Section A Translate the underlined sentences of
the following passage into Chinese. Remember to write the answers on the answer
sheet.
The standardized educational or psychological tests that are
widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students,
employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in
books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. (81) The target is
wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that
lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely
tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under
specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even
misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed predictions of future performance are based upon
some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research
productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. (82) How well the
predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount,
reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and
wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows
that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are
always subject to error. Standardized tests should be
considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting
some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has
developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has,
qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of
information. (83) Whether to use tests or other kinds of information,
or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from
experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and
availability. (84) In general, the tests work most
effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and
least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted can not be well
defined. Properly used, .they provide a rapid means of getting comparable
information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high
potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do
not do. (85) For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality,
and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had
he grown up under more favorable circumstances.