美國大學委員會近日釋出了一項新PSAT考試的測試標準，這為在2016年開始施行的新SAT考試提供了參考依據。這兩種考試在內容上聯絡較大，於是專家根據此標準預測SAT考試將會更簡單，真的會是這樣嗎?
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.
大學委員會最近釋出了一個關於修改後的國家優秀學生獎學金資格考試標準，該考試又叫PSAT，每年都會有350萬高中生參加。PSAT不能作為大學錄取的依據，但對於想拿到國家級獎學金的學生而言非常重要。由於PSAT和SAT考試的題型相同，所以該標準的提出可以讓我們預測2016年施行的新SAT考試會是什麼樣子。James S. Murphy寫了一篇帖子，他對SAT考試的教學研究經驗已經有20年了。以下是他的觀點：
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.
大學委員會所發出的關於PSAT考試標準的帖子若在以前根本不會引起注意，因為它畢竟不是大學的錄取依據，只是評估獎學金的一種考試，並且我們知道，在參加考試的人當中，只有百分之零點五的學生能獲得獎學金。
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.
然而今年情況有所不同。一年多前大學委員會宣佈SAT考試標準將會有所變化，而且大約一年後就會正式策劃新SAT考試。PSAT考試和新SAT考試在內容上可能有聯絡，所以我們可以通過它來預測新SAT的考試標準。
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.”
閱讀部分將會更簡單，在新PSAT測試中，有一個小時的閱讀理解部分和35分鐘的語法部分，將不會再有句子填空這樣的題型。
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.
正如許多評論家所說的那樣，SAT考試政策的改變旨在使其向ACT考試的模式靠近。新PSAT考試對ACT考試的模仿程度非常之大，甚至其很多數學概念只在以前的ACT考試中出現過。並且像ACT一樣，新PSAT測試也有4個答案可供選擇。這兩種考試之間沒有太大的區別。然而，新PSAT測試沒有科學題部分，而科學題正是ACT考試的難點。大學委員會把PSAT的表格題分成了數學和閱讀兩個部分，相對於ACT表格題而言，考生完成新SAT所需花費的時間和精力都會更少。
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的考試標準為依據，將來的新SAT考試可能會比ACT考試或目前的SAT考試更簡單。數學部分可能會有一些更高階的概念，但所考知識點總體而言會更少，對考生而言也會更簡單。