In 1991, Western Europeans were shaken by
television images of a downpour of explosives falling upon the sleepy little
Danube town of Vukovar, and plumes of smoke snaking their way over Dubrovnik,
"the jewel of the Adriatic" and a World Heritage site. From 1991 to
1999, countries of the former Yugoslavia were subjected to wars. The terms
emerged during the wars: "urbicide" to describe the bombing of cities
such as Mostar and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and "cultural
cleansing" or "cultural genocide" to indicate the fate of
mosques, churches, museums, archives, libraries, schools, and so on.
Inevitably, these terms were in some way propaganda wars, but all too often,
they reflected the new landscapes of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more
recently, of Kosovo.
The deliberate destruction in wartime of
cultural heritage is no historical novelty. Sometimes destruction has been an
affair of pillaging for profit, at others it has been part of the widely
recognized right to annihilate the enemy. During World War I, churches and old
town centres were reduced to rubble out of military necessity. During World War
II, large German city centres disappeared as part of strategic "area bombing"
by Commonwealth air forces.
In the case of the former Yugoslavia, the
heritage sites destroyed for purely military reasons were few and far between.
History reminds us that sacred buildings have been destroyed time and time
again in the Balkans. In the 19th century, the conquering Hapsburg armies and
Catholic administrators in Croatia turned a handful of mosques into churches
and destroyed the rest. More recently, during World War II, massive destruction
of Serbian Orthodox churches was carried out in Croatia and parts of Bosnia and
Herzegovina by the fascist Ustasha forces. Ruins in Eastern Slavonia and
Krajina, prominently Serb areas of Croatia, stand as clear and definite
reminders of this period.
But the more recent events are of a singularly
different nature. We are not referring to foreign powers invading a territory
and sweeping aside everything in their wake. We are in the presence of old
societies which were to some extent integrated, but in the process of breaking
up. The Serbian inhabitants of Croatian Krajina were not newcomers to the
region in 1991. Croats, Muslims and Serbs have lived together in Bosnia and
Herzegovina since the 16th century. And more recently, in the 20th century,
mixed marriages in cities and towns played a significant role in weaving the
social fabric. In the countryside, where people often settled by ethnic
belonging, the situation was different. Accordingly, during the war, when
Muslims, Croats, Serbs or Kosovar Albanians were chased out of their villages while
their mosques and churches were mined or burned, it was the "other"---“foreigner"
--- who was being removed from the region.
In the cities and towns of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, destruction had a different significance. It was common to hear in
Sarajevo and Mostar that synagogues, Christian churches and mosques are only
100 metres from each other. This may not in fact be true, but in people's
minds, it was. The cities enjoyed great religious foundations and were home to
the finest Ottoman sacred heritage. A sense of integration had developed
through a common attachment to places and shared spaces. The coexistence of
religious traditions provided people with a common sense of ownership f sacred
heritage. Serbs, Muslims and Croats also took equal pride in their secular
buildings, such as the Sarajevo National and University Library.
All this was profoundly changed by war.
Although we perceive destruction as barbarous, it is seen as an act of creation
in the eyes of its perpetrators. In the countryside of Croatia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina, it was the creation - or the liberation - of a mythical rural
society, with the symbols of the unwanted other - his minarets or church
steeples ? eliminated from the horizon. But in the cities of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, a common civic identity was destroyed, and along with it, the
"other" inside the people. Secular and sacred heritage became
ethnicized: before the war, nobody in Mostar would have said that the Old
Bridge was a "Muslim" monument. Its destruction by Croat tanks turned
it into one. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the impoverishment of the post-war
cities is appalling, not simply because they are largely emptied of another
ethnic group or of great sacred buildings. The surviving buildings, even
intact, are simply ghosts from another age: the "other" has been
eliminated at all levels, inside people and outside on the streets.
In this context, the restoration and
rebuilding of cultural heritage can take on political and downright divisive
dimensions: it is no longer a question of rebuilding what was held in common,
but only "what was ours." The technical problems of reconstruction
are infinitely less important than the "de-ethnicization" of
heritage, and it is difficult to imagine how the Balkan societies will be able
to overcome this problem. The only hope of restoring a once commonly held
landscape lies in a commitment to do so by the ethnic or national group that
carried out the crimes. (845 words)
名古屋市立・中期は初めて，ここ数年では一番長い英文総量になりました。３問で２４００語超です。長いと思っていた慶応・環境情報と肩を並べます。私の担当した後半では環境情報のパワーも少し落ちてきて，最後は１０００語ちょっとだった時もありました。内容は極めて政治的。聞いたことだけがあるユーゴスラビア情勢。内戦によって，調和を保っていた都市が修復できない所まで破壊尽くされてしまった。それは町並みの復興ではなく，人々のこころに根ざす共生のこころだ。なかなか難しい英文でした。空所補充問題が５題ありましたが，あやうく２題を間違うところでした。幸い原典があったので，それに救われました。
大問２
All of us have felt pain. We have cut
ourselves. We have been burned. Or we have had headaches. Some of us suffer
pain rarely. And others have painful attacks all the time. Why does pain come
in so many forms? What are the different ways to stop it? What have scientists
discovered about pain, and how are doctors helping to fight it?
French doctor and Nobel Peace Prize winner
Albert Schweitzer once said that, “pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than
even death itself." This is because we can feel pain.
Pain can take complete control of our body
and mind, making it impossible to move and even to think. Yet we need pain. Without
it, we would not know if we have hurt ourselves. It is our body's warning
system. It tells us that we are injured and should do something about it.
Pain is the most common reason we go to a
doctor or another healer. It is the most common reason we take medicine. Until
recently, however, most doctors knew of only a few drugs that stopped some
pains. They knew little about the process of pain itself. But new knowledge
about the process of pain is helping them learn to control pain better.
How do we feel pain? What happens, for
example, when something heavy falls on our foot?
Scientists have learned that the sense of
pain is made up of both chemical and electrical signals. These signals travel
from nerve cells in the injured area, up the spinal cord to the brain, and back
down again. Scientists also have learned that the nervous system sends two
different kinds of pain messages to the brain: one very fast, the other slow.
The first message is the warning signal. It
moves at a speed of 30 meters a second. In less than a second, the brain
understands that part of our body is hurt and how badly it is injured.
The other message moves at a speed of only
one meter a second. It is the first step in the healing process. A very
powerful substance plays an important part in this process. It is called
prostaglandin. Prostaglandins are produced, when needed, in almost every kind
of body tissue. They are responsible for many different reactions. For example,
scientists say prostaglandins raise and lower blood pressure. They also cause
fever.
When we hurt ourselves, the injured tissue
produces a chemical called arachidonic acid. The acid changes into
prostaglandins. The prostaglandins cause the tissue to become red and swollen.
And they send the second, slower message of pain to the brain. This message
tells us not to use the injured part until it heals.
Scientists now know that some drugs stop
pain directly at the injury. The drugs do this by preventing arachidonic acid
from changing into prostaglandins. When there are no prostaglandins. there is
no painful swelling and no slow pain message. The most common of these
pain-killing drugs has been used for many years. It is aspirin. Other drugs
reduce pain, but do not reduce swelling. So scientists believe they act on the
other part of the body instead of directly at the injury.
The fast and slow pain messages travel on
separate nerves through the body. But both must pass through an area of the
spinal cord called the dorsal horn. The horn changes electrical signals from
the injured area into chemicals the brain can understand. When the brain
receives these signals, it produces a number of special substances. Two of
these are called endorphins and enkephalins.
Endorphins and enkephalins are natural
pain-killers. Some of them work directly in the brain. They block pain signals
by fitting into nerve cells that receive the signals, just as a key fits into a
lock. Pain-killing drugs made from the opium poppy act on nerve cells in the
same way. Some endorphins and enkephalins, as well as other brain chemicals,
travel back down the spinal cord to the dorsal horn. They block pain messages
there, too.
As you can imagine, the dorsal horn gets to
be a very busy place when so many pain and pain-killing messages try to pass
through it at the same time. A growing number of scientists believe our nervous
system can deal with only a limited number of nerve signals. And they say this
might, in fact, be another way the body fights pain.
For example, if we hurt our foot, we might
reach down to rub it. It might seem as if we move without thinking. But we
cannot actually move until the brain sends messages to the muscles in our hand.
These messages compete with the messages of pain traveling from the foot to the
brain. In a way not yet completely understood, the nervous system recognizes
only one group of signals. If it recognizes the messages to the hand, the pain
messages will be blocked. And we will feel less pain.
Scientists say this idea about the nervous
system might help explain how people can do unbelievable things when they are
hurt. If someone is extremely afraid or excited, for example, the nervous
system might recognize the signals that produce these feelings, instead of the
signals that produce pain. We all have heard stories about badly wounded
soldiers continuing to fight a battle, or injured athletes continuing to play a
game.
As scientists learn more about the process
of pain, doctors can improve treatments for pain.
Most of us only suffer pain from time to
time. We can ease it with drugs that prevent the production of prostaglandins -
drugs such as aspirin. But millions of people suffer pain all the time..
Their pain might be caused by a squeezed
nerve, or arthritis or cancer. Sometimes no medical reason can explain their
pain. Yet they still feel it. For them, simple drugs cannot block the pain signals
to their brains. They need stronger longer-lasting treatment. Most of the
treatments try to turn on the nerve cells that produce the body's own
pain-killing substances. (1006 words)
こちらはなんと１０００語超。内容は「痛みを科学する」なかなか興味深い内容です。その昔，「熱が出るのは悪くない」という入試英文を扱ったことがあります。もう１０年前のことですが，ほぼ同レベル，同じような内容でした。薬学部合格にはおそろいしく英語ができなければならないようです。
When you start to feel very sleepy, you
should go to bed, because shortchanging your rest can hurt your health. We
don't need a scientist or a study to tell us that there's a price to be paid
for losing sleep. You sag after lunch, or just plain feel - crummy. Remember
when your parents shooed you to bed with "Because you need your sleep,
that's why!"? They were right more than they knew.
Research now suggests that regular,
sufficient sleep is one of those indispensables, ranking right up there with
eating right and exercising. Recent experiments show that when you shortchange
sleep, the human immune system produces fewer infection-fighting antibodies,
making you vulnerable to disease. Researchers at the University of Chicago
studied volunteers who slept four hours a night for six straight days. They
found hormonal and metabolic systems in disarray. The conclusion: chronic sleep
loss might hasten the onset and
increase the severity of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Another study linked lack of sleep to
increased risk of heart attack.
There are also benefits to the brain. In
Canada, researchers used a certain logic game to test sleep's influence on
"complex cognitive procedural" thinking. If people get drunk shortly
before going to bed, after they learn the game in the afternoon, they do 40
percent worse the next time they play it than those who did not drink. One
explanation is that alcohol suppresses the REM (rapid eye movement) cycles of
sleep, which you need in order to learn well. Similar experiments at Harvard
University have shown that people score
better on memory tests if they sleep soundly for six hours the night
after learning the task. Sleeping poorly can impair your ability to learn and
remember.
Memories are created by strengthening
connections among networks of brain cells. Sleep may be the brain's way of
making those connections. Each waking moment bombards your brain with
sensations, thoughts and feelings. If your brain tried to store them all as
memories, you might experience overload. Sleep may help edit out some of those
impressions.
