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广西大学课程考试试卷
 广西大学课程考试试卷
2007 年 12 月 11 日
考查用 广西大学课程考查试卷
课程名称：外报外刊
试卷类型：（A） 命题教师签名：
教研室主任签名： 主管院长签名：
题 号 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 总分

应得分 20 20 100

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评卷人

Article ONE
The Children are First to Die
Can earlier relief efforts stave off a report of Ethiopia’s 1984 disaster?
Madar Heeban Munsal could carry only two of her children on the 80—mile walk from her village
to a makeshift feeding center in the southeastern Ethiopian outpost of Gode. With no water, her other
two barefoot sons collapsed on the sweltering trek. For miles, she dragged their unconscious bodies,
shriveled by starvation, along the dirt road past numerous cattle carcases. Soon, they both died, and
she stopped to dig two small graves. Now at a feeding center run by an Ethiopian aid group, she is
not sure if her youngest boy, still severely malnourished, will survive. “I’m helpless,” she says.
There years of extended drought have left many of the nomadic people in southeastern Ethiopia
unable to cope as wells have dried up, crops have failed, and livestock have perished. And conditions
continue to worsen. As many as 400 people, most of them under 5, died from hunger and related
causes in Gode last month. For now, the deaths are limited to only a small portion of the country. But
aid groups estimate that as many as 10 million Ethiopians are at risk of starvation this year, along
with an additional 8 million people in neighbouring countries in the Horn of Africa.
The pictures of skeletal children evoke painful memories of the 1984 famine, which killed 1 million
Ethiopians and prompted Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie to write the song “We Are The World”
to raise aid money. And while Ethiopia is in the throes of its worst food crises since then, this time
it’s different. Aid groups have a jump on the problem, and officials believe that they can still avert a
full-scale famine despite some serious logistical hurdles. The aid community, led by the Ethiopian
government and the United States, has been predicting the crises for nearly a year, and already vast
amounts of food are steaming toward East Africa. “Our aim is to prevent there needing to be a theme
song this year,” says Hugh Parmer, who directs the aid effort for the US Agency for International
Development.
Early warning. Usually, it takes wrenching media coverage before governments mount a concerted
aid response But despite little press attention, officials at USAID and other aid groups have been
working for months to line up funding and plan a response. Several planeloads of food aid designed
specifically for children have reached the Gode region in the past few weeks. The first ship laden
with American food aid is due in the port of Djibouti this week. And aid groups are scrambling to
arrange logistics for delivering some 1 million metric tons of supplies. “We’ve woken up too many
times and said, ‘Oh, there’s a drought now,’” says Catherine Berini, who heads the UN World Food
Program. Improved early-warning systems, using real-time satellite imagery and socioeconomic
studies, provide better information about who will be the most vulnerable. And the Ethiopian
government has been working from the beginning as an active partner in the fight against hunger.
Politics complicates the picture, though. Just as Ethiopia was fighting a civil war in 1984, the
country is currently embroiled in a nasty two-year-old border war with Eritrea that threatens to snarl
 广西大学课程考试试卷
relief efforts. Aid donors will be relying primarily on the port of Dfibouti, with the tiny Somali port
of Berbera as a backup. Together, the ports provide barely enough theoretical capacity for the project
need.
Bad roads. The crumbling infrastructure may also impede relief. The dilapidated road from
Djibouti into Ethiopia currently strains to carry 400 trucks per day. At the peak of the aid effort this
summer, it would need to handle 1000 trucks daily, and US officials fear it could collapse in less
than two months. The road from Berbera is even worse.
Relief workers are anxious to use the Eritrean port of Assab, the main hub for the 1984 relief effort.
But while Eritrea has given its permission, Ethiopian officials dismiss the offer as a “public-relations
gimmick”. Aid officials want to push the Ethiopian government for permission, but some diplomats
fear that such pressure might undercut their peace initiatives. “I can’t assure anybody that we can
deliver enough food through the current distribution system to prevent starvation,” says USAID’s
Parmer. “I could assure this if we use Assab.”
Once the food arrives in Ethiopia, the government’s aid agency will distribute it. But the projected
volume of aid is more than double what the government has ever handed out before. And some of
the hardest—hit areas are dangerous. One aid worker was recently killed, and the United Nations
does not allow its staff to stay overnight in many parts. Says Judith Lewis, who directs WFP’s work
in Ethiopia, “We can only move by air into some towns.”
War zone. The United States has already pledged more than $150 million in food aid, which covers
about half of the estimated need. But the belg rains, which usually come to Ethiopia in February and
March, have failed to appear, signaling the loss of another harvest and the need for more help.
Ethiopia has made it clear that fighting hunger is crucial, and US officials are impressed with the
depth of its efforts, including a large purchase of Ethiopian grain to contribute to the aid program.
But at the same time, Ethiopia has on illusions about its priorities. “The government has a war at
hand”, says Mohammoud Abdi, head of the Ogaden Welfare Society, an Ethiopian aid group
operating in Gode. “It’s clear the main concern will be to defend the country.”
In fact, some European donors have held back , fearing that aid could be diverted for the war effort,
Others fear the war will limit the number of trucks available to move food to remote villages. “It’s a
savage war and it’s taking a lot of resources,” says John O’Shea, head of Irish aid group Goal. “If
one person dies of starvation because of this war, the Ethiopian government stands indicted.”
But some critics in Ethiopia and elsewhere complain that the aid groups should shoulder some of
the blame for not moving fast enough. With the first drought warning a year ago, aid groups could
have pre-positioned more food in Ethiopia, they say. Instead, donor governments and aid groups
were distracted by crises in Kosovo and East Timor. Aid groups also borrowed from Ethiopia’s
emergency grain reserve last year but did not replenish the stock. “What’s sad is that now in the last
minute, everyone is crying desperately to get (food aid) in,” says Angela Raven-Roberts, an expert
with the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts University. “How malnourished do you have
to be before people decide that they will kick in to help?”
There complaints point to a new irony: As aid groups get better at predicting and preventing
famine, they could become victims of their own success. For their funding, aid groups rely on
government and private donors, who in turn are motivated primarily by media coverage of disasters.
But with fewer scenes of mass misery to attract the press, preventive missions could become
increasingly hard to fund.
——from U. S. News & World Report, April 24, 2000

