VOA慢速英语2010年-Education Report - Studying in the US:

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

This week in our Foreign Student Series the subject is grades.

Most American colleges and universities use the grading system of A, B, C, D and F. An A is worth four points, a B three points, a C two points and a D one point. Getting a grade like a B-plus or a C-minus adds or subtracts a few tenths of a point. An F is a failing grade worth zero toward a student's grade point average.

Students at Evergreen¹ State College in Washington state

A small number of colleges -- perhaps about twenty nationally -- reject the traditional grading system. The Evergreen State College, for example, was established in nineteen sixty-seven and has never used letter or number grades. Evergreen State is a public four-year college in the northwestern city of Olympia, Washington. It has more than four thousand students, including twenty-six international students currently.

Evergreen State is organized into programs taught by teams of professors. Each program brings together different subjects and extends in length over two or three quarters. Students are required to do a major research project at the end of each program.

The professors write detailed² evaluations³ of the students. These are combined with evaluations written by the students themselves. Students also meet with their professors to discuss their work.

The director of admissions, Doug Scrima, says employers and graduate schools like these evaluations, called narratives⁴. He says they show more about the quality of students' work than traditional grades do.

Most teachers would probably agree that traditional grades are sometimes unfair. But professors at big schools say there is not enough time to write evaluations for each student in large classes. Some classes have hundreds of students.

Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a small women's school that does not use grades. Kathleen O'Brien is the chief academic officer. She says letter grades do not effectively document learning or provide good direction to students. She says even at big schools there are classes small enough to give evaluations. But she says the American university system is not organized to accept this kind of change.

We will talk more about grades next week. But first, let us know how you feel about grades. You can submit comments on this story and find earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series at voaspecialenglish.com.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.

 

1 evergreen   

n.常青树；adj.四季常青的

参考例句：

• Some trees are evergreen;they are called evergreen.有的树是常青的，被叫做常青树。
• There is a small evergreen shrub on the hillside.山腰上有一小块常绿灌木丛。

2 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

3 evaluations   

估价( evaluation的名词复数 )； 赋值； 估计价值； [医学]诊断

参考例句：

• In fact, our moral evaluations are merely expressions of our desires. 事实上，我们的道德评价只是我们欲望的表达形式。 来自哲学部分
• Properly speaking, however, these evaluations and insights are not within the concept of official notice. 但准确地讲，这些评估和深远见识并未包括在官方通知概念里。

4 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。