How much sleep do you need? A century ago
most people got about nine hours a night. Researchers say that most of us need
about eight hours. Nowadays we get about seven hours on average, and a third of
us get by on six or less. The electric light bulb is partly to blame. Your
body's inner clock responds to light-dark cycles. There are many times when
your alarm clock and your inner clock simply don't correspond. For those who
work at night, this becomes a chronic issue. Recent studies show that
artificially illuminated evenings disrupt sleep and may produce sleep pathology
in some people. Age is another factor. As we get older, this inner clock
changes. For teenagers it is set to "late to bed, late to rise."
After years of sleep experience, we are more likely to fall asleep at dusk and
awaken at dawn. It's not true that you need less sleep as you get older, but it
is true that you get less. The reasons
are
aches, pains, depression, medications, nighttime trips to the bathroom and so
on.
How, in our plugged-in, overworked,
present-day lives, can we get more sleep? There are some easy steps to take.
Wine with dinner may relax you, but it also interrupts the sleep cycle and
causes midnight wakefulness. Don't use alcohol as a sleeping pill; it disrupts
normal sleep patterns. The bed should be a sleep only zone. Many foods and
beverages contain hidden caffeine, which acts as a disturbing agent in your
sleep. Avoid caffeinated coffee, tea, soft drinks and chocolate after noon.
More fundamentally, we need to change our attitudes. Sleep isn't a form of
laziness: it may make you smarter and healthier. We need to promote sleep as a
necessary ingredient of a healthy life. Sleep is not a waste of time. It is
vital for a functioning brain and your
overall
health. (662 words)
こちらは頻出問題。睡眠に関する英文は極めて人気が高く，今年もこれで２題めです。内容的には普通の感じですが，これも原典がありました。比較的最近の英文でびっくり。２００４年４月ということですので，入試の頻出テーマは前年度の６月まで，というのに入っています。これで今年の担当は終わりだと思いますが，今年もよく解きました。特に担当数は最小ですが，それぞれ解説の行数があって，解説を書いた行数では今年が一番です。なんか一杯書きました。
（２００５年３月２９日）
大問１
The Internet is very much like television in
that it takes time away from other pursuits, provides entertainment and
information, but in no way can compare with the warm, personal experience of
reading a good book. This is not the
only reason why the Internet will never replace books, for books provide the
sufficient knowledge of a subject that sitting in front of a computer monitor
cannot provide. We can transfer text from an Internet source, but the artistic
quality of sheets of transferred text leaves much to be desired. A
well-designed book makes the reading experience important.
The book is still the most compact and
economical means of conveying a lot of knowledge in a convenient package, and
this is what makes it popular. The idea that one can carry in one's pocket a
play by Shakespeare, a novel by Charles Dickens or the Bible in a small book
with a stiff, paper cover is incredible. We take such uncommon convenience for
granted, not realizing that the book itself has undergone quite an evolution
since the production of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 and Shakespeare's book of
plays in 1623
Not only has the art and craft of printing
and making books been greatly improved over the centuries, but the great
variety of subject matter now available in books is surprising, to say the
least. In fact, the Internet requires the constant entry of authors and their
books to obtain the information that makes it a useful tool for research and
learning.
Another important reason why the Internet
will never replace books is because those who wish to become writers want to
see their works permanently published as books -- something you can hold, see,
feel, look through, and read at your leisure without the need for an electric
current apart from a lamp. The writer may use a computer instead of a pen and
pad, but the finished product must eventually end up as a book if it is to have
value to the reading public. The writer may use the Internet in the course of
researching a subject just as he may use a library for that purpose, but the
end product will still be a book.
Rather than replacing books, the Internet is
now being used by bookstores on the Web to sell more and more books to
consumers on a global scale. And even though the Internet provides consumers
with a much larger selection of books than is available in any one bookstore,
it will never replace the bookstore where the reader can turn pages to his
heart's content and even settle down in an easy chair and read a book until
closing time. The big new super bookstores serve coffee and cake, present live
readings by authors, and stay open late.
Nor will the Internet ever replace the utter
enjoyment of looking through books in a secondhand bookstore or going to an old
book fair and actually holding a book and touching the pages that were printed
over a hundred years ago. Books provide a bridge to the past, to all of those
who have gone before us and have left us a wisdom stored by their life
experiences. Books have that magic
ability to bring the past to life through the words of those who lived in years
gone by. If you want to truly know
history, you must read the actual words of those who lived it.
That is not to say the Internet is any less
than it is. The Internet, as it continues to grow, is certainly one of the most
remarkable developments of technology in the history of mankind. Its ability to
connect us all with the entire world is what makes it so extraordinary. For
example, you can read the morning's headlines or weather reports in Australian
newspapers, explore the subway system in Buenos Aires, or find a long-lost
friend in the US if he or she has a telephone. Through e-mail you can
communicate with anyone anywhere who also has an e-mail address. You can even
discuss the latest book you've read. But
will the Internet ever replace books? Probably not.
(693
words)
久しぶりに原典がわかりました。→http://www.home-school.com/Articles/phs27-samblumenfeld.html
内容的にはごく穏当なもの。本の「良さ」を知らずに育った人が増えている現在，この英文がどのくらい説得力を持つかは疑問です。
大問 ３
The Great Depression was a time of great
fear and widespread poverty throughout America and the whole world. The crisis
began in October 1929, when the stock market collapsed. By 1932, more than 100,
000 businesses in America had failed and a quarter of the nation's workers had
no jobs. There seemed to be no hope for a better life in the future. During the
Depression, Americans turned to entertainment for escape. One critic said,
"America went mad for movies," but to most Americans, radio was still
a cheap and popular form of
entertainment during those years. It was also a powerful force that was able to
influence the way people thought. Here is an episode that shows how powerful
radio can be.
The most famous radio broadcast in history
took place at 8:00 p.m. October 30. 1938. It was Halloween eve, and millions of
Americans turned on their radios to listen to a popular program starring Orson
Welles. The program that evening was a story based on a science fiction story
called The War of the Worlds. A Martian
attack of Earth would be a good one for the night before Halloween. But Welles
decided to make some changes in the original story. For example, he changed the
background from London in the 1890s to modern New Jersey. Welles also made the
show sound like an actual news broadcast about a real attack from Mars to make
it seem more realistic.
The show began with an orchestra playing
dance music. After a few minutes, the music was interrupted with a "news
bulletin" reporting that a "huge flaming object" had landed in
New Jersey. The music continued, but “news bulletins" kept interrupting
with "live" reports from the scene. During the show, people pretending
to be news announcers and policemen described in great detail the dangerous
attack from Mars.
An announcer stated at the beginning of the
show that the program was a drama based on a science fiction story.
Unfortunately, many listeners tuned in after the show had begun and missed the
explanation. They were shocked and afraid when they heard that Martians had
landed in the United States. They thought that they were listening to a real
news bulletin. Thousands of fearful Americans believed that an actual attack on
Earth from Mars was taking place. The program was so realistic that they
thought they could really hear the Martians and smell their poison gas. Some
people packed their suitcases, got into their cars, and attempted to escape.
Others tried to defend themselves from the aliens by hiding in cellars, loading
guns, even wrapping their heads in wet towels to protect themselves from
Martian poison gas.
Stories of panic caused by the radio show
appeared all over the country. The next day, Welles held a press conference. He
apologized that his broadcast had caused so many people to panic. (479 words)
知っている人は知っている，という有名な話しですが，受験生は知らないかもしれません。知らない場合はこの短い英文でだいたいのことを理解するのは少し大変かもしれませんが，英語教師にとってはごくありふれた題材という感じ。神奈川大学の英文読解の形式は３問ともほぼ同じ。語彙→文→理解で構成されています。取り組み易いと感じました。
大問 ４
Growing up with six sisters wasn't easy. We
had our share of differences of opinions over the years. My parents never had
much money and we were sometimes without food. We were lucky to get our
stomachs full. If there was a treat at night, it was rare.
I will never forget that summer back in
1969. Funds were very tight because my parents were building a new home. The
old house was too small and every penny my father earned was going into the new
one. The last few days before payday were the worst. There just wasn't enough
food to go around. I can remember how we waited for payday as if it were a
holiday. My father would stop at the bank on the way home from work so my
mother could go shopping when he got home. We all enjoyed going to the grocery
store with her. We would walk past the food and dream about bringing the whole
store home, much as children would walk through a toy store. When we returned
home with the groceries, my sisters and I were like a pack of wolves tearing
through the bags. On payday we would eat until we were ready to burst, knowing
that as the week progressed food would become less available.
Going to school also wasn't very easy. We
never had any lunch money. My parents
were too proud to sign us up for free lunch. If we were lucky we would be able
to bring something for lunch a few days a week. We never had the proper school
supplies or nice clothes to wear. This was probably the hardest thing any
sisters and I had to go through. The other children were persistent making
jokes about us. Then, one summer our garage door broke and we had no money to
fix it. The other children on the school bus laughed at us. I was so embarrassed.
It was beyond my control.
One day my father came home and told us he
knew where there were some wild blueberries growing. We had permission to go
pick them, so my father asked if we wanted to go. We were so excited. Not very
often did we get to go anywhere, and to go pick blueberries was a real treat. I
can remember being out there in the hot sun all day picking blueberries. I
think we ate more than we brought home. When we got home, my mother decided to
make a blueberry pie. She made the pie herself and spent half the day working
on it. We couldn't wait. The smell of it baking in the oven was driving us
crazy. We were all starting to hang around in the kitchen and my mother was
getting upset. She put the pie on the top shelf to cool while we ate our
dinner.
Dinner was hard to get down that night, as
we knew that the pie was in the kitchen waiting for us. We were having potato
stew that night and nobody wanted to eat it. But my mother wouldn't let anyone
leave the table until everyone was finished. When my mother told us we had
eaten enough, it sounded like a rush of cattle as we raced for the kitchen. I
was the first in line at the counter. Before my mother could get there, I had
already jumped up so I could reach the top shelf of the cabinet. I took the pie
and started climbing down. Then it happened! I slipped on the wet counter and
let go of the pie. I can
close my eyes today and still see the clear image of that pie turning through
the air slowly and landing upside down on the floor, then looking up and seeing
the look of surprise on my sisters' faces. All I could think of was all the
hard work we had done that day and how fast it had been destroyed. My mother
made me clean up the mess. This was one of the hardest things I ever had to do
in my life.
Looking back, I'll never forget that night.
My family always brings it up on the holidays. Life was tough back then and it
taught us to appreciate what we have today even more. (719 words)
まさしくセンターレベル。センター試験の過去問といっても知らない人は信じそうなくらい，展開といい，英文の難度といい，センターレベルです。ちょっといい話し，子ども時代のこと，教訓的，全ての要素の入っています。ただ，物語が１９７０年前後の設定ですが，１９７０年といえば，もう繁栄を極めており，日本でもこんなふうではなかったような…
（２００５年３月２７日）
There is a kind of pride, a man's pride in
what he is doing, in his work, as distinct from pride in himself for having
done it. That is the sort of pride exhibited by Socrates before his Athenian
accusers. Socrates displayed no sign of aristocratic pride; he would talk
freely to anybody, to statesman, to workman, or to slave. Nor was he proud of
himself; he did not think of himself as a `great man'. But he took pride in
what he was doing. When he was called upon to desist, he refused to do so, even
in the face of death. What mattered, to Socrates, was not himself but his work---
and this we may properly think of as the `classical' attitude.
'Classical' pride, pride in workmanship, is
the very stuff of civilization. Often enough, no doubt, it is objectively
unjustified: men may take pride in what they are doing, persisting in the face
of every obstacle, when what they are doing is intrinsically worthless. If
'humility' means nothing more than the capacity to learn from criticism, then
it has an undoubted value; but if `humility' means a willingness to submit to
authority ---to abandon or to modify what one is doing merely because it does
not accord with the teachings of the Bible or the thoughts of Chairman Mao---then
it is death to the spirit： the
proper name for it, indeed, is 'servility'. In so far as mystical perfectibilism
seeks to destroy pride in workmanship, to convince men that no human task is
worth while for its own sake, it carries dehumanization to its extreme point
Pride in one's work carries with it a
determination to accept the demands imposed by that work: in the case of
philosophy to follow the argument where it leads, in the case of history to
discover what actually happened, in the case of literature to explore to its depths
a particular theme. In consequence, this sort of pride demands freedom: it has
to be laid low in any authoritarian state. The historian, in such a system, has
to conform to official interpretations of the past, the philosopher to dogmas,
the writer to stereotypes of human action, the craftsman to
'production-schedules'. More subtly, attempts are made to lay pride low in a
consumer's society: the film-director, the novelist, the craftsman are called
upon to produce 'what will pay' at whatever cost to their pride in workmanship.
Nothing could be more opposed to pride in workmanship than "built-in
obsolescence', the ideal of a throw-away society for which everything is replaceable.
Indeed, better novels may come out of an authoritarian state in which the
author writes without any expectation of being published than out of a society
in which he has one eye constantly fixed on `the market'. In the long run,
however, the quality of a society will be largely decided by the degree to
which it encourages and facilitates pride in workmanship; a society in which
that pride is humbled will be a shoddy, second-hand, society. (509 words)
この英文が薬学部から出題されたのは大いに疑問です。訳す時大変苦労したので，英文レベルは「難」としました。１文，１文が大変長く，特に前半が大変抽象的。設問も多岐にわたりますが，おかしな問題が多くてとまどいました。たとえば，派生語の問題modifyの名詞形，qualityの動詞型。modifyの名詞形はmodificationとしましたが，辞書によるとmodifablity，こんな単語知らないし，まさか，そんな単語を求めているとも思えませんので，穏当にmodificationとして起きました。qualityにいたっては，辞書にも派生語なぞ出ていません。一応qualifyとしましたが，いったい何を求めているのでしょう。
また，他の小問では，ことわざの意味を問う問題が８題。時代錯誤としかいえません。どうも受験生が少ない難関学部（医学部など）にこの傾向があるようで，ことわざを出題するのはごく限られています。
（２００５年３月２５日）
The Three Gorges
Project
The Yangtze Kiang is the third longest river
in the world and the longest river in China. It runs for about 6,300 km across
China. Halfway between its source in Tibet and the fertile delta at its mouth
in Shanghai, the river flows through a canyon area that is commonly known as
the Three Gorges This area will soon become the site of the world’s largest
hydroelectric dam. The dam, scheduled to be completed by the year 2009, will be
1, 900 meters long and about 185 meters high. The water in its lake will drive
turbines with a generating capacity of almost 18, 000, 000 kW . This is eight
times that of the Aswan Dam on the Nile, four times greater any power station
in Europe. It has more than 50 times the generating capacity of the Kurobe Dam
in Japan. Estimates of the project's cost range between $17 billion and $30
billion. Most of it will be provided by the Chinese government, but about $8
billion is needed in foreign investment, for example by foreign governments and
organizations like the World Bank.
It will be very difficult for the rapidly
growing nation of 1. 2 billion people, all of whom would like refrigerators and
other conveniences, to promote economic development without having some
negative impact on the environment. The proponents of the dam, or people that
support it, argue that the Three Gorges is the best way to provide clean energy
for China. Now China uses coal to supply 75 percent of the country's energy
needs, and coal causes a lot more pollution than hydroelectric power created by
a dam. In fact, the burning of coal is a major source of pollution in the
country, and it has helped to make lung disease the nation's leading cause of
death. The burning of coal also contributes considerably to acid rain and the
greenhouse effect. These environmental problems affect not only China but the
whole world.
Besides reducing China's heavy dependence on
coal, the Three Gorges will also help in the overall development of the region.
First, the dam will provide urgently needed energy for China's inland
central-southern region. Second, it will bring energy for industrialization and
reduce the risk of floods, thus making the area more attractive for businesses.
Third, the dam will improve navigation along the Yangrze and make the area more
accessible for further development. (418 words)
全く印象のないまま終わりました。（３月２２日）
大問１
Human culture is influenced by many
factors, including history. genetics,
physical environment, and information environment. One of these factors,
the information environment, is being
profoundly changed by digital technology.
The historical barriers that have separated human cultures by limiting
the propagation of information from one
to another are falling away. It will, of
course, continue to be colder in Finland than in Panama, but the information
that is accessible to citizens of these two countries is becoming increasingly
homogeneous. On the global network, communities are forming of people who are
interested in topics such as stamp collecting, nuclear power, and women's
rights, and these communities arc largely independent of national boundaries.
Gutenberg's press was a seminal invention
because it made it possible for the publisher of a book to communicate information
to large numbers of readers, a “one-to-many” form of communication. Today,
digital networks make it possible for everyone t o be as publisher. The advent
of "many-to- many" communication on digital networks is no less a
watershed event in human history than was the development of the printing
press.
In the digital world, everyone has access to
a global market, both as seller and as buyer. Everyone can make requests for
information or for goods and services, and have these requests disseminated to
a large population. Everyone has access to the "world library" of
interconnected computers and can contribute material to the library for others
to see. Digital technology tends to make it difficult for a population to be
isolated in its own private "reality." Opinions and priorities may
differ, and the world library will certainly contain a lot of material that is
incorrect, misleading, or offensive. Government
and other institutions will try to control the content of the world library and
to limit people's access to it. But in a span of decades, the overall trend
will be toward a free global market in which barriers to information flow are
lowered and people can seek out the ideas that they find most useful.
The digital marketplace will tend to have a
leveling influence on global standards of living by creating a worldwide
meritocracy. Over time, for example, the income levels of a computer programmer
in India and a similarly qualified computer programmer in California will tend to
converge, since digital information can flow very quickly and cheaply from one
to the other. Ubiquitous digital information will also make education more
broadly available, enabling individuals around the world to participate in the
global economy according to their skills and ambitions. These changes will be
impeded by established political and economic institutions and may occur slowly
as measured by a human lifetime; but measured against a perspective of planetary
history, they will occur very quickly. (455 words)
大問２と同じレベルの英文ですが，どちらも「やや難」というのもなんだと思い，こちらを「やや難」としました。内容的にはインターネットの与える社会への影響という，ここ１０年ぐらいの頻出のテーマ。新味はないといえばありません。デジタルディバイドの反対をいくところがちょっと新しいかもしれません。
→大意
大問２
Asian-American groups in the United States
have experienced stereotyping, which although positive has hindered communication.
The term Asian-American was created to refer to all people of Asian descent in
the belief that they shared a common history and struggle in the United States.
And up to the 1970s, Asian-Americans were largely born in the United States. The
Immigration and Nationality Act amendments of 1955 abandoned the old policy of
immigration quotas for each country and established a new system giving
preference to relatives of U.S. residents. That change resulted in large
numbers of Asian immigrants. and from 1981 to 1989. Asians began migrating to
the United States in large numbers. Although these immigrants came from many
Asian countries, such as China, the Philippines, Japan, India, Korea, and
Vietnam, the continued use of the term Asian-American contributes to a
stereotype of some 8 million people of Asian ancestry as a single community.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s.
"Asian-American" became associated with the stereotype of the
"model minority" who achieved success through hard work, perseverance,
silent stoicism, strong family ties, and strong support for education. This
stereotype seemed to continue the belief that any group can achieve the
American Dream if its members "just work hard enough." And this
stereotype continues in the media. Asian-Americans of all groups are most often
portrayed in the press as industrious and intelligent, enterprising and polite,
with strong values, and successful in schools and business and in science and
engineering.
The stereotype is strengthened in news
reports that Asian-American students score much higher on math exams than their
white counterparts and that the percentage of U.S. scientists who are
Asian-American is two to three times the percentage of Asian-Americans in the
total population.
Asian-American high school students of all
backgrounds complain that teachers often counsel them to go into math and
sciences. Some teachers respond that they do this so that immigrants will not
have to struggle with language problems. Asian-Americans argue that some
teachers continue to do this even to those who are fluent in English and that
the reason why teachers do this is that they perceive Asians as not being free
thinking or extroverted. The "remodel minority" stereotype is too
narrow and limiting. A smaller percentage of Asian-American students are
encouraged to enter the creative fields of art and theater or the management
field. (403 words)
こちらは「センターレベル」としましたが，内容的にはこちらの方がわかりにくいかもしれません。実は前置詞の問題で悩みました。 successful ( ) schools and business and in science and engineering の部分です。schoolsだけを見るとat が適当かとも思いますが，次にbusinessがあります。successful in businessが優勢で，at businessはまれ。in ...が共通なら後半にもう一度inを使うのは不自然か？だとすればat？考えれば考えるほどわからなくなりました。
（３月２２日）
大問 １
If you were
planning a road trip across the country, would you leave without having a map?
Or would you look at the map once and then forget about it? If that was your
method, you would never arrive at your destination, But if you were absolutely
determined to arrive at your destination in the shortest time possible, you
would study the map carefully, charting out your route for each day. And if you
made a wrong turn along the way, you would pull over, look at your map, and get
back on track.
When you set out on a twenty-year road trip, the most important thing
you can do is to consult your vision map. The map is your vision of your life.
It shows you where you are going. Without vision, it's easy to live for the
moment and make decisions according to your emotions at the time. Even if you
begin your journey by setting small goals in different areas of your life, at
least you will know in which direction to head. You need to revisit your goals,
visions, and dreams in order to have a fixed point to keep in mind, a guide by
which you can navigate and decide which steps you can take to bring your
desires closer to becoming a reality. (220
words)
パラグラフの構成は，たとえを使ったもので，「旅行する時には地図を使うでしょ。人生だって地図みたいなものは必要ですよ」というごく常識的なもの。
この英文のレーベルは「やや難」としました。「センター」というのは，私の頭の中ではかなり楽なので，ほとんどの国立２次や難関私立の英文は「やや難」とすべきですが，実際にはほとんどが「センターレベル」高校２年生でも読める，ということになります。１文，１文の息が長いので，まぁ，「やや難」でいいでしょう。
大問２
It
is often said that time seems to go more quickly, the years rush by, as one
grows older either because when one is young one's days, are packed with novel,
exciting impressions or because as one grows older a year becomes a smaller and
smaller fraction of one's life. But
, if the years appear to pass more quickly,
the hours and minutes do not --- they are the same as they always were.
At
least, they seem so to me (in my seventies), although experiments have shown
that, while young people are remarkably accurate at estimating a span of three
minutes by counting internally, elderly people apparently count more slowly, so
that their perceived three minutes is closer to three and a half or four
minutes. But it is still not clear that this phenomenon has anything to do with
the psychological feeling of time passing more quickly as one ages.
The
hours and minutes still seem terribly long when I am bored, and all too short
when I am engaged. As a boy, I hated school, being forced to listen passively
to teachers. When I looked at my watch, counting the minutes to my liberation,
the minute hand, and even the second hand seemed to move with infinite
slowness. There is an exaggerated consciousness of time in such situation:
indeed, when one is bored there may be no consciousness of anything but time,
In
contrast were the delights of experimenting and thinking in a little chemical
lab I had set up at home then, and here, every now, I might spend an entire day
in happy activity and absorption. Then I would have no consciousness of time at
all. (280 words)
(Adapted from Oliver Sticks,
"Speed," The New Yorker, August 2004)
大問３
Wild animals tend to be rare wherever there are people around. When the
people leave they become less rare, as in the case of the wolves that have
returned to some villages in Italy now that those villages are in decline.
Recently attempts have been made to bring back wolves in areas from which they
have been eliminated; farmers protest. Some kind of balance must occur between
concerns for the wolves and concerns about the wolves.
If
an area is low in a variety of species, it is either because extinction, or the
total death of local populations, has occurred or because the area cannot hold
more species.
Extinction is generally considered a bad thing. There are four basic
reasons why we should preserve species and populations from extinction--even
mosquitoes. I will present them in order of descending significance.
First, I see all plants and animal as masterpieces left to us from the
past. Every species on earth has literally billions of years of history behind
it. Its ancestors lived through one crisis after another, day by day, year by
year, and century by century. They have effectively taken advantage of all the
good times and somehow survived the bad. They have changed in response to some
pressures, and hid from others. It is horrible that the history of any species
should be brought to an end by careless human activity and ignorance.
The
second reason is a more practical one. There is much to be learned by careful
study of any species, and so few species have been carefully studied that the
extinction of a species, particularly an unstudied species, is like burning a
book before it has ever been read. There is no guarantee as to what would be
learned by the study, but the world would be a poorer place if the species were
not there to be studied.
The
third reason is that wild species of many kinds produce items useful for
humans. On a very practical level species extinction is generally bad for
medicine and for other business. The wide variety of herbal medicines in the
health food shop of your local shopping center will demonstrate how many and
how unusual are the virtues attributed to relatively rare plants.
Finally, if a particular species is found in a community, it obviously
has some role in the community. Should that species be eliminated, whatever the
role of that species had been, it is no longer precisely filled, although
various competitors can and do take over parts of the role. And what usually
happens when a species is eliminated from some region? Its parasites will also
be eliminated. Its hunter will be hungrier. Its prey will perhaps become more
abundant, and in some cases there may be other effects. Grass may grow taller,
sheltering more mice or some tree may be unable to germinate its seed.
Although
the elimination of one species may not always result in a wave of other
disappearances, some species are certainly more critical than others. Also, I
believe most strongly that the actual global extinction of any species does
real damage to the richness of the world. Preventing species extinction is
equivalent to passing masterpieces on to coming generations. (546 words)
(Adapted from Lawrence B Slobodkin, A Citizen's Guide to Ecology,
2003)
こちらは大問１，２とちがって標準的な長さ。設問も空所補充や並べ替えなど総合問題的。内容は環境問題。種を絶滅から守る理由４点を大変わかりやすく列挙しています。大問１と同じく「やや難」としました。「やや難」のレベルは授業でやると大変苦しいレベルです。おそらくこの題材で授業がスムーズにいく学校は少ないことでしょう。
お茶の水女子大は初めての担当。昔から，下線部訳が長くていやだな，と思っていましたが，その伝統は引き継いでいます。
（２００５年３月１７日）
大問 １
I'm a great believer in the idea that
relatively small changes in our nutritional status bring big benefits in the
long term. So I was very interested to read recent British research showing
that giving basic nutrients to young offenders can significantly reduce their
criminal tendencies.
The
idea that the answer to Britain's youth crime epidemic may be found on the
shelves of our local health-food store might seem a little far-fetched, but
there is good reason to believe there is some truth in this. It is a fact that
our mood and behavior are, to a degree, dependent on the nutrients the brain
gets from the diet.
No
wonder, then, that more and more research is stacking up to suggest that
altering this organ's fuel supply can take the edge off a tendency toward
delinquency"
Scientists have been exploring this idea for about 20 years now. Early
research discovered that individuals eating an unhealthy diet were more likely
to commit serious offenses compared to those consuming relatively healthy fare.
高知大学の英文はこれだけ。語数１７０語とかなり少なめ。これに下線部訳３カ所，空所補充２カ所，並べ替え１カ所，同意表現を捜す問題１問。高校の定期試験のような問題です。大変穏当です。他の問題も並べ替え，文強勢で，英作文が結構長いので，それに重きを置いた感じ。会話の並べ替えもありますが，これが不思議な問題で，普通は記号で答えさせるのに，会話の英文を全て筆写するようになっています。これでは大変な時間がかかるし，途中で順番を変更しようと思ったら全て消さなければならないし，大変な労力。どうして，こういう解答形式にしたのか不明です。
今回は出典がThe Japan Times 2002年７月１８日と明示されていますが，実は，オブザーバー紙２００２年７月１４日のもののよう。The Japan timesに版権が移っているのでしょうか？
Crime and nourishment by Dr. John Briffa
→大意
（２００５年３月７日）
大問１
My daughter, Olivia, who just turned three,
has an imaginary friend whose name is Charlie Ravioli. Olivia is growing up in
Manhattan, and so Charlie Ravioli has a lot of local traits: he lives in an
apartment "on Madison and Lexington." he dines on grilled chicken,
fruit, and water, and, having reached the age of seven and a half, he feels, or
is thought, "old." But the
most peculiarly local thing about Olivia's imaginary playmate is this: he is
always too busy to play with her. She holds her toy cell phone up to her ear,
and we hear her talk into it: "Ravioli? It's Olivia... It's Olivia. Come and play? OK. Call me. Bye." Then
she snaps it shut and shakes her head. "I always get his machine,"
she says. Or she will say, "I spoke to Ravioli today." "Did you
have fun?" my wife and I ask. "No, he was busy working. On a
television," she says, leaving it unclear whether he repairs electronic devices or has his own talk show.
On a good day, she "bumps into"
her invisible friend and they go to a coffee shop. "I bumped into Charlie
Ravioli," she announces at dinner (after a day when, of course, she stayed
home, played, had a nap, had lunch, paid a visit to the Central Park Zoo, and
then had another nap). "We had coffee, but then he had to run," She
sighs at her inability to make their schedules fit together, but she accepts it
as inevitable, just the way life is. "I bumped into Charlie Ravioli
today," she says. "He was working." Then she adds brightly,
"But we hopped into a taxi." "What happened then?" we ask.
"We grabbed lunch," she says.
It seemed obvious that Ravioli was a
romantic figure of the big exotic 1ife that went on outside her little limited
life of parks and playgrounds---drawn, in particular, from a nearly perfect,
parrot-like repetition of the words she hears her mother use when she talks
about her day with her friends. ("How was your day?" Sighing:
"Oh, you know. I tried to make a date with Meg, but I couldn't find her,
so I left a message on her machine. Then I bumped into Emily after that meeting
I had in SoHo, and we had coffee and then she had to run, but by then Meg had reached
me on my cell and we arranged...") I was concerned, though, that Charlie
Ravioli might also be the sign of some "trauma," some loneliness in
Olivia's life reflected in imaginary form. "It seems odd to have an
imaginary playmate who's always too busy to play with you," Martha, my
wife, said to me "Shouldn't your
imaginary playmate be someone you tell secrets to and sing songs with? It
shouldn't be someone who's always hopping into taxis." (478 words)
<W-A> The Rest American Essays 2003 (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003).
実は一読した時，何を言いたいのかわからずに難儀しました。おそらくこんな事をいいたいんだな，とはわかっても，その事に直接的に言及されておらず，最後も中途半端に終わっているので，釈然とせず。その上，問題は英文の内容説明と訳に注力されて，空所補充が２カ所ありましたが，これも，自分から書くもの。かなり難しい問題だと感じました。
この英文に触れた投稿がありました。→
大問２
The US once belonged to Britain, and many
Americans have British ancestors, so when Americans think of Britain, they
think of a place that seems very familiar. Americans watch British television
programmes, especially period dramas, see James Bond films, and read detective
stories by Agatha Christie. As children, they read British books like
Winnie-the Pooh. On the basis of these experiences, which are common even to
people who are not of British origin, most Americans know more about Britain
than about any other country. Although only a few Americans travel to Britain,
almost all have an opinion of the British.
Many Americans would have difficulty drawing
a map of Britain. They think the country consists of London and a village in
Scotland where one of their ancestors came from. London itself is covered in
fog. The average British man wears a bowler hat and carries an umbrella. He
waits in a queue for the bus, eats fish and chips, and drinks a lot of tea. He
has a servant .--- everyone in Britain does --- and he has great respect for
the Queen.
Americans admire the behaviour of the
British, although they themselves would never want all their social rules.
Americans think of the British as being perfectly polite and proper, always
knowing which knife and fork to use, always saying `please', `thank you' and
`excuse me'. The violence associated with football matches is not widely known
about in the US. British people arc also
famous for their reserve and their 'stiff upper lip', i.e. for not giving their
opinion or showing their feelings in public, which makes them seem formal and
distant.
Americans often say that the British are
`quaint', a word which means old-fashioned, but in a nice way. This impression
comes partly from differences in how the two countries speak English. British
English has words and structures that have not been used in the US for a long
time, and so it sounds old-fashioned or formal. A favourite British adjective
is lovely, which is used to describe
anything, including the weather. Other British words, like holiday, smashing and brilliant make Americans smile.
The view of Britain as a country where
everyone behaves in a strange but nice way is not realistic, and Americans who
have been to Britain have some negative impressions to add to the positive. The British are snobbish and do not seem very friendly. The famous British reserve seems cold to Americans who are more used to an open, enthusiastic way of communicating. British people cause confusion by not saying what they know. They say: 'That's no problem' when they know that it will be a big problem, and get upset when Americans fail to understand. Overcooked food, the smallness of the houses, baths instead of showers, and the weather which is always dull or rainy, are other favourite complaints of Americans visiting `the old country'. But in spite of these negative things, the
view of Britain from the US is, in general, very positive and for many
Americans, going to Britain is almost like going home. (516 words)
Oxford Guide to British and American Culture
(Oxford University 1999).
こちらは大問１とはうってかわって，典型的な文化比較。大変わかり安い英文でした。ところが，空所補充が問題。赤字が問題で適語補充になっていましたが，わたしはthinkかknowだと思っていましたが，河合塾はmeanでした。meanでもいい気がしますが，決定的ではありません。なかなかの難物でした。
（２００５年３月１２日）
大問２-1
Benjamin Franklin, a product of the 18th
century Enlightenment, is remembered by all Americans with affection. Born in
the city of Boston in 1706, the son of a candlemaker, he went on to become a
statesman, printer, scientist, and writer.
A printer by trade, Franklin ran away to
Philadelphia, where he published the Pennsylvania
Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanac.
He also helped found the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical
Society, and the nation's first circulating library. As a scientist, he proved
that there is electricity in lightning.
Franklin represented Pennsylvania in England
from 1757 to 1762. He returned to America for political reasons and eventually
helped draft and signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. He
helped negotiate peace with Great Britain, formalized by the Treaty of Paris.
Franklin signed the Constitution in 1787, and later favored the abolition of
slavery.
Franklin died at the age of 84. He will
always be remembered for his thrift, hard work. common sense, and humor.
(175 words)
(Adapted from Paul McLean,
Factual Writing, 1990+)
空所補充問題です。
ペンジャミン・フランクリンの簡単な紹介文です。今の受験生では知らない生徒も数多くいることでしょう。ひとつ気になったのは，electricity
( ) lightningの前置詞選択問題。inが入るのはいいとは思いますが，これはコロケーションではないし，「稲光の中に電気」というのはインターネットの検索では，フランクリンがらみのもので，あまり一般的な表現とはいいがたい気がします。
【大問2-2】
Before going further, we should perhaps
cast a glance at all those systems of communication in which speech plays no
part. First and foremost among them. of course, is writing. In modern society.
writing has become such an important and widespread means of getting your ideas
across to others.
It was not always so, however. Time was, and not too long ago, when most
people did not know how to read and write. Curious reminders of that not very
distant past are the barber-shop poles and the cigar-store Indians. They served
to notify people who could not read of what goods or services they could get in
those shops.
If we go back far enough, there was a time
when writing had not yet been invented. Yet people managed to get messages
through to one another without speech even then. Today, they still manage to
convey messages without either speech or writing.
Consider, for instance, your system of
traffic lights. At a given street intersection there is no policeman, no
written sign. But the light turns red, and the motorists stop. Then it turns
green, and they start moving once more. That light is just as full of meaning
as though the words "Stop" and "Go" were spoken or written.
Signals recognized by the eye can take many forms. There are signal fire,
and smoke signals. There are signal flags, used especially at sea to convey
all sorts of complicated messages. There is the heliograph, that device
used by the U.S. Navy to catch and reflect the sun's rays into the eyes
of men miles away and spell out a message to them.
Then there are thousands of ear-signals. The
whistle of a policeman or referee, the siren of an ambulance or fire engine,
the bell at your door or in the classroom, all convey messages as clearly as
though they were spoken. (323 words)
(From Mario Pei, All About
Language. 1978)
こちらも空所補充問題。2-1より眺めで難度も少し上がっていますが，「話すこと」以外の通信手段，ということで，ごく一般的な入試頻出分野からの出題。印象に残りません。
【大問3】
Our
species, Homo sapiens, has lived for
about two hundred thousand years. For 99% of this time, people lived as
hunter-gatherers in small groups. Within
these groups, sharing was part of the life-style. The individual was dependent on the group. Sharing was beneficial for the group and for
the individual. Besides, it was easy to
share because property was extremely limited. The group were always on the move,
except in certain situations, to avoid
wearing down their natural support base. People could not have more property
than they could carry and the woman often had to carry a child. Normally,
although there were exceptions, the hunter-gatherer groups utilized their natural
support in an ecologically sustainable way. The groups did not normally have a leader in
the sense of a boss or master. Time was largely irrelevant and such a
phenomenon as anonymity was unthinkable.
Ten thousand years ago, when the estimated population
of the world was five million, people in certain areas began to support
themselves in a new fashion--- by cultivating the land. The agricultural
revolution occurred and subsequently spread. Agriculture meant settling down.
People could cope with more possessions and so ownership became part of normal
life. This in turn resulted in social stratification. Society became divided into
the chief, peasants, soldiers, slaves, etc. The attitude to the natural support
basis was still one of housekeeping although forests were cleared to make space
for cultivation. In the agricultural society, time became relevant and this
meant living with seasons.
About 260 years ago, with an estimated world
population of eight hundred million, the next great revolution took place---the
industrial revolution. It was based on fossil coal, as energy source, the steam
engine as energy transformer, and the colonial system as the means for bringing
resources from all over the world to Europe. The hunter-gatherer society was characterized
by sharing, the pre-industrial agricultural society by owning, and the
industrial society by steadily increased ownership. Acquisition and consumption are means of
keeping the industrial system going. The ecologically sustainable, or housekeeping,
mode of life was replaced by an
exploiting one. Anonymity became common, which contributes to criminality.
Humans have long generations and few
offspring, which means slow adaptation by the process of natural selection. The
human species has not had time to readapt biologically to the mode of life in
industrialized society with its big cities. People have been biologically shaped
by, and adapted to the situation and life-style that lasted for a long time
-that of the hunter-gatherers. Biologically people are still stone age beings.
Now, however. we stone age beings live in the modern industrialized system with
its big cities normally far removed from a natural environment, separated from
our ecological support system. Many of us live in a noisy and polluted
environment where we have to close our senses. How, for instance, can we assimilate the whole flow of advertising
matter? Many live alone in the crowd, anonymously, and under rapidly changing
conditions. We live in a technically, economically, socially complicated and
sensitive condition which is difficult to grasp and where alienation is common.
To a great extent, people are consumers of a commercialized culture. Stress at
the office desk with telephones cannot be physically utilized and so is stress
in a negative sense. We have, so to speak, driven a wedge between our nature
and our life-style. We are forced to live more or less on the margin of our patience
in various respects.
(578
words)
anonymity：匿名 stratification : 階層化
(Adapted from Bengt Hubendick,
"Industrialization and Urbanization." The Global Environment, 1997)
「やや難」のレーベルとしました。少なくともセンター試験よりはるかに難しいでしょう。「話しを聞かない男，地図を読めない女」で私は初めてこういった見方に接しましたが，人間は基本的には「狩猟採集民」としての特性を備えている，という見解は大いに納得できるような。「話しを聞かない～」に大いに感化を受けた身としては，この英文はすんなり理解できました。ただ，１文１文が長いので，受験生は苦労したことでしょう。全統の記述模試のレベルと言えます。
（２００５年３月７日）
１
Flat breads are an ancient tradition in the Mediterranean region. Perhaps
of ancient Persian origin, such bread was introduced to southern Italy
by its earliest Greek colonists. The first history of Rome, written by
Marcus Porcius Cato in the 3rd century B.C., mentions a 'flat round of dough (a mixture of
flour and water) topped with olive oil, herbs, and honey, baked on stones'.
Further evidence is found from the remains of the ancient city of Pompeii.
Shops that closely resemble present-day pizza parlors have been found there.
The tomato was first believed to be poisonous,
when it came to Europe in the 16th century. However, by the late 18th century the poor of
the area around the city of Naples were adding it as an ingredient to their
flat bread, and the dish gained in popularity. Pizza became a tourist
attraction and visitors to Naples ventured into the poorer areas of the city to
try this local special dish.
The earliest pizza parlor opened in 1830 in Naples and is still in business
today. Pizza was still considered 'poor man's food' in 1889 when Rafaele Esposito, the most famous pizza maker of Naples, was called before King Umberto I and Queen Margherita to prepare the local specialty. It is said that he
made two traditional ones and additionally created one in the colors of
the Italian flag with red tomato sauce, white mozzarella cheese, and green
basil leaves. The Queen was delighted and 'Pizza Margherita' was born.
In 1897, Gennaro Lombardi, an Italian immigrant to the US, opened a small grocery store in New York. An employee of his, Antonio Totonno Pero, also an Italian immigrant, began making pizza for the store to sell. Their pizza became so popular that Lombardi opened the first US pizza parlor in 1905, naming it simply Lombardi's. In 1924 Totonno left Lombardi's to open his
own pizzeria called Totonno's in the suburbs of New York. At this point in time
pizza was still eaten mostly by Italian Immigrants.
The international spread of pizza came after World War II. Even in Naples, the birthplace of modern-day pizza, local bakers were unable to satisfy the demand from American soldiers. While the American troops involved in the war in Italy took their love for the dish back home, millions of Italians helped rebuild the damaged economy by introducing their cooking to the rest of Europe.
With the rising popularity of pizza in the 1950s, especially in the US, several major corporations became chiefly engaged in the commercial production of pizza. Today these pizza chains often coexist with locally owned and operated chains. Because pizzas can be made quickly and are easily transported, most pizza restaurants in the United States offer delivery services.
In most developed countries, pizza is also found in supermarkets as a frozen food. A great deal of food technology has gone into the creation of tasty frozen pizzas, The main challenges include preventing the sauce from combining with the dough, and producing a crust that can be frozen and reheated without becoming hard and dry. Typically, the dough is somewhat pre-baked and other ingredients are also sometimes pre-cooked; lately, frozen pizzas with completely raw ingredients have also begun to appear. (537 words)
前回は兵庫県立のパイナップル，今回はピザの歴史，と食べ物が続きます。なんとなくピザが食べたくなりました。私とピザの出会いは，何となく印象的でした。大学１年か２年の春休みだと思いますが，一人でビートルズの映画３本立てを見に行って，その返りレコード店をのぞいていたら，同じくラブの女の子と偶然出会って，なんとなく食事をすることになりました。その時彼女が注文したのがピザでした。私はそれまでピザというものを食べたことがなくて，不思議な食べ物があるものだなぁ，としきりに感心したものです。高度成長時代に育ったので，物がない時代からある時代への変化の中で，「初めてのバナナ」「初めてのコーヒー」「初めてのトンカツ」「初めてチーズ」「初めてのステーキ」「初めてのマックシェイク」とすべて記憶にあります。今から考えると気が付いたらそこに存在していた，というより，幸せだったような気がします。何しろ，食べるたびに初めての出会いを思い出せるのですから。
（２００５年３月７日）
２
Tools are any objects other than the parts
of our own bodies that we use to help us do our work. Technology is nothing
more than the use of tools. We tend to think of technology as a human
invention, but the reverse is closer to the truth. Stone tools show that our
ape-like ancestors were already putting technology to use. Experts believe that
using tools may have helped these creatures develop into human beings; in a
tool-using society, manual skill and intelligence are more important than brute
strength.
Most of the tools we have invented have
aided our bodies rather than our minds. These tools help us lift and move and
cut and shape. Only quite recently, for the most part, have we developed tools
to aid our minds as well.
The tools of communication, from pencil and
paper to television, are designed to serve our minds. These devices transmit
information or preserve it, but they do not change it in any way. Although
these tools are important, our present interest lies with machines that
classify and change information rather than merely transmitting it or
preserving it. The machines that do this are the computers and the calculators.
(199 words)
この短い英文を８０字でまとめのが問題です。私立大学としては，珍しい出題といえます。短いのですが，道具と人間の関わりを包括的に述べているので，これ以上まとめようがないほど，内容が独立していて，８０字でまとめるのは結構むずかしいと思います。一応書きましたが，どのくらいの点数がもらえるのか楽しみです。
（２００５年３月７日）
In 1992, an amusement park in Nago， Okinawa Prefecture began
operating a processing plant to make juice from fresh pineapples. These drinks
proved to be very popular with visitors
to the park, and were a great financial success. However, as the amount of
juice produced increased to meet the desires of the visitors, so did the amount
of waste in the form of pineapple skins. In a few years, the amount of leftover pineapple skins
reached 300 tens per year-, and the park operators were at a loss as to how to
dispose of them.
Then in the summer of 2002, the park's
president, while attending a confectionery machinery fair in Tokyo, came across
a booth showing charcoal manufacturing equipment. It displayed a number of
machines that could make charcoal out of various products. Remembering his
park's increasing waste problem, he asked one of the booth's salespersons if
pineapple skins could also be processed into charcoal. After discussing the
matter for a while, the booth's salespersons were certain that pineapple skins
could be made into charcoal.
