第2题：
问答题
Although more and more students are enrolled in university every year, there are also more and more students who fail in their studies and drop out of school. This has caused much concern in the society, and a local newspaper is inviting contributions from university students to discuss the reasons. Write a composition as a contribution to this newspaper to voice your opinion. Remember to supply a title for your own article. In the first part of your writing you should present your thesis statement, and in the second part you should support the thesis statement, with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or a summary. Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a toss of marks.
正确答案：
Why Students Fail in Universities Traditionally Chinese believed that university education was the guarantee of a happy life, so every fall we can find many freshmen happily and hopefully enter the campus. But what is unknown is that many students fail in their tests and have to take make-up exams or even drop out. To solve the problem, we have to find the reasons. In my opinion, there are mainly three reasons to account for this tragedy.
Most students' failures can be attributed to their poor study ability due to problems in high school. High school should prepare students for university education, but currently it is doing everything but that. High school education is known to be test oriented, for students are engaged in memorizing texts and working at sample test papers. Because of this, students admitted to university come to school only with mechanical study habits, which cannot help students cope with university study. For example, many students in my class may be good in courses that rely on memory, but in courses that require personal judgment or group activity, they will invariably fail.
Even with good study ability, some students may still fail because of the negative influence from their families. The first kind of such influence is lack of money. Now most universities collect quite high tuition from students, so students from poor families are constantly worried by money problem. Another influence is family misfortune, the most common examples of which are illness and accident. If students are troubled by family problem, they won't be able to focus their mind on study, and naturally they will not survive in university.
There are also a small number of students who fail because of personal weakness. Some students have trouble in sustaining positive relationship with their classmates, and bad relation prevents them from enjoying university study. Some other students cannot resist various temptations in their life, such as movies, TV programs, computer games, and campus romance, and these may also prevent them from studying well.
From what are said above, we can conclude that different students fail for different reasons. Some fail because they lack proper study methods, some fail because they are distracted by family issues, and still some other students fail because they suffer from shortcomings in their personality. Therefore if we want to prevent academic failures, we should first identify the reasons why they are experiencing trouble in their study, and then help them in the most effective way. It can be hoped that we will all pull through the four years in university and make our dreams and happiness come true.
解析：
本题要回答的问题是why do some university students drop out of school，属于因果关系题。例文先后列举了三个原因：不良的学习方法、家庭问题以及个人问题。关于每一种原因作者都做了一定阐述，除了逻辑推理外，还用了很多的例子。例文引言段采用了对比的方式开始，作者先说大学新生入学的欣喜，然后引出学生的失败。Thesis statement中的表达非常明确清晰。在正文段中，作者按照涉及学生数量多少为顺序列出三个原因，确保了内容的通顺。在结论段中，作者使用了两句话充分总结了自己的观点，然后用提出解决方法的方式写出了最终评论。
