閱讀理解 Part A

　　Text 1

　　文章選自不是很熱門的一本雜志“Commentary” 2007年9月號，原文作者 TERRY TEACHOUT 題目為 Selling Classical Music。作者從紐約愛樂樂團任命Alan Gilbert為新音樂總監一事談起，分析了交響樂團現在面臨的困境，并給出了自己的解釋和解決途徑。文章難度一般，后面題目也比較簡單

　　Text 2

　　文章選自Business Week 商業周刊 2009年11月5日，原文作者Jena McGregor 原文的題目是Top Managers Are Quitting, Without a New Job：頂級經理人在離職，新工作還沒著落。講在西方經濟逐漸擺脫金融危機影響后，工作機會也漸漸多了起來，許多高級經理人不等和下家談好，就先辭職，即現在所謂的“裸辭”或“裸跳”。作者分析了這種情況的利弊和產生的原因。文章難度一般，題目也不難

　　Text 3

　　文章選自麥肯錫季刊，講的是媒體最新的變化，因為涉及到一些大眾傳播學的原理和理論知識，文章難度較難，題目也不容易

　　Text 4

　　文章選自2010年9月7日的新聞周刊，文章作者Jennie Yabroff 文章的題目是 Not On Board With Baby (孩子不能登機登船)，副標題是Parenthood—the condition, not the TV show—sucks. Or so everyone keeps saying。文章討論的是美國社會中的一個熱點話題，是否要孩子。作者直言不諱地指出，美國流行文化中對養育孩子的好處比較渲染，而養育孩子的艱苦則提的較少。這篇文章的難度主要體現在考生對作者的態度把握上比較困難。

　　閱讀理解 Part B

　　文章自于2010年2月25日的Economist 經濟學人雜志，原文題目為University education in America 美國的大學教育

　　The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. By Louis Menand. Norton; 174 pages; $24.95 and £17.99. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

　　THIS subtle and intelligent little book should be read by every student thinking of applying to take a doctorate. They may then decide to go elsewhere. For something curious has been happening in American universities, and Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard University, captures it deftly。

　　His concern is mainly with the humanities: literature, languages, philosophy and so on. These are disciplines that are going out of style: 22% of American college graduates now major in business compared with only 2% in history and 4% in English. However, many leading American universities want their undergraduates to have a grounding in the basic canon of ideas that every educated person should possess. But most find it difficult to agree on what a “general education” should look like. At Harvard, Mr Menand notes, “The great books are read because they have been read”—they form a sort of social glue。

　　One reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools. Many students experience both varieties. Although more than half of Harvard undergraduates end up in law, medicine or business, future doctors and lawyers must study a non-specialist liberal-arts degree before embarking on a professional qualification。

　　Besides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor. The growth in public money for academic research has speeded the process: federal research grants rose fourfold between 1960 and 1990, but faculty teaching hours fell by half as research took its toll. Professionalism has turned the acquisition of a doctorate into a prerequisite for a successful academic career: as late as 1969 a third of American professors did not possess one. But the key idea behind professionalisation, argues Mr Menand, is that “the knowledge and skills needed for a particular specialisation are transmissible but not transferable。” So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge。

　　No disciplines have seized on professionalism with as much enthusiasm as the humanities. You can, Mr Menand points out, become a lawyer in three years and a medical doctor in four. But the median time—median!—to a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. (Advertising note to American students: you can get a perfectly good PhD at a top British university in under four years。) Not surprisingly, up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees。

　　Equally unsurprisingly, only about half end up with the jobs they entered graduate school to get: tenured professorships. There are simply too few posts. This is partly because universities continue to churn out ever more PhDs. But fewer students want to study humanities subjects: English departments awarded more bachelor’s degrees in 1970-71 than they did 20 years later. Fewer students require fewer teachers. So, at the end of a decade of thesis-writing, many humanities students leave the profession to do something for which they have not been trained。

　　The key to reforming higher education, concludes Mr Menand, is to alter the way in which “the producers of knowledge are produced”. Otherwise, academics will continue to think dangerously alike, increasingly detached from the societies which they study, investigate and criticise. “Academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic。” Yet quite how that happens, Mr Menand does not say. In reality, baby and bathwater may go out together. Public exasperation with academic introversion may lead to a loss of some independence, the most precious right of academics in a free society。

　　此部分的標準答案為

　　G → 41. B→42. D→ E →43.A →44.C →45. F