26. (20170923) Your university offers two choices to freshmen to help them adapt to university life. Which do you prefer and why?
— Attending a one-week orientation or introduction program when you are in the university campus, and it will begin before you have the classes.
— Meeting regularly in your first year with a student in your major field who has entered the university for several years.
头脑风暴
新生入学该如何适应校园生活？
——在开始上课前参加一个为期一周的orientation（情况介绍）。
——在第一年经常性地和一个本专业的学长见面。
orientation：
对校园有一个初步印象，知道各种设施在哪里，不至于因为迷路而耽误时间甚至迟到。
可以认识很多朋友，这可能是唯一一个直接走上前跟人打招呼而不感到尴尬的机会了。
和学长见面：
可以解答你的很多疑惑，消除你的顾虑，给你提供选课、食宿等方面的建议。
在校园里有了一个熟悉的人，可以在很多事情上寻求帮助，比如作业、考试、假期安排。
范文思路
论点：定期跟学长见面能更好地帮助你融入校园生活。
理由一：更有针对性地介绍学校。
理由二：熟悉了之后能够在以后的学习生活中提供帮助。
理由三：orientation给人机会认识新朋友，但在课上或者社交活动上也能够认识新朋友。
范文文本
As prospective international students, one day, we will all leave our mother country and embark on a brand-new journey in another country, and our first obstacle will be adapting to the life in the university campus. Over the years, the approach commonly taken by most universities is to hold an activity called orientation that aims to familiarize the incoming freshmen with the campus as well as with each other. However, recently, a few novel methods towards the same end have been discovered. Among them, I believe that having freshmen regularly meet with an upperclassman majoring in the same field is more effective than the current method of orientation.
First of all, pairing each freshman with an upperclassman provides the freshman with a more personalized experience. In a typical orientation, a group of freshmen is led by one senior or an admission officer and guided to walk around the campus while the “tour guide” introduces each building and utility in a rather official manner. In contrast, if one freshman is guided by one senior, the senior could give a much more personalized introduction of the campus, according to the preference of the freshman. For example, he could talk more about the gym if the freshman enjoys working out and the library if the freshman is a workaholic. In addition, an upperclassman can answer many questions the freshman has regarding any aspect of the life on campus with much more details and can even offer suggestions on choosing an appropriate class schedule and the best cafeteria on campus.
Second of all, once a freshman got to know the senior, he would have a person to contact should anything occur. According to my brother, almost all seniors are more than willing to do favors for the freshmen. For instance, one of my friends went to Cornell last year and on a freezing winter evening, he found himself stranded at a bus station far away from campus because an hour had already passed since the scheduled time of arrival and the bus still hadn't turned up. Worried and anxious, he called an upperclassman he knew from a previous class and he was guided, stepby-step, by the upperclassman to report this problem to the office of logistics and half an hour later, a bus eventually came to pick him up. When he told me about this traumatic experience, he said that if it is not for the generous help of that senior, he would probably have spent the night at the bus station, not to mention that if the senior is majoring in the same field, the freshman can even have a person to turn to for academic concerns.
Admittedly, compared with regular meetings with a senior, orientations offer an opportunity to make more friends. However, for freshmen, orientations are not the only occasions for meeting new friends. For example, they can establish relationships with their classmates through academic discussion; they can also meet fun people at social events such as sports games and parties.
In a nutshell, I consider regular meetings with an upperclassman majoring in the same field to be superior to orientations for incoming freshmen to adjust to their new lives on campus.
语料积累
embark on a new journey 开始一段新的旅程
aim to 以……为目标
utility 公共设施
workaholic 工作狂
infrastructure 基础设施
be stranded 被困住
logistics 后勤
traumatic 造成精神创伤的，很惨的
A is superior to B A比B更优越