Issue185 [Jet]小组第一次作业 第一篇I，欢迎拍砖

goldin2008UID: 2140085

没限时，而且还是一边看范文，一边上网查资料写的，头一篇Issue写的很费劲，希望后面有经验会好点：）
TOPIC: ISSUE185 - "Scandals-whether in politics, academia, or other areas-can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."
WORDS: 810          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2008-1-31

Are scandals useful and do they focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could, as the author claims? To the extent, I agree with the arguer's assertion that scandals can serve to reveal many subtle and serious problems, which we should concern about, thereby attracting our attention. However, in many cases scandals can sometimes distract us from more vital issues.

As a threshold matter, scandals can focus our attention on issues that we neglect, or even cannot realize unless the scandals have surfaced. Perhaps the paradigmatic modern example is the phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire. In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The fee for the jamming, reportedly $15,600, was paid by New Hampshire Republicans. Republicans were intent on winning a Senate majority so they would control the White House and both houses of Congress. They saw the Sununu-Shaheen race as pivotal. The election wasn't as close as expected. Mr. Sununu won, and Republicans retook the Senate. After the dirty campaign tricks had surfaced, the news media and the general public became to demand more information about what happened at a critical moment in a tough election and other political activities.

In addition, while nothing has so far attracted the international notoriety of the Woo-Suk Hwang affair in South Korea, the past two years have seen a series of minor scandals over research ethics across Chinese science. The highest profile case involved Jin Chen, dean of the Microelectronics School at Shanghai Jiaotong University, who was fired in May 2006 for faking the research behind a supposedly groundbreaking microchip. Dr Chen was discovered to have been reusing chips made by one of Motorola’s subsidiaries, to which he had simply added his company logo. He was eventually caught after a whistleblower reported him to the university authorities. It is easy to pin the blame on the moral weakness of individual scientists, while ignoring the wider reasons why such cases occur. Behind this more extreme example, there is a more subtle and pervasive culture of plagiarism within higher education. Dr Chen is a case in point. He received a substantial salary to return to China from the US, and a big grant for his research. But with such largesse comes regular scrutiny of results and an assessment system that can be unforgiving of those who fail. Misconduct is an almost inevitable product of this mix. Another is stress and even suicide: there has been a spate of deaths among young Chinese scientists in the past two years, linked to the intense pressures of research assessment. As one PhD student said: ‘There are so many pressures inducements, and temptations. Money, power and prestige all flow from scientific success. But there shouldn’t be so much pressure on scientists at such an early stage in their careers.’ Policy-makers are waking up to these problems after the scandal. The general public and the news media called for new procedures to prevent misconduct and compulsory courses for students and researchers on research integrity and scientific ethics. The government responded to these calls by announcing a series of measures, including the creation of a special office for research integrity, tough new penalties for plagiarism, falsifying data and research fraud, and a tightening up of the system for project evaluation.

Admittedly, if every new development during the scandal became front-page news, it would distract the general public and government from far more vital issues, which were relegated to the second page of the newspaper during the scandal. Or perhaps, scandal could readily break down into a dangerous game of unregulated accusation and counter-accusation, shedding no light on actual misconduct. However, if there are organizations charged with assessing allegations of misconduct and an independent press to report on such matters, in most cases the scandal would spark a hot debate about it and maybe reveal a small-time crime with hints of big-time connections. If so, the scandal would increase the level of scrutiny and accountability to which our public officials are held, thereby working a significant and lasting benefit to our society.

To sum up, although deleterious effects of the scandal do exist, such as too much attention paid to scandals may risk distracting that focus on the mainstream events, being hazardous, unregulated accusation and so on, it works more benefit than harm to a community or society.These benefits will serve useful legal precedents for the future and will no doubt provide useful procedural precedent at some future time. Time will tell whether the scandal will benefit our political, social, or legal system.




[ 本帖最后由 goldin2008 于 2008-2-1 16:41 编辑 ]

追梦的追梦人UID: 2347436

写得太多了。。。汗！

goldin2008UID: 2140085

原帖由 追梦的追梦人 于 2008-2-1 15:20 发表
写得太多了。。。汗！

嗯哪，举例子用的语言稍微有点多了

dreamstringUID: 2389201

Are scandals useful and do they focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could, as the author claims? To the (that更好) extent, I agree with the arguer's assertion that scandals can serve to reveal many subtle and serious problems, which we should concern about, thereby attracting our attention. However, in many cases scandals can (尽量避免这样的重复，变换一些说法）sometimes distract us from more vital issues.

