly not on TV or the radio, not even on local stations! All local stations must help promote the national language, putonghua! It is very annoying for most people to hear dialects on TV or the radio because they cant unders
20、tand what is said, unless they belong to that dialectic group. The role of the mass media is to communicate important messages to people all over China; this would be defeated if dialects are popping up so often. Keep the dialects to the coffee shops, street markets, etc. , but not on TV or the radi
21、o. Another very important reason why only putonghua, and no dialects, should be allowed on air, is that it is the only language that most foreigners have learned before or after arriving in China, and this is the only language that can bridge the communication gap between them and the locals. Imagin
22、e how problematic it would be for a foreigner travelling through China; he has to learn each of those local dialects as he travels to different provinces, if putonghua is not used widely there! And by the way, this problem is not limited to foreigners only, even the Chinese face the same problem. A
23、Chinese from Shandong traveling to Guangdong is not going to be able to understand the guy in Guangdong who speaks Cantonese instead of putonghua, and vice versa! I strongly urge that putonghua be promoted and used widely, for the benefit of all, both the locals and foreigners! ngajia Cantonese has
24、9 tones, not 6. By the linguists rule: the more tones a language has, the more ancient it is; the most authentic Chinese dialect should be Cantonese. This could well be true as classical poems recited in Cantonese bring out both the spirit and soul, such as the poem Manjianghong composed by the grea
25、t patriot general Yuefei, who has a temple built in his honor by Lake Xihu in Hangzhou. 3 Nowadays, the mobile phone seems to be a must for everyone. Although a large number of children have mobiles until recently, it has often been the case that schools banned the use of mobiles. Do the good things
26、 about every child having a mobile phone outweigh the bad things that result from every child having a mobile phone? The following are opinions from different sides. Read the excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinio
27、ns; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Brilliant: Mobile phones are expensive. First there is the cost of buying the phone. Then there are a
28、ll the charges for using it. Often there are more charges for downloading apps and other extras. Sometimes we go over the limits of our call time or data allowance and are charged extra. Finally there may be extra costs when the phone needs to be replaced or upgraded. The average cell phone bill in
29、the United States is $ 70 for a month but it can sometimes be much higher. Clearly not every child can afford their own mobiles and often parents cant either. Emily: Having a mobile phone helps us learn in a lot of different ways. First, we learn about technology about how to use the mobile phone. S
30、econd, most phones today have apps to enable users to learn using the phone, or through the Internet. Phones can access online courses and lessons which can be provided in fun ways and can in some cases instantly tell you if you have the right answer. It may even sometimes be possible to do homework
31、 on a phone and send it to your teacher. Even without the Internet, phones can be used to provide short assignments, or to provide reminders to study. Din-nib; Mobile phones can easily distract us. They can be a particular problem in schools where they discourage us and those around us from working.
32、 Using a mobile phone while doing a piece of work will reduce your concentration making it more likely to make mistakes. Mobile phones, like video games, are also a distraction from doing other things. We dont just use phones for communication but also for games. Most young people spend well over an
33、 hour on their mobiles. As a result, there is much less time for other activities. Peter: Mobile phones bring us increased independence. Being able to use a mobile phone is clearly a basic skill to allow children to be independent. It means that they are not dependent on an adult being with them for
34、 parents to know where they are. The main reason for parents being unwilling to let children out on their own is fear for their safety. This is a fear that mobiles help prevent. This increased independence has other benefits, such as teaching us to be responsible for ourselves. Eileen: Mobile phones
35、 are a part of a desire to keep up with the fashion and friends. We all want the biggest and the best. Mobile phone companies know this and regularly bring out flashy new models that are immediately the one everyone must have. The more children have mobiles, the more they are caught up in this fashi
36、on. Our compulsion to want new things all the time is not good for us. Mobile phones, as with many other electronics, are damaging to the environment. Since we buy them and often dispose of the phone only a couple of years later and finally they pile up in gigantic rubbish dumps. Mobile phones are c
37、learly a luxury and not something that everyone should have, and we certainly should not keep buying new ones. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. 4 Much as we enjoy the conveniences the Internet brings us, the threat to our privacy is getting more and more serious. We should not ignore the da
38、nger brought by this violation of our privacy. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language qu
39、ality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Today, as companies strive to personalize the services and advertisements they provide over the Internet, the surreptitious collection of personal information is rampant. The very idea of privacy is under threat. Most of
40、us view personalization and privacy as desirable things, and we understand that enjoying more of one means giving up some of the other. To have goods, services and promotions tailored to our personal circumstances and desires, we need to divulge information about ourselves to corporations, governmen
41、ts or other outsiders. This trade-off has always been part of our lives as consumers and citizens. But now, thanks to the Net, were losing our ability to understand and control those trade-offs to choose, consciously and with awareness of the consequences, what information about ourselves we disclos
42、e and what we dont. Incredibly detailed data about our lives are being harvested from online databases without our awareness, much less our approval. We often assume that were anonymous as we go about our business online. As a result, we treat the Net not just as a shopping mall but as a personal di
43、ary. Through the sites we visit and the searches we make, we disclose details not only about our jobs, hobbies, families, politics and health, but also about our secrets, fantasies, even our minor offences. But our sense of anonymity is largely an illusion. Pretty much everything we do online is rec
44、orded, stored in cookies and corporate databases, and connected to our identities, either explicitly through our user names, credit-card numbers and the IP addresses assigned to our computers, or implicitly through our searching, surfing and purchasing histories. Years ago, a team of scholars from t
45、he University of Minnesota described how easy it is for data-mining software to create detailed personal profiles of individuals. The software is based on a simple principle: People tend to leave lots of little pieces of information about themselves and their opinions in many different places on the
46、 Web. By identifying correspondences among the data, sophisticated algorithms can identify individuals with extraordinary precision. And its not a big leap from there to discovering the peoples names. While Internet companies may be complacent about the erosion of personal privacy, the rest of us sh
47、ould be wary. There are real dangers. First and most obvious is the possibility that our personal data will fall into the wrong hands. Powerful data-mining tools are available not only to legitimate corporations and researchers, but also to con men and creeps. Criminal syndicates can use stolen info
48、rmation about our identities to commit financial fraud, and stalkers can use locational data to track our whereabouts. A second danger is the possibility that personal information may be used to influence our behavior and even our thoughts in ways that are invisible to us. Personalizations evil twin
49、 is manipulation. As mathematicians and marketers refine data-mining algorithms, they gain more precise ways to predict peoples behavior as well as how theyll react when theyre presented with online ads and other digital stimuli. The greatest danger posed by the continuing erosion of personal privacy is that it may lead us as a society to devalue the concept of privacy, to see it as outdated and unimportant. That would be a tragedy. Privacy is not just a screen we hide behind when we do something naughty or embarrassing; privacy is intrinsic to the concept of liber
