德国3万多名学生网上请愿 抱怨高考英语太难

Grappling with the