万花筒 2011-11-24&11-26 直击韩国高考

 And now for the last look. Those of you who watched our recent Education Special saw the exhausting study habits of South Korean students. The culmination¹ of that pressure was last week when almost 700 000 South Korean high school students took the test they had spent all those hours working toward.

 

 

 

It was a wild scene outside test centers as younger kids cheered on the heroic test-takers as they arrvied. Police motorcycles even whisked the late ones to school. But when it came time for the high schoolers to begin the grueling nine-hour exam, silence was the order. Planes were grounded, honking² was banned. And teachers refrained from wearing squeaky shoes for fear of distracting the students. Relatives prayed outside the school gates for good results. 

 

 

 

Why all the fuss？Well, it's widely believed in South Korea that this test determines which college a student will go to, which company they will then work at, the size of their eventual³ paycheck, and even whom they'll marry. That's pretty intense pressure.

1 culmination   

n.顶点；最高潮

参考例句：

• The space race reached its culmination in the first moon walk.太空竞争以第一次在月球行走而达到顶峰。
• It may truly be regarded as the culmination of classical Greek geometry.这确实可以看成是古典希腊几何的登峰造级之作。

2 honking   

v.（使）发出雁叫似的声音，鸣（喇叭），按（喇叭）( honk的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Cars zoomed helter-skelter, honking belligerently. 大街上来往车辆穿梭不停，喇叭声刺耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Flocks of honking geese flew past. 雁群嗷嗷地飞过。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

3 eventual   

adj.最后的，结局的，最终的

参考例句：

• Several schools face eventual closure.几所学校面临最终关闭。
• Both parties expressed optimism about an eventual solution.双方对问题的最终解决都表示乐观。