Question

 

Now in his senior year in Bowdoin College, a small, elite liberal-arts（文科）college in Masine, Chen Yongfang has become such a devotee of the liberal-arts approach that he’s made it his mission to spread the word throughout China. He has coauthored a book called A True Liberal Arts Education, which essentially explains the little-known concept to Chinese students and their parents. Though there have been many books about how to get into Ivy League universities, “there was not a single book in China about the smaller liberal-arts colleges,” he says.

The book, which Chen wrote with friends Ye Lin and Wan Li, who also attend small U. S. colleges, touts（兜售）such benefits as intimate classes (the student-to-faculty ratio at Bowdoin is 9:1) and professors who focus on teaching rather than research. Chen, 23, explains that he was won over by Bowdoin’s commitment to nurturing skills for life, rather than simply for the workplace. “Liberal arts is abut fostering your identity,” he says. “They want to cultivate your mind.” He admits that liberal arts may be a hard sell in a country with an increasingly competitive job market. The book states bluntly that in the short term, a liberal-arts education won’t improve job prospects. “In China, employers are looking for someone who can come in and start working immediately when they graduate, not someone who still needs to be trained in practical skills,” Chen says.

The book, which received wide media coverage in China and now has a waiting list for its second print run, is certainly timely: it plays into a growing debate in China about what national universities should be teaching. The country needs a workforce with the skills and creativity to help move away from low-cost manufacturing and, in economic terms, move up the value chain. And some educators believe liberal-arts training is vital to help China deal with its increasingly complex new realities. Yet the well-known intellectual historian Xu Jilin believes that China’s rapid expansion of higher education has had a detrimental effect on curriculum as the country’s universities race to compete globally. “Education these days in like factory-farming chickens,” he says. “Universities all wan to get into international rakings—and most of these depend on research. They’re not interested in providing a unique education for our kids.”

1.According to Chen Yongfang, the benefits of attending liberal-arts colleges are the following EXCEPT        .

    A．closer relationship with tutors

    B．teachers more devoted to teaching

    C．practical skills for getting a job in China

    D．development in mind and life-long ability

2.It can be inferred from the passage that        .

    A．the teaching quality in big research universities not as good as small colleges

    B．it is more difficult for liberal-arts graduates to find a job because employers don’t believe that they can perform well

    C．literal-arts education is of little help to China’s economic development

    D．research universities received more Chinese applicants than smaller liberal-arts colleges

3.The word “detrimental” in Para.3 probably means “         .”

    A．instant        B．rewarding      C．damaging       D．obvious

4.According to Xu Jilin,         .

    A．the expansion of higher education has improved the competitive strength of China’s universities

    B．Chinese universities are providing the same courses as foreign universities

    C．many universities are not paying enough attention to teaching

    D．research should gain more attention in order to improve China’s universities’ rankings

5.This passage is most probably adapted from         .

    A．a(chǎn)n article introducing liberal arts

    B．a(chǎn)n article introducing the book A True Liberal Arts Education

    C．a(chǎn)n article criticizing China’s higher education

    D．a(chǎn)n advertisement for Bowdoin College

 

Answer 1

【答案】

1.C

2.D

3.C

4.C

5.B