2017 DSE English Past Paper 閱讀材料 (中英翻譯 + MP3 配音) 免費版

2017 DSE English Past Paper

• (A) The Myth of Recycling

  
  

• (B1) MILLENNIALS - Coming of age

  
  

• (B2) MILLENNIALS - Themes In The Literature

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The Myth of Recycling  - A  

回收的神話

[1] If you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?

[2] In 1996, I wrote an article arguing that the recycling process as we carried it out was wasteful. I presented plenty of evidence that recycling was costly and ineffectual, but its defenders said that it was unfair to rush to judgment. Noting that the modern recycling movement had really just begun a few years earlier, they predicted it would flourish as the industry matured and the public learned how to recycle properly.

[3] So, what’s happened since then? While it’s true that the recycling message has reached more people than ever, when it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all.

[4] Despite decades of initiatives, it’s still typically more expensive for local governments to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Most recycled materials are exported, and the prices for these materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies.

[5] The future for recycling looks even worse. As cities move beyond recycling paper and metals, and into glass, food scraps and assorted plastics, the costs rise sharply while the environmental benefits decline and sometimes vanish. “If you believe recycling is good for the planet and that we need to do more of it, then there’s a crisis to confront,” says David Steiner, the CEO of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the United States. “Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected, We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?

[6] Recycling has been relentlessly promoted as a goal in and of itself: a public and private virtue that is indoctrinated in students from kindergarten through university. As a result, otherwise well-informed and educated people have no idea of the relative costs and benefits.

[7] They probably assume, for instance, that recycling plastic must be helping the planet. They've been encouraged by the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), which assures the public that this results in fewer carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere. But how much difference does it make? Here’s some perspective: To offset the carbon impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly economy. If you sit in business- or first-class, it could be more like 100,000.

[8] Even those statistics might be misleading. Residents are instructed to rinse bottles before putting them in recycling bins, but the E.P.A.’s life-cycle calculation doesn’t take that water into account. That single omission can make a big difference, according to author Chris Goodall. He calculates that if you wash plastic in water that was heated by coal-derived electricity, then the net effect of your recycling could be more carbon in the atmosphere.

[9] To many public officials, recycling is a question of morality, not cost-benefit analysis. The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, declared that by 2030 the city would no longer send any garbage to landfills. “This is the way of the future if we're going to save our earth,” he explained while announcing that New York would join other cities in moving toward a “zero waste” policy, which would require an unprecedented level of recycling. 

[10] But while politicians set higher goals, the national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years. Yes, it’s popular in affluent neighborhoods, but residents of low income areas don’t have the same fervor for sorting garbage in their spare time. 

[11] The national rate of recycling rose during the 1990s to 25 percent, the goal set by an E.P.A. official, Winston Porter. He advised state officials that no more than 35 percent of the nation’s trash was worth recycling, but some ignored him and set goals of 50 percent and higher. Most of those goals were never met and the national rate has been stuck around 34 percent in recent years. 

[12] “It’s practical to recycle cardboard and some paper, as well as selected metals and plastics,” he says. “But other materials don’t make sense, including food waste and other compostables. The zero-waste goal makes no sense at all — it’s very expensive with almost no real environmental benefit.” 

[13] With the economic rationale gone, advocates for recycling have switched to environmental arguments. Researchers calculate that there are indeed such benefits to recycling, but not in the way that many people imagine. 

[14] Most of these benefits do not come from reducing the need for landfills and incinerators. Unlike earlier ones, a modern well-lined landfill in a rural area can have relatively little environmental impact. Decomposing garbage releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but landfill operators have started capturing it and using it to generate electricity. Modern incinerators, while politically unpopular in the United States, release so few pollutants that they’ve been widely accepted in the eco-conscious countries of Northern Europe and Japan for generating clean energy. 

[15] Moreover, recycling operations have their own environmental costs, like extra trucks on the road and pollution from recycling operations. Composting facilities around the country have inspired complaints about nauseating odors, swarming rats and defecating seagulls. 

[16] The environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products ~ less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs. Nearly everyone, though, approves of one potential gain from recycling: reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. 

[17] However, according to the E.P.A.’s estimates, virtually all the greenhouse benefits —more than 90 percent —come from just a few materials: paper, cardboard and aluminum in soda cans. Once you exclude these materials, the total annual savings in the United States from recycling everything else — plastics, glass, food, yard trimmings, textiles, rubber, leather — is only two tenths of 1 percent of America’s carbon footprint.

MILLENNIALS - Coming of age  - B1

千禧一代 - 成長的歷程

Slide-1

Millennials are the largest generation in history and are Pies about to move into their prime spending years. 

