GRE作文备考资料：历史类 传媒类 环保类

　　第九大类 历史类

　　1 历史的定义

　　History, in its broadest sense, is the totality of all past events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to the known past. Historiography is the written record of what is known of human lives and societies in the past and how historians have attempted to understand them. Of all the fields of serious study and literary effort, history may be the hardest to define precisely, because the attempt to uncover past events and formulate an intelligible account of them necessarily involves the use and influence of many auxiliary disciplines and literary forms. The concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts. They have known that the information they have is incomplete, partly incorrect, or biased and requires careful attention. All have tried to discover in the facts patterns of meaning addressed to the enduring questions of human life.

　　6 历史研究的目的

　　Moreover, the purpose of history as a serious endeavor to understand human life is never fulfilled by the mere sifting of evidence for facts. Fact-finding is only the foundation for the selection, arrangement, and explanation that constitute historical interpretation. The process of interpretation informs all aspects of historical inquiry, beginning with the selection of a subject for investigation, because the very choice of a particular event or society or institution is itself an act of judgment that asserts the importance of the subject. Once chosen, the subject itself suggests a provisional model or hypothesis that guides research and helps the historian to assess and classify the available evidence and to present a detailed and coherent account of the subject. The historian must respect the facts, avoid ignorance and error as far as possible, and create a convincing, intellectually satisfying interpretation.

　　Until modern times, history was regarded primarily as a special kind of literature that shared many techniques and effects with fictional narrative. Historians were committed to factual materials and personal truthfulness, but like writers of fiction they wrote detailed narratives of events and vivid character sketches with great attention to language and style. The complex relations between literary art and historiography have been and continue to be a subject of serious debate.

　　48 历史学家重建历史

　　Many scholars have commented on the difficulty in producing secondary source narratives from the raw data which makes up the past. Historian/philosopher Hayden White has written extensively on the rhetorical strategies by which historians construct narratives about the past, and what sorts of assumptions about time, history, and events are embedded in the very structure of the historical narrative. In any case, the question of the exact relation between historical facts and the content of written history has been a topic of discussion among historians since at least the nineteenth century, when much of the modern profession of history came into being.

　　As a general rule, modern historians prefer to go back to primary sources, if available, as well as seeking new ones, because primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new input into　historical questions, and most modern history revolves around heavy use of archives for the purpose of finding useful primary sources. On the other hand, most undergraduate research projects are limited to secondary source material.

　　第十大类 传媒类

　　1 媒体： 政治第四不动产

　　The term Fourth Estate refers to the press, both in its explicit capacity of advocacy and in its implicit ability to frame political issues. The term goes back at least to Thomas Carlyle in the first half of the 19th century.

　　Novelist Jeffrey Archer in his work The Fourth Estate made this observation: In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the ?Estate General?. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, ?Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.

　　7 影响资讯报道的因素

　　A variety of external and internal pressures influence journalists? decisions on which stories are covered, how issues are interpreted and the emphasis given to them. These pressures can sometimes lead to bias or unethical reporting. Achieving relevance, giving audiences the news they want and finding interest, is an increasingly important goal for media outlets seeking to maintain market share in a rapidly evolving market. This has made news organizations more open to audience input and feedback, and forced them to adopt and apply news values which will attract and keep audiences. The growth of interactive media and citizen journalism is fast altering the traditional distinction between news producer and passive audience and may in future lead to a deep-ploughing redefinition of what news means and the role of the news industry.

　　14 广告的影响： 媒体内容

　　The propaganda model posits that advertising dollars are essential for funding most media sources and clearly have a clear effect on the content of the media. For example, when Al Gore proposed launching a progressive TV network, a Fox News executive told Advertising Age : The problem with being associated as liberal is that they wouldn?t be going in a direction that advertisers are really interested in. If you go out and say that you are a liberal network, you are cutting your potential audience, and certainly your potential advertising pool, right off the bat. Furthermore, an internal memo from ABC Radio Networks to its affiliates reveals scores of powerful sponsors have a standing order that their commercials never be placed on syndicated Air America programming that airs on ABC affiliates. The list, totaling 90 advertisers, includes some of largest and most well-known corporations advertising in the U.S.: Wal-Mart, GE, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Bank of America, Fed-Ex, Visa, Allstate, McDonald?s, Sony and Johnson Johnson. The U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Navy are also listed as advertisers who don?t want their commercials to air on Air America.

　　33 美国心理协会观点： 电视暴力的影响

　　A 1993 report by the American Psychological Association stated:

　　1. Viewing violence increases fear of becoming a victim of violence, with an increase in self-protective behavior and an increase in mistrust.

　　2. Viewing violence increases desensitization to violence, resulting in callused attitudes toward violence.

　　3. Violent programming increases the viewers appetite for becoming involved or exposing themselves to violence.

　　第十一大类 环保类

　　1 环保论的概念

　　Environmentalism is a concern for the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment, such as the conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and certain land use actions. It often supports the struggles of indigenous peoples against the spread of globalization to their way of life, which is seen as less harmful to the environment. The study of practical environmentalism is split into two positions: the mainstream anthropocentric or hierarchic, and the more radical ecocentric or egalitarian.

　　2 技术对环境的影响既明显又细微

　　The effects of technology on the environment are both obvious and subtle. The more obvious effects include the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources , and the added pollution of air, water, and land. The more subtle effects include debates over long-term effects .

　　Each wave of technology creates a set of waste previously unknown by humans: toxic waste, radioactive waste, electronic waste.

　　One of the main problems is the lack of an effective way to remove these pollutants on a large scale expediently. In nature, organisms recycle the wastes of other organisms, for example, plants produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, oxygen-breathing organisms use oxygen to metabolize food, producing carbon dioxide as a by-product, which plants use in a process to make sugar, with oxygen as a waste in the first place. No such mechanism exists for the removal of technological wastes.

　　Humanity at the moment may be compared to a colony of bacteria in a Petri dish with a constant food supply: with no way to remove the wastes of their metabolism, the bacteria eventually poison themselves.