SECTION 1 READING TESTDirections: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, A. B. C. or D. to each question.
When Harvey Ball took a black felt-tip pen to a piece of yellow paper in 1963, he never could have realized that he was drafting the face that would launch 50 million buttons and an eventual war over copyright. Mr. Ball, a commercial artist, was simply filling a request from Joy Young of the Worcester Mutual Insurance Company to create an image for their "smile campaign" to coach employees to be more congenial in their customer relations. It seems there was a hunger for a bright grin—the original order of 100 smiley-face buttons were snatched up and an order for 10,000 more was placed at once.
The Worcester Historical Museum takes this founding moment seriously. "Just as you'd want to know the biography of General Washington, we realized we didn't know the comprehensive history of the Smiley Face," says Bill Wallace, the executive director of the historical museum where the exhibit "Smiley—An American Icon" opens to the public Oct. 6 in Worcester, Mass.
Worcester, often referred to by neighboring Bostonians as "that manufacturing town off Route 90," lays claim to several other famous commercial firsts, the monkey wrench and shredded wheat among them. Smiley Face is a particularly warm spot in the city's history. Through a careful historical analysis, Mr. Wallace says that while the Smiley Face birthplace is undisputed, it took several phases of distribution before the distinctive rounded-tipped smile with one eye slightly larger than the other proliferated in the mainstream.
As the original buttons spread like drifting pollen with no copyright attached, a bank in Seattle next realized its commercial potential. Under the guidance of advertising executive David Stern, the University Federal Savings & Loan launched a very public marketing campaign in 1967 centered on the Smiley Face. It eventually distributed 150,000 buttons along with piggy banks and coin purses. Old photos of the bank show giant Smiley Face wallpaper.
By 1970, Murray and Bernard Spain, brothers who owned a card shop in Philadelphia, were affixing the yellow grin to everything from key chains to cookie jars along with "Have a happy day". "In the 1970s, there was a trend toward happiness," says Wallace. "We had assassinated a president, we were in a war with Vietnam, and people were looking for [tokens of] happiness. [The Spain brothers] ran with it."
The Smiley Face resurged in the 1990s. This time it was fanned by a legal dispute between Wal-Mart, who uses it to promote its low prices, and Franklin Loufrani, a Frenchman who owns a company called SmileyWorld. Mr. Loufrani says he created the Smiley Face and has trademarked it around the world. He has been distributing its image in 80 countries since 1971.
Loufrani's actions irked Ball, who felt that such a universal symbol should remain in the public domain in perpetuity. So in a pleasant proactive move, Ball declared in 1999 that the first Friday in October would be "World Smile Day" to promote general kindness and charity toward children in need. Ball died in 2001.
The Worcester exhibit opens on "World Smile Day", Oct. 6. It features a plethora of Smiley Face merchandise—from the original Ball buttons to plastic purses and a toilet seat and contemporary interpretations by local artists. The exhibit is scheduled to run through Feb. 11. Perhaps we could have our children pledge allegiance to a national motto. So thick and fast tumble the ideas about Britishness from the Government that the ridiculous no longer seems impossible. For the very debate about what it means to be a British citizen, long a particular passion of Gordon Brown, brutally illustrates the ever-decreasing circle that new Labour has become. The idea of a national motto has already attracted derision on a glorious scale—and there's nothing more British than the refusal to be defined. Times readers chose as their national motto: No motto please, we're British.
Undaunted, here comes the Government with another one: a review of citizenship, which suggests that schoolchildren be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. It would be hard to think of something more profoundly undemocratic, less aligned to Mr. Brown's supposed belief in meritocracy and enabling all children to achieve their full potential. Today you will hear the Chancellor profess the Government's continuing commitment to the abolition of child poverty, encapsulating a view of Britain in which the State tweaks the odds and the tax credit system to iron out inherited inequalities.
You do not need to ask how this vision of Britain can sit easily alongside a proposal to ask kids to pledge allegiance to the Queen before leaving school: it cannot. The one looks up towards an equal society, everyone rewarded according to merit and not the lottery of birth; the other bends its knee in obeisance to inherited privilege and an undemocratic social and political system. In Mr. Brown's view of the world, as I thought ! understood it, an oath of allegiance from children to the Queen ought to be anathema, grotesque, off the scale, not even worth considering.
