一块石头长什么样？牛津公布面试样题
How you listen to music, what a rock looks like, and what historians cannot know about the past are among this year’s list of sample interview questions published by Oxford University.
你如何听音乐？一块石头长什么样？有哪些过去的事情历史学家是无法知道的？牛津大学今年公布的面试样题清单中，这三个问题都在其列。
The annual release of interview questions and suggested ways of answering them are designed to prepare aspiring students for the ordeal of trying to get into one of the world’s most elite institutions.
aspire v.渴望;有志于
ordeal n.煎熬，磨难
每年公布面试题以及供参考的答题思路，这一举措是为了帮助考生们度过备考难关，进入牛津这间世界顶尖的学府。
Oxford’s director of admissions, Samina Khan, advises candidates not to be afraid to give plain answers at first. She said: “It is often best to start responding by making very obvious observationsand building up discussion from there—solving the problem quickly is less important than showing how you use information and analysis to get there.”
observation n.言论；评论
build up 建立，发展
牛津大学招生部主任萨米纳·汗建议考生们不要害怕在一开始给出直白坦率的回答。她说：“通常最好的做法是，最开始给出一些浅显的点评作为回答，然后在此基础上深入讨论下去——比起快速解决问题，更重要的是展现出你是如何利用信息以及如何分析才得出你的结论的。”
Siân Pooley, from Magdalen College, advised history candidates how to explain what they cannot find out about the past. “A candidate might start off by saying that they had been studying Tudor England and historians don’t know much about the lives of the poor because they were less likely to be able to write,” she said.
Tudor adj.都铎王朝的
莫德林学院的锡安·普利为历史系考生提供了建议，想要解释有哪些过去的事情他们没有办法得知，“考生也许可以在开场时说他们正在研究都铎时期的英格兰，历史学家对穷人的生活了解不多，这是因为穷人不太可能会写字。”普利说道。
“Given these lower levels of literacy, we could then talk about what sources historians can use to learn about the lives of the majority of the population in 16th-century England. This would require the candidate to think creatively about alternative sources (and their drawbacks), such as, for instance, criminal court records in which people who could not write were required to give oral testimony as witnesses.
literacy n.读写能力
drawback n.缺点，不利条件
testimony n.证据，证词
“在说明了（穷人）低下的读写能力之后，我们接下来就能谈论，历史学家们可以使用哪些信息源了解 16 世纪英格兰王国中大多数民众的生活了。这就需要考生打开脑洞，找出其他可选的信息源（也要考虑它们的缺陷），比如刑事法庭记录，在这样的记录中，不会写字的人被要求提供口头证词作为证据。”
“They might want to think about how structures of power have altered over time or about how social norms for what can be recorded and kept in archives have changed. This is the sort of conversation that no candidate could predict in advance.”
alter v.改变
norm n.准则，规范
archive n.档案档案馆
“考生们也许应该考虑，随着时间的推移，权力结构发生了怎样的变化；或者决定哪些信息能够被记录并保存在档案中的社会规范又发生了什么变化。这类谈话是没有考生能够提前预测的。”
文章来源 卫报/流利阅读
