2012 DSE English Past Paper 閱讀材料 (中英翻譯 + MP3 配音) 完整版

2012 DSE English Past Paper

• (A) Game boys get unplugged

  
  

• (B1) Saving the world, one patch at a time.

  
  

• (B2) Book Publishers Weekly

交互式數碼科技

免費的英文文法學習系統

https://www.makewithinterest.com/

Game boys get unplugged - A

游戲男孩們拔掉電源 THE NATION 1 MAY 2011

At the polar café, the wired generation powers down with parlour games.

[1]  In what many people will greet with a huge sigh of relief, a cafe at the Crystal Design Centre is low-tech, switched off, unplugged.  Patrons don’t sit at computer terminals and race virtual hotrods —they sit at tables and play board games.

[2]  Board games. You know —cardboard and little pieces of plastic you move around, maybe a pair of dice too. How about a guessing game with picture cards?

[3] What is the world coming to? (Or going back to?)

Polar Board Games & Café

[4] Pat Pornpiranon and Dee Sattarujawong opened Polar Board Games & Cafe one month ago to slow down the pace of life a little bit. They rescued some games from the dusty top of the wardrobe and found a few new ones, and now they’ve got customers enjoying their refreshments while chatting over their board moves.

[5] Face to face, no less.

[6] It’s a suitably friendly and homey place —comfy chairs, wood floor. One wall has a painting of the busy pathways found in the Kids of Carcassonne game, which is popular here too. Shelves are stacked with other choices of pastimes.

[7] Cafes specialising in parlour games have caught on in South Korea and China. Sometimes there’s a small admission fee that covers snacks, several hours of gaming and help from the staff.

[8] The drinks at Polar Cafe cost around Bt80 (approx HK$20), and for that price you get to try out any game for an hour. Buy another drink and play for another hour. There are about 40 games to choose from at this point, most of them imported from Germany and the US. There’s little foreign text to slow you down, and anyway you get Thai instructions and the staff can help with the rules.

[9] ‘I played nothing but Monopoly, Uno and Snakes & Ladders when I was a child,’ says Pat, a Thai University business-management graduate. ‘There weren’t that many games available in Thailand, but when I studied in the US, I found a lot of interesting board games that were more challenging than anything on the computer.’

[10] ‘Germany is the pioneer when it comes to new and interesting board games,’says Dee. ‘It has a prestigious award for creativity called the Spiel Des Jahres.’

[11] If you like a game so much you want to take it home, the prices range from Bt 500 to Bt 3,000 (HK$130-720). They’re great for parties, lazy afternoons or dreary family get-togethers where no one can think of what else to do except eat. It might also boost your strategic talents and your kids’ maths scores.

Board games as a learning too

[12] Dee also run a Chinese-language school called Learning East and use board games as teaching tools.

[13] 'Kids of Carcassonne, for example, is a 65 great game for little children,' explains Pat. 'You place tiles to form paths and then fry to close them off with wooden tokens. The player with the most tokens when all the tiles are used wins. Kids leam to watch the tiles carefrlly 70 and think twice before every move. It's good for teaching problem solving.'

[14]  Customer Benson Tanattanachot, 29, says he became utterly bored with computer games. 'There's a lot more satisfaction in playing 75 against human opponents,' he says. 'I prefer a game you can enjoy with friends and family. And in Thailand you don't usually see the wide selection of games that you get here. ' 

[15] Benson and a chum got so immersed in 80 Carcassonne that they decided to buy it. 'It's fun, and the playing cards are beautifully illustrated,' he says. 'It promotes sharp wit and logic, skills which I can use in my marketing job.'

[16] Another cafe patron, Aey, says she was never big on games but she's really taken by the fun she's found here, and the intriguing effects on the brain. 'Thai children should get to play games like this to learn about 90 teamwork and society,' says the 30-something working woman. 'Kids today have their computer games and console games, but they play alone. For board games you have to have a circle of friends. My friends and I love 95 playing Railways to the World.'

[17] In Railways to the World you build railroads to deliver goods to cities. There is no board, so it's different every time you play.[18] Pat points out that, while the chief  of parlour games is in the pleasant socialising — which usually trumps the drive to win — you can learn a lot about people by watching how they play, especially with games like Dixit, which won the Spiel Des Jahres last year.

[19] In Dixit, players receive cards with illustrations and take tums giving clues about them to the others. The other players choose the card in their own hands that they think best matches your clue. The trick is in choosing the perfect clue to share, not too specific or too vague.