As a threshold matter, scandals can focus our attention on issues that we neglect, or even cannot realize unless the scandals  (the scandal has或者scandals）have surfaced. Perhaps the paradigmatic modern example is the phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire（觉得这句话有点直译中文的感觉，不知我说的对不对）. In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The fee for the jamming, reportedly (reported)$15,600, was paid by New Hampshire Republicans. Republicans were intent on winning a Senate majority so they would control the White House and both houses of Congress. They saw the Sununu-Shaheen race as pivotal. The election wasn't as close as expected. Mr. Sununu won, and Republicans retook the Senate. After the dirty campaign tricks had surfaced, the news media and the general public became to demand more information about what happened at a critical moment in a tough election and other political activities.(我觉得这一段过于冗长了，例子应该是不用详细的叙述这个过程的，只用把关键点讲到就行了。对于这一段，我认为你只用提出这件事，然后说明这件事之后人们意识到应该更多关注选举和其他政治活动进行中的过程。因为通过丑闻人们意识到什么，才是你这一段的观点，应该把重点放在例子如何支持你的观点上，而不是很长的去叙述一个例子。）

In addition, while nothing has so far attracted the international notoriety of the Woo-Suk Hwang affair in South Korea, the past two years have seen a series of minor scandals over research ethics （ethical problems可能更好：“道德问题”）across Chinese science. The highest profile case involved Jin Chen, dean of the Microelectronics School at Shanghai Jiaotong University, who was fired in May 2006 for faking the research behind a supposedly groundbreaking microchip. Dr Chen was discovered to have been reusing chips made by one of Motorola’s subsidiaries, to which he had simply added his company logo. He was eventually caught after a whistleblower reported him to the university authorities (the university authority). It is easy to pin the blame on the moral weakness of individual scientists, while ignoring the wider reasons why such cases occur. Behind this more extreme example, there is a more subtle and pervasive culture of plagiarism within higher education. Dr Chen is a case in point. He received a substantial salary to return to China from the US, and a big grant for his research. But with such largesse comes regular scrutiny of results and an assessment system that can be unforgiving of those who fail. Misconduct is an almost (almost an)inevitable product of this mix. Another (another什么？)is stress and even suicide: there has been a spate of deaths among young Chinese scientists in the past two years, linked to the intense pressures of research assessment. As one PhD student said: ‘There are so many pressures inducements, and temptations. Money, power and prestige all flow from scientific success. But there shouldn’t be so much pressure on scientists at such an early stage in their careers.’ Policy-makers are waking up to these problems after the scandal. The general public and the news media called for new procedures to prevent misconduct and compulsory courses for students and researchers on research integrity and scientific ethics. The government responded to these calls by announcing a series of measures, including the creation of a special office for research integrity, tough new penalties for plagiarism, falsifying data and research fraud, and a tightening up of the system for project evaluation.

Admittedly, if every new development during (about)the scandal became front-page news, it would distract the general public and government from far more vital issues, which were relegated to the second page of the newspaper during the scandal. Or perhaps, scandal could readily break down into a dangerous game of unregulated accusation and counter-accusation, shedding no light on actual misconduct. However, if there are organizations charged with assessing allegations of misconduct and an independent press to report on such matters, in most cases the scandal would spark a hot debate about it and maybe reveal a small-time crime with hints of big-time connections. If so, the scandal would increase the level of scrutiny and accountability to which our public officials are held, thereby working a significant and lasting benefit to our society.

To sum up, although deleterious effects of the scandal do exist, such as too much attention paid to scandals may risk distracting that focus on the mainstream events, being hazardous, unregulated accusation and so on, it works more benefit than harm （觉得有点怪，这里是动词还是形容词呢？动词前面可以用more吗？我不太懂语法~~）to a community or society.These benefits will serve useful legal precedents for the future and will no doubt provide useful procedural precedent at some future time（in future就行了吧）. Time will tell whether the scandal will benefit our political, social, or legal system.

总结一下，觉得这篇文章的例子过于冗长了，而且用了两个好几百字的例子来支持一个观点。第一个例子的问题我已经说了，我觉得第二个例子用来支持你的观点比较好。其实适当把第二个例子叙述得简洁一些，删掉第一个例子会比较好。我觉得对于论点来说，仅仅一个反对观点显得有些单薄，考官可以比较容易的找到一个观点来反驳你的观点。而且，这篇issue强调scandals能把我们的视线集中到那些speakers or reformers不能让我们关注的问题上。而你整片文章只是在说scandals是有用的。你应该用那些例子来强调，那些scandals是speakers or reformers无法让我们引起注意的，这是这篇issue所强调的一个地方。
另外就是注意例子的篇幅，我还是想说，例子只要说明问题，支持你的观点就行，不必大规模的举例子。试想一下，你在考场上写这么一篇文章的时候，如果你有两三个论点，可能会由于例子太长而占用了大量的时间去书写，可能写到第二个论点的例子时就发现时间不够了，这会导致你整篇文章逻辑论证不完整，所带来的损失可能就更大了。我相信一篇这样字数的文章在考场里用45分钟完成是不现实的，你说呢？


[ 本帖最后由 dreamstring 于 2008-2-1 23:49 编辑 ]

leftkissUID: 2347956

原帖由 追梦的追梦人 于 2008-2-1 15:20 发表
写得太多了。。。汗！

好么～同感同感～太野乎了:funk: