2023 DSE English Past Paper 閱讀材料 (中英翻譯 + MP3 配音) 完整版

2023 DSE English Past Paper

• (A) Flash Fiction: Writing a Story in 1,000 Words or Less

  
  

• (B1) International Guide Dog Day Celebrates the Partnership between Owner and Dog

  
  

• (B2) Michelle Obama

  
  

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Flash Fiction: Writing a Story in 1,000 Words  or Less - A

微小說：千字以內的叙事藝術

[1] People have been enjoying stories for as long as humanity has been around. Some people love to read 400-page novels, while others struggle to read the first four paragraphs. More and more, technology has unfortunately resulted in many people having shorter attention spans. Therefore, writers have to find new ways to tell stories in a way that appeals to people who are used to reading snippets of information on the small screen of their smart phones. Flash fiction is a medium that works perfectly in a low-attention-span world.

What is Flash Fiction?

[2] Flash fiction is a category of short story that limits the author to a word count of 1,000 words or less. Some magazines limit flash fiction stories to as little as 300 words.

How to Write Flash Fiction

[3] Following the tips below will guide you in writing a solid flash fiction story

Focus on One Character

[4] With a limit of 1,000 words, there isn’t a lot of room for character development, so you’ll want to pick one character to focus on. There will likely be two characters in the story because you’ll often use a human antagonist as opposition to your main character. You might be able to use three characters, but any more than that will probably be overkill in the realm of flash fiction.

Focus on One Scene

[5] Longer story forms have a beginning, middle, and end, but with flash fiction, you’re really telling only the end of a story. Of course, you won’t be able to flesh out a complex story world. Instead, your flash fiction story should focus on one scene, one moment in the life of your character. It needs to be a significant, life-altering moment for your character. Focusing on one scene also means focusing on one location. So for flash fiction your limited word count focuses on the essentials to the story.

Focus on One Conflict

[6] All stories are about conflict. A story can be easily defined as a character who wants or needs something and has to overcome some obstacle in order to attain it. The obstacle is the conflict. You have to answer two very important questions to write a really good flash fiction story:

1. What does your main character want? 

2. Who or what is trying to stop your main character from getting it? 

Focus on One Theme

[7] Your theme is the moral argument of your story. It’s about how you want your readers to be impacted by the story. What do you want them to be encouraged to do, be, or believe as a result of reading your story?

Focus on Word Choice

[8] You only have up to 1,000 words to tell your story, so you have to choose those words wisely. When you know what actions and ideas you want to communicate, choose the least amount of words to communicate them.

How Flash Fiction Makes You a Better Writer

[9] Flash fiction forces you to be economical with your words. It helps you to focus your ideas and strip away anything that isn’t essential to your story. Often, when you're writing flash fiction, you’! write more than you need. When you go back through, you’ll see what needs to be there, what can be taken out, and what needs to be reworked, which helps you to develop your editing and revising skills.

Flash Fiction Example

The Big Bang

[10] BOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!! Timothy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. His face was blackened with soot and his hair stood on end. He looked down at what remained of the school laboratory bench and saw smouldering wood and shattered glass. Shocked faces gazed up at him.

[11] A month ago, it had all started fairly well. It was nearly the end of Chemistry and Timothy was drifting in a pleasant doze with his head rested upon Super Science Experiments for Eager Youngsters, whilst Professor Snookhorn droned on. “So, if anyone is interested, raise your hand now ... how about you Timothy?”“Eh? Ermmm —sure,”mumbled Timothy with not the faintest idea of what he had been asked. “Marvellous!”replied an enthused Professor Snookhorn, fixing him with a steely gaze through his thick glasses. “Meet me in Lab 922 after school today and we’ll get started.”The bell clanged and the students crashed out of the classroom like a herd of elephants. Billy Brenton, class thug, barged past Timothy muttering “Swotty boy - volunteering for Young Scientist of the Year - urghh!” “Argeghhhh!” thought Timothy, but it was too late.