Why then, could No. 10 not dismiss it out of hand yesterday? Asked repeatedly at the morning briefing with journalists whether the Prime Minister supported the proposal, his spokesman hedged his bets. Mr. Brown welcomed the publication of the report; he thinks the themes are important; he hopes it will launch a debate; he is very interested in the theme of Britishness. But no view as to the suitability of the oath. It is baffling in the extreme. Does this Prime Minister believe in nothing, then? A number of things need to be unpicked here. First, to give him due credit, the report from the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith contains much more than the oath of allegiance. That is but "a possibility that's raised". The oath forms a tiny part of a detailed report about what British citizenship means, what it ought to mean and how to strengthen it.
It is a serious debate that Mr. Brown is keen to foster about changing the categories of British citizenship, and defining what they mean. But it is in him that the central problem resides, the Prime Minister himself is uncertain what Britishness is, while insisting we should all be wedded to the concept. No wonder there is a problem over what a motto, or an oath of allegiance, should contain. Britain is a set of laws and ancient institutions—monarchy, Parliament, statutes, arguably today EU law as well. An oath of allegiance naturally tends toward these.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. In its younger and bolder days, new Labour used to argue that the traditional version of Britain is outdated. When Labour leaders began debating Britishness in the 1990s, they argued that the institutions in which a sense of Britain is now vested, or should be vested, are those such as the NHS or even the BBC, allied with values of civic participation, all embodying notions of fairness, equality and modernity absent in the traditional institutions. Gordon Brown himself wrote at length about Britishness in The Times in January 2000: "The strong British sense of fair play and duty, together embodied in the ideal of a vibrant civic society, is best expressed today in a uniquely British institution—the institution that for the British people best reflects their Britishness—our National Health Service."
An oath of allegiance to the NHS? Ah, those were the days. They really thought they could do it; change the very notion of what it meant to be British. Today, ten years on, they hesitatingly propose an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Could there be a more perfeet illustration of the vanquished hopes and aspirations of new Labour? Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair. Ah, but I see there is to be a national day as well, "introduced to coincide with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee—which would provide an annual focus for our national narrative". A narrative, a national day, glorifying the monarchy and sport? Yuck. I think I might settle for a national motto after all. When the British artist Paul Day unveiled his nine-metre-high bronze statue of two lovers locked in an embrace at London's brand new St. Pancreas International Station last year it was lambasted as "kitsch", "overblown" and "truly horrific". Now, a brief glimpse of a new frieze to wrap around a plinth for The Meeting Place statue has been revealed, depicting "dream-like" scenes inspired by the railways.
Passengers arriving from the continent will be greeted with a series of images including a Tube train driven by a skeleton as a bearded drunk sways precariously close to the passing train. Another shows the attempted suicide of a jilted lover under a train reflected in the sunglasses of a fellow passenger. Another section reveals a woman in short skirt with her legs wrapped round her lover while they wait for the next train.
Other less controversial parts of the terracotta draft frieze depicts soldiers leaving on troop trains for the First World War and the evacuation of London's underground network after the terror attacks of 7 July, 2005.
Until the unveiling of The Meeting Place last year, Day, who lives in France, was best known for the Battle of Britain memorial on Embankment. His new frieze looks set to be a return to the sort of crammed bronze montages that has made him so well known. Day said he wanted the new plinth to act as the yin to the larger statue's yang.
"For me this sculpture has always been about how our dreams collide with the real world," he said. "The couple kissing represent an ideal, a perfect dream reality that ultimately we cannot obtain. The same is true of the railways. They were a dream come true, an incredible feat of engineering but they also brought with them mechanized warfare, Blitzkrieg and death."