I. Questions: (20 points)

1. Give a brief account of the famine in Ethiopia. Are there any similarities or differences between
this one and the 1984 famine?

2. Does the aid community undertake its mission smoothly?

 广西大学课程考试试卷

3. Is there any connection between the grave consequences of the famines and wars in Ethiopia?

4. Why does Ethiopia dismiss Eritrea’s offer of using Assab for relief effort? Is this sensible?

5. In the last paragraph there is such a sentence, “As aid groups get better at predicting and
preventing famine, they could become victims of their won success.” How do you paraphrase it?

II. Summarize this feature. (20 points)

Article TWO
 广西大学课程考试试卷
With booming economy in China comes unexpected offshoot: beauty pageants

News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
Released 9/20/07

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — There she is ... Miss China?

Four years have passed since the Chinese government endorsed the appearance of Wu Wei as
the nation’s first-ever competitor in the Miss World competition. Since then, governmental
support and cultural preoccupation with such pageants just keeps growing.

“In 2004, China hosted more than six major international beauty competitions, including Miss
World, Miss Universe, Miss Asia, Miss Tourism World, Miss Tourism International and Miss
Intercontinental,” notes University of Illinois China scholar Gary Xu in a special double issue of
the journal Feminist Economics.

Among the guest editors of the edition on “Gender, China and the WTO” is Gale Summerfield,
the director of the U. of I. Women and Gender in Global Perspectives program and a professor
of human and community development, agricultural and consumer economics, and of gender
and women’s studies. Summerfield also contributed an article with U. of I. graduate student
Junjie Chen that documents a case study of population control and land rights policies in
Northern Liaoning.

The popularity of the pageants, according to Xu, a professor of East Asian languages and
cultures, is symptomatic of a broader cultural shift taking place in China. As the nation’s
economy becomes increasingly market-driven, he said, a curious side effect of recent economic
reforms and an increased trend toward Westernization has been the widespread linkage of
beauty and economic gain. The coupling is so pervasive that a new phrase has been coined to
describe the phenomenon: meinü jingji.

“Broadly defined, meinü jingji refers to activities like beauty pageants that are typically
commercialized and localized festivities that put beautiful women on parade, as well as the
accompanying range of advertisements for TV shows and movies, cosmetics, plastic surgery
centers, weight-loss products, fitness programs and the ubiquitous beauty parlors,” Xu and co-
author Susan Feiner (University of Southern Maine) write in the journal article.

The overwhelming message beamed to women through the media, Xu said, is that beauty –
often defined in Western terms – equals on-the-job success.

