北京外国语大学2000年硕士研究生入学试题基础英语试卷I. Reading Comprehension.（32分）1. Read the following article and paraphrase the underlined parts:The twenty-first century will mark the era of tertiary and lifelong learning for everybody-or almost everybody. Thus the West Report from Australia, echoing a key theme of the immediately preceding Dearing Report in the UK (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education NCIHE, 1997).The notion of lifelong learning has pervaded higher education around the world as governments have increasingly come to recognize a link between their education systems and national economic performance. However, policy relating to the actual making of the link needs deeper consideration. The development of key skills has been seen in the UK as an important way in which higher education can contribute to economic development, but it can be argued that to focus on these skills represents a narrow and insufficient response to what employers-and the wider interest-really need (see Stephensons 1998 argument for a capability approach to higher education and, more broadly, the discussion in part 2 of Barnett 1994. However the contested nature of this aspect of higher education might be resolved, current discussions have left relatively unexplored the broader implications for curricula and, in particular, for fist-cycle provision.In earlier times many took the view that a first degree was a sufficient basis for lifetime career. The accelerating pace of knowledge development has undermined this conception, and increasing attention is now being given to the provision of higher degree programs and other opportunities for professional development. This raises a serious question: what function does the first degree serve in the context of lifelong learning?Logically, it makes no sense in todays world to try to pack first degree curricula with all the knowledge, understanding and skills need for the rest of a lifetime. There simply is not the time available, and anyway curriculum-packing runs the risk of superficiality of learning. A first degree should, if they have not already acquired it, develop in students the ability to learn how to learn, as well as enhance their subject-specific expertise and other relevant skills. The old saying is valid here: giving individuals each a fish might feed them for a day, but teaching them the skills of fishing could feed them for life.There is a need to think of the first degree in terms of the quality, rater than the quantity, of students learning, In todays world the first degree becomes more of a foundation qualification, upon which graduates will expect to build during their lives. Some might react by saying that to make such a shift implies a dilution of academic standards-but the counter is that standards relate primarily to the quality, and not the quantity, of students learning. The reconstrued first degree need be no intellectual poor relation: academic rigour can be built into curricula of widely differing focus. The standards may well be different, but they do have to be inferior.Some reduction in the volume of discipline-specific content will require an adjustment of thought in particular, on the part of employers and professional bodies. The professional accreditation of some first degree programs is seen by some as an essential condition. However, there seems no necessary reason for this to be the case-and it might well be to the professions longer-term advantage if first degree curricula were to pay particular attention to developing in graduates the ability to learn to learn, leaving subsequent professional and developmental activities to provide the topping-up that would cohere with the professional bodies expectations.A strategic vision for higher education in the next millennium requires more than a muttering of the mantra of lifelong learning. Making lifelong learning work demands a sustained commitment to fitting together the pieces of the multidimensional jigsaw whose components include educational purposes, values and practicalities. Academics are among the people who ought to relish this jigsaws challenge.Whippier-snapper: an insignificant, esp. young, person who appears impertinent.echoing a key theme of the immediately preceding Dearing Report in the UK.However the contested nature of this aspect of higher education might be resolved, current discussions have left relatively unexplored the broader implications for curricula.first degreecurriculum-packing runs the risk of superficiality of learning.but the counter is that standards relate primarily to the quality, and not the quantity, of students learning.Some reduction in the volume of discipline-specific content will require an adjustment of thoughtit might well be to the professions longer-term advantage if first degree curricula were to pay particular attention to developing in graduates the ability to learn. Read