查资料是偶然看到几片外国人分析awe的文章，分享一下
这是一个美国人再blog上写的，一家之言，仅供参考。第一篇没什么用，可以不看，主要是介绍AWE的。看一下红笔部分即可。
With all the debate surrounding the College Board's new, "improved" version of the SAT, you'd think there would be some discussion about the changes that have recently been made to the GRE (Graduate Record Exam). But it's as if the SAT has served as a sort of standardized decoy. While pundits, parents, teachers, and administrators have been duking it out about whether the SAT should test aptitude or achievement, whether it is racially or ethnically biased, whether verbal analogies measure anything worth measuring and whether the addition of a tougher math section and a writing sample will help or hinder those populations that have historically done poorly on the traditional SAT, the GRE has been overhauled in some extraordinarily controversial and potentially destructive ways. And no one, as far as I can tell, has raised an eyebrow.
The GRE is to graduate school as the SAT is college (note skilled use of the much-maligned verbal analogy). If you want to get a Ph.D., you have to take it and report your scores as part of your application. Like the SAT, the GRE has math and verbal sections that read like enhanced versions of their SAT counterparts and are scored, like their SAT counterparts, on an 800 point scale. Traditionally, the GRE has also had an analytical reasoning section and what's known as a "subject test"--a specialized multiple choice exam that measures your knowledge of your proposed field of study. Both of these have also been scored on an 800 point scale.
As of October 1, however, the analytical reasoning section of the GRE will be replaced with a two-part writing section, described on the GRE website thus:
The assessment consists of two analytical writing tasks: a 45-minute "Present Your Perspective on an Issue" task and a 30-minute "Analyze an Argument" task. The "Issue" task states an opinion on an issue of general interest and asks test takers to address the issue from any perspective(s) they wish, as long as they provide relevant reasons and examples to explain and support their views. The "Argument" task presents a different challenge--it requires test takers to critique an argument by discussing how well-reasoned they find it. Test takers are asked to consider the logical soundness of the argument rather than to agree or disagree with the position it presents. These two tasks are complementary in that the first requires the writer to construct a personal argument about an issue, and the second requires a critique of someone else's argument by assessing its claims.Reading through GRE.org's Q&A on the new format, the rationale for the change seems straightforward enough: writing skills are crucial in academe; too many students arrive at graduate school without the requisite writing skills; the GRE ought therefore to test writing ability. And, indeed, in my quick googling of the issue, I did not find any major objections to the change. A student paper at Arizona wondered whether the new requirement would discriminate against non-native English speakers, but that was about it.
The essay portion of the GRE has been optional for two years, and its format has been borrowed from the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test), which has been using the two-part writing assessment for a number of years. The MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) and the LSAT (Law School Admission Test) also have essay sections. This probably accounts for the ease with which the analytical writing section has been adopted as the new right way to assess how prepared someone is or is not to embark on graduate study. The GRE has long been an outlyer in its failure to test the writing skills of aspiring Ph.D. students. But I think, too, that a lack of analytical reasoning ability has, ironically, had a lot to do with how quietly and decisively the change to the GRE has been made.
Certainly the writing section provides a way to verify a student's real writing skills. Just as the SAT writing section will allow college admissions officers to see what an applicant's writing looks like in its raw, unpolished state, before it has been thoroughly worked over by parents, teachers, and hired consultants, so, too, will the GRE essay section allow the testing service and graduate admissions committees to get a look at a writing sample that is unequivocally the applicant's own work. (The statement of purpose and the writing sample portions of the standard graduate application are, like college entrance essays, notorious for being the much-coached products of collective efforts at packaging.)
But certainly, too, the writing section provides a way of verifying a student's politics. In an overwhelmingly left-wing academy, one where many humanities and social science departments cannot count a single Republican as one of their members and where, as a consequence, the curriculum is heavily and unapologetically biased against conservative and religious beliefs, this is, to say the very least, a problem. There is already plenty of informal (and illegal) gatekeeping going on at the graduate admissions level--now the GRE looks to be making it official.
