[分享]每日一评！6.5！老外280中少见的4分文章

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每日一评：老外280中少见的4分文章
Issue120
"So much is new and complex today that looking back for an understanding of the past provides little guidance for living in the present."

The speaker claims that since so much in today's world is new and complex the past provides little guidance for living in the present. I agree with this assertion insofar as history offers few foolproof panaceas for living today. However, I disagree with the speaker's claim that today's world is so unique that the past is irrelevant. One good example that supports my dual position is the way society has dealt with its pressing social problems over time. 开头对于assertion和claim的区分还是不错的，不过后面搞不明白为什么非得把one good example给粘在最后，另外the past is irrelevant这里用is恐怕不如用become好。比较奇怪的还有既然是OVER time为什么还是HAS dealt with?

Admittedly, history has helped us learn the appropriateness of addressing certain social issues, particularly moral ones, on a societal level. Attempts to legislate morality invariably fail, as illustrated by Prohibition in the 1930s and, more recently, failed federal legislation to regulate access to adult material via the Internet. We are slowly learning this lesson, as the recent trend toward legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes and the recognition of equal rights for same-sex partners both demonstrate.展开比较窄，appropriateness直接就蹦到legislate morality了，按说例子是比较好的，不过后面的both demonstrate让人大跌眼镜：how do they demonstrate？为什么不说？中间hop得太厉害。

However, the only firm lesson from history about social ills is that they are here to stay. Crime and violence, for example, have troubled almost every society. All manner of reform, prevention, and punishment have been tried. Today, the trend appears to be away from reform toward a "tough-on-crime" approach. Is this because history makes clear that punishment is the most effective means of eliminating crime? No; rather, the trend merely reflects our current mores, attitudes, and political climate.这一段问题更大，TS是the lesson from history is that social ills are here to stay，然后从crime说起，说到punishment，然后又变到effective means和current attitude，越扯越远，扯到最后完全离开了TS.

Another example involves how we deal with the mentally-ill segment of the population. History reveals that neither quarantine, treatment, nor accommodation solves the problem, only that each approach comes with its own trade-offs. 这两句话组成一个例子，但是表达的信息非常有限 Also undermining the assertion that history helps us to solve social problems is the fact that, despite the civil-fights efforts of Martin Luther King and his progenies, the cultural gap today between African-Americans and white Americans seems to be widening. It seems that racial prejudice is a timeless phenomenon. 这个例子还算是和上段的TS联系起来，不过全文的最高水平也仅限于此了。

To sum up, in terms of how to live together as a society I agree that studying the past is of some value; for example, it helps us appreciate the futility of legislating morality. However, history's primary sociological lesson seems to be that today's social problems are as old as society itself, and that there are no panaceas or prescriptions for solving these problems---only alternate ways of coping with them.

这篇文章是老外280至今写的最差的一篇文章。主论点是一个dual position，然后分论点展开两个：appropriateness和firm lesson，但是展开水平实在和原先的好文章不是一个级别。而且全文在organization的组织上至少有两点显得很别扭：第一，开头在表述dual position的时候的顺序是1，however 2，但是到了主体变成了 admittedly 2，然后1，显得非常不协调；第二则是段落的划分很混乱。

最主要的问题应该说还是出在展开上，基本上文章的各个论点只停留在support而没有develop，而这种support和reasoning也是相当的平庸，idea expression方面，例如第二个分论点，如果不是倒数第二段的例子help illustrate的话恐怕自身都很成问题。这样的文章最多只能是4分的水平。其实大家完全应该思考一下：我们论证所谓的position，support，develop，到底都体现在哪里？

补充一句：这个“4分”是我个人作出的判断。