But China’s new-found obsession with fashion and beauty is not just skin deep. It is fueled by
those who oil the machines of China’s commerce. “The Chinese bureaucracy is heavily invested
in the promotion of the beauty economy as a source of employment, growth and glory for
China,” Xu said.

Xu and Feiner indicate in the article that, along with real estate, meinü jingji is among China’s
most productive economic sectors. Citing a 2005 report in the People’s Daily, they noted that
the beauty industry employed more than 16 million people. Another newspaper story quoted
women who claimed that half of their monthly paychecks is spent on skin-care products and
cosmetics.
 广西大学课程考试试卷

While lucrative, China’s beauty industry isn’t necessarily advancing the status of women.
“Misogyny is running rampant,” Xu said. “Women’s rights are more violated than men’s.
Women’s value is more likely determined by appearance than anything else.”

In the introduction to Feminist Economics, Summerfield and co-editors Günseli Berik

(University of Utah) and Xiao-yuan Dong (University of Winnipeg) argue that women’s rights
have been eroded in a number of other areas since China’s transition from a socialist to a
capitalist economy. While sweeping changes began to take place in 1978, the journal focuses
mainly on “gendered processes and outcomes” that have occurred since 1992 and China’s
affiliation with the World Trade Organization.

Summerfield said that period has been one of tremendous growth, punctuated by a number of
positive changes for women. But along with what the editors call China’s “imperative for
accumulation and efficiency,” they maintain that certain policies – or lack thereof – have led to a
weakening of land rights, income insecurity and declining access to healthcare for women,
along with gender disparities in urban and rural wages and disproportionate layoffs.

While some of these problems have surfaced since China joined the WTO and became an active
participant in the global economy, Summerfield noted that “it hasn’t really affected people’s
day-to-day life much in some of the rural areas.”

“But with the growing inequality that’s associated with this lop-sided income growth, you can’t
just stay in one place. You’re actually getting worse off if everyone else is getting better off.”

One example of this is occurring in the villages, where women typically lose rights to long-term
leases to farmland when they marry and move to their husbands’ villages and take up residence
with the men’s families. Even though the government issued a regulation stating that women
should keep rights to their original plots, issued in their parents’ land allocation, “having that
law didn’t really change what was happening on the ground because traditions trumped law in
many cases.”

In larger towns and cities, employment practices such as discrimination and wage disparity
exist, but are not always apparent, she said.

“Discrimination is not just a relic of the past; it’s built into the incentives of the current period,
too,” Summerfield said. For instance, “even though you have (had) two-earner families since
the socialist period, there’s a sense that men are the real heads of the family and the ones who
have to earn the income. And if somebody has to go home, it would be better to be the wife, so
she can take care of the children.

“When they lay off people, it’s amazing how common and repetitive it is to see a figure like
two-thirds of the lay-offs are women and a third are men.”

With respect to wage disparity, Summerfield said many in China would maintain there is no
such thing.

“They are more egalitarian than in many places, and it is generally illegal to pay different wages
for the same work.” But, she noted, “where the disparities show up more frequently are things
like bonuses or promotions – especially bonuses because, obviously, if you’re going home to
 广西大学课程考试试卷
make dinner and feed kids, the male is working the extra hours.” Therefore, when employers
issue bonuses, the men are first in line.

Summerfield is hopeful that by bringing together and highlighting current scholarship on the
gender impacts of China’s reforms in the journal, some of these problems will receive more
attention in the future.

“Putting light on the problems that crop up strikes a chord with some people, and they do act,”
she said. “And it’s much more likely that the government would take some of these things into
account in their official regulations. Sometimes they just don’t realize there are these gender
issues going on in the reform. They think it’s just a family issue.

“That’s what policies for intervention are about. There is no reason a market (automatically) is
going to come out on a gender-equitable solution. You have to have other mechanisms in place
to achieve social goals that relate to forms of equity, whether it’s gender or rural or urban
issues.”

In an effort to better reach those most able to affect change – Chinese scholars and government
officials, Summerfield said the special issue of the journal will be translated into Chinese and
published as a book within the next year.

Questions:

III Answer the following questions in between 3 and 5 sentences without quoting directly
from the article (5 points each):

1. How are the ideas of beauty and economy linked in the article?
2. Why is the concept of “beauty” seen as misogynist?
3. What are the aspects of discrimination towards women in today’s China according to the
article?
4. Is any solution for overcoming the problem offered?