A paranoid assessment? Not in the least. I'll explain why in part two of this series. In my July 3 blog, I suggested that the new GRE format, in which a two-part analytical writing assessment replaces the former multiple choice analytical reasoning component, will test applicants' politics as well as their writing abilities认为考试考察考生的政治信仰和写作能力. The new writing assessment will compel test takers to write two essays, one in which they articulate their personal standpoint on a given "issue," and one in which they assess the logic of a given passage. It is the first of these essay formats that concerns me here.
When I first learned of the changes to the GRE, I was immediately struck by the litmus-test quality of the "Present Your Perspective on an Issue" part of the exam. The idea sounded ominous to me, reeking as it does of an invasive desire to probe private beliefs and to make the results of that probing part of an assessment of the test taker's preparedness for advanced graduate study这里作者认为issue考试侵犯了考生的私人信仰，要把个人的想法报漏给考官. Such evaluative intrusions into matters of private conscience have, after all, become all-too usual in contemporary academic contexts. In an academic world where professors can require students to sign on to their politics as a condition of speaking in class, where composition instructors can advise conservative students not to register, where freshman orientation frequently doubles as indoctrination, where discipline frequently consists of sentencing students and faculty offenders to "sensitivity training" (a Newspeak term for thought reform), and where, as I observed in my last blog, a vastly disproportionate percentage of the faculty are politically liberal, the GRE's decision to assess students' writing abilities by requiring them to "present" their "perspective" on a selected "issue" reads just a little bit like a thinly disguised attempt to vet students' beliefs as well as their skills; indeed, it reads like an attempt to confound the two so thoroughly that a positive assessment of ability depends on a correct statement of opinion.
My fears were hardly allayed by my tour through GRE.org's on-line pool of "Issue topics". GRE.org assures prospective test takers that the essay topic they will be asked to write about on their GRE exam will come from the pool. This is alarming enough in itself--giving out the topics ahead of time cheapens the test, making it something that can be prepped for by rote and, significantly, taught for profit by self-styled test-taking experts. Even more alarming, though, are the topics themselves, which predictably cluster around the very issues that are nearest and dearest to academe's politically correct little heart.
There are the topics that seek to determine whether you are a proper collectivist（看考生是否是集体主义者，言外之意好像应该倾向于集体主义，怎么感觉和中国差不多，不是米国强调个人吗？不解)
"If a society is to thrive, it must put its own overall success before the well-being of its individual citizens."
"The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative."
"It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we define ourselves."
"People work more productively in teams than individually. Teamwork requires cooperation, which motivates people much more than individual competition does."
And there are topics to make sure you are properly anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist（反资本主义和反消费主义）
"Competition is ultimately more beneficial than detrimental to society."（这与资本主义消费主义有什么关系阿？）
"In most societies, competition generally has more of a negative than a positive effect."
"Although many people think that the luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life are entirely harmless, in fact, they actually prevent people from developing into truly strong and independent individuals."（消费主义，应该反对把）
There are topics to assess whether you are a proper social constructivist（社会构成主义,什么咚咚?)MW地解释 a nonobjective art movement originating in Russia and concerned with formal organization of planes and expression of volume in terms of modern industrial materials (as glass and plastic) constructivist adjective or noun , often capitalized 不解
"People's attitudes are determined more by their immediate situation or surroundings than by any internal characteristic."
"When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers."
And there are topics to make sure you are a proper moral relativist道德相对主义:
"Facts are stubborn things. They cannot be altered by our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions."
"Much of the information that people assume is 'factual' actually turns out to be inaccurate. Thus, any piece of information referred to as a 'fact' should be mistrusted since it may well be proven false in the future."
"There is no such thing as purely objective observation. All observation is subjective; it is always guided by the observer's expectations or desires."
There are topics to make sure you have the proper understanding of oppression,hegemony, and personal accountability:
"The concept of 'individual responsibility' is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people's behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making."
"The absence of choice is a circumstance that is very, very rare."
"Choice is an illusion. In reality, our lives are controlled by the society in which we live."
"One often hears about the need for individuals to take responsibility for their own lives. However, the conditions in which people find themselves have been largely established long before people become aware of them. Thus, the concept of personal responsibility is much more complicated and unrealistic than is often assumed."