Day is still working on the final bronze frieze which will be wrapped around the bottom of the plinth in June next year but he says he wants the 50 million passengers that pass through St. Pancras every year to be able to get up close and personal with the final product. "The statue is like a signpost to be seen and understood from far away," he said. "Its size is measured in terms of the station itself. The frieze, on the other hand, is intended to capture the gaze of passers-by and lead them on a short journey of reflections about travel and change that echoes their presence in St. Pancras, adding a very different experience to The Meeting Place sculpture."
Brushing aside some of the criticism leveled at his work that has compared it to cartoons or comic strips, Day said he believed his work would stand the test of time. "All the crap that was hurled at the sculpture was just that, crap," he said. "The reaction from the critics was so strangely hostile but I believe time will tell whether people, not the art press, will value the piece."
"When people criticise my reliefs for looking like comic strips they have got the wrong end of the stick. Throughout the. ages, man has been telling stories through a series of pictures, whether it s stained glass windows, sculptures or photojournalism. My friezes are part of that tradition. "
Stephen Jordan, from London and Continental Railways, which commissioned the piece, said. "The Meeting Place seeks to challenge and has been well received by visitors who love to photograph it. In addition, it performs an important role within the station, being visible from pretty much anywhere on the upper level of St. Pancras International and doing exactly what was planned, making the perfect meeting place for friends." At the tail end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that natural history—which he saw as a war against fear and superstition—ought to be narrated "in such a way that everyone who hears it is irresistibly inspired to strive after spiritual and bodily health and vigour", and he grumbled that artists had yet to discover the right language to do this.
"None the less," Nietzsche admitted, "the English have taken admirable steps in the direction of that ideal ... the reason is that they [natural history books] are written by their most distinguished scholars—whole, complete and fulfilling natures."
The English language tradition of nature writing and narrating natural history is gloriously rich, and although it may not make any bold claims to improving health and wellbeing, it does a good job—for readers and the subjects of the writing. Where the insights of field naturalists meet the legacy of poets such as Clare, Wordsworth, Hughes and Heaney, there emerges a language as vivid as any cultural achievement.
That this language is still alive and kicking and read every day in a newspaper is astounding. So to hold a century's worth of country diaries is, for an interloper like me, both an inspiring and humbling experience. But is this the best way of representing nature, or is it a cultural default? Will the next century of writers want to shake loose from this tradition? What happens next?
Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we're about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same.
Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species—as well as the nature we don't like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species.
Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these.
Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder. SECTION 2 READING TESTDirections: Read the following passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions which follow each passage.
Disparaging comments by adults about a children's presenter have led to an angry backlash in support of Cerrie Burnell, the 29-year-old CBeebies host who was born missing the lower section of her right arm. One man said that he would stop his daughter from watching the BBC children's channel because Burnell would give his child nightmares.
Parents even called the broadcaster to complain after Burnell, with Alex Winters, took over the channel's popular Do and Discover slot and The Bedtime Hour programme last month, to complain about her disability. And some of the vitriolic comments on the "Grown Up" section of the channel's website were so nasty that they had to be removed.
"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?" wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result. "I didn't want to let my children watch the filler bits on The Bedtime Hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter's mind and possibly caused sleep problems," said one message. The BBC received nine other complaints by phone.
While charities reacted angrily to the criticism of the children's presenter, calling the comments disturbing, other parents and carers labeled the remarks as disgraceful, writing in support of Burnell and setting up a "fight disability prejudice" page on the social networking site Facebook.
"I think that it is great that Cerrie is on CBeebies. She is an inspiration to children and we should not underestimate their ability to understand and accept that all of us have differences—some visible and some not," wrote "Surfergirlboosmum". Other websites were flooded with equally supportive comments. "I feel we should all post counter complaints to the BBC and I'm sure they will receive more complaints about the fact they have even considered accepting these complaints," wrote Scott Tostevin on Facebook. "It's a disgrace that people still have such negative views against people who are 'different'", he added.
Burnell, who described her first television presenting role as a "dream job", has also appeared in EastEnders and Holby City and has been feted for performances in the theatre while also worked as a teaching assistant at a special needs school in London. She also has a four-year-old child. "I think the negative comments from those few parents are indicative of a wider problem of disabled representation in the media as a whole, which is why it's so important for there to be more disabled role models in every area of the media," she said in response yesterday.