Soon after this, the park purchased the
necessary machinery to produce charcoal from pineapple skins. The machines can
process 600 kilograms of pineapple skins into 18 kilograms of charcoal. To do this,
the pineapple skins need to be roasted for 14 hours at a temperature of 600
degrees centigrade, and then cooled for 12 hours. As pineapple skins are 90
percent water, the roasting shrinks them to half of their original size and
reduces their weight by 97 percent,
When the resulting charcoal was tested for
its effectiveness as an air purifier, it was found that the charcoal made from
pineapple skins was able to absorb much more of many harmful substances from
the air than charcoal made from wood or bamboo. The charcoal is also very
useful for eliminating bad smells and taking moisture from the air.
At present, the park has a 3.3-hectacre
field to grow the pineapples. It displays what it is called "pain
tan" (pine charcoal) at the park's souvenir shops next to its other
pineapple products, such as sponge cake and dried pineapple in addition to the
juice. Now it sells 10 different items
featuring pine charcoal as the main ingredient, including car air cleaners and
fresheners and even a body soap. There is also a joke item, canned pine
charcoal for 840 yen, which looks very similar to canned pineapple that is sold
in supermarkets. When it is opened. a toy that looks like a burnt pineapple
pops up from the can. The only indication that the product is a joke is a
statement on the label telling people that it is not a food product. The
popularity of these products has grown so much that their monthly sales have
now exceeded 4 million yen.
Not only is pine charcoal good for the park,
it is also good for some of the local farmers. Fresh pineapples are a major local produce.
However, local sales have decreased due to fierce competition from cheaper
imports. This new process allows the park to purchase pineapple, from local
farmers, even if their prices are higher and even if the pineapples do not meet
domestic market standards. Park officials also hope to put pine charcoal to
other uses, including improving agricultural soil, while recycling the natural
products and resources of the local community.
(560
words)
英文としては標準的。沖縄・名護市ということで，インターネットで検索。
何かの縁だと思い，思わずパイナップル炭のボディシャンプー，パイナップルワイン，ジュースを注文してしまいました。送料１０５０円がちょっときついか。これで沖縄気分が味わえます。
Forty years ago, the Chorleywood "No
Time Dough" baking process was invented. The aim was to mass-produce cheap
bread very quickly. This process took bread baking out of the kitchens and
small bakeries and into the factories. It changed baking bread from a craft
into a technical procedure.
In the usual, traditional baking process.
the wheat grains are milled only as much as is needed to crush the grains yet
not destroy most of the starch cells. After this, natural yeast and water are mixed
with the flour and the dough is left to rise for twelve to sixteen hours.
During this time, most of the yeast becomes fermented. Then the dough is
kneaded by hand and left to rise again for at least fifty minutes in order for
the yeast to become fully fermented. Finally, the dough is baked into bread.
In the Chorleywood baking process, the wheat
grains are milled more severely than in usual milling. This is so that more of
the starch cells are broken, which allows the flour to absorb more water. Also,
a much larger amount of yeast than is needed for traditional baking, plus enzymes,
are used in order to decrease the time it takes the dough to rise. After mixing
the Ingredients mechanically, the first rising of the dough takes four minutes.
After the second mechanical mixing, which takes the place of usual hand
kneading, the second rising takes fifty minutes. When the baking begins, very
little of the yeast has been fully fermented.
Another result of the Chorleywood baking
process is the number of different kinds of wheat grown, and therefore eaten,
in at least the more developed nations, has become extremely small. In the 1800s
and early 1900s, many hundreds of different varieties of wheat were grown.
However, in order to use the mechanical mixers used in the Chorleywood baking
process, the wheat must have a high protein content. This makes the dough
tougher and harder, which is required for the mechanical mixing. Therefore,
special varieties of wheat were produced. Three of these high protein varieties
now dominate the flour market.
One consequence is that in the last few
decades, the number of people who have allergic reactions to bread has
increased greatly. Before this, such intolerances to wheat were rare. Now,
there are even many children in Japan who have allergic reactions when they eat
bread. How can this be possible? Usually such intolerances to food are caused
by small children eating too much of a certain food when they are too young for
their bodies to digest it well. Then when they get a little older, they are
allergic to it. However, children in Japan eat very little bread, or any other
wheat products, compared with children in many other industrial countries. So
how can they become allergic to bread?
In Japan, almost all of the bread is made
using the Chorleywood process, and most people only eat bread produced by this
process. Traditionally made and Chorleywood processed bread both can look the
same, but in the latter the yeast has not been properly fermented and the flour
has a higher protein content. Also, the dough tends to contain more sugars, and
the bread is softer, which means it requires less chewing. For these reasons,
Chorleywood processed bread is more difficult to digest and can cause people,
especially children, to experience more intolerances than bread made the
old-fashioned way. In fact, when people who experience wheat intolerableness
eat bread which has been made properly the traditional way, they do not have
allergic reactions to it.
(597
words)
こちらはいたって教育的。パンの製法（これが辞書やネットでもヒットしませんでしたが，チョーリーウッド製パン法というパンの製造法とそれによってパンアレルギーが増えているという記事。なんとなく説得力があり，知見に飛んでいました。
（３月６日）
【静岡・前期】
【１】 In April 2004. I asked 109 students at a Japanese
university (all majoring in education) to pretend they were teaching their
first international-understanding class to a group of eight-year-olds. I asked
them to write a 2-3 minute speech, in which they explained to the eight-year-olds
why cross-cultural education was important and what was interesting about such
education. Below are excerpts from four of the potential teachers' short
speeches. It's easy to see how their different attitudes might affect the
eight-year-olds' attitudes toward cross-cultural studies.
Maseru: "American culture and
Japanese culture are completely different"
Miyoko: "If you can speak English,
there are six billion people in the world you can become friends with. Six
billion? Wow, there must be so many of them who like the same things you
do!"
Yoshio: "From today, we're going to
study other countries and their cultures. As Japanese, you're going to find the daily
customs in a lot of those countries absolutely unbelievable. For example, in
India, they eat rice with their hands. Your mother would really yell at you if
you did that, wouldn't she!"
Ai: "Wherever we live, whatever we
eat, no matter what we look like, we're really all the same. When we're happy,
we smile; when we're having fun, we open our mouths wide and laugh heartily;
and when we're sad, we cry."
Clearly, some of the potential teachers try
to get their students' interest by focusing on differences between people,
while others try to do so by focusing on similarities. Which method is
preferable?
Introducing differences or similarities is
not bad, I think, unless the differences or similarities are exaggerated (as
perhaps the difference in Masaru's speech is). or unless we focus on either
differences or similarities to such an extent that we encourage our students to
imagine further differences or similarities that do not really exist. In fact,
of those potential teachers who specifically wrote about differences,
similarities, or both, the vast majority (about 57 out of 67 potential
teachers) wrote about differences- only.
The Peace Corps in the United States, which
trains volunteers to work overseas, suggests that it is misleading to focus
only on cultural differences. The Peace Corps' home page stresses.
"Culture is but one category or dimension of human behavior, and it is
therefore important to see it in relation to the other two dimensions: the
universal and the personal- [...] because of universal behavior, not everything
about people in a new culture is going to be different. [.. .] Because of
personal behavior, not everything you learn about your host culture is going to
apply in equal measure to every individual in that culture."
This sounds very reasonable to me. I would only add that individuals are not only members of a national culture, but dozens of subcultures, based on such things as region, educational level, gender, income level, profession, and hobbies.
(1) Thus, it seems to me that when we teach culture, we need to make sure that our students are always understanding clearly the relationship among universality, individual variation, culture, and
(2) Of course, cultural differences are fascinating to student , and as long as there is no reason not to teach them.
(531 words)
静岡大学担当は初めて。異文化理解，国際教育のごく穏当な英文。教育学部生の異文化理解の考えを提示，「平和部隊」での派遣教育での派遣先での過ごし方の指針から，その態度を学ぶ。大学入試の英文らしい，典型的な英文としか，感想が持てません。
Steve Redford, "The Nature of International-Understanding Education." 2004.
静岡大学教官の書き下ろし英文のようです。
（３月３日）
【２】
In Endora, there are two grocery stores. Smack on the town square is Lamson Grocery, where I, Gilbert Grape, work; and on the edge of town, there is Food Land, where everyone else shops.
A case could be made that I became the thinker, the dreamer that I am while stocking the many cans and bags and food items for the people of this town.
Over the years, my technique has become so automatic, so natural, that I don't need to think about what I'm doing. No, my thoughts wander off wherever they want. I'm usually not in the same place mentally that I appear to be physically. Either I'm in Des Moines at Merle Hay Mall or driving across the desert or standing on an Omaha rooftop waiting for a tornado to come ripping. Know this??- I am rarely in this store or in this town in my thoughts.
I'm pricing the breakfast cereals when Mr. Lamson comes up behind me. "Wonderful surprises are in store for us all, Gilbert."
Startled, I almost drop the Wheaties I'm holding. I manage a "Huh? What?",
"Surprised you, did I?"
"Yes, sir."
For years Mr. Lamson has taken great joy in surprising me. He's hidden under the counter, behind the dog food, and once he almost froze to death in the freezer waiting for me to open it so he could yell "Surprise." When I finally did, his eyebrows had begun to frost and his lips had turned blue,
I whisper under my breath, "Wonderful surprises --- I'm waiting."
Mr. Lamson sees my mouth move.
"What was that?"
"Nothing, sir."
Mrs. Lamson, who is in the little office cubicle waiting for money to count, calls out.
"Dad, have they got some special going on at Food Land?"
"Not that I know of. Gilbert, anything going on at Food Land?"
"Oh. I'm not the one to ask. Never shopped there. Never will. Would rather die."
"You do not mean that."
"Sir," I say, "I'm afraid that I do. I go to a store for food. Not for..."
"They must have something going," Mrs. Lamson chimes in, walking all over my words and not seeming to mind. "Because nobody is here."
'I can't bring myself to tell them what Tucker told me the other day. It seems that Food Land installed an aquariumlike tank where they keep crabs or lobsters with their claws taped shut. People crowd around; kids make faces at the creatures---glad, I guess, that they're not the ones trapped inside. (422 words)
Peter Hedges, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, 1991)
この小説の一節です。全編現在時制で書かれています。私はたまに現在時制で書かれた小説をたまに読むことがありますが，どうももう一つしっくり来ません。難易度は「やや難」とするのは気がひけたので，「センターレベル」としてみましたが，実際にはかなり読みにくかったかもしれません。今年担当した学校では，小説が結構ありました。一時期，小説が少数派になり，ほとんどがエッセーか評論でした。（現在もその傾向があるのでしょうが）その反動で小説に回帰する傾向があるかもしれません。若者の読書離れが進んでいて，日本でも小説を読まない状況が続き，ましてや，英語での小説はかなり読みにくいと思われます。実際には英語の小説を読むのも楽しみの一つで，大切な面でもあるので，この傾向は歓迎すべきでしょう。
The study of economics is a modern discipline.
Today everybody seems to know about the business cycle, while supply and
demand, inflation and recession, are all household words. But until the late
eighteenth century, when Adam Smith witnessed the beginnings of the English
Industrial Revolution and wrote The
Wealth of Nations (1776), there was little systematic consideration of the
way that commerce worked. Nevertheless, over half a century earlier the
Scotsman John Law single-handedly created a financial system very similar to
that of a modern industrial state. Its cornerstones were a central bank to
control the money supply, and the use of paper currency and easy credit to
promote investment. This did not take place in Scotland but in France under the
Regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, following the death in 1715 of King Louis
XIV, whose extravagance had brought the country to the verge of financial ruin.