[20] 'No matter what language you speak, you can play Dixit,' says Dee, 'and the more you play, the more you leam about the other players' perspectives on life. It can also improve children's vocabulary, especially when they play with their parents, and stretches their minds to think abstractly. '

[21] All very nice, but come on, girls — seriously — have you seen the latest iPad and Xbox Kinect? How can you compete with that?

[22] 'Parents want pastimes that will keep their children away from the TV and computer,' says Pat. 'They're trying to get back into more interactive things now. ne way a child behaves reflects how his parents treat him. Activities like this that get families together can only be a good thing.'

[23] Polar Board Games & Cafe is in Phase 2 of the Crystal Design Centre on Ram Indra-Ekamai Road and is open weekdays from Ipm to 9 pm and weekends from 11am to 10pm. Find out more at (083) 133 0743 or www.polarplaygames.com.

Saving the world, one patch at a time. - B1 

拯救世界，一片布料接一片布料。

climate quilt gives children a voice in fighting for the environment

[1] The world’s children are joining the fight against climate change. And they are doing it one fabric patch at a time through an international initiative called the Climate Quilt Campaign, which encourages young people everywhere to help protect the environment.

[2] Using recycled clothing, children in the United States, Australia, China, New Zealand, Britain, the Philippines, Canada, and South Africa designed ‘pledge patches’ depicting how they promised to work on environmental stewardship.

[3] Last month, thousands of patches arrived in a small-town store in Pennsylvania, USA where volunteers gathered to sew them together into a huge quilt.

[4] Crafeteria, a family-run business in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania sells yarn, sewing machines and all kinds of fabrics.

[5]  When Steve Chubin and his wife, Karen, opened their store in 1990, they dreamed of a place where their neighbours could gather, not just to buy fabric and thread, but to mingle and learn crafts like quilting and embroidery. That is exactly what Crafeteria is today.

[6] The couple’s involvement in_ the campaign began one evening when Karen was watching TV and saw a story about the Climate Quilt Campaign. She was intrigued by the connection between conservation and quilting and wanted to learn more about the project.

[7] ‘Quilting is actually one of the best and most old-fashioned ways of recycling,’ she says. ‘Old fabrics, that’s what a quilt is made of, can be sewn together with any type of material, sometimes embellished with embroidery to make a decorative bedspread or wall hanging.

[8] In the television report, Karen listened to Lisa Kemmerer, the campaign’s spokeswoman, describe the global initiative. ‘...We encourage children to make a pledge to help the environment which they write onto a piece of fabric or old T-shirts or anything that’s recycled.’

[9] Kemmerer appealed for volunteers to help sew the pledge patches together into a quilt and Karen immediately put in a call to the organizers who were happy to accept her offer for help.

[10] When Karen heard that the Climate Quilt Campaign had collected 2,500 patches from children in the USA alone and more than 5,000 internationally, Karen made her own pledge to organize a day where Crafeteria could donate their equipment and invite volunteers to come and sew the patches together.

[11] “We couldn’t have finished the job without the help of the local community,’

Kemmerer stated. ‘We’re a small not-for-profit campaign working on a shoe-string budget.’

[12] Steve Chubin was equally amazed at the positive response from the community. He emailed 5,000 people about the project and many responded saying they wanted to be involved and to support a good cause.

[13] One teacher who received an email, invited the students in her school to take part. Five-year-old Dylan worked with his classmates on a small quilt. ‘We all made different pledges and we wrote our ages and our names,” he says.

[14] Dylan pledged to use less water when washing his hands while fourteen-year-old Rachel and her brother Jacob, who is two years younger, had other ideas.

[15] ‘A lot of people don’t finish what’s on their plate and end up throwing away a lot of food. But if they just saved their leftovers, it would help a lot,’ says Rachel.

Book Publishers Weekly - B2 

[1] The Wall Street Journal’s provocative January 8 headline alone ~ ‘Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’- would have been enough to spark intense discussion. But coupled with an excerpt from Amy Chua’s parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin Press, Jan.), that sharply contrasts so-called ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ styles of parenting, what resulted was nothing less than a firestorm.

[2] Chua’s stated intent is to present the differences between Western and Chinese parenting styles by sharing experiences with her own children (now teenagers). It is a deeply personal story about her two daughters and how their lives are shaped by such demands as Chua’s relentless insistence on straight A’s and daily hours of mandatory music practice, even while vacationing with grandparents.

[3] Readers may be stunned by Chua’s explanations of her hard-line style, public shaming and insults intended to force greatness from her girls. She insists that Western children are no happier than Chinese ones, and that her daughters are the envy of neighbors and friends, because of their poise and musical, athletic, and academic accomplishments. Ironically, this may be read as a cautionary tale that asks just what price should be paid for achievement.

