TOEFL 真题：笑谈大学无用
唱反调搞笑回答真题
[奉父母之命上大学]
谢振礼老师
Jeenn Lee Hsieh
对付雅思或托福的写作测验，五段的论文不如起承转合的四段结构。学院派的课外作业大多倾向五段的写法，主要是因为没有强迫的限制时间，所以可以长篇大论。
谢振礼老师和多数同行建议候选人写雅思或写托福时，最好坚持布局四段。企图五段则可能时间不足。少于四段，则恐怕字数不够。下面一篇原著五段范文倾向唱反调，只供搞笑。
很多人上大学，种种原因。主要有三点》1. 尝试经验。2.职业培训。3. 增进知识。本篇范文嘲笑这三点，因为更大的原因也许是父母的期待与逼迫。
>People attend college or university for many different reasons, for example, new experience, career preparation, increased knowledge. What do you think that people attend college or university? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
>Sample Essay:
Some young people probably would not consider attending a university seriously were it not for the pressure from their parents. It is absolutely understandable that parents wish to send their sons and daughters to higher education either because they went to college or they didn't. But for this kind of pressure as the most motivational factor, some children might think twice before hastily deciding to go to a university, simply for such doubtful reasons as increased knowledge, new experience and career preparation. Independent of the financial situation, there are good reasons why some smart boys and girls are not actually interested in college education.
To begin with, they would think that a university is not the only place where knowledge is. Now that so much information is made accessible so easily via the Internet, it makes little sense studying in a library on the campus just to have a chance once in a while reading a collection of ancient books. Besides, one may just as well feel uneducated even if being filled with a million facts. Moreover, it can be seen that the university brings out all abilities, including 'incapability'. What is more, any academic subject can become boring when a professor becomes a broken recorder who is talking in someone else's sleep. To be sure, going through a college education can increase one's knowledge, and so what? To quote Oscar Wilde: "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth learning can be taught." Indeed, what cannot be taught is exactly "thinking independently." You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Likewise, you can send one to a university, but you cannot make one think.
Ironic but true, a new experience in a university can be a lot of fun, if referring particularly to football in a great university with a stadium seating over 3,000. Aside from that, a university is no place to learn real experience in life. Rather, for quite a few young people it is an ideal place to keep warm between high school and an early marriage. Wise boys and girls therefore need not necessarily obtain a higher education and follow where the path leads. Instead, they may go where there is no path and leave a trail. As such, those who have no vanity for academic degrees can learn examples from many celebrities not having any college education, to whom it used to be a joke if one studied at a university. Imagine, without university experience, one is likely to be a first-rate version of oneself instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Last but not least, nor is a university the best dream-land for career preparation. Although it may be true that a university degree is associated with generating more income than the average, it is also true that most billionaires on the planet have never finished higher education. For example, the average professor earns more money in a 'year' than a professional athlete or movie star in a whole 'week'. Sadly, nowadays a lot of graduates with a B.A, M.A., PhD even do not have a JOB. Economists report, jokingly, that a college education does add many thousands of dollars to one's lifetime income, then only to be spent on sending one's children to college. This fact clearly raises doubts about the wisdom of so many parents investing so much in giving their children some kind of career preparation in vain.
To sum up, many people attend college or university for different reasons, but for some of them who do, there is no other factor more influential than pressure from their parents who would not take 'No' for an answer. The logic is simple. If parents went to college, it follows that their children should not be different. If they didn't go to college, nothing could please them more than seeing their children turn out to be different and even better.