[12] Four weeks and 25 excruciating extra Chemistry lessons later, Timothy was blinking out nervously at a gaggle of eager science teachers and pushy parents, crammed into the National School of Science Laboratory for what Professor Snookhorn enthusiastically described as “The pinnacle of my teaching career”(no pressure).

[13] Professor Snookhorn was a superlative scientist but little did he know that Timothy was a bigger hazard than sulphuric acid when it came to Chemistry. He had mistaken Timothy’s glazed expression for wide-eyed enthusiasm in class. Timothy looked down at the glistening bench, taking in the jewel-coloured containers of liquids and crystals, without a clue of what they were or how to use them. 

[14] A klaxon blared. Timothy’s competitors scurried around like a pack of lab rats. Timothy had not bothered reading the competition rules, but jerked into action, picking random coloured bottles up and mixing the contents in a large glass container which appeared to have been placed on the bench in front of him for that purpose. 

[15] A smell like Billy Brenton’s worst ever fart began to fill the air and Timothy looked down in alarm at his bench. Thick grey smoke filled Timothy’s nostrils. The glass container into which he had poured his random mix shuddered and shook. The pushy parents started to point. The science teachers went pale. Timothy gulped. BOOQOQOQOOOOMMMM!!!! 

[16] As the smoke cleared, the science teachers began to clap and a tear of pride trickled down Professor Snookhorn’s cheek. A voice boomed: “Ladies and gentlemen I give you the winner of this year’s Young Scientist of the Year - The Biggest Bang: TIMOTHY TRENTON!”

 International Guide Dog Day Celebrates the Partnership between Owner and Dog - B1

國際導盲犬日：致敬人與犬的夥伴情誼

[1] Most people have heard about guide dogs. These service animals are carefully trained to lead their owners (either blind or with limited vision) around, avoiding other people and obstacles, so their owners can travel safely and independently.

[2] In honour of the guide dogs that have changed the lives of those with disabilities, April 29 is International Guide Dog Day. Without them, many could not do simple daily activities that most people take for granted. Here are three inspirational stories of how guide dogs have changed people’s lives for the better:

Story 1

[3] At five years old Nathan became ill with arthritis, which soon affected his eyesight. Fourteen years later, he lost his sight completely. At this point, he felt hopeless, but that was when his family decided to get a guide dog, and it changed his life. When Nathan met Hudson, it was the most amazing day, and he even cried because of how emotional the experience was. Hudson has turned Nathan’s life around. Now Nathan has the confidence to go out even with the loss of his sight. Hudson is more than just a guide dog; he is Nathan’s best friend.

Story 2

[4] Sami is just like any typical everyday sixteen-year-old, except she is blind. However, that hasn’t stopped Sami from long distance running. Before going blind, she loved to run, and she didn’t want to stop because of her disability. Because of her guide dog, Chloe, she is able to continue doing what she loves. Chloe runs with Sami for miles and trains with Sami on a daily basis. Because of Chloe, Sami is able to continue doing long distance running with her school, and now the team has an extra four-legged member.

Story 3

[5] Mark and Claire are both blind and met while they were getting their guide dogs. The dogs they were training with kept pulling towards each other, so they started talking. Because of their guide dogs, the two started going on dates, and it was a perfect match. They loved hanging out, and so did their pups. It was great because they felt like they could understand each other since they both had the same disability. Eventually Mark asked Claire to marry him, and it’s all thanks to their guide dogs.

Hong Kong needs 1,700 guide dogs for the visually impaired, but where can the animals be trained?

[1] Trainers say outdated laws and insufficient public awareness prevent them from giving guide dogs under training full exposure to the city.

[2] When Meicy Choi took her four-month-old labrador retriever named Don Don out on a sunny Saturday in December, she did not expect to get into a row over going to the park with her canine buddy.