The “Chinese Mom” Backlash by Melinda Liu

All the controversy over Amy Chua’s new book has missed the fact that mothers in China aren’t raising their kids this way anymore —they’re copying the U.S. system.

[1] ‘Chinese moms’ in China aren’t raising superior kids, actually. U.S. author Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Wall Street Journal extract of her memoir headlined ‘Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior’ have sparked huge debate inside China. But the response from what should surely be the Wild Kingdom of ‘tiger moms’ might surprise you.

[2] One real Chinese mom is 39-year-old Guo Jing, a government office-worker in Beijing with 8-year-old twins. (Yale law professor Amy Chua is of Filipino-Chinese descent and lives in the U.S., not in China.) ‘I won’t be like Amy Chua,’says Guo about her kids’ upbringing. ‘I don’t want to pressure them ... in the future I’d like them to have their own hobbies, to develop their own abilities. ] won’t make decisions for them.’

[3] Guo says she believes her sons love their extracurricular hobbies, such as painting and learning how to play weiqi (the Chinese equivalent of chess), not because she forces them into it, but precisely because she does not: ‘I didn’t give them any pressure.’If that isn’t a startling admission, here’s the clincher: Guo is so convinced that her kids need more than a traditional Chinese education that she’s sending them to a private, bilingual international school where kids learn both English and Chinese in a comparatively looser classroom environment. ‘I try my best to adopt both Chinese and Western educational ways.’

[4] Chua’s strict parenting guidelines, including the long hours of piano practice, the endless rules, the homework that never goes unfinished, the lack of playdates, TV watching and electronic games are familiar to many mainland Chinese families. One recent online survey in China, conducted in response to the controversy over Chua’s book, found a majority of Chinese netizens ticking the box that stated, ‘Yes, starting from when I was little, my mother always said I’m not as good as others at this or that.’

[5]  Then there’s the eye-opening international study, conducted in 65 countries and publicized fast month, revealing that Shanghai schoolkids outperformed all other contenders in reading, science, and math. Of the next three top performers, students in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea, two are ethnic Chinese societies and the third is based on Confucian beliefs, prompting The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof to declare Confucianism the hands-down winner. ‘Education thrives in China and the rest of Asia because it is a top priority and we have plenty to learn from that,’concludes Kristof. Participants in the American study scored No. 15 in reading, No. 23 in science, and No. 31 in math.

[6] But the really big question, and one that the ‘Chinese mom’ debate doesn’t entirely explore, is this: Even if ‘Chinese moms’ raise kids who excel academically, does that mean the aggregate of those scholastically superior kids is a more dynamic economy, a more creative population, a ‘superior’ society? And the answer is no, at least as far as Chinese moms, and the Chinese kids they raise, inside China are concerned.

[7] In fact, China is suffering a glut of college graduates who can’t.find appropriate jobs, and a —shortage of blue-collar workers. These jobless grads comprise an unusual underclass, they’re educated, white-collar, net-savvy yet broke. China’s higher-education system is churning out too many university graduates with high-paying expectations and too few practical skills. Multinational managers privately complain that fresh Chinese grads are often clueless when it comes to working in an office environment.

[8] One Western expat who helps Chinese students enter Western colleges tells the story of a Chinese student who lived with an English host family in Britain; he was so flummoxed by the knobs and levers on the washing machine that he phoned his mom back in China for help. The Chinese mom phoned the washing-machine manufacturer’s rep in China who then contacted the firm’s people in the U.K. to help out the hapless son. Tellingly, last year saw a decrease in the numbers of high school students taking the nationwide college entrance examinations, the all-important rite of passage by which college freshmen are selected. By contrast, applications to blue-collar vocational schools jumped.

[9] What the ‘Chinese mom’ debate swirling around Amy Chua’s book fails to adequately consider is the fact that American classrooms, and society in general, are more conducive to individual expression and innovation. The rote learning that she stresses at home might work for her daughters because, outside the home, they are encouraged to think independently. But in China, where authoritarian parenting is coupled with an ossified higher-education system resistant to change, creativity is stifled. The father-knows-best Confucian approach is applied to a repressive degree.

[10] Many young Chinese lament there is no Bill Gates of China. And the most cutting-edge scientific institutions are research centers run by Western-educated administrators wooing Chinese-born scientists back from the West, where they had relocated in order to enjoy the more rewarding research environment abroad. If they had the money and the clout and the personal connections to do so, Chinese moms would want to send their kids to Harvard (as several top-level Chinese leaders have done). In other words, the key to success is seen as a hybrid of East and West, at least when viewed from the lair of the Tiger Moms.