"The support that I've received ... has been truly heartening. It's brilliant that parents are able to use me as a way of talking about disability with their children and for children who are similarly disabled to see what really is possible in life and for their worlds to be represented in such a positive, high profile manner."
Charities said that much still needed to be done to change perceptions in society. "In some way it is a pretty sad commentary on the way society is now and that both parents and children see few examples of disabled people. The sooner children are exposed to disability in mainstream education the better," said Mark Shrimpton at Radar, the U.K.'s largest disability campaigning organisation. "She is a role model for other disabled people."
Rosemary Bolinger, a trustee at Scope, a charity for people with cerebral palsy, said: "It is disturbing that some parents have reacted in this way ... Unfortunately disabled people are generally invisible in the media and wider society."1. Who is Cerrie Burnell? Give a brief introduction of Cerrie Burnell.
Cerrie Burnell is a 29-year-old children's programme presenter, a CBeebies host of BBC's children's channel. She also worked as a teaching assistant at a special needs school in the past. She appeared in a number of TV programmes. She is a disabled presenter born without the lower section of her right arm. Her appearance in the TV programmes is causing "disparaging" argument. There is controversy among parents and carers over "disabled representation".
本文围绕BBC残疾主持人Cerrie Burnell展开，关于她的描述和相关经历，考生从文中可以直接找到。
2. What are the responses from parents and carers towards Cerrie Burnell? What is the reaction from charities to such criticism?
There are both positive and negative comments from parents and carers. The positive comments are: It is an inspiration to children. People should not have negative views against people with disability. Some websites are full of supportive comments. Someone would like to post counter complaints to the BBC. It sets up a "fight disability prejudice" page on Facebook. People should not "underestimate" children's ability to understand disabled representation. The negative comments are. Her image of disability may scare the children and give children "nightmares", causing sleep problems.
Charities think negative comments against Burnell are "disturbing". There is much to be done to "change perceptions" in society. There are few examples of disabled people in the media. Children should be "exposed to disability in mainstream education". Burnell is "a role model for other disabled people".
关于残疾人Cerrie Burnell主持节目这一话题，社会上的评价既有肯定的也有反对的，反对者认为这会令孩子恐惧，对孩子产生消极影响。赞成者认为不应对残疾人持负面观点。慈善机构认为社会应改变观点，我们在这方面需要做的还有很多。
3. What is Cerrie Burnell's own view about her job as a television presenter?
She thinks of her first TV presenting role a "dream job" and she thanks those who support her. In her opinion, it is quite important to have "more disabled role models" in the media as there is a "wider problem" of disabled representation in the media as a whole.
相关内容主要在文中的第六段，Burnell喜欢现在的工作，她认为少数人的负面看法显示了社会上某些人对残疾人的偏见，正因如此，各个媒体业都需要有残疾人的参与。
I am the founder of Wikipedia, a charitable effort to organize thousands of volunteers to write a high-quality encyclopedia in every language of the world. We the Wikipedians have achieved remarkable success in our five-year history, and we've done it as volunteers freely sharing our knowledge.
And yet, strangely enough, in addition to researching facts on hundreds of thousands of topics, we are forced to become copyright experts, because so much of our cultural heritage is being threatened by absurd limits on fair use of information in the public domain. ! get two to three threatening lawyergrams each week; one I just received from a famous London museum begins, typically, "We notice you have a number of images on your website which are of portraits in the collection of [our museum] ... Unauthorized reproduction of such content may be an infringement ..."
I now respond with a two-part letter. First, I patiently and tediously explain that museums do not and cannot own the copyrights to paintings that have been in the public domain for hundreds of years. And then I simply say. "You should be ashamed of yourselves." Museums exist to educate the public about our shared cultural heritage. The abuse of copyright to corner that heritage is a moral crime.
The excuse normally given, that producing digital reproductions is costly and time-consuming, and museums need to be able to recoup that cost, is entirely bogus. Just give us permission, and Wikipedians will go to any museum in the world immediately to make high-quality digital images of any artwork. The solution to preserving our heritage and communicating it in a digital form is not to lock it up, but to get out of our way.
