高考的英语表达gaokao

高考被认为是世界上最难的考试(the Toughest Exam in the World)。高考是普通高等学校招生全国统一考试的简称 (Gaokao is short for“The National Higher Education Entrance Examination"),就是大学入学考试(the Chinese university entrance exam)。高考的汉语拼音gaokao已经被收录进了牛津英语词典，我们来看看词典的解释:

gaokao NOUN:(in China) a test of a student's academic skills, used for admission to colleges and universities.

e.g. ‘the interns all had good grades from the best university in the province, having aced the gruelling gaokao’

Origin

From Chinese gāo kǎo, literally ‘high test’.

Parents wait for their children to finish taking the gaokao, outside the Beijing Renmin University Affiliated High School

我们来看看2018年的高考规模:

A total of 9.8 million students will be taking the Gaokao test this year which is 350,000 more than last year. For the test which is deemed to be the most significant tests in a young person’s students would often start preparing years in advance and revising for 16 hours a day without a break in extreme cases.

Gaokao is the academic qualification test for almost all high school graduates in China hoping to receive an undergraduate education. It was first started in 1952 but was halted. The first such standardised examination in the People’s Republic of China was held in 1952 but halted in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution chairman Mao Zedong decreed that educated youth must be “sent down” to the countryside to “learn from the peasants”. It was subsequently restarted in 1977.

Students have to give exams in three compulsory subjects – Chinese language and literature, mathematics, a foreign language (often English) – and one comprehensive subject depending whether the candidate chooses to major in liberal arts or the sciences.The exam is spread over two days and lasts a total of nine hours. Thier scores determine which university they can go to and also what careers they can choose.

For two days in early June every year, China comes to a standstill as high school students who are about to graduate take their college entrance exams. Literally the “higher examination”, the gaokao is a national event on a par with a public holiday, but much less fun. Construction work is halted near examination halls, so as not to disturb the students, and traffic is diverted. Ambulances are on call outside in case of nervous collapses, and police cars patrol to keep the streets quiet. Radio talkshow hosts discuss the format and questions in painstaking detail, and when the results come out, the top scorers are feted nationally. A high or low mark determines life opportunities and earning potential. That score is the most important number of any Chinese child’s life, the culmination of years of schooling, memorisation and constant stress.

Students revise for the gaokao in Jiaxing, China.