At first the Scotsman's ideas worked extremely well, and he rapidly became the
richest and most powerful man in France---perhaps in all of continental Europe.
But clearly Law was ahead of his time, for within little more than five years
his ambitious financial schemes were to fall apart
John Law was born in Edinburgh in 1671, the son
of a wealthy goldsmith, a profession which then included the roles of banker
and money-lender, since precious metals were the only currency. As a youth Law earned
a reputation not only for his brilliance in mathematics, but also as a man of
fashion and a gambler. In London in April 1694 he killed a man in a duel and
had to flee the country. He went to the thriving commercial city of Amsterdam,
where he studied the banking and financial arrangements closely. For the next
twenty years he traveled widely in continental Europe, dividing his time
between the gambling table, where his luck and skill earned him a substantial
fortune, and the study, where he composed a series of pamphlets on financial and
monetary issues, including Money and
Trade Considered(1709). At the same time, he made contacts with many
European statesmen, but repeatedly failed in his attempts to persuade them to
put his economic theories into practice. The same was true in his homeland,
where the Scottish parliament had rejected his scheme for the establishment of
a state bank.
After
the death of Louis XIV, however, Law managed to win the support of the French
Regent for a scheme that promised to reduce the crushing burden of public debt
and stimulate French trade and industry. Though Law's proposal for a national
bank was rejected, in May 1716 he was permitted to create his own private bank,
the General Bank, the first of its kind to be founded in France. In this way,
Law was able to try out his pet scheme of a paper currency under especially
favorable circumstances. At that time the French government frequently changed
the value of coins by reducing the amount of precious metals they contained.
Law made his bank notes payable on demand in coin of the same standard and
weight as at the date of issue. The reputation of the General Bank was
increased in 1717 when the government agreed to accept Law's bank notes in
payment of taxes. Since his paper money was more popular than gold or silver
coins, Law freely lent money at low interest, and the result was the
stimulation of French industry of all kinds.
Unfortunately Law's love of gambling, plus,
pressure from the Regent to provide funds for his own extravagant lifestyle
ensured that the Scotsman would go at least one step too far. Law wanted a bank
that would not only issue paper money and encourage investment but that would
also control all national trade. He thus came up with a scheme to develop the
land along the Mississippi River in North America. In 1717 he began to issue
shares in a new Mississippi Company. His agents sent back optimistic reports
about the wealth to be made in Louisiana, though at the time it was little more
than a swamp. With the government's blessing he merged his company with the
bank and acquired a monopoly in the trade in tobacco and slaves. Later Law’s
company took over the East India, China, and Africa Companies. Thus the whole
of the non-European trade of France fell into its hands.
In addition, Law won the right to collect
French taxes and to mint gold and silver coins. By the spring of 1719, Law's
scheme had performed so well that he was made Controller-General of Finance in
the French government. At the same time, Law was given the right to issue
shares in his banking institution, which was given national status and renamed
the Royal Bank. The stock rose quickly to more than 3600% of its initial
selling price. Speculation was fueled by easy bank loans for the purchase of additional
stock, and a futures scheme which drove the price up even further. In the fall
of 1719, the bank took over the entire national debt, which meant that it had
to print a huge new supply of paper money.
By then, the Mississippi Bubble was already on
the point of bursting. Shrewd investors began quietly to get out of the market,
making enormous profits. In early 1720, the price began to fall and people
started to dump the shares in quantity. Because Law had to buy back the shares
at fixed prices, he was forced to print flood of paper money. In May, a run on
the Royal Bank forced the authorities to acknowledge that the amount of gold
and silver in the country was worthless than half the total amount of paper
currency in circulation. Soon the shares and the paper money to back them were
close to worthless. The government tried first to prevent the hoarding of gold
and silver and then to devalue both bank notes and share certificates, but it
was too late. The Mississippi Bubble burst in October 1720 and Law's entire financial
system came crashing to the ground. Many investors lost everything, leaving the
Regent's government in prolonged political crisis. Law himself was forced to
flee the country, and died in poverty in Venice ten years later.
Most importantly, the dizzy speculation served
to discredit the concepts of a paper currency and national bank for a
considerable time. However, although the immediate results of Law's financial schemes
were disastrous, his monetary theories have found defenders among modern
economists, who have noted that by only the second decade of the eighteenth
century Law had introduced much of what constitutes the modern banking and
securities system. Some have argued that, if Law had not caused the Mississippi
Bubble but had confined himself to the stable development of his General Bank,
an industrial revolution might have occurred in France by the mid-eighteenth
century. In that case it is more than likely that the French Revolution could
have been averted, and we might all have been learning French today rather than
English. (1176 words)
久しぶりの早稲田大学です。研究社時代には，立命館を７年間ずっと担当。早稲田は後半４年間の担当でした。理工学部の担当が多く，問題としては大変穏当でした。慶応・環境情報も立命館と同じく担当した全ての年に全訳を書きました。なんといっても語数が１４００語ぐらいの英文が２題。内容も最初の頃は本当に難しくて，苦労したのを覚えています。この慶応，立命館の問題で鍛えられた，という感じです。それから，国立では東京外語を担当，最後の３年間は京都を担当し，これも鍛えられました。
この英文は早稲田受験生にとっては標準と言うことになるのでしょうが，受験生全体となれば，「難」としたかレーベルを付けられません。ただし，経済に関する知識の有無が大きく英文理解に影響するでしょうから，全員必修となっている「公民」の授業できちんと教えられていれば，私が思うほど難しくないかもしれません。
Suddenly,
almost everyone in England has a mobile phone, but because this is new,
unfamiliar technology, there are no set rules of etiquette governing when, how,
and in what manner these phones should be used. We have to make up these rules
as we go along---a fascinating process to watch and, for a social scientist,
very exciting, as one does not often get the opportunity to study the formation
of a new set of unwritten social rules.
For example, I have found that most English
people, if asked, agree that talking loudly about business or domestic matters
on one's mobile while on a train is rude and inconsiderate. Yet a significant
minority of people still do this, and while their fellow passengers may sigh
and roll their eyes, they very rarely challenge the offenders directly---as
this would involve breaking other, well-established English rules and inhibitions
about talking to strangers, making a scene or drawing attention to oneself. The
offenders, despite much public discussion of the topic, seem not to notice the
effects of their behavior, in the same way that people tend to pick their noses
and scratch their armpits in their cars, apparently forgetting that they are
not invisible.
How will this problem be resolved? There are some early
signs of emerging rules regarding mobile-phone use in public places, and it
looks as though loud "I'm on a train" conversations---or mobiles
ringing in cinemas and theaters---may eventually become as unacceptable as
"queue jumping", but we cannot yet be certain, particularly given
English inhibitions about confronting offenders. Inappropriate mobile-phone use
on trains and in other public places is at least a social issue of which
everyone is now aware. But there’re other aspects of mobile-phone etiquette
that are even more blurred and controversial.
There
are, for example, as yet no agreed rules of etiquette on the use of mobile
phones during business meetings. Do you switch your phone off, discreetly,
before entering the meeting? Or do you take your phone out and make a big show
of switching it off, as a flattering gesture conveying the message, "Sec
how important you are! I am switching off my phone for you"? Then do you
place your switched-off phone on the table as reminder of your courtesy and
your client's or colleague's status? If you keep it switched on, do you do so
openly or do you leave it in your briefcase? Do you take calls during the
meeting? My preliminary observations indicate that lower-ranking English
executives tend to be less courteous, attempting to trumpet their own
importance by keeping phones on and taking calls during meetings, while
high-ranking people with nothing to prove tend to be more considerate.
Then what about lunch? Is it acceptable to
switch your phone back on during the business lunch? Do you need to give a
reason? Apologize? Again, my initial observations and interviews suggest a similar
pattern. Low-status, insecure people tend to take and even sometimes make calls
during a business lunch-often apologizing and giving reasons, but in such a
self-important "I'm so busy and indispensable” manner that their
"apology" is really a disguised boast. Their higher-ranking, more
secure colleagues either leave their phones switched off or, if they absolutely
must keep them on for some reason, apologize in genuine and often embarrassed
manner.
There are many other, much more subtle social
uses of mobile phones, some of which do not even involve talking on the phone
at all---such as the competitive use of the mobile phone itself as a status symbol,
particularly among teenagers, but also in some cases replacing the car as a
medium for "mine's better than yours" displays among older males,
with discussions of the relative merits of different brands, networks and
features taking the place of more traditional conversations about the speeds
and designs of different cars.
I have also noticed that many women now use
their mobiles as "barrier signals" when on their own in coffee bars and
other public places, as an alternative to the traditional use of a newspaper or
magazine to signal unavailability and mark personal "territory." Even
when not in use, the mobile placed on the table acts as an effective symbolic
bodyguard, a protector against unwanted social contact. Women will touch the phone
or pick it up when a potential "intruder" approaches. One woman
explained: "You just feel safer if it’s there-just on the table, next to
your hand. Actually, it's better than a newspaper because it's real people-Mean,
there are real people in there you could call or text if you wanted, you know?
It's sort of reassuring.’ The idea of one's social support network of friends
and family being somehow "inside" the mobile phone means that even
just touching or holding the phone gives a sense of being protected-and sends a
signal to others that one is not alone and vulnerable. (790 words)
久しぶりに出典がはっきりしている英文に出会いました。
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (2004), Kate Fox
やはり，単行本としては標準レベルの英語ですが，センター試験の英文よりはるかに難しいので，レーベルは「やや難」単行本から原文をとって，おそらく省略もしてあると思います。そのため，７９０語の英文にしてはまとまりがありません。第１段落がこの英文の導入の役割をしていますが，前半の「電車内では携帯電話は御法度」は暗黙のルールになるかもしれないが，ビジネスミーティング中に携帯電話をどうするか，は発展途上。これで，やめておけばよいのに，最後から２番目の段落は，若者にとっては，かつての車のように，付加価値をもって話題にされている。最後の独身女性にとっての携帯電話の存在，の２つは異質。このため，英文全体がばらついたものになっています。要約がしにくかった要因です。
（２月２６日）
When members of a group are working cooperatively, they can clearly accomplish more than a single individual can. Indeed, some human achievements are possible only when several people participate through a group process that integrates their contributions. The economic, technological, and political complexity of contemporary society demands such diverse skills that no one can ever hope to master them all. Most industrial, scientific, and governmental enterprises now require many specialists, each contributing expertise in a different field.
However, researchers studying group processes have discovered that as groups
increase in size, each group member's contribution tends to decline. In
the late 1920's, researchers found that when people pull together on a
rope, each exerts less force than if he or she were pulling on the rope
alone. Working alone, one person pulled nearly 63 kg, but two people working
together pulled, not 126 kg (2x63), but 118 kg. And three people pulled
160 kg, which is only about two and one half times what a single individual
pulls. This and other studies led to the conclusion that people work less
hard when they are part of a group than when they work alone. Apparently,
individuals slacken their efforts when there are many contributors to a
common task. In short, they become lacy.
The social impact theory holds that the larger the group, the less
pressure there is on any one member to produce, The theory suggests that it is
the diffusion of responsibility for the group's work that leads each individual
to reduce his or her effort. Social psychologist Stephen Harkins suggested in
the late 1980's that it is specifically the anonymity of performance that
encourages laziness. When each individual believes that no one can detect how much
he or she is contributing, all tend to produce less. When individual
contributions can be identified, as when the experimenter measures how much
each has contributed, laziness is reduced.
