TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS (2008)

-GRADE EIGHT-

TIME LIMIT: 195 MIN

PARTI  LISTENING COMPREHENSION (35 MIN)

SECTION A   MINI-LECTURE

In this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.

SECTION B   CONVERSATION

In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on a conversation. At the end of the conversation you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.

Now listen to the conversation.

1.    Mary doesn’t seem to favour the idea of a new airport because

A. the existing airports are to be wasted

B. more people will be encouraged to travel.

C. more oil will be consumed.

D. more airplanes will be purchased.

2.    Which of the following is NOT mentioned by Mary as a potential disadvantage?

A. More people in the area.

B. Noise and motorways.

C. Waste of land.

D. Unnecessary travel.

3.    Freddy has cited the following advantages for a new airport EXCEPT

A. more job opportunities.

B. vitality to the local economy.

C. road construction,

D. presence of aircrew in the area.

4.    Mary thinks that people don’t need to do much travel nowadays as a result of

A. less emphasis on personal contact.

B. advances in modern telecommunications.

C. recent changes in people’s concepts.

D. more potential damage to the area

5.    We learn from the conversation that Freddy is Mary’s ideas,

A. strongly in favour of

B. mildly in favour of

C. strongly against

D. mildly against

SECTION C  NEWS BROADCAST

In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your coloured answer sheet.

Question 6 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.

Now listen to the news.

6.    What is the main idea of the news item?

A. A new government was formed after Sunday’s elections.

B. The new government intends to change the welfare system.

C. The Social Democratic Party founded the welfare system.

D. The Social Democratic Party was responsible for high unemployment.

Questions 7 and 8 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions.

Now listen to the news.

7.    The tapes of the Apollo-11 mission were first stored in

A. a U.S. government archives warehouse.

B. a NASA ground tracking station.

C. the Goddard Space Flight Centre.

D. none of the above places.

8.    What does the news item say about Richard Nafzger?

A. He is assigned the task to look for the tapes.

B. He believes that the tapes are probably lost.

C. He works in a NASA ground receiving site.

D. He had asked for the tapes in the 1970s.

Questions 9 and 10 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions.

Now listen to the news.

9.    The example in the news item is cited mainly to show

A. that doctors are sometimes professionally incompetent

B. that in cases like that hospitals have to pay huge compensations.

C. that language barriers might lower the quality of treatment. 

D. that language barriers can result in fatal consequences. 

10.   According to Dr. Flores, hospitals and clinics

A. have seen the need for hiring trained interpreters.

B. have realized the problems of language barriers.

C. have begun training their staff to be bilinguals.

D. have taken steps to provide accurate diagnosis.

PART II   READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)

In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured answer sheet

TEXT A

At the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon’s life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p.m. After dinner, it’s time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul’s many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It’s a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder.

South Korea’s education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That’s because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year’s 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SAT-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges.

The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly to help students enjoy a more normal high-school life. But the new system has had the opposite effect. Before, students didn’t worry too much about their grade-point averages; the big challenge was beating the standardized tests as high-school seniors. Now students are competing against one another over a three-year period, and every midterm and final test is crucial. Fretful parents are relying even more heavily on tutors and cram schools to help their children succeed.

Parents and kids have sent thousands of angry online letters to the Education Ministry complaining that the new admissions standard is setting students against each other. "One can succeed only when others fail,” as one parent said.

Education experts say that South Korea’s public secondary-school system is foundering, while private education is thriving. According to critics, the country’s high schools are almost uniformly mediocre—the result of an egalitarian government education policy. With the number of elite schools strictly controlled by the government, even the brightest students typically have to settle for ordinary schools in their neighbourhoods, where the curriculum is centred on average students. To make up for the mediocrity, zealous parents send their kids to the expensive cram schools.

Students in affluent southern Seoul neighbourhoods complain that the new system will hurt them the most. Nearly all Korean high schools will be weighted equally in the college-entrance process, and relatively weak students in provincial schools, who may not score well on standardized tests, often compile good grade-point averages.

Some universities, particularly prestigious ones, openly complain that they cannot select the best students under the new system because it eliminates differences among high schools. They’ve asked for more discretion in picking students by giving more weight to such screening tools as essay writing or interviews.

President Roh Moo Hyun doesn’t like how some colleges are trying to circumvent the new system. He recently criticized "greedy" universities that focus more on finding the best students than faying to "nurture good students". But amid the crossfire between the government and universities, the country’s 10th graders are feeling the stress. On online protest sites, some are calling themselves a “cursed generation” and “mice in a lab experiment”. It all seems a touch melodramatic, but that’s the South Korean school system.

11.   According to the passage, the new college-entrance system is designed to

A. require students to sit for more college-entrance tests.

B. reduce the weight of college-entrance tests.

C. select students on their high school grades only.

D. reduce the number of prospective college applicants.

12.   What seems to be the effect of introducing the new system?

A. The system has given equal opportunities to students.

B. The system has reduced the number of cram schools.

C. The system has intensified competition among schools.

D. The system has increased students’ study load.

13.   According to critics, the popularity of private education is mainly the result of

A. the government’s egalitarian policy.

B. insufficient number of schools:

C. curriculums of average quality.

D. low cost of private education.

14.   According to the passage, there seems to be disagreement over the adoption of the new system between the following groups EXCEPT

A. between universities and the government.

B. between school experts and the government.