大学入試長文読解

In Medieval times, the choice was simple. A Christian man of means could enroll at one of a handful of universities, two of which were in England. Since then, continents have been discovered, everyone has got smarter and richer, and students have grown more demanding. How competitive are British universities today? Although America leads the world in attracting foreign students to its campuses, Britain and Australia are not far behind. Almost 672,000 foreigners were enrolled in American universities in the autumn of 2008, compared with 183,000 in Australian universities and 342,000 in British ones in 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available). The global recession has not dented the demand for higher education abroad, especially in English-speaking countries. On November 16th a study by the Institute of International Education, which is based in New York, reported that record numbers of international students are now studying in America. Most of these come from ...

Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical factors in international development. When women are educated and can earn and control income, a number of good results follow: infant mortality declines, child health and nutrition improve, agricultural productivity rises, population growth slows, economies expand, and cycles of poverty are broken. But the challenges remain dauntingly large. In the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, large and persistent gender gaps in access to education, health care, technology, and income ― plus a lack of basic rights and pervasive violence against women ― keep women from being fully productive members of society, Entrenched gender discrimination remains a defining characteristic of life for the majority of the world's bottom two billion people, helping sustain the gulf between the poorest and everyone else who shares this planet. Narr...

Why should Asian families be such powerful agents of influence? Here I need to step back a bit and note some very great differences between Asian and Western societies. Asians are much more inter-dependent and collectivist than Westerners, who are much more independent and individualist These East-West differences go back at least twenty- five-hundred years to the time of Confucius and the ancient Greeks. Confucius emphasized strict observance of proper role relations as the foundation of society, the relations being primarily those of emperor to subject, husband to wife, parent to child, elder brother to younger brother, and friend to friend Chinese society, which was the prototype of all East Asian societies, was an agricultural one. In these societies, especially those that depend on irrigation, farmers need to cooperate with one another because cooperation is essential to economic activity. Such societies also tend to be very hierarchical, with a tradition of power flowing from t...

In my son's nursery school, there was a little girl whose parents were going through a divorce. I particularly liked her father, a struggling painter who earned his living by doing architectural renderings. His paintings were quite beautiful, I thought, but he never had much luck in convincing dealers to support his work. The one time he did have a show, the gallery promptly went out of business. B. was not an intimate friend, but we enjoyed each other's company, and whenever I saw him I would return home with renewed admiration for his steadfastness and inner calm. He was not a man who grumbled or felt sorry for himself. However gloomy things had become for him in recent years (endless money problems, lack of artistic success, threats of eviction* from his landlord, difficulties with his ex-wife), none of it seemed to throw him off course. He continued to paint with the same passion as ever, and unlike so many others, he never expressed any bitterness or envy toward less...

My love affair with blue jeans began when I got into a bath with my very first pair. In the days before pre-shrunk denim, this was what I thought you had to do with jeans labeled "shrink-to-fit". There was about them a special aura. Hard to find in the shops, they could be repaired, embroidered*, "personalized". You could stitch things on to them or cut them off. You could make a statement without saying a word. They made you distinctive yet free from the fear of looking odd. In fact, in blue jeans you could be whatever you wanted: masculine, feminine, granny*, groupie*, peasant, potentate*. Whoever you were, you could be someone else. The original associations came, of course, from America via the Wild West and the Hollywood dream factory ― youthful, individualistic, forward-looking. They were hard to resist if you were growing up as I was, in a war-weary Britain still gazing backwards into the imperial sunset. Today you can find jeans down gold mines...

原文は こちら II 1 On November 2, 2010, Facebook's American users were subject to an ambitious experiment in civic-engineering: Could a social network get people to vote in that day's elections? get O to do「Oに～させる」 2 The answer was yes. 3 The way to [31 ] (1. nudge 2. shake 3. stroke) bystanders to the voting booths was simple. It consisted of a graphic containing a link for looking up voting places, a button to click to announce that you had voted, and the profile photos of up to six Facebook friends 〔who had indicated they'd already done the same〕. look up「調べる」 up to「最大～までの」 done the same = voted [32](1. Against 2. With 3. Beyond) Facebook's cooperation, the political scientists〔who conducted the study〕 planted that graphic in the newsfeeds of tens of millions of users. Other groups of Facebook users were shown a [33](1. generic 2. generous 3. genetic) get-out-the-vote message or received no voting reminder at all. Then the researcher...

II 1 On November 2, 2010, Facebook's American users were subject to an ambitious experiment in civic-engineering: Could a social network get people to vote in that day's elections? get O to do 「 O に～させる」