IV Write a letter to the editor explaining why you agree or disagree with the ideas
expressed in the article (20 points). Use appropriate reference to identify the article you are
supporting or opposing. Give personal opinion about the issue and back it with some facts from
everyday life in China as you know it. If you think there is a problem, offer solutions, if you
think there is no problem explain to the editor what is the mistake of the article. Write at least 8
and not more than 16 sentences.
 广西大学课程考试试卷

Article III

Border agency vows to improve monitoring

Polish-speaking officer was not called to key confrontation

IAN BAILEY

with reports from Gloria Galloway in Ottawa and Justine Hunter in Victoria

The Globe and Mail, November 27, 2007

VANCOUVER -- A Canada border services employee with a working knowledge of Polish dealt
with confused Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at one point as he wandered a secure area of
Vancouver International Airport, but officials did not rally the employee to assist when the
agitated Mr. Dziekanski, unable to speak English, had a fatal confrontation with Mounties hours
later.

After six weeks of silence, the Canada Border Services Agency issued an eight-page report
yesterday on the Dziekanski case to try to explain how the 40-year-old man was able to wander
the international arrivals area for more than six hours before his death on Oct. 14. The report
recommends various changes, including additional cameras to track its area at the airport, more
patrols, and a review of interpreter services and updated lists of the languages employees can
speak.

In the document and at a subsequent news conference, the agency said it did its best to track Mr.
Dziekanski, but faced challenges in doing so through an area the size of two football fields that
was crowded, at times, with up to 4,000 travellers. Officials also said views of fixed cameras
were limited by construction in the area.

Mr. Dziekanski, a construction worker, arrived Oct. 13 at 3:30 p.m. on a flight from Frankfurt,
planning to join his mother, a resident of Kamloops, and begin a new life in Canada. Just after 1
a.m. on Oct. 14, Mr. Dziekanski, agitated and throwing items around, died after being subjected
to two taser* blasts from four Mounties, who were called to the scene to deal with him - a
confrontation seen around the world on video footage shot by a bystander.

As the border services agency yesterday vowed to do more to better communicate with
travellers who do not speak English, officials conceded that a member of staff who had "some
limited knowledge of the Polish language," dealt with Mr. Dziekanski as he was clearing
immigration.

In a briefing that agency staff refused to allow the media to record, Blake Delgaty, regional
director-general for the Pacific Region, suggested the Polish-speaking staffer was otherwise
occupied when Mr. Dziekanski became erratic and began yelling in Polish.

The decision astonished the lawyer for Mr. Dziekanski's mother, Zofia Cisowski."It raises all
kinds of questions," Walter Kosteckyj said. "How can you have this incident happening not
more than 150 to 200 feet away not come to the attention of the customs people?" he said,
 广西大学课程考试试卷
suggesting the agent could "absolutely" have been called to translate during the confrontation
with the Mounties.

Mr. Kosteckyj said he was not entirely satisfied with the eight-page report. "It talks about the
fact that 'We are going to explore options,' instead of implementing options," he said in an
interview. He said Mr. Dziekanski's mother had not been briefed on the report, but has said
apologies matter less to her than the fact that she no longer has her son.

Alain Jolicoeur, the border agency's president, expressed his condolences to Mr. Dziekanski's
family yesterday. However, he ruled out sanctions against any staff of the agency, saying it was
his view that they followed procedures.

Mr. Jolicoeur called it "very odd" that someone would spend six hours in the airport in such a
manner. "But it occurs every day that people spend many hours in that very area so I am very,
very sorry and really wish we had found out about Mr. Dziekanski before," he said, promising
aggressive change.

Mr. Jolicoeur said he had reviewed video footage from fixed cameras that allowed him to
actually see Mr. Dziekanski in the last hours of his life. "He looked like any traveller. In fact, he
leaves with other travellers. He's obviously tired like every international traveller is."

The report suggests that Mr. Dziekanski's stepfather called the agency's secondary area at one
point, looking for Mr. Dziekanski, but was told he was not there. At about 2 a.m. on Oct. 14, Mr.
Dziekanski's mother was told that her son had been seen earlier.

Vancouver International Airport promised yesterday to announce its own measures on Dec. 7,
based on its own internal review of the matter.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day who is responsible for the Canada Border Services
Agency, would not comment on the report yesterday. But opposition members had plenty to say.
"This is an astoundingly deficient report," said Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal Public Safety critic.
"It provides a bit of a timeline but doesn't provide any exhaustive, thorough answers to any
major questions."

