2017年10月7日亞太SAT寫作真題分享
Sir David Attenborough's pessimism is misplaced
My recent column in the Times addresses the demographic transition and land-sparing:
1 Publicising his imminent new series about the evolution of animals, Sir David Attenborough said in an interview this week that he thought a reduction in human population during this century is impossible and 「we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse」. People will look back in another 100 years 「at a world that was less crowded, full of natural wonders, and healthier」.
2 His is a common view and one I used to share. He longs for people to enjoy the open spaces and abundant herds of game that he has been fortunate enough to see. To that end he thinks it vital that there should be fewer of us.
前兩段明顯的採用「樹靶子」的方式，體現出了一個counter argument，並在後文進行批駁。從reasoning的角度，這是一種典型的駁論文的論證結構。對counter argument的呈現，作者採用了direct quotation的方式。對這部分的分析中，要體現出Sir David的觀點（以改寫的方式）；還可以更進一步的要深入分析connotation，即Sir David對過去的緬懷也反應出了對未來的擔憂。
3 Ever so politely, I would now passionately disagree with the two premises of his argument. It's actually quite likely, rather than impossible, that population will be falling by the end of this century and it is also quite likely that the people alive then will have lots more wilderness to explore and wildlife to admire than today.
這個段落作者提出了自己的觀點，這部分作為文章主旨，應該在intro段中重點分析。要注意第一不能直接抄文末prompt方框中的那句主旨概括，也不要用直接引用的方式來呈現原文主旨。要對原文主旨進行總結和概括，並適當涉及到原文重要分論點的內容。以保證能夠在reading部分得到較高的分數。
4 The rate at which world population grows has roughly halved from more than 2 per cent a year in the 1960s to roughly 1 per cent a year now. Even the total number of people added to the annual population has been dropping for nearly 30 years. If those declines continue, they will hit zero in about 2070 — not much more than 50 years from now. In recent decades the birth rate has fallen in every part of the world. Fertility in Bangladesh has fallen from nearly 7 children per woman in the 1960s to just over 2 today; Kenya from 8 to 4.5; Brazil 5.7 to 1.8; Iran 6.8 to 1.9; Ireland 3.9 to 2.
這個段落中很明顯的出現了evidence的分析點，statistics和factual information都可以作為切入點進行分析。數據和事實信息都強化了本段的分論點「世界人口增速放緩」，也進一步的強化了主旨。
5 It is still conventional wisdom that the only way to get population growth down is to be nasty to people, albeit with noble motives. You must coerce, bribe, shame or educate them into having fewer babies against their preferences. One country — China — did indeed bring down its birth rate with coercive measures in the shape of a one-child policy. Another — India — tried to introduce coerced sterilisation in the 1960s in return for food aid from America, but was defeated by popular protest and democracy, factors unknown in China.
這個段落從reasoning 的角度上，採用了concession的方式，提出了傳統上控制人口數量的方式，作者也以此對有可能出現的不同意見預先進行反駁。在使用concession 的過程中，也採用了exemplification的方式舉了中國印度兩個例子。（多說一句，CB在SAT考試的題材選取中偶爾會隱晦的表達下對中國的腹誹，之前真題寫作原文中也有所表現。可見開科取士的選拔考試中，意識形態宣揚也是目的之一，古今中外皆難以免俗。）
6 Yet everywhere else voluntary birth control proved a more effective weapon than coercion, and the birth rate came down just as fast. This was because nice things happened: economic growth, female emancipation and, above all, the conquest of child mortality. So long as women have some access to the means of birth control, then one of the best predictors of a falling birth rate is a falling child mortality rate. Once children stop dying in infancy, people plan smaller families. Once they think their kids will survive, they start investing in them, rather than in having more kids.
這個段落中提出了幾個重要的分論點：人口數量增速下降的幾個其他原因：經濟增長，女性解放和嬰兒死亡率的下降。（有關人口增長的話題在普樂思學院的閱讀強化教材中有所涉及，上過課的同學應該還記得解老師在課上對馬爾薩斯的人口學理論做的一些分析，觀點和本文基本相似：人口數量並非如馬爾薩斯所說，會一直以幾何級數增長，而是隨著社會經濟的發展自然放緩。）這幾個分論點應該在寫作中重點提及，以體現對原文的充分理解。
7 You can see this in the statistics. There is no country on Earth with a child mortality rate below 10 per 1,000 births that has a fertility higher than 3 children per woman; whereas all countries except one (Swaziland) that have a child mortality rate above 100 also have a fertility rate above 4.5. Keep kids alive and you bring down population growth.
