"I promise." "I swear to you it’ll never happen again." "I give you my word." "Honestly. Believe me." Sure, I trust. Why not? I

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问题     "I promise." "I swear to you it’ll never happen again." "I give you my word." "Honestly. Believe me." Sure, I trust. Why not? I teach English composition at a private college. With a certain excitement and intensity, I read my students’ essays, hoping to find the person behind the pen. As each semester progresses, plagiarism appears. Not only is my intelligence insulted as one assumes I won’t detect a polished piece of prose from another wise-average writer, but I feel a sadness that a student has resorted to buying a paper from a peer. Writers have styles like fingerprints and after several assignments, I can match a student’s work with his or her name even if it’s missing from the upper left-hand corner.
    Why is learning less important than a higher grade-point average (GPA)? When we’re threatened or sick, we make conditional promises. "If you let me pass math I will…" "Lord, if you get me over this before the big homecoming game I’ll…" Once the situation is behind us, so are the promises. Human nature? Perhaps, but we do use that cliche to get us out of uncomfortable bargains. Divine interference during distress is asked; gratitude is unpaid. After all, few fulfill the contract, so why should anyone be the exception? Why not?
    Six years ago, I took a student before the dean. He had turned in an essay with the vocabulary and sentence structure of PhD thesis. Up until that time, both his out-of-class and in-class work were borderline passing.
    I questioned the person regarding his essay and he swore it was his own work. I gave him the identical assignment and told him to write it in class, and I’d understand this copy would not have the time and attention an out-of-class paper is given, but he had already a finished piece so he understood what was asked. He sat one hour, then turned in part of a page of unskilled writing and faulty logic. I confronted him with both essays. "I promise… I’m not lying. I swear to you that I wrote the essay. I’m just nervous today."
    The head of the English department agreed with my finding, and the meeting with the dean had the boy’s parents present. After an hour of discussion, touching on eight of the boy’s previous essays and his grade-point average, which indicated he was already on academic probation, the dean agreed that the student had plagiarized. His parents protested, "He’s only a child" and we instructors are wiser and should be compassionate. College people are not really children and most times would resent being labeled as such, except in this uncomfortable circumstance.
The phrase "borderline passing" (Line 5, Para.3) probably means________.

选项 A、below average
B、extremely poor
C、above average
D、fairly good

答案A

解析 本题关键词是borderline passing,属于词义题,定位到第三段。根据第三段,六年前,老师将一名学生带到了教学主任面前。这个学生交上来的一篇文章里都是博士论文的词汇和句子结构(vocabulary and sentence structure of PhD thesis),也就是非常高级的用法,但是之前的作业和这篇文章有一定出入,因此才会被带到教学主任面前,因此选项C和选项D正反混淆。其次,根据短语borderline passing可以推测意思,pass the line就是过线,因此该短语应该是“刚刚通过及格线”的意思,选项A代入后与原文是相同含义,为正确答案。选项B的extremely poor中的extremely过于极端。第三段:一个学生剽窃博士论文的实例。
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