Kyle Harland

---

* taser = commercial abbreviation for “Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle”, a stun gun that can
release up to 300,000 V of electricity from 11 metres away; widely used by police and security
personnel in most countries to subdue offenders. It is, however, illegal in some cities and
provinces. The UN's Committee against Torture considers that "TASER electronic stun guns are
a form of torture that can kill."

V Analyse the article (20 points): What type of journalism piece is it (a feature, opinion
piece, etc.) – and why do you say so? Is it neutral, affirmative, critical etc? What kind of
vocabulary is used (is it a general public piece)? Are the title and the subtitle appropriate –
 广西大学课程考试试卷
would you change them and why or why not? Does the article give full information about what
has happened and is it clear? Is it objective or does it take one side? etc.

广西大学课程考试
试卷答案要点及评分细则
课程名称：外报外刊 考试班级：英语 2006 级
试卷类型：（A）
命题教师签名 2007 年 12 月 11 日
I. Questions:
1. Three years of extended drought have left many of the nomadic people in southeastern Ethiopia
unable to cope as wells have dried up, crops have failed, and livestock have perished. Many children
died in the famine.
2. The aid community undertakes its mission hardly. Few press attention has been given to the
famine. It becomes difficultly to fund enough food and money. Also, they don’t have enough
vehicles to transport the supplies. And bad roads limit the transport capacity. What makes things
worse is the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Donors hesitate to give donation for fearing the aid
could be diverted for the war effort.
3. War prevents the aid workers from undertaking their plan smoothly. First, they only can use small
port providing barely enough theoretical capacity for the project need. Second, the lives of aid
workers have been threaten. Third, donors fear that aid could be diverted for the war effort so than
they have held back. All of these have made the situation worse.
4. If the permission is also granted by Ethiopian government, Eritrean government will have a good
card up their sleeves. It may give them initiatives in peace negotiating process. It is really a sensible
issue.
 广西大学课程考试试卷
5. Because aid groups get better at predicting and preventing famine, if the aid acts fail or are carried
out unsuccessfully, they are easier to be blamed for not giving all the effort on it. Since they know it
well, they should prepare well.
II. Summary.
In the summary, 5W and 1H must be given if they could be located in the text. The summary should
be an abstract of the original text, simple, concise, excluding detail information. NO personal
opinions would be added in the summary.

Keys to III

1. Students should mention the following: several beauty pageants in China in recent
years; promotion of the beauty ideal as a key to success in everything, including
business; promotion of beauty services (plastic surgery, cosmetics) as a sign of financial
wellbeing linked to economic boom.

2. Women under pressure to be beautiful to get a job, yet that job is not guaranteed at
layoff, as they are the first to be let go. Shallow Westernisation – primarily consumerism
(women earn less because less prone to work ovbertime, yet they m,ust spend money to
be “beautiful”)

3. Discrimination entrenched despite govrenment declarations against it: women laid off
two times more than men, women lose the title to parents’ land even though the law
prohibits that (but peasant tradition is stronger than law), women cannot get best paid
job as easily as a man (because their place is in the house, in the mind of traditionalists)
etc.

4. Raising awareness of the reality among government officials who tend to see the law,
but not the actual application thereof; encouraging gender studies among students and
researchers; translation of works in other languages to Chinese and cooperation of
foreign and Chinese researchers and experts.

IV

Letters will be graded based on relevance to the topic, ability to express one’s opinion
clearly and to the point, grammar and style. I expect that most students support the idea
that there is discrimination towards women in China – and the world – despite all world
governments saying they try to eliminate it (and doing a little, or even less) in this
regard. However, I imagine some may disagree and claim that those women who accept
the beauty ideal choose it themselves (albeit under pressure from society). As long as
their reasoning is solid, either answer is good for me.

Students should be able to identify that the piece is primarily a report (not broad enough
to be a feature, not a personal opinion piece; does bring to viewpoints: of the victim’s
family and of the perpetrator/police); that it is relatively neutral (if they can identify that
 广西大学课程考试试卷
the author is slightly on the side of the police, but without being explicitly against the
victim, more on the “vis maior” kind of attitude, that’s a plus but not necessary). They
should be able to explain that most words are everyday ones (except the name of the
weapon which is epxlained), and therefore a general public piece and not a report for
experts. They should identify that the title and subtitle are not clear enough when put
together and propose a different one or a combination of the two.