This issue, public-domain artworks, is about an abuse of existing law. But the law itself is also a problem. Copyrights have been repeatedly extended to absurd lengths for all kinds of works, whether the author aims to protect them or not. Even works that have no economic value are locked away under copyright, preventing Wikipedians from rewriting and updating them.
Every school system in the world faces the problem of expensive texts. Wikipedia shows a way to a solution, and we have founded a supporting project called Wikibooks to implement that solution. Here, thousands of volunteers are working to write textbooks. If we still lived in an era of reasonable copyright lengths (14 to 28 years, with registration), it would be no problem for us to seek out works of lapsed copyright, abandoned by their owners, and update them quickly. We could cut the costs of textbooks in schools radically, not just in the United States and other wealthy countries, but in the developing world as well.
And finally, the example set by Wikipedia and Wikibooks is beginning to spread, in an explosion of creativity. Another of my projects, the for-profit Wikicities, allows communities to form and build knowledge bases or other works on any topic of interest. Again, thousands of people are working to write the definitive guides to humor, films, books, etc., and they are doing this work voluntarily and placing it all under free licenses as a gift to the world. And, of course, here we have again all the same problems of abusive application of copyright law as at Wikipedia and Wikibooks. We obey the law; we are not about civil disobedience. We want only to be good, to do good and to share knowledge in a million different ways.
We have the people to do it. We have the technology to do it. And we will do it, bad law or no. But good law, law that recognizes a new paradigm of collaborative creativity, will make our job a lot easier. Copyright reform is not about kids' stealing music. It is about recognizing the astounding possibilities inherent in the honest and intelligent use of new technologies.4. What are Wikipedia and Wikibooks? Why did the author start such projects?
Wikipedia is a "charitable" cause and it is a kind of "high-quality" online encyclopedia written by a large group of volunteers in many languages of the world. Wikipedia, through intelligent use of new technologies, helps preserve and spread the cultural heritage in the world. Wikibooks are textbooks also written by volunteers for students, one of their targets is "to cut the costs of textbooks" in both wealthy countries and the developing world.
[解析] 对文章主题的理解及归纳能力。文章作者即Wikipedia和Wikibooks的创始人，在开头几段就介绍了创办的原因和经过，并明确提出了其宗旨和目标，即通过各种手段传播人类的文明和知识财富。在文章的后几段作者介绍了Wikibooks。
5. Explain the statement "The abuse of copyright to corner that heritage is a moral crime". (para. 4)
The author holds that the cultural heritage should be shared by the public and that to use copyright as an excuse to gain control of and limit the spread of cultural heritage is wrong and should be repudiated. So the author condemns such practice of museums as a kind of "moral crime".
[解析] 对文内句子的理解判断能力。该句子出现在第四段，反映了作者对现行的版权保护制度及做法所存在的缺陷的不满和批评，提出各地的博物馆不应滥用“版权”，应对人类文明遗产的保护和传播起积极的、而非阻碍的作用。
6. What is the author's attitude to the current copyright laws and what is his suggestion? Give your comments.
In the author's opinion, there are "absurd limits" under the current copyright laws on how to use information fairly "in the public domain" and to lock up information is not the solution to "preserving our heritage". He suggests that copyrights should not be extended to "absurd lengths" for all kinds of works and there should be a "copyright reform" so that the cultural heritage could be shared by all.
[解析] 对文章基本内容的理解和归纳能力。作者公开表示了对现行的版权制度存在的缺陷的不满，也提出了他的改进建议，这在文章的第一、三、五、七等段落都能找到。我们可以看到，作者的批评和建议是有其积极意义的，值得引起有关部门的重视。
The increasing cost of the Bar and a perception that it is run by a social elite has halted progress in the greater inclusion of barristers from different backgrounds. A number of high-profile barristers, including the prime minister's wife, Cherie Booth QC, have warned that without changes, the Bar will continue to be dominated by white, middle-class male lawyers.