[3] Don Don is not an ordinary dog. He is training to become one of fewer than 50 guide dogs in Hong Kong, and Choi herself is not blind but is registered as a host to train and care for him. But a staff member at Lai Chi Kok Park stopped her from entering the park and asked to check her documents. “Even if you are blind, you can’t take the dog in!” the worker said. A handful of onlookers, mostly middle-aged women, gathered and confronted Choi.

[4] The commotion frightened Don Don, causing the dog to become uneasy. “You can’t be serious,” Choi recalled thinking to herself. She eventually backed down, not wanting to escalate the matter

[5] Such incidents reflect the daily challenges faced by guide dog trainers in the city. The issues are grey areas under current laws, which allow visually impaired people to use public facilities with their guide dogs, but not those who train the animals.

[6] Hong Kong only started breeding guide dogs in 2011 because of a previous lack of professional trainers. The city’s guide dog community lags in scale compared with neighbouring Japan and South Korea, not to mention the United States or Germany, which were the first countries to train such dogs in the 1920s.

[7] Raymond Cheung Wai-man, chairman of Hong Kong Seeing Eye Dog Services and the first person to start a guide dog training institution locally seven years ago, estimated the city would need 1,700 guide dogs, given its 170,000 visually impaired people. "On top of taking visually impaired people around and preventing them from walking into obstacles, guide dogs also help them lead freer, more confident and dignified lives," Cheung said.

[8] But outdated laws and insufficient public awareness remain the biggest obstacles to a bigger role for guide dogs in Hong Kong, according to Cheung. “The government needs to change the current laws, which do not protect dogs under training,” Cheung said. “If a trainer takes a bus with a trainee dog, there is a chance the driver may deny them entry. But if the dogs never get on buses during training, how can they learn to do this and help the visually impaired?”To familiarise guide dogs with the urban environment and prepare them to assist the blind, trainers need to take them around the city and “go everywhere”, Cheung said.

[9] “Public awareness has improved a lot from six years ago, when I had to fight just to allow guide dogs under training onto the MTR. But misunderstanding still exist,” Cheung said, as evident in another row at a cha chaan teng in Yau Ma Tei in December, which stirred up a heated online debate. The restaurant had refused to let in a trainer with a trainee guide dog. It eventually apologised on its Facebook page after coming under fire from netizens, and said it welcomed visually impaired customers with guide dogs.

[10] “I think many people are supportive of guide dogs,”Choi said. Referring to Choi’s encounter, a spokeswoman for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) said guide dogs and dogs under training were allowed to enter all venues managed by it, including public parks. “But it’s possible some staff like security guards were unclear about the guidelines,”she said.

[11] “The government will continue to work with rehabilitation organisations and stakeholders to facilitate the development of the guide dog service in Hong Kong,”the LCSD spokeswoman said.

Michelle Obama - B2

米歇爾·奧巴馬

[1] In a special personal essay, excerpted here, in honorf Mother's Day, Michelle Obama shares memories of her mom, Marian Robinson, and women who shaped the extraordinary life of an ordinary gir i from Chicago who would grow up to be the wife of the President of the United States.

[2] My mother is a woman who chooses her words carefully. She'll sometimes speak in clipped sentences, hr wisdom packed into short bursts and punctuated with an infectious smile or a wry laugh. It’s a style that makes her a favorite of everyone she meets —a sweet, witty companion who doesn’t need the limelight.

[3] As I’ve grown older, I’ve seen how her manner in conversationl so reflects her approach to parenting. Because when it came to raising her kids, my mom knew that her voice was less important than allowing me to use my own.

[4] That meant she listened a lot more than she lectured. Growing up, she was willing to endure endless questioning from me —Why did we have to eat eggs for breakfast? Why do people need jobs? Why are the houses bigger in other neighborhoods? She didn’t chide me if I scrapped with some of the neighbor kids or challenged my omery grandfather when I thought he was being a little too ornery. She listened intently to the lunchtime conversations | had with my schoolmates over bologna sandwiches, and nodded patiently along to tales of my contentious piano lessons with my great-aunt Robbie. 