Researchers have discovered that being evaluated by others is not the only thing that keeps people working. When people can evaluate their own performance by comparing it to the previous performance of others on the same task, they work hard---even though the experimenter cannot calculate how much they have contributed. Self-evaluation apparently provides them with the satisfaction of matching or surpassing the "standard" performance on the task. It seems that social laziness develops when there is no way for people to tell how well they are doing. (404 words)
２００５年度最初の問題は関西学院大学・法学部。担当は初めてです。立命館はかなり多くの問題をこなしてきましたが，どういうわけか，他の３大学とは縁がなく，冊子になってから取り組むことはありましたが，実際の問題を細かく見るのは初めて。かなり長い英文を出題すると思っていましたが，それほどではありませんでした。英文の素材そのものはインターネットでヒットせず。
内容的には，個人の力が集団になると発揮されない場合がある，という前半と，集団内であっても，他から評価されたり，自己評価ができれば，十分力を出す，という後半からなります。週代内では，他から見られていないとわかるとさぼる傾向にある，というのは，ちょっと最近の評価制度を連想させていやでしたが，自己評価でもよい，ということろでちょっと救われました。
【→大意】
"Grandma!" little Desiree exclaimed.
"It's my daddy's birthday. How will I send him a birthday card?"
Desiree's grandmother looked at Desiree and sighed. She didn't know what to say.
Desiree's father had died nine months earlier. Desiree didn't understand. She
was only four years old,
"I have an idea," her grandmother said. "Let's write your
daddy a letter. We can tie the letter to a balloon and send it up to heaven.
What should we write?" Desiree told
her grandmother to write, "Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you and miss you.
Please write me on my birthday in January."
Desiree's grandmother wrote Desiree's message and their address on a
small piece of paper. Then Desiree, her mother, and her grandmother went to a
store to buy a balloon. Desiree looked quickly at the helium-filled balloons
and said, "That one! The one with the mermaid ! "
They bought the mermaid balloon and tied Desiree's letter to it. Then
Desiree let the balloon go.
Desiree released the balloon in California. The wind caught the balloon
and carried it east. Four days later, it came down 6,000 kilometers away, near
a lake in eastern Canada. The name of the lake was Mermaid Lake,
Wade MacKinnon, a Canadian man, was hunting ducks at Mermaid Lake when
he found Desiree's balloon and letter. He took them home to his wife. She
decided to send
Desiree a birthday present. She also
wrote her a letter. The letter said:
Dear Desiree,
Happy Birthday from your daddy. I guess you wonder who we are. Well, my
husband, Wade, went duck hunting, and guess what he found? A mermaid
balloon that you sent your daddy. There are no stores in heaven, so your daddy
wanted someone to do his shopping for him. I think he picked us because we live
in a town called Mermaid. I know your daddy loves you very much and will
always watch over you.
Lots of love,
The MacKinnons
Desiree's mother wrote the MacKinnons to thank them. During the next few
weeks, she and the MacKinnons telephoned each other often. Then Desiree, her
mother, and her grandmother flew to Canada to meet the MacKinnons. The
MacKinnons took them to Mermaid Lake and showed them, where the balloon landed.
Now, whenever Desiree wants to talk about her father, she calls the
MacKinnons. After she talks to them, she feels better.
People often say, "What a coincidence-the mermaid balloon landed at Mermaid Lake!" Desiree's mother is not sure it was just a coincidence. She says, "I think that somehow my husband picked the MacKinnons. It was his way to send his love to Desiree. She understands now that her father is with her always." (449 words)
残念ながらこの英文もインターネットではヒットしませんでした。センター試験で出題してもよいよな平易な英文です。さらに心温まる話し。センターの英文よりちょっと語数が少ないのですが，まとまりがあって大変よいと思います。
「娘の父を思う気持ち」というところにジーンときました。親となって，子と親の絆について考えるところもあり，正直感動しました。いい人たちが登場して，泣けます。私の個人的な事情によると思いますが…
Attitudes toward time differ from country to country and culture to culture. Latin Americans, for example, are customarily later than the times announced or scheduled for appointments and parties, though how late varies with the occasion and the particular country. In contrast, Germans and Swedes and Americans from the northern states expect people to arrive precisely on time and will sometimes stand outside a door staring at their watch until the exact moment to knock or ring the bell. Consequently, anyone who hopes to do business abroad or simply demonstrate good manners while traveling around the globe needs to learn new codes of etiquette to fit in with local formality. What is polite in Rome is rude in Helsinki and what is looked on with favor in Miami, Florida may be unsatisfactory in Boise, Idaho. Learning local time formality will not only flatter your hosts and make your visits more pleasant, but will also make you a good ambassador abroad; instead of causing embarrassment, misunderstanding, and offense, you will demonstrate your respect for the host culture and your own international aptitude. Although you yourself must learn what is polite in terms of time in any given place, it helps to have some general guidelines for wide areas. In the main, northern areas are more precise about time and southern areas less so.(222 words)
１段落だけからなる英文。空所補充問題です。内容は昔からある，時間に対する態度の文化による違い。入試の頻出問題だと思われます。
２００１年秋田大学・教育学部で出題されたようです。出典も明示されており，A. Macdonald & G.Macdonald (1996) : Mastering Writing Essentials となっています。
【大意→】
【参考・秋田（教育）,2001】
Attitudes toward time differ from country to country and culture to culture. Latin Americans, for example, are customarily later than the times announced or scheduled for appointments and parties, though how late ( ア ) with the occasion and the particular country. In contrast, Germans and Swedes and Americans from the northern states expect people to arrive precisely on time and will sometimes stand outside a door ( イ ) at their watch until the exact moment to knock or ring the bell. Consequently, anyone who hopes to do business abroad or simply demonstrate good manners while traveling around the globe ( ウ ) to learn new codes of etiquette to fit in with local custom. Learning local time custom will not only flatter your hosts and make your visits more pleasant, but will also make you a good ambassador abroad; (1)instead of causing embarrassment, misunderstanding, and offense, you will demonstrate your respect for your host culture and your own international aptitude.
Although you yourself must learn what is polite in terms of time in any given place, it helps to have some general guidelines for wide areas. In the main, northern areas are 〔 X 〕 precise about time and southern areas less. A dinner invitation for seven o'clock in Chicago, which has a strong northern European influence, means that you must arrive at or 〔 Y 〕 that time, while a dinner invitation for seven in New Orleans, which has a strong Italian, Spanish, and French influence, means you should come sometime between 7:15 p.m. and 8 o'clock. In Sweden, a 7 p.m. invitation means a 7 p.m. arrival time, while in Mexico a 7 p.m. invitation means 〔 Z 〕 before 7:30 or 8 p.m. and a 7 p.m. party invitation might mean "Come around 10 or 11 p.m." Americans who are invited to a Mexican party scheduled for 7 p.m. and who arrive at 8 p.m. might find themselves the first guests of the evening. Standard Bombay expected arrival time is also 15 or 30 minutes later than the time ( エ ), but rarely as late as the Mexican expected arrival time. (2)In Arab countries, in contrast, a dinner invitation might be incredibly flexible; in fact, in some rural areas it might mean, "show up sometime on the invited day" if it is for a celebration. In other words, you should find out what the local custom of time and invitation ( オ ) before you set out for dinner or a party.
Macdonald & G. Macdonald (1996) : Mastering Writing Essentials
アマゾンでは入手可能ではありませんが，スカイソフトでは，入手可能，それに安い！洋書はアマゾン，スカイソフト両方をチェックする必要がありますね。
【２月１８日】
Ⅴ The bicycle has gone through one full circle
of development already. It began as a toy for rich people. Then it was a means
of transportation. Next it became a toy again. Now the bicycle is becoming
popular as a means of transportation once more.
There
are several reasons for the new popularity of bicycles. The cost of fuel for cars is one reason.
Another is the need to keep the environment clean. The third reason is a desire
for exercise. Americans are one group of people who are leaving their cars at
home. In fact, for about thirty years
bicycles have been outselling cars. There are more than a hundred million in
the United States alone.
An institute called World Watch made a study
about the future of the automobile. The researchers stated, "The automobile
is much less convenient than the bicycle, and the bicycle saves more
energy."
Furthermore, it is nearly as fast as the
automobile for short city trips. Many people, however, are still using their
cars. Why? Time is one reason. It is still fast to drive a car than to ride a bicycle.
Another reason people do not ride bicycles is their lack of confidence. Some
new bicycle riders do not trust themselves. If they are not completely certain
that they can ride well enough, they decide to take their cars. New bicycle
riders might be afraid of hurting themselves. At least in a car, there is steel
around the driver.
A more important reason is lack of knowledge
about the vehicle. For example, the average person does not know how to shift gears
on a ten-speed bicycle. One startling bit of information indicates the cyclists'
ignorance. Bicycle manufacturers have looked at the statistics about bicycle
use. They say that 80% of the ten-speed bicycles in the United States have
never been shifted! If bicycle riders knew how to ride their bicycles
correctly, they would probably make better use of them. (334 words)
大変易しい英文です。もし，目新しさがあるとすれば，最後の段落，１０段変速の自転車の変速をいじったことのない人が８０％というところか。
この英文の前半部分は，中国とか韓国の試験に出題されたようで，それぞれ，ハングルや漢字と一緒に表示されました。
Ⅵ Most people around the world are
right-handed. This fact also seems to have held true throughout history. In
1977, scientists studied works of art made at various times in history starting
with cave drawings from 15,000 B.C. and ending with paintings from the 1950s. Most
of the people shown in these works of art are right-handed, so scientists
guessed that right-handedness has always been common in human through history.
Because no one has ever come across records of any large groups of left-handed
nations or people, scientists also guessed that right-handedness -is a natural
characteristic of humans today, only about 10 to 15 percent of the world's
population is left-handed.
In studying the reasons why more people are
right-handed rather than left-handed; several interesting facts have been discovered.
Scientists now know that a person's two hands each have very special jobs. For
most people, the left hand is used to find things, hold things, or support
things. The right hand is used to handle or work with things. This division of
work seems to be related to how the two sides of the brain work. The right side
of the brain, which controls the left-hand, is strong in skills related to
making a person's hands and eyes work together. The left side of the brain,
which controls the right-hand, is the center for thinking and solving problems.
These findings suggest that more artists should be left-handed, and studies have
found that left-handedness is twice as common among artists as among people in
other jobs.
What makes a person become right-handed
rather than left-handed? As of yet, no one really knows for sure. Scientists
have found that almost 40 percent of the people who suffer major brain damage
when they are born become left-handed. Even small cases of brain damage can
cause a person to become left-handed. However, not everyone who suffers brain
damage becomes left-handed, so scientists guess that there must be another
reason why people become left-handed. One simple idea suggests that people
normally get right-handedness from their parents. If a person does not receive
the gene for right-handedness, he/she may become either right or left-handed
according to chance and the person's surroundings. Even though right-handedness
is more common than left-handedness, nowadays people who are left-handed are no
longer looked down on nor are they considered abnormal. Left-handed children
used to be punished until they began using their right hand like other
children, but today either case is perfectly acceptable. (411 words)
こちらも定番。全くの新鮮みがありません。これまで，左利きについては数多くの英文が出題されてきています。上智２００１年，北海道２００３年，早稲田２００３年，東京薬科２００３年，大阪１９９６年，名城１９９７年など，きりがありません。したがって，新しい刺激とか知見はないような。
（２００５年２月２２日）