Companies want to understand the attitudes and lifestyle of Millennials because their shopping habits will make a big difference to their business.

Slide-2

Snug in the nest, a growing number of Millennials are choosing to live at home with 

their parents. 

Many Millennials don’t want to own a home but their reluctance to enter the housing market could change. 

As they get older, they will likely have a desire to settle down, and this could lead to a surge in home sales.

Slide-3

It's not just homes: Millennials have been reluctant to buy items such as cars, music and luxury goods. 

Instead, they’re turning to a new set of services that provide access to products without the burdens of ownership, giving rise to what’s being called a “sharing economy”. 

The must-haves for previous generations aren’t as important for Millennials. They’re postponing major purchases —or avoiding them entirely.

“25 years from now, car sharing will be the norm, and car ownership an anomaly.”

Jeremy Rifkin, Author and Economist

Slide-4

Millennials have been putting off significant milestones like getting married and having children. But that doesn’t mean they want to stay single forever. 

The average age of couples getting married in 1970 was 20. By 2010, it had risen to 30.

Slide-5

Millennials’ love for technology is changing the retail industry. With product information, reviews and price comparisons at their fingertips, they are able to compare prices in the store or shop online. 

Millennials want maximum convenience at the lowest price. So when marketing to this generation, a strong brand isn’t enough to lock ina sale.

Slide-6

For Millennials, wellness is a daily, active pursuit. They’re exercising more, eating 

smarter and smoking less than previous generations. 

They’re using apps to track training data, and online information to find the healthiest foods. 

And this is one space in retail where they're willing to spend money on as ‘healthy’ doesn’t just mean ‘not sick’. It’s a daily commitment to eating right and exercising.

DO MILLENIALS HAVE IT BETTER OR WORSE

[1] You might think that young people have it easy. But in a special report, the editor of The Economist, Robert Guest, argues that millennials have it tougher than most people think. 

[2]‘In some respects the young have never had it so good,’ Guest writes. ‘They are wealthier and are more likely to live longer than any other generation. They live in more liberal societies than their predecessors could barely have imagined, and have high speed access to information from around the world.

[3] ‘They are also brainier than any previous generation before them. Average scores on intelligence tests have been rising for decades in many countries, thanks to both better nutrition and mass education.

[4] However, the report says, the talent and intelligence of millennials is often wasted, with not enough employment opportunities. Youngsters are twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed, while over 25% of young people in middle-income nations —and 15% in richer ones — are NEETs (not in education, employment or training).

[5] Furthermore, the cost of housing and education often prices millennials out of the market. ‘Education has become _so expensive that many students rack up heavy debts. Housing has grown costlier, too, especially in the globally connected megacities where the best jobs are. Young people yearn to move to such cities: besides higher pay, they offer excitement and a wide selection of other young people to date or marry. Yet constraints on the supply of housing make that hard.’ 

[6] Guest also wrote that the time it takes to feel financially secure means people leave having children until later. ‘For both sexes, the path to adulthood—from school to work, marriage and children-has become longer and more complicated. Mostly, this is a good thing. Many young people now study until their mid-20s and put off having children until their late 30s.

[7] ‘They form families later partly because they want to and partly because it is taking them ionger to become established in their careers. Alas, despite improvements in fertility treatment, the biological clock has not been reset to accommodate modern working lives.’

MILLENNIALS - Themes In The Literature  - B2

千禧一代 - 文獻中的主題

I. Introduction

[1] Authors Neil Howe and William Strauss are widely credited with coining the term ‘Millennial Generation’, a reference to children graduating from secondary school in the year 2000. Since their landmark research on generational types, many authors have built on Howe and Strauss’work. This article will identify a number of general themes found in recent literature regarding the Millennial generation. Many of these themes, though originating from different sources and perspectives, are complementary, and even those in conflict with one another find they have common foundations.

[2] This article will refer to Millennials as those born from approximately 1980 through 2000 (Howe & Strauss, 2003; Sutherland & Thompson, 2001). The most significant variation on this definition comes from Twenge, who includes all those born in the 1970s as well (Twenge, 2006).

[3] By and large, the Millennials are considered the children of the Baby Boomers’. They have grown up ina child-centred society, adored from infancy by their parents and other adults {Sutherland & Thompson, 2001). They have lived in an era of relative peace, knowing little of worldwide conflict until the recent emergence of global terrorism. They have also lived in an era of relative prosperity, in which economic boom periods have been high, and downturns have been slight (Howe & Strauss, 2003).

[4] The most common and most significant theme found in literature about the Millennial Generation is that they have been told since birth that they are each unique and special, and that they embrace this specialness whole heartedly.

