2018“外研社·国才杯”全国英语阅读大赛落下帷幕，阅读大赛以“Read and Know”, “Read and Reason”, “Read and Question”, “Read and Create”四个模块架设比赛结构，匠心独运、层层递进，启迪选手智慧、引导选手思考。 为让大家深入了解决赛赛题及选手表现，今天特地奉上赛题Part IV及冠军作品展示，以小见大，重现选手风采！
Part IV Read and Create
In Part IV, you will read two passages and then write a short essay according to them. You should write with clarity and logic. Directions: Read the following two passages. Write a short essay according to the passages.
Passage A
On one occasion when a disciple of Confucius was sent on a public mission to a foreign State, he left his mother at home unprovided for. Another disciple then asked Confucius to provide her with grain. "Give her," said Confucius, "so much," naming a certain quantity. The disciple asked for more. Confucius then named a larger quantity. Finally the disciple gave her a larger quantity than the quantity which Confucius named. When Confucius came to know of it, he remarked, "When that woman's son left on his mission he drove in a carriage with fine horses and was clothed with costly furs. Now I believe a wise and good man reserves his charity for the really needy; he does not help the well-to-do and rich." On another occasion, when another disciple was appointed the chief magistrate of a town, Confucius appointed his salary at nine hundred measures of grain. The disciple declined it as being too much. "Do not decline it," said Confucius to him, "If that is more than necessary for your own wants, cannot you share what you do not want with your relatives and neighbors at home?" Source: The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius.
Passage B
…with respect to acting in the face of danger, courage is a mean between the excess of rashness and the deficiency of cowardice; with respect to the enjoyment of pleasures, temperance is a mean between the excess of intemperance and the deficiency of insensibility; with respect to spending money, generosity is a mean between the excess of wastefulness and the deficiency of stinginess; with respect to relations with strangers, being friendly is a mean between the excess of being ingratiating and the deficiency of being surly… Source: Aristotle: Ethics and the Virtues
41. Write a short essay of about 300 words based on your understanding of the two passages. Remember to write in your OWN words. Your essay should respond to the following questions: 1) In the first story, what was Confucius' attitude toward his disciple? 2) How did Confucius behave differently to his second disciple? And why? 3) Compare Confucius and Aristotle in their understanding of generosity. Please support your opinion with the information from the given passages.
选手答题思路王清波 湖北大学（指导教师：曾靓婧老师）2018“外研社·国才杯”全国英语阅读大赛冠军
通常的阅读主观题要求选手要对文章有或批判或赞成的态度，而这次的题目重在对于题目信息的提取，即便是最后一问也只是要求选手比较孔子和亚里士多德对于generosity 的理解，而没有让选手表达自己认为谁的理解更好。因此，在完成这道题的时候主要将精力放在理解文章和paraphrase上，我认为写作的目的是传达观点和交流，因此不过分纠结语言的华丽，尽量选用平实、简单的词汇表达观点。 关于审题的问题，我注意到赛后部分选手反映纠结第一问的disciple到底是哪个disciple，其实我觉得完全没必要，因为这三个题目的设置本质上就是让选手用自己的话说出这两篇文章的内容，所以我认为前两问只要表达出“孔子对于第一个学生擅自给独居的母亲那么多grain非常不满，却给了第二个当上官的学生非常高的工资，因为孔子认为君子就是应该资助穷人，而不应该去管富人”就OK了。而第三问要求比较孔子和亚里士多德对generosity的理解，他们的不同之处比较明显，基本看完文章就可总结出来：孔子只帮助穷人不帮助富人，因此他对于要帮助的人是有一个自己的判断的，而亚里士多德就是中庸之道，花钱就应该不多不少，不管帮谁都是一样的标准。 确认文章大意理解充分后，我给三个问题分配了不同的篇幅。前两问我个人认为一两句话就可以回答，因此用第一个段落回答前两个问题，后面的所有内容都是回答第三问。此外，我习惯在每一段的开头清晰地说明这一段将要说什么，方便阅卷老师很快把握我的思路。
选手作品展示
（为真实展示选手赛场上的写作风貌，文章为从iTEST 大学外语测试与训练系统中摘出的原生作品，仅供学习分享使用。）
In the first story, Confucius had a negative attitude towards his first disciple's decision to give more grain than he allotted to the woman. In contrast, he gave the second disciple who was appointed magistrate much more than he actually needed as his salary, because he followed his principle of helping people that most urgently need help and thought his second disciple fit into the criteria. There are nuances of differences between Confucius and Aristotle's understanding of generosity. Confucius believed that generosity was about refraining from helping the rich and saving all the money for people who are really in need, whereas Aristotle was convinced that generosity was in the middle between the two ends of the spectrum of spending money--- wasting it and not spending anything. When Confucius found that the lonely woman's son was luxurious in his outfits as he left on the mission, he classified the family into financially capable ones and played down the sum of grains that the disciple asked to give to the woman. Then he gave much more salary than necessary for that position of the magistrate and encouraged the appointed disciple to give the amount that he did not need to his family and neighbors. Clearly Confucius had a clear priority in helping people, which was reflected in his behaviour---he was stingy to the rich and extremely generous to the poor. As regards Aristotle,he preferred the middle ground of spending. In his view, you should never spend too much which he labeled as "wasteful" and too little which he labeled as "stingy". This means that Aristotle didn't really categorize and judge the people whom he wanted to spend money on. People should be indiscriminate in their spending and refrain from having different treatments in different circumstances. The term "generosity" was interpreted differently by the two great masters. Confucius might be able to give more help to people in need, and Aristotle might be able to be objective in his spending, which could rule out the possibility of unfair judgement and unfair categorization when helping the poor.
专家点评
田朝霞教授 南京师范大学
2018“外研社·国才杯”全国英语阅读大赛评委
文学博士，剑桥大学、伦敦大学学院、墨尔