In a speech to the Social Mobility Foundation think tank in London this afternoon, Geoffrey Vos QC, Bar Council chairman, will say: "The Bar is a professional elite, by which I mean that the Bar's membership includes the best-quality lawyers practicing advocacy and offering specialist legal advice in many specialist areas. That kind of elitism is meritocratic, and hence desirable."
"Unfortunately, however, the elitism which fosters the high-quality services that the Bar stands for has also encouraged another form of elitism. That is elitism in the sense of exclusivity, exclusion, and in the creation of a profession which is barely accessible to equally talented people from less privileged backgrounds."
Last month, Mr. Vos warned that the future of the barristers' profession was threatened by an overemphasis on posh accents and public school education. Mr. Vos said then that people from ordinary backgrounds were often overlooked in favour of those who were from a "snobby" background. People from a privileged background were sometimes recruited even though they were not up to the job intellectually, he added. In his speech today, Mr. Vos will outline the "barriers to entry", to a career at the Bar and some of the ways in which these may be overcome.
The Bar Council has asked the law lord, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, to examine how these barriers can be overcome, and he will publish his interim report and consultation paper before Easter. He is expected to propose a placement programme to enable gifted children from state schools to learn about the Bar, the courts and barristers at first hand.
The Bar Council is also working towards putting together a new package of bank loans on favourable terms to allow young, aspiring barristers from poorer backgrounds to finance the Bar vocational course year and then have the financial ability to establish themselves in practice before they need to repay.
These loans would be available alongside the Inns of Court's scholarship and awards programmes. Mr. Vos will say today: "I passionately believe that the professions in general, and the Bar in particular, must be accessible to the most able candidates from any background, whatever their race, gender, or socioeconomic group. The Bar has done well in attracting good proportions of women and racial minorities and we must be as positive in attracting people from all socioeconomic backgrounds."7. What is the "elitism of the barristers' profession" in the United Kingdom?
According to the passage, in England, the barristers' profession is dominated by people from the rich and privileged classes. People from poorer families are often intimidated and discouraged to join the profession, and as a result students from less privileged families joining the profession are declining.
[解析] 对文章基本内容的理解。文章第一段指出了英国的律师行业中的这一垄断现象，即大多数律师都来自富裕的上层社会，出身贫困的优秀学生难以涉足该行业，这一现象对社会的公正公平是颇有影响的。
8. What are the barriers for graduates from under-privileged families to become barristers?
Such barriers include the unfriendly "intimidating" environment, the increasing cost of the Bar, the overemphasis on education background, the perception that the Bar is run by a social elite, a sense of "exclusivity, exclusion" and that the profession is becoming "barely accessible to talented people from poorer backgrounds".
[解析] 对文章的基本内容和细节的理解。文章指出了阻碍贫困学生加入律师行业的原因及具体障碍，包括思想观念上的和工作环境方面的，在文章的前几段均有提及。
9. Give a brief summary of Bar Council chairman Geoffrey Vos's view on elitism of the barrister's profession.
According to Geoffrey Vos, the elitism which stresses meritocracy, that is, talent and best-quality of professionals is desirable and acceptable, however the elitism which focuses on exclusivity and exclusion of the profession will threat the future of the profession, and the inequality in the enrollment of people from ordinary backgrounds and poorer families should be overcome.
[解析] 对文章基本内容和具体细节的理解及概括。Geoffrey Vos的观点在第三、四、五段都有介绍。他对律师业的现状作出了评述，指出了当前律师招聘做法中的不平等现象，提出了批评和改进的建议。
10. What are the measures of reform to help poorer graduates become barristers?
The measures include the proposal of a "placement programme" to help children from state schools to learn about the barristers' profession, a new package of bank loans on favourable terms to help students from poorer families to attend the Bar vocational course study and join the profession, and provision of loans together with scholarship and awards programme which are "accessible" to talented candidates from any background.
[解析] 对文章的基本内容的理解和总结能力。该文第一段即介绍拟改进的措施，在最后两段又具体介绍了the Bar Council提议采取的几项做法，以帮助出身贫困家庭的优秀生进入律师行业。
深色：已答题 浅色：未答题