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- 精华
- 0
- 积分
- 535
- 经验
- 535 点
- 威望
- 34 点
- 金钱
- 359 ￥
- 魅力
- 158
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Introduction
Many students sent me E-mail, asking me to recommend some reading materials. Of assorted iBT preparing materials, Barron, Longman, Delta, etc, which is the best? As often as not, I feel at a loss: does brand equal to quality? These branded institutions are highly publicized, however, their passages and questions are not necessarily of quality. Does the brand “Sanlu” mean something to you? “QUALITY and safety are the foundations of social harmony,” proclaim posters at the headquarters of the Sanlu Group, until recently one of China’s biggest producers of milk powder. Now we all know that Sanlu Scandal has been more than an embarrassment. To say that these “branded” passages are not of quality does not mean they are not stylish, elegant or carefully-written; in fact, I discovered that the passage types, sentence patterns, arguing methods, and arrangement of questions are not quite consistent with, and sometimes even wildly divergent from those of ETS. I reflect that practicing with these materials cannot expect a satisfactory result. At this, we should collect ETS’s original passages and questions. Such passages available include:
1. 13 passages in Official Guide (OG);
2. 19sets from TPO, with 3 passages included in each set, 57 passages in total;
3. 3 passages provided by ETS to the applicants for a test on line in the early time of iBT,
4. 1 passage extracted from the simulated exam software provided by ETS;
(3 passages in TPO are abstracted from OG, so they are exactly the same)
Then, I cannot resist the temptation to make such a text: I typed every letter of the 13 passages in OG into computer; I paid dollars for the TPO and completed it myself, filming the screen and capturing every page. Then I typed all the passages with the help of videos and captured pictures. The 3 passages in the on-line test happened to be available to me; and as for the one passage in the simulated exam, though with a little difficulty, I nevertheless succeeded make an electronic text of it. Of course, I finished all these questions and attached the answer to end of this text. Eventually, the final “deluxe” edition of this text, including 71 passages in aggregate (3 passages in TPO are abstracted from OG, so they are exactly the same. Then taking 3 from 74 leaves 71 passages at last. ) I insist that before carefully finished and studied these 71passages, we should not let ourselves distracted by any other materials. Sometimes, I yelled to my students, only a joke, “If you had not studied these passages and questions 3 times at least, how could you be barefaced enough to sit in the exam room? Shame on you to waste your mother’s money buying other costly books!”
In addition, have you got ants in your pants every time you make a stab at writing? Do you go berserk for your personal statement? If you are preparing for the iBT, SAT, GRE, etc, writing, essays, or your personal statement, these passages can also be of help: polished by ETS, words, sentence, and structures of these passages are “epic…”, and worth imitating for none-native English users. Frequently, friends asked me to help with their personal statement, complaining why what they had written looked so naïve, immature and awkward, even littered with those “glorious noble” GRE words (Actually, these words made their personal statement even freak!). And they asked, “Wenyong, my brother, how you forged your impressive writing skills?” I said, “Read! Read! And read again! The more you read, the better you write.” “Are these iBT passages really so amazing?” I affected a tone of a comedian, “try them!”
How good can these passages be? “They are golden, they are precious, they are diamonds!”
Yours
Wenyong |
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