VOA慢速英语20061123a

EDUCATION REPORT - GRE and MAT Spell Graduate School Entrance ExamsBy Nancy Steinbach

Broadcast: Thursday, November 23, 2006

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

For the past few weeks, we have been talking about some of the college entrance exams used in the United States. Well, we still have some more to talk about. A listener in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Noel Kouadio N'Guessan, wants to know about the GRE -- the Graduate Record Examinations.




Many graduate programs in the United States require the GRE General Test. The exam takes almost four hours. And the cost to take it outside the United States is about one hundred sixty dollars.

The Graduate Record Examination measures verbal and mathematical reasoning. It also measures critical thinking and writing skills.

But the GRE is changing. The Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey¹, has redesigned it. The new version will be given starting in September of two thousand seven.

The new GRE will continue to test the same areas as now. But Educational Testing Service officials say the new questions will better test the skills used in graduate school.

They say the redesigned exam will provide colleges with better information about students. And they say it will improve security and make better use of technology.

The GRE General Test will be administered on computer on about thirty test dates worldwide. And the number of Internet-based testing centers worldwide will be expanded. The exam is currently offered as either a computer test or a paper-and-pencil test.

There are also GRE tests in different subject areas.

Another entrance exam accepted by some American graduate schools is the Miller² Analogies Test. The MAT measures knowledge of English and the ability to recognize relationships between ideas. It also tests knowledge of literature, history and science.

You can find links to more information about the MAT and the GRE on the Special English Web site, www.unsv.com. You can also find the earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series.

Next week we will answer a question from Cambodia about the IELTS, the International English Language Testing System.

If you have a general question about studying in the United States, send it to [email protected]. We might be able to answer it on the air. So please be sure to include your full name and your country.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Bob Doughty³.

1 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

2 miller   

n.磨坊主

参考例句：

• Every miller draws water to his own mill.磨坊主都往自己磨里注水。
• The skilful miller killed millions of lions with his ski.技术娴熟的磨坊主用雪橇杀死了上百万头狮子。

3 doughty   

adj.勇猛的，坚强的

参考例句：

• Most of successful men have the characteristics of contumacy and doughty.绝大多数成功人士都有共同的特质：脾气倔强，性格刚强。
• The doughty old man battled his illness with fierce determination.坚强的老人用巨大毅力与疾病作斗争。