[5] Howe and Strauss emphasize the emergence of the pro-child culture among Baby Boomer adults as the catalyst for this characteristic, and Twenge supports this idea, to a degree. With the emergence of widespread use of birth control, and the growing availability of abortion through the 60s and 70s, Americans entered an era in which fewer and fewer ‘unwanted’ babies were born (Sutherland & Thompson, 2001). Parents became parents because they wanted children, not because childbearing was foisted upon them. This era saw cultural adoption of the pro-child ethic in movies, books and the ubiquitous ‘Baby On Board’ car bumper stickers. Schools across the nation joined the bandwagon as well with the adoption of official self-esteem curricula (Twenge, 2006). 

[6] Where researchers and authors seem to disagree on Millennials is in the effect of their ‘specialness’. Howe and Strauss believe that Millennials have translated their special status into an ability to contribute to society and its structures. They are community-minded citizens who believe in, and tend to follow, societal conventions because they believe in the rules that brought them through their happy childhoods.

[7] Twenge, on the other hand, perceives less optimistic outcomes for the Millennials, which she calls ‘Generation Me’. She expresses concern that the overt emphasis on individual ‘speciainess’ has resulted in a generation for whom the individual is of ultimate importance. Twenge’s research, in contrast to Howe and Strauss, has revealed a generation that is more individualistic and more self-oriented than any that have gone before. As a result, this generation is less likely to care about others’ opinions, and more likely to flaunt society's conventions.

[8] Twenge clashes again with Howe and Strauss when describing Millennials’ belief in their ability to succeed. Though Howe and Strauss admit that the Millennials feel pressure to succeed, they contend that this confident, achieving generation believes that they will be both financially and socially successful. Howe and Strauss also cite achievements in high school academics and extra-curricular activities as evidence that these Millennials may indeed live up to their confident expectations. 

[9] Twenge, however, cites research that seems to indicate that the Millennials are leaving their exuberant confidence behind as they leave childhood. The encouragement that so many young Millennials heard, that you can be or do anything, as long as you try hard enough and follow your dreams, has created unrealistically high expectations of themselves, producing high levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness among Millennials today.

[10] Whether in school, work, or at home, Millennials must interact every day with members of the generations that preceded them. As they move through their teens and twenties, into adulthood, the nature of the Millennials’ relationships with their elders is another theme found in recent literature.

[11] Sutherland and Thompson describe how the changing structure of the nuclear family has, in many cases, led to a dynamic in which children are included in family discussions and decisions to a greater degree than previous generations. Howe and Strauss echo this sentiment. As this dynamic blends with the message of special importance that Millennial kids have heard all their lives, the result is often a young adult who views his or her relationship with older adults as a peer-to-peer relationship.

[12] This emphasis on equality has implications in a variety of areas. Culturally, Millennials believe that their identity is just as valid as anyone else’s. Consequently, enthusiastic self-expression has flourished, and Twenge cites the explosion of tattoos and piercings as an example of this trend. In the workplace, the idea of paying dues, and working up the corporate ladder is foreign. Millennials expect their views to be valued from the beginning, and advancement to be rapid (Raines, 2002). In education, Millennials are more than willing to challenge professors on everything from opinions to the very facts themselves, with no conception that the instructor's perspective is any more valid than their own (Twenge, 2006). Generally speaking, what Millennials seem to be seeking from other generations is acceptance as equals (Windham, 2005).

[13] While more of a cultural reality than generational characteristic, technology has so affected and defined the Millennial generation that it regularly emerges as a theme in literature on the subject. While all generations alive today have experienced the development of technology, and adapted to the changes it has brought to society, the Millennials are the only ones who did not live through its emergence as adults.

[14] Prensky (2001) describes the situation with the analogy that Millennials are natives ina society that is dominated by modern technology, whereas previous generations are ‘digital immigrants’. There are significant implications for the differences in the ways that the natives and the immigrants think about the land they live in. What might have once been described as distractibility, is now considered multi-tasking: the practice of doing multiple things simultaneously. To describe Millennials as having short attention spans denies the evidence that they can spend extended time in sharply focused activity when playing hightech video games (Prensky, 2001).

[15] The clearest truism with regard to the Millennial generation is that they have been told throughout their childhood that they are each unique and special, and that as they become adults, it is clear that they have believed the message. For some, this belief will likely translate into ambitious goals, and great achievement. For others, it is likely that this belief will translate into unrealistic goals, and crushing disappointment. Millennials need to be encouraged to succeed and provided safety nets for failure as they learn to work through both of these experiences as adults.