Part I Writing (30 minutes)
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled On the Importance of a Name. You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below.
1. 有人说名字或名称很重要
2. 也有人觉得名字或名称无关紧要
3. 我认为
On the Importance of a Name
Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.
Helicopter Moms vs. Free-Range Kids
Would you let your fourth-grader ride public transportation without an adult? Probably not. Still, when Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote about letting her son take the subway alone to get back to her Manhattan home from a department store on the Upper East Side, she didn’t expect to get hit with a wave of criticism from readers.
“Long story short: My son got home, overjoyed with independence,” Skenazy wrote on April 4 in the New York Sun. “Long story longer: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn on in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and cell phone and careful watch is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating (使虚弱)—for us and for them.”
Online message boards were soon full of people both applauding and condemning Skenazy’s decision to let her son go it alone. She wound up defending herself on CNN (accompanied by her son) and on popular blogs like the Buffington Post, where her follow-up piece was ironically headlined “More From America’s Worst Mom.”
The episode has ignited another one of those debates that divides parents into vocal opposing camps. Are Modern parents needlessly overprotective, or is the world a more complicated and dangerous place than it was when previous generations were allowed to wander about unsupervised?
From the “she’s an irresponsible mother” camp came: “Shame on you for being so careless about his safety,” in Comments on the Buffington Post. And there was this from a mother of four: “How would you have felt if he didn’t come home?” But Skenazy got a lot of support, too, with women and men writing in with stories about how they were allowed to take trips all by them selves at seven or eight. She also got heaps of praise for bucking the “helicopter parent” trend: “Good for this Mom,” one commenter wrote on the Buffington Post. “This is a much-needed reality check.”
Last week, encouraged by all the attention, Skenazy started her own blog—Free Range, kids—promoting the idea that modern children need some of the same independence that her generation had. In the good old days nine-year-old baby boomers rode their bikes to school, walked to the store, took buses—and even subways—all by themselves. Her blog, she says, is dedicated to sensible parenting. “At Free Range Kids, we believe in safe kids. We believe in car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security guard.” |