這裡再一次使用來的統計數據的方式強化了作者的觀點。在嬰兒死亡率和出生率之間做了對比，進一步解釋了上一段中的一個分論點：嬰兒死亡率下降會導致出生率的下降。
8 Which is why the recent plummeting of child mortality in Africa is such good news for Sir David and others with his concerns. Thanks to rapid economic growth, better governance and much improved public health, especially against malaria, most African countries are now experiencing child-mortality falls of 5 per cent or more a year, a rate that is far more rapid than it was in the 1990s. These falls will surely soon be followed, as night follows day, by an even faster fall in birth rates.
繼續採用舉例和數據等evidence來解釋嬰兒死亡率和出生率之間的相關性。可見原文作者估計到這個分論點是有些與常識不符，所以著重的解釋了這個分論點的合理性。（這裡如果能夠深入的解讀出作者隱含的寫作意圖，將在分析部分顯著的提高得分表現。今年5月以來，CB在SAT寫作上的評分日趨嚴格，對原文connotation的深入解讀顯得愈發重要。之前簡單的套用模板的方式，已經難以取悅SAT作文的grader了。）
9 Europe, Asia and Latin America have already gone through this transition and most countries are producing babies at or below replacement rate of 2.2 per woman, at which population stabilises (without immigration). Africa, for so long written off as a special (basket) case, is following suit almost exactly.
這個段落採用factual information的方式介紹了「人口置換率」這一概念，並對當前的人口現狀進行了準確的描述。
10 For this reason alone, I suspect the world population will stop growing and begin to shrink even earlier than 2070 and almost certainly within this century. But even if it does not, there is good reason to reassure Sir David that our great grandchildren will have more wildlife to look at than he has had. An ingenious study by scientists at Rockefeller University in New York has recently calculated that even with population continuing to grow, and even with people eating more food and especially more meat, we have almost certainly already passed 「peak farmland」, because of the rate at which fertilisers are improving yields. (Or we would have done if not for biofuels projects.) We will feed nine or ten billion people in 2070 from a considerably smaller acreage than we need to feed seven billion today.
這個段落開始，文章進入到主題的另一個重要方面：野生動物的數量。段落的開頭兩句很好的起到了過渡作用，這一點可以作為reasoning類別的一個feature來進行分析。保證了原文的coherence，用流暢的logic chain，將原文的分論點聯繫起來。從文章整體邏輯結構上，明顯的展現出deductive這種演繹式的邏輯結構。而且這個段落中還巧妙的提及了標題和前文中涉及的Sir David，體現出了一種前後照應的echo的效果。段落中採用的論證手法是evidence類別中research result。
11 Land sparing is already occurring on a grand scale. Forest cover is increasing in many parts of the world, from Scotland to Bangladesh. Wildlife populations are booming in Europe (deer, bears, boar, otters), in the polar regions (walrus, seals, penguins, whales) and North America (turkeys, coyotes, bison, geese) and this is happening fastest in the richest countries. According to one recent report, animal populations grew by 6 per cent in Europe, North America and Northern Asia between 1970 and 2012, while shrinking in tropical regions. There is almost a perfect correlation between the severity of conservation problems and poverty, because the richer people get, the less they try to live off the land and compete with nature — the less they seek bushmeat and charcoal from the forest.
這個段落主要採用來的舉例和數據的方式強化了上一段中提出的觀點，並且進一步指出人們的富裕程度提高會減少對環境的破壞，對上段的觀點進行了深化和總結。手法上採用了research report的方式。
12 Once again, Africa may spring a pleasant surprise. Over the past four decades agricultural yields in Africa hardly budged while they doubled or quadrupled in most of Asia. That is almost entirely down to a dearth of fertiliser and it is beginning to change. If African yields were to rise, the acreage devoted to farmland globally would start to fall even faster, releasing more and more land for 「re-wilding」. The great herds and flocks that so delight Sir David would reassemble in more and more places. The happy conclusion is that making people better off and making nature better off are not in opposition; they go hand in hand.
結尾段繼續分析了原文主旨中的第二個方面，使用「pleasant」和「happy」，「delighted」等比較口語化的詞彙，也體現出一種樂觀輕鬆的語氣，增強了讀者的對作者觀點的信心也吸引了讀者的注意力。再一次提到了Sir David，使得原文首尾照應，使文章的整體結構更為完整。
整體來說，這次寫作考試的原文理解上難度不大，分析點不多，但很明顯。在寫作的過程當中，以分析點為線索，採用analysis order來寫；或者以原文分論點為線索，採用passage order來寫都可以。解老師仍然要強調的是，基於目前SAT寫作日趨嚴格的評分標準，以往那種簡單套用模板，提前將各個分析點的general purpose記下來，在考場上默寫的方式，越來越難以獲得高分。應該認真的閱讀原文，把各個features作為切入點，首先全面的展現出原文中重要的分論點和重要細節（reading部分高分的保障）；另外還要注意重點分析作者的寫作意圖和讀者有可能產生的感受，以及分論點背後，作者沒有明確提出的言外之意。（這樣才能保證在analysis部分獲得高分）
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