新概念英语（第四册，旧版）复习（原文及全文翻译）——Lesson 17 - Learning to Live（学会生活）

Lesson 17 - Learning to Live

The fact that we are not sure what 'intelligence' is, nor what is passed on, does not prevent us from finding it a very useful working concept, and placing a certain amount of reliance on tests which 'measure' it.

In an intelligence test we take a sample of an individual's ability to solve puzzles and problems of various kinds, and if we have taken a representative sample it will allow us to predict successfully the level of performance he will reach in a wide variety of occupations.

This became of particular importance when, as a result of the 1944 Education Act, secondary schooling for all became law, and grammar schools, with the exception of a small number of independent foundation schools, became available to the whole population. Since the number of grammar schools in the country could accommodate at most approximately 25 per cent of the total child population of eleven-plus, some kind of selection had to be made. Narrowly academic examinations and tests were felt, quite rightly, to be heavily weighted in favour of children who had had the advantage of highly-academic primary schools and academically biased homes. Intelligence tests were devised to counteract this narrow specialization, by introducing problems which were not based on specifically scholastically-acquired knowledge. The intelligence test is an attempt to assess the general ability of any child to think, reason, judge, analyse and synthesize by presenting him with situations, both verbal and practical, which are within his range of competence and understanding.

参考译文——学会生活

事实上，我们不确定什么是智力，也不确定智力意味着什么，但这并不妨碍我们发现它是一个非常有用的概念，并在一定程度上信赖智商的测试。

在智商测试中，我们会抽取一个人解决各种谜题和问题的能力样本。如果我们抽取了一个具有代表性的样本，这将使我们能够成功预测他在各种职业中的表现水平。

1944年教育法案出台后，所有人都要接受中等教育成为了法律，每个人都可以报考语法学校（少数独立学校除外）。由于这个国家的语法学校最多能容纳的学生数只有11岁以上儿童总人口的大约25%，必须在学生中进行选拔。狭义的学术考试和测试被认为非常有利于那些毕业于高度学术性的小学或出身于具有学术优势的家庭的孩子，而智力测验是为了抵消这种狭隘的专业化所造成的选拔偏差而设计的，因为它引入的问题并不基于专门的学术知识。智力测试的目的是在孩子们的理解范围内，通过语言和实践的方法给孩子们呈现问题场景，来评估孩子思考、推理、判断、分析和综合的能力。

注：博主基于百度翻译校译而成

参考资料：

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~yuana/new_concept_english.html