泽熙美文English Chinese Translation
The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks on books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. 1 The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. 2 How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.
Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. 3 Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.
4 In general, the tests work most effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted can not be well defined. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. 5 For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality, and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.
1.
正确答案：
把标准化测试作为抨击的目标是错误的，因为在抨击这类测试时，批评者没有注意到测试的弊病在于使用测试的人对测试不甚了解或使用不当。
2.
正确答案：
这些测试在多大程度上为后来的表现所证实，这取决于所采用信息的数量、可靠性和适用性，以及解释这些信息的技能和才智。
3.
正确答案：
因此，在某一特定情况下，究竟是采用测试还是其他种类的信息，或是两者兼用，需凭有关相对效度的经验依据而定，也取决于诸如费用和实用性等因素。
4.
正确答案：
一般来说，当所要测定的特征能很精确地界定时，测试最为有效；而当所要测定或预测的东西不能明确地界定时，测试的效果则最差。
5.
正确答案：
例如，测试并不弥补明显的社会不公，因此它们不能说明一个物质条件差的年轻人，如果在较好的环境下成长的话，会有多大才干。
One of the most important results of the Mrs. Global Surveyor mission is that a comparison of Mars and Earth will allow scientists to understand Earth’s history and possibly its future. One of the most intriguing, unanswered scientific questions is why do Earth and Mars appear different today? At the time of their formation several billion years ago, Mars and Earth shared similar conditions. 6 Both planets harbored vast quantities of surface water, thick atmospheres, and climates warmer than at present.
Today, Earth is a lush world filled with a countless number of animals and plant species. 7 In contrast, data gathered from Mars over the last 30 years shows that the planet lies trapped in conditions reminiscent of a global ice age. The dry and seemingly lifeless Martian surface makes the Sahara Desert look like an ocean in comparison, and average daily temperatures make Antarctica seem balmy. Comparing the history and evolution of the two planets will yield clues into Earth’s past and possibly its future.
Despite its forbidding climate, surface temperatures on Mars resemble the Earth’s more than any other planet. 8 These similarities in temperature result in part from the fact that Mars orbits the Sun only slightly farther out than the Earth as compared to other planets. For example, the ground at some locations near the equator may warm up to as high as 25℃ at noon. However, daytime temperatures still average well below freezing, and night temperatures dip much lower.
9 Martian temperatures may seem almost inviting to the seasoned outdoors explorer, but the composition of the atmosphere leaves much to be desired from a human perspective. Most of the Martian air consists of carbon dioxide CO2, similar to conditions on Venus. If breathing carbon dioxide seems uninviting, the density of the air will appear worse. Average barometric pressures on Mars measure lower than that found at Earth’s sea level by a factor of more than 125. In other words, the air at the surface of Mars is thinner than that found on Earth at an altitude 19 times higher than Denver, Colorado.
10 The extremely thin Martian air contributes to the mystery of whether there is life on Mars, either in the past or presence. The reason is that almost all of the water lies trapped in the Martian polar ice caps or frozen beneath the surface. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface because the thin atmosphere will cause melting ice to evaporate directly into water vapor.
6.
正确答案：
两个星体都蕴藏着大量的表层水和厚厚的大气层，而且气候比现在温暖。
7.
正确答案：
相反，过去30多年从火星上收集的数据资料表明，该星体陷入的困境使人联想到地球冰河时代。
8.
正确答案：
气温上之所以有这些相似之处，部分原因在于：与其他星体相比，火星的轨道与太阳距离只比地球的轨道与太阳的距离稍远一点。
9.
正确答案：
尽管火星上的温度看起来对训练有素的户外勘探者有相当大的诱惑力，但从人类的角度看，其大气成分还有许多欠缺。
10.
正确答案：
火星上极度稀薄的空气使火星上无论是过去还是现在是否有生命这一问题更加神秘化了。
Communication technology is in a period of revolutionary change. 11 The new inventions and developments, such as communication satellite, optical fiber, large-scale integration, computers and microcomputers, video telephone data banks, and packet switching networks, etc., are involved. Any one of them has enormous potential. Taken in combination, they will change the entire fabric of society.
12 Few technologies could have as profound an effect on human condition as the full development of these inventions, and certainly additional inventions in telecommunications are yet to come, some perhaps of even greater impact. 13 The last quarter of the twentieth century will be remembered as the era when man acquired new communication channels to other men, to libraries of film and data, and to the prodigious machines.
International cooperation, in the new era, with flourish with the help of worldwide computer networks. Human talent, the scarcest resource in the coming cybernetic age, will be made available worldwide. Communications are essential factor to a growing world economy. Business and social patterns will change as screen-to-screen communication proves more efficient than traveling. In the future, traveling will be more for pleasure than for business. Certain type of people may work at home much of the time, dialing computers and
