1 2008 英语专业八级真题及答案 PART II READING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN) In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your coloured answer sheet TEXT A At the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon's life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p.m. After dinner, it's time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul's many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It's a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder. South Korea's education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That's because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year's 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SAT-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges. The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly ...
VIP
