1、专业英语八级（作文）模拟试卷 71及答案与解析 一、 PART V WRITING 1 There are a number of beauty contests across the world, the most famous perhaps being the Miss World Pageant. Some people believe that these contests are an important platform to celebrate the beauty and wisdom of women. The following are opinions from two
2、 women writers. Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the arguments on both sides and then 2. give your comment on the statement that beauty contests are beneficial to women. Naomi Wolf, writer, and author of Beauty Myth The most obvious detrimental effect of
3、beauty pageants is enforcing an inappropriate body perception for men and women. Unlike the majority of so-called “average“ women, the beauty of such contests participants is cherished and rehearsed; this is the case when natural beauty is heavily supported by the efforts of visagistes and dressers.
4、 Though pageants represent the absolute minority of the society, their appearances set high, unrealistic standards for how women of all ages should look like. Young girls who try to live up to these standards, mature women complaining about their bodies, men who demand their wives/girlfriends to loo
5、k like beauty pageants all of them are affected by the illusions propagated by beauty contests. Another perception issue arises from the very nature of beauty contests the objectification of women. Despite proclaimed gender equality, physical attractiveness remains one of the major requirements for
6、women today. No matter how progressive and tolerant people strive to be, they still make their first impression about other people by their appearance, and this is natural. However, the idea of beauty contests implies evaluating women solely on their physical shape, ignoring all other aspects of ind
7、ividuality. Interviewing, meant to show a contestants personality, is a fraud; as one of the former pageants wrote, none of the judges wanted to hear about deep problems, asking about the most challenging childhood experiences. This turns a woman into a media object, or even a product, which can be
8、assessed and then either approved or rejected; due to the popularity of beauty contests, such attitude is being widely propagated. Elizabeth Day, feature writer for The Observe In an environment where women are valued on solely on their appearance, and in which there are more opportunities for men,
9、beauty contests give women an opportunity to improve their situations. Winning a beauty contest can be a first step toward a successful life in the future; the most attractive earn 12% more, according to a survey in The Observer. Many Hollywood actresses are former beauty queens, and they would not
10、have reached their success without the beauty contests they won. In addition, the winners of high-profile beauty contests are able to publicize charities and causes they feel strongly about they have a public platform they could not otherwise have gained. Beauty pageants can also empower in other wa
11、ys: The Miss America competition is the largest provider of scholarship assistance for women in the world; indeed it pioneered assistance for women in higher education in the 40s and 50s. 2 Chinese people are no longer strangers to food-safety crisis the contaminated vinegar, the meat that glowed in
12、 the dark, the exploding watermelons, the mushrooms imbued with bleach, the pork so dosed with chemicals to make it lean and the infamous melamine-tainted milk. The following news report provides detailed information about this issue. Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should:
13、1. summarize briefly the news report; 2. give your comment, especially on what are the major causes of food-safety crisis in China. Food Safety Top Concern in China In China, where food safety scandals are commonplace, the public have to be extra careful before every bite. Reports of meat injected w
14、ith steroids and unhealthy animals butchered for consumption give new weight to the phrases “beef up“ and “sick as a pig“. There have been reports of problems from every link in the production chain. Even agricultural produce, it seems, is not safe. A huge batch of bean sprouts was seized after they
15、 were found to contain worrying amounts of controlled chemicals. Last July, Shanghai Husi Food Co. Ltd, a supplier to leading fast food brands including McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut, were discovered using expired meat in their products. Six of the companys senior executives were arrested. The revise
16、d Food Safety Law comes into effect on Oct. 1, and brings harsher punishment for the adulteration of food intended for our plates. An annual China Youth Daily survey in March found that food safely was the publics top concern. In response to a list of “quality of life“ issues including housing and t
17、he environment, 77.3 percent of respondents said food safety mattered most to them. The new law should rebuild confidence in the domestic food industry. Those found to have added substances unfit for human consumption to food could be jailed for up to 15 days, and producers may face fines of up to 3
18、0 times the value of their products. The amendment includes provisions for landlords and suppliers found to be complicit, at any stage of the production chain, in the adulteration of food. Should officials with food and drug regulators, or health and agriculture departments, be found negligent or in
19、volved in concealment, they will face administrative penalties, such as demotion or dismissal. Producers will now have to run tests on their products, conduct regular inspections and submit reports to regulatory bodies. Earlier this month, the Premier lauded the revamped Food Safety Law and its “zer
20、o tolerance“ stance. He advised that a tracking system, which would record and monitor the whole food production process, should be established. Zhang Gaoli, a vice premier and head of a ministerial food safety committee under the State Council, called for strict supervision of food manufacturers an
21、d distributors. Wang Yang, another vice premier, concurred with his colleague and stressed the importance of risk management. He also reminded local governments that they must assume responsibility for food quality. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce has started to draw up a black li
22、st of firms, as a stepping stone toward a system to monitor corporate conduct. An administration official said last June that better records detailing the food companies conduct would be kept, and they would be made available to the public to ensure an environment of honesty. 3 A childs world is sup
23、posed to be fresh and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. Unfortunately, this is not the case for some kids, especially for those born and bred in cities. Their joys are dimmed and even lost to study. In the following news report, you can find more details about this phenomenon. Write an artic
24、le of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the main idea of the news report, and then 2. express your opinion towards this phenomenon. Chinas Children Too Busy for Playtime Like most other Chinese children of her age, Zhuzhu, at the age of 12, has to go to school from Monday to
25、Friday, nine hours a day an hour more than her parents spend at work. On weekends, she has to get up early for piano lessons on Saturday and Sunday morning, followed by private extracurricular Maths and English classes the afternoon. As a reward for her hard work, Zhuzhus parents let her play with h
26、er toys for one hour on Saturday and Sunday evening. Zhuzhu is not alone. According to a new survey conducted by the Chinese Youth and Children Research Center (CYCRC), increasing numbers of children in large cities across the country are experiencing joyless childhoods. The CYCRC surveyed 2,500 pri
27、mary and secondary school pupils across the country. The results of the survey reveal how, due to long school hours and growing pressure from parents to study hard, children are feeling unhappy about a lack of playtime. On average, Chinas children spend 8.6 hours a day at school, with some spending
28、12 hours a day in the classroom. The survey also claimed that the majority of children spend longer hours at school than their parents spend at work. Almost all of the students involved in the survey said they had to do homework, revise and prepare for classes after school. Around half of the studen
29、ts parents testified that they often dont allow them to play outside as it means less study time. The CYCRC survey also reveals that when they do have spare time for play, many children are either too tired to play or have nobody to play with only 4 in 10 of the surveys participants claim they had f
30、riends to play with. Indeed, Sun Yunxiao, director of the CYCRC noted that heavy study loads have exhausted children, more than half of the surveys participants said that what they want most is, “A good nights sleep.“ Chinese students are put under ever-increasing pressure by their parents to study
31、hard due to the countrys highly competitive market for university places and jobs. Study pressure has led to an increase in stress, psychological problems and even tragedy. Last June, a 16 year-old girl from Chengdu, Sichuan Province, committed suicide after failing to pass the entrance exam for a r
32、espected senior high school. In spite of persistent requests from the Ministry of Education asking parents to stop enrolling their children in extracurricular courses and requesting schools to limit homework time to one hour a night, primary and secondary schools have continued to offer after school
33、 Maths and English classes, with the sole aim of sending more students to good universities. “Too many students are striving for the limited places in higher education resources may be a reason for schools flout to the circulars,“ said Sun Yunxiao. 4 Over the past generation, about 270m Chinese labo
34、urers have left their villages to look for work in cities. Many of those workers have children; most do not take them along. We call these youngsters liushou ertong, or “left-behind children“. It is not hard to imagine that the damage will be felt not just by the left-behind themselves but by societ
35、y as a whole. The following article analyzes the problem in details. Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the news report; 2. give your comment. An estimated 61 million children are “left behind“ by their migrant parents. Being left behind damages chi
36、ldren in many ways. A non-governmental organisation, Growing Home, surveyed them this year and found that they were more introverted than their peers and more vulnerable to being bullied; they also had “significantly higher states of anxiety and depression“ than their peers. Being brought up by gran
37、dparents is a common experience worldwide, and by no means necessarily harmful. But Chinas rapid development does make it more of a problem now than it was in the past. Unlike their parents, the left-behind childrens grandparents are often illiterate; their schooling can suffer accordingly. Lastly,
38、left-behind children are vulnerable to sexual and other abuse. Child abuse is distressingly common anyway. An analysis of 47 studies in Chinese and English this year estimated that over a quarter of Chinese children are physically abused at some point in their lives. The left behind are among the mo
39、st vulnerable to such abuse, especially those in boarding schools, because any adults who might speak up for them are far away. Leaving such broader consequences aside, the decision to leave behind a child is a hard one. Why do so many migrants make it? According to a survey, two-thirds said they wo
40、uld not have enough time to look after them while working in the city; half said it was too expensive to bring up children there. In principle migrants might take along their grandparents rather than leaving behind their children. But the restrictions of the hukou system make that almost impossible.
41、 The hukou or household-registration document is a bit like an internal passport, giving people access to various services. When registered in the country, grandparents get a lower pension than urban dwellers and the money is not enough for them to live in the city. The hukou system also exacerbates
42、 things by making it very hard for children registered in a rural area to get state schooling or health care in the city. Private schools that exploit the opportunity this presents are often crowded, substandard and constantly threatened with closure by city governments. On top of this vital school-
43、leaving exams have to be sat where a child is registered. So even if children accompany their parents to the city, they are almost always sent back again at the age of 14 to prepare for the exam. Reform of the hukou system-already under way, in a piecemeal fashion-can address some of the problems of
44、 the left-behind and those who leave them. But given the underlying factors at work a full response will require China to build a child-welfare system almost from scratch. At its heart, the problem of the left-behind is one of misplaced hopes. Like so many parents, Chinas migrants are deferring plea
45、sure now (that of raising their children) for the hope of a better life later (to be bought with the money they earn). One result has been the stunning growth of cities and the income they generate. Another has been a vast disruption of families-and the children left behind are bearing the burden of
46、 loss. 专业英语八级（作文）模拟试卷 71答案与解析 一、 PART V WRITING 1 【正确答案】 The Benefits of Beauty Contests The two excerpts mainly present two distinct attitudes towards beauty contests with Naomi Wolf in the first excerpt maintaining a negative attitude while Elizabeth Day in the second excerpt is positive about bea
47、uty contests. Specifically, Naomi Wolf believes that beauty pageants not only spread high, unrealistic standards for how women of all ages should look like, but also contribute to the objectification of women. Elizabeth Day, however, appreciates beauty contests in that they open up an opportunity fo
48、r women to improve their situations, help to raise money for charities and provide scholarship assistance for women in the world. I think the long-running history of the contest shows that beauty contests are beneficial to women. To begin with, beauty contests draw the public attention to women and
49、improve their social status. The emergence of beauty contests, such as Miss World pageant, showcases the refined attributes of women, beautiful, kind-hearted, understanding and considerate. The contests, though indirectly, urge people, especially men, to look at women in a different perspective. They are confident and self-sufficient ladies who are brave enough to compete and make their voices heard. In other words, beauty contests lead to the positive image and the subsequently improved conditions of women. Whats more, entering or even winning a