[5] In today’s world, it’s easy to hear all that and think that Marian Robinson was bordering on negligent, that she was letting the kids rule the roost. But the reality was far from that. She and my father, Fraser, were wholly invested in their children, pouring a deep and durable foundation of goodness and honesty, of right and wrong, into my brother and me. After that, they simply let us be ourselves.

[6] I see now how important that kind of freedom is for all children, particularly for girls with flames of their own —flames the world might try to dim. It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to give the girls in our lives the kind of support that keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices —not necessarily with our own words, but by letting them find the words themselves.

Below is an excerpt from Michelle Obama’s bestselling memoir, Becoming, in which she recalls how her greataunt Robbie's tough love and piano lessons helped shape the woman she is today:

[7] At home, I continued to work on my own progress as a musician. Sitting at Robbie’s upright piano, I was quick to pick up the scales and I threw myself into filling out the sight-reading worksheets she gave me. Because we didn’t have a piano of our own, I had to do my practicing downstairs on hers. I learned one song in the piano book and then another. I was probably no better than her other students, no less fumbling, but I was driven. To me, there was magic in the learning. I got a buzzy sort of satisfaction from it. For one thing, I’d picked up on the simple, encouraging correlation between how long I practiced and how much I achieved. And I sensed something in Robbie as well —too deeply buried to be an outright pleasure, but still, a pulse of something lighter and happier coming from her when I made it through a song without messing up. I’d notice it out of the corner of my eye: Robbie’s lips would unpurse themselves just slightly.

[8] This, it turns out, was our honeymoon phase. It’s possible that we might have continued this way, Robbie and I, had I been less curious and more reverent when it came to her piano method, But the lesson book was thick enough and my progress on the opening few songs slow enough that I got impatient and started peeking ahead —and not just a few pages ahead but deep into the book, checking out the titles of the more advanced songs and beginning, during my practice sessions, to fiddle around with playing them. When I proudly debuted one of my late-in-the book songs for Robbie, she exploded, slapping down my achievement with a vicious “Good night!” I got chewed out the way I’d heard her chewing out plenty of students before me. All I’d done was try to learn more and faster, but for Robbie it was a crime approaching treason. She wasn’t impressed, not even a little bit.

[9] Nor was I chastened. I was the kind of kid who liked concrete answers to my questions, who liked to reason things out to some logical if exhausting end. I was lawyerly and also veered toward dictatorial, as my brother Craig, who often got ordered out of our shared play area, would attest. When I thought I had a good idea about something, I didn't like being told no. Which is how my great-aunt and I ended up in each other's faces, both of us hot and unyielding.

[10] “How could you be mad at me for wanting to learn a new song?”

“You’re not ready for it. That’s not how you learn piano.”

“But I am ready. I just played it.”

“That’s not how it’s done,”

“But why?”

[11] Piano lessons became epic and trying, largely due to my refusal to follow the prescribed method and Robbie’s refusal to see anything good in my freewheeling approach to her songbook. We went back and forth, week after week, |was stubborn and so was she. I had a point of view and she did, too. In between disputes, I continued to play the piano and she continued to listen, offering a stream of corrections. I gave her little credit for my improvement as a player. She gave me little credit for improving. But still, the lessons went on. 

[12] Upstairs, my parents and Craig found it all so very funny. They cracked up at the dinner table as ire counted my battles with Robbie, still seething as I ate my spaghetti and meatballs. My parents expressed no sympathy for my woes and none for Robbie’s, either. In general, they weren’t ones to intervene in matters outside schooling, expecting early on that my brother and I should handle our own business. They seemed to view their job as mostly to listen and bolster us as needed inside the four walls of our home. And where another parent might have scolded a kid for being sassy with an elder as I had been, they also let that be. My mother had lived with Robbie on-and-off since she was about sixteen, following every arcane rule the woman laid down, and it’s possible she was secretly happy to see Robbie’s authority challenged. Looking back on it now, I think my parents appreciated my feistiness and I’m glad for it. It was a flame inside me they wanted to keep lit.