2016年3月传来了美国SAT考场的消息：新SAT历史上第一篇作文题目。这一次SAT改革也算是里程碑的一幕。具体情况如何呢?下面就跟着
我们一起来欣赏分析下这新SAT历史的首篇作文。，这是我们在新SAT作文全程班和冲分班课堂主推的一款学生阅读报刊。作文的题材是公共服务类，又跟我们北美研发中心为新SAT高级班制作的讲义中第五篇"Summer Jobs for the Guilty Generation“的题材方向高度吻合。
Adapted from E.J. Dionne Jr., “ACall for National Service”? 2013 by Washington Post. Originally published July 03, 2013.
Here is the sentence in the Declaration of Independence we always remember: “We hold thesetruths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they areendowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these areLife, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And here isthe sentence we often forget: “And for the support of this Declaration, with afirm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge toeach other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”
作者在前两段引用了(allusion)独立宣言的原文，从权威的角度唤起读者对历史文献所赋予公民的责任的反思，并引出下第四段中要说明的社会问题。
This, thevery last sentence of the document, is what makes the better-rememberedsentence possible. One speaks of our rights. The other addresses our obligations. The freedoms we cherish are self-evident but not self-executing.The Founders pledge something “to each other,” the commonly overlooked clause in the Declaration’s final pronouncement.
作者针对独立宣言中某个词汇(diction)进行深度挖掘，尤其使用了“self-evidentbut not self-executing”来提醒读者对自由精神的狭义解读的问题。
We find ourselves, 237 years after the Founders declared us a new nation, in a season of discontent, even surliness, about the experiment they launched. We are sharply divided over the very meaning of our founding documents, and we aremore likely to invoke the word “we” in the context of “us versus them” than inthe more capacious sense that includes every single American.
作者多次使用“we”，从诉诸于德(ethos)的角度拷问读者内心是否已经背离了建国文献的初衷，并解释到所谓的“we”是一种更广义的公民意识。
There are no quick fixes to our sense of disconnection, but there may be a way to restore our sense of what we owe each other across the lines of class, race, background— and, yes, politics and ideology.
作者用过渡段引出下文谈及的社会问题，即我们可以重建人与人之间的平等和互助的公民意识。
Last week,the Aspen Institute gathered a politically diverse group of Americans under the banner of the “Franklin Project,” named after Ben, to declare a commitment tooffering every American between the ages of 18 and 28 a chance to give a yearof service to the country. The opportunities would include service in our armed forces but also time spent educating our fellow citizens, bringing them healthcare and preventive services, working with the least advantaged among us, and conserving our environment.
本段作者用轶事(anecdote)的手法来引出某权威机构宣布了18-28岁的美国公民需要参加1年以上的包括了各个领域的国家公共服务。这一手法让读者感受到了共鸣。
Service would not be compulsory, but it would be an expectation. And it just might become part of who we are.
“Not compulsory,but it would be an expectation”，这个措辞(diction)让作者站到了读者的立场，让读者意识到这一措施是合乎情理的，从心里上更能接受公共服务的要求。
The call for universal, voluntary service is being championed by retired U.S. Army Gen.Stanley McChrystal, in league with two of the country’s foremost advocates ofthe cause, John Bridgeland, who served in the George W. Bush administration,and Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year, one of the nation’s most formidable volunteer groups. The trio testifies to the non-ideological and nonpartisan nature of this cause, as did a column last week endorsing the idea from Michael Gerson, my conservative Post colleague.
这一段作者引用了三个退役将军StanleyMcChrystal， JohnBridgeland 和Alan Khazei对志愿活动的支持，从理性角度让读者更信服公共服务号召的合理性。
“We’ve aremarkable opportunity now,” McChrystal says, “to move with the American people away from an easy citizenship that does not ask something from every American yet asks a lot from a tiny few.” We do, indeed, owe something to our country,and we owe an enormous debt to those who have done tour after tour in Iraq and Afghanistan.
作者使用来自McChrystal的权威引言(expert quotes)进一步阐释了为什么美国民众需要志愿活动，权威的话增加了论证的可信度。
同时本段还采用了重复(repetition)这一修辞手法，连用二个“owe” 更有力度的指出了我们对国家的亏欠。
McChrystalsees universal service as transformative. “It will change how we think about America and how we think about ourselves,” he says. And as a former leader ofan all-volunteer Army, he scoffs at the idea that giving young Americans astipend while they serve amounts to “paid volunteerism,” the phrase typicallyinvoked by critics of service programs. “If you try to rely on unpaid volunteerism,” he said, “then you limit the people who can do it. .?.?. I’d like the people from Scarsdale to be paid the same as the people from EastL.A.”
作者使用来自McChrystal的权威引言(expert quotes)来强调这一服务的意义菲方，权威的话增加了论证的可信度。
作者使用“transformative”(改革)而不是“change”，这个措辞强调了这一服务的重大意义。
There are real challenges here. Creating the estimated 1 million service slots requiredto make the prospect of service truly universal will take money, from government and private philanthropy. Service, as McChrystal says, cannot just be a nice thing that well-off kids do when they get out of college. It has to draw in the least advantaged young Americans. In the process, it could open new avenues for social mobility, something the military has done for so many in the past.
作者使用数据论据(statistics)来说明公共服务所面临的一些挑战。
Who knows whether the universal expectation of service would change the country as muchas McChrystal hopes. But we have precious few institutions reminding us to join the Founders in pledging something to each other. We could begin by debating this proposal in a way that frees us from the poisonous assumption that even an idea involving service to others must be part of some hidden political agenda.The agenda here is entirely open. It’s based on the belief that certain unalienable rights entail certain unavoidable responsibilities.
作者在结尾段用了一系列诸如“poisonous”， “hidden”， “entirelyopen”， “unavoidable”和 “unalienable”这样的词汇来诉诸于情感(pathos)，唤起读者心里的强烈责任感。
这篇文章的主题是 “young citizens should do more public services”, 作者采用多种方法来支持自己的主旨，其中最为显著的是权威引言，措辞和诉诸于德。
考试建议：
1. 大家平时要多阅读报刊文章，坚持每周一篇;
2. 按照上文的方法做识别练习;
3. 多看老师的课堂笔记，做特色段落练习。
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