Learning English Questions and Answers – Number 2
3. At the beginning of each May and October, there will be a long holiday for about 7 days in China. Tens of millions of people will take advantage of this holiday to go shopping or tour outside. Billions of Renminbi will be spent during these holidays. So such 7-day-long holidays are called Golden Week. The Golden Week provides great business opportunity for
tourism companies and shops. Meanwhile it also causes great trouble for transportation companies such as airline companies, railway system and expressway bus companies. Because too many people are moving between different cities, the transportation system is over committed. Moreover, the hotels, restaurants and other service facilities near the famous landscapes are not able to provide basic service to the tourists. Complaints are heard much more in the Golden Week than in other period.
Now the relevant departments are working hard to take better advantage of the Golden Week. The shops will prepare more popular goods in stock to meet the demand in the holiday. The tourism companies are also developing more projects in order to attract the tourists. The transportation companies will provide more transportation vehicles in the Golden Week. The local governments of the landscape enhance their regulation to the local tourism-related companies to provide acceptable service to the tourists.
CET is China’s state-organized English test. Most universities used it as measurement of their student’s English ability. Generally speaking, to get the bachelor degree would request CET-4 and master degree CET-6. In order to get the degree, many students paid too much attention to CET test.
Since 2004, after several serious frauds found in CET-4 test, the state education committee started to consider the reform of CET test. The most important reform is that there will be no CET approval certificate issued to students. Only the mark of the test will be informed. Many universities also decided to stop the practice that links the CET mark with the degree approval.
Most students seem welcome this reform. They said that it is reasonable to separate the CET test with their degrees. So they could pay more attention to other courses other than English. But some other students and professors are criticizing the reform of CET. They argued that this will lower the level of the student’s English ability and make them unable to communicate with people from other countries in their future job. However, the reform of CET is going on. Everybody is watching what will happen then.