专家分析：新SAT考试会比旧SAT更简单吗
出国留学网讯 美国大学委员会近日发布了一项新PSAT考试的测试标准，这为在2016年开始施行的新SAT考试提供了参考依据。这两种考试在内容上联系较大，于是专家根据此标准预测SAT考试将会更简单，真的会是这样吗?
The College Board just released a sample of its revised PSAT, or the Preliminary SAT/ National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which is taken by some 3.5 million high school students each year. The PSAT does not count for college admissions, but is important for students hoping to win a National Merit Scholarship. And because the PSAT and the SAT use the same style of questions, this gives us a chance to see what the new SAT — which is being unveiled in 2016 — will look like. This post does just that. It was written by James S. Murphy, who has been prepping students for the SAT for almost two decades. He lives in Boston and is a tutoring manager for The Princeton Review. The views represented here are his own.
大学委员会最近发布了一个关于修改后的国家优秀学生奖学金资格考试标准，该考试又叫PSAT，每年都会有350万高中生参加。PSAT不能作为大学录取的依据，但对于想拿到国家级奖学金的学生而言非常重要。由于PSAT和SAT考试的题型相同，所以该标准的提出可以让我们预测2016年施行的新SAT考试会是什么样子。James S. Murphy写了一篇帖子，他对SAT考试的教学研究经验已经有20年了。以下是他的观点：
By James S. Murphy
Like a hip new restaurant using a soft opening, the College Board has quietly released a sample PSAT on its website to no fanfare or press at all. In most years, this would be a non-event. The PSAT score, after all, plays no role in college admissions. It only matters for the less than 0.5% of test takers who qualify for the National Merit and a few other scholarships.
大学委员会所发出的关于PSAT考试标准的帖子若在以前根本不会引起注意，因为它毕竟不是大学的录取依据，只是评估奖学金的一种考试，并且我们知道，在参加考试的人当中，只有百分之零点五的学生能获得奖学金。
This year, however, is different. It was a little over a year ago that College Board announced it was redesigning the SAT, and in a little less than a year the new SAT will be administered for the first time. This sample PSAT is important because it gives us a chance to see what the new SAT might look like, given that the two tests are related in content.
然而今年情况有所不同。一年多前大学委员会宣布SAT考试标准将会有所变化，而且大约一年后就会正式策划新SAT考试。PSAT考试和新SAT考试在内容上可能有联系，所以我们可以通过它来预测新SAT的考试标准。
There’s even better news on the reading front. The reading section just got easier, as long as you don’t pass out. On the new PSAT, the “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Score” will be based on a one-hour long reading comprehension section and a 35-minute grammar section. With the elimination of sentence completions, there is no vocabulary of note on this PSAT. I repeat: none. The College Board is being true to its word, testing Tier 2 words rather than Tier 3 words, so goodbye “treacly,” hello “post.”
阅读部分将会更简单，在新PSAT测试中，有一个小时的阅读理解部分和35分钟的语法部分，将不会再有句子填空这样的题型。
As many commentators have noted, the changes to the SAT are likely motivated in part by the ACT moving past the SAT in the number of students who take it each year. We now know that many of those changes aim to turn the SAT into something resembling a copy of the ACT. The new PSAT mimics the format of the ACT’s English test to a startling degree, and many of the new math concepts it tests historically appeared only on the ACT. Like the ACT, the new PSAT does not penalize wrong answers. Like the ACT, the new test has four answer choices. There is one big difference between the two tests, however. The new PSAT has no science section, and it is the science section that many students struggle with on the ACT. The College Board has incorporated graphs into the PSAT, but they are split between the math and the reading and make many fewer demands on time and concentration than do the ACT’s graphs.
正如许多评论家所说的那样，SAT考试政策的改变旨在使其向ACT考试的模式靠近。新PSAT考试对ACT考试的模仿程度非常之大，甚至其很多数学概念只在以前的ACT考试中出现过。并且像ACT一样，新PSAT测试也有4个答案可供选择。这两种考试之间没有太大的区别。然而，新PSAT测试没有科学题部分，而科学题正是ACT考试的难点。大学委员会把PSAT的表格题分成了数学和阅读两个部分，相对于ACT表格题而言，考生完成新SAT所需花费的时间和精力都会更少。
The new SAT might be a good thing. Yes, I did shudder writing that. Up to now, I’ve been telling people to think about taking the old SAT or the ACT, since we don’t know that much about the new SAT. I stand by that position, for now. Based on the sample PSAT — for which the College Board did not release a scoring grid – the new SAT could turn out to be easier than both the ACT and the current SAT. The math might have a few more advanced concepts on the new test, but with fewer concepts tested overall than the current SAT or the ACT and an increased number of opportunities to use the single most powerful standardized testing technique—plugging in—the math might be ultimately be easier for many test takers.
以新PSAT的考试标准为依据，将来的新SAT考试可能会比ACT考试或目前的SAT考试更简单。数学部分可能会有一些更高级的概念，但所考知识点总体而言会更少，对考生而言也会更简单。
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