And there are topics to make sure you are properly anti-American (in the wake of 9/11, academe has shown how important it believes a cold contempt for America is to intellectual work):（这个比较严重地说）
"Patriotic reverence for the history of a nation often does more to impede than to encourage progress."
These are just a few of the wonderfully evocative topics catalogued at GRE.org. There are also topics designed to assess whether you are properly green, properly multicultural, properly suspicious of technology, and properly sensitized to the importance of never giving offense. But I am guessing there is no need to list them here. I am guessing you get my point.
One might argue that there are no right and wrong responses to these topics, and one could cite GRE.org's own promise that evaluation of the essay will be viewpoint neutral. But that would be naive. In certain academic disciplines, there absolutely are right and wrong approaches to these issues. The GRE analytical assessment seems specially crafted to determine whether the test taker knows what the proper approaches are, to see if she can adequately reproduce the accepted tenets of the postmodern, multicultural academy, and to score her accordingly.
How am I so sure? I'll explain in part three.
[ Last edited by conquer0824 on 2005-6-18 at 23:50 ] 不错！ 谢谢分享！ In my July 3 and July 5 blogs, I wrote about how the new GRE writing assessment looks to be a political litmus test. In my July 5 blog, I showed how the pool of essay topics consistently seeks to assess where test takers stand on a number of issues that are central to left-wing academic culture, among them a preference for collectivism over individualism(喜欢集体主义而不是个人主义); a hatred for capitalism, consumerism, and patriotism(憎恶资本主义，消费主义和爱国心，是这样吗？不解，爱国心是爱那个国啊？米国还是伊拉克？）; a commitment to hard-line social constructivism（水来解释一下？什么叫强硬的社会构成主义，比较深奥的说）; and an unfailing adherence to a morally bankrupt but snobbishly appealing ethical and historical relativism（理解不了，期待高人解释吧，好像全理解反了的说）.
Today I want to spell out some further observations about the new GRE test format. I'll conclude with some thoughts on what you can do to make your opinion of the test known, and to make your opinion count.
My observations today center on credibility. Despite the stated goal of the GRE writing assessment--to test writing ability--the GRE site does not inspire confidence in the ETS's ability to evaluate writing. Most basically, GRE.org's description of the new writing test is riddled with typos, spelling errors, and grammatical gaffes.
On the Test Preparation page, for example, we are advised to prepare for the Issue task by reading "the screen directions and the entire pool of Issue topics from which your test topics will be selecte" (sic) and by "reading the eassay-writing (sic) strategies for 'Present Your Pepsective (sic) on an Issue' task." Likewise, we are advised to prepare for the Argument task by reading "the screen directions and the entire pool of Argument topics from which your test topics will be selecte" (sic).
The topics themselves do not reliably observe the conventions of proper English either. Here's an illiterate keeper: "The true strength of a country is best demonstrated by the willingness of its government to tolerate challenges from it's own citizens." As the possessive "its" becomes the contraction "it's," we witness the wonders of syntactical drift. Here's another gem: "The bombardment of visual images in contemporary society has the effect of making people less able to focus clearly and extensively on a single issue over a long period of time." The sentence wants to suggest that visual images are bombarding people, but through a failure of prepositional phrasing it instead suggests that visual images are themselves the object of society's bombardment.（在给题目挑语法错误，研究的还蛮仔细的阿）
Scoring procedures look to be on a par with the test directions and topics: scoring the writing assessment "requires identical or adjacent scores from 2 readers; any other score combination is ajudicated (sic) by a third GRE reader." Google spells better than the GRE people. When you type in "ajudicate," it says, "Did you mean adjudicate."
"In creating this assessment for the GRE Board," the site announces, "Educational Testing Service (ETS) followed a rigorous test development process that was guided by faculty committees representing different academic institutions, disciplines, and cultural perspectives." Too bad none of them can write.
In all fairness, GRE.org does note that the writing assessment is not geared toward assessing test takers' ability to write correct English so much as it is toward evaluating how well they can express themselves in writing. Sure, it's a non sequitur, and an irresponsible one at that (How can you express yourself well in writing if you do not know the rules of grammar and syntax? Who can be held responsible for knowing the language if intellectuals can't?). But let's go with it and see where it leads.
