外国人眼中的高考理想与现实的差距_BEC初级作文

外国人眼中的高考理想与现实的差距

One week,before the gaokao

高考前1周…

Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children's scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in the hope of improving their concentration. Some girls take contraceptives so they will not get their periods during the exam. (The New York Times, Jun 13, 2009)

每家每户都想尽办法帮助自己的孩子考试中取得高分。在中国西南地区的四川省，学生一边在医院吸氧一边复习，以期提高注意力。一些女孩子则服用避孕药物以防止月经周期在考试期间到来。(《纽约时报》，2009年6月13日)

The day of gaokao

高考当天

Outside the exam sites, parents keep vigil for hours, as anxiously as husbands waiting for their wives to give birth. A tardy arrival is disastrous. One student who arrived 4 minutes late in 2007 was turned away, even though she and her mother knelt before the exam proctor, begging for leniency. (The New York Times, Jun 13, 2009)

考场外，家长们持续几个小时地等待，就像等待妻子临产的丈夫一样焦虑。迟到则是毁灭性的，2007年就有一名学生迟到了4分钟，她和她的母亲在监考官面前跪下了，仍然未能参加考试。(《纽约时报》，2009年6月13日)

Tough reality

理想与现实

Following the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), China's universities were reopened and the entrance exam was launched in 1977. The vision behind it was utopian. The gaokao was expected to ensure that a peasant's son from Gansu has the same doors open as a Shanghai official - to make high test scores, not political patronage or guanxi (relationships), the ticket to a university education.