All concerns about political content and poor grammar aside, the writing assessment topics are hardly designed to produce thoughtful, considered explorations of complex issues. They are, instead, poorly designed attempts to provoke. Structured as declarative statements, they are at once contentious and closed off. They encourage the respondent to take issue, to dispute, to agree or disagree, but they do not encourage the respondent to think, or question, or explore. In their simplistic formulations and pat pronouncements, the topics send a strong message that boiling complex issues down into insipid generalities is possible, desirable, and inherently intellectual (this is, after all, a test to determine who is cut out for the life of the mind). More to the point, the topics imply that failure to engage in analogously boilerplate thought will be construed as failure to perform the required task: to "present your perspective on an issue." That many of the topics are so poorly framed that it is not possible to have an intelligent perspective on them seems not to have occurred to the people at GRE; nor does it seem to have occurred to them that in many cases the best response to a "topic" might be to reject it as a callow and superficial platitude that cannot sustain the serious consideration test takers are expected to give it.
Where does this lead the intrepid aspiring graduate student? One of two places, depending on how canny that student is.
Place Number One--Ethical Double Bind: The test taker who can see the writing assessment's intellectual shallowness and political intrusiveness for what they are is put in the awkward position of either throwing the exam (by refusing to respond, or by responding with a frankness that could be costly come scoring time) or abandoning principle (by coughing up the formulaic cliches that the exam telegraphically demands).
Place Number Two--Unthinking Assent to Indoctrination: The test taker who does not see the writing assessment's shallowness and intrusiveness for what they are is even worse off. This is the test taker who trusts the educational system and the testing service implicitly, and who never imagines that there could be anything untoward about the methods or aims of either. This is the test taker who is a perfect student; who does all work on time, who studies hard, and who earnestly and unquestioningly does her best on every assignment and every exam. This is not an unusual test taker; while I can't speak for the sciences, I can say from experience that this is the profile of the vast majority of students who go on to grad school in the humanities. This test taker willingly conforms her opinions and beliefs to the requirements of the writing assessment; she takes the topic seriously, and responds to it in kind. She thus freely offers up her private thoughts on controversial, politically fraught subjects as a professional credential, and she freely consents, in turn, to the proposition that her professional fitness may be measured in terms of what, and how, she believes.
Tests do not simply examine; they also teach: this one teaches that one's private opinions are the same as one's professional qualifications; that one ought, in academe, to be ready to parade those opinions upon request; and that one ought, in turn, to expect one's opinions to be a central factor in the moments of performative evaluation that define academic life--the seminar paper, the qualifying exam, the dissertation, the job interview, the tenure review. In an academe where this is very much how things go, the GRE is doing useful work indeed. But it is neither credible nor conscionable work, and the GRE should not be permitted to pretend that it is.
If you want to write to the ETS about the new GRE writing assessment, address your correspondence to:
Tom Rochon
Executive Director, GRE Program
GRE-ETS
P.O. Box 6000
Princeton, NJ 08541-6000
They are not, alas, terribly email friendly at ETS.
If you are an academic, an academic-in-the-making, or if you hold a Ph.D., you might also consider writing to selected deans and departmental administrators at your home institution. Alert them to the changes in the GRE (assume nothing! there are many daft administrators out there!). Explain why you find the writing assessment degrading / invasive / stupid / other (because of the rampant administrative daftness in our halls of higher ed, you must always explain in detail: do not imagine your correspondent can or will think for herself!). And then make some suggestions. You could suggest that deans and academic departments have a responsibility to take the matter of the writing assessment up with the ETS. You could also suggest that they might refuse, as a matter of principle, to consider the writing assessment score when evaluating applicants to their graduate programs, and that they might even go so far as to announce this fact in their application materials.
All kinds of possibilities come to mind. Protest in good health and impeccable grammar!
自己看吧，没什么用的说，好像是强调GRE考试考得不是语法，句型，而是政治，并说考试侵犯了人的隐私，有些偏激，不过也有借鉴之处，至少写的时候不要写太另老米反感的话题。 再次感谢，抽空我会研究一下的。 谢谢分享 有点儿意思！顶的！
thx～^_^
保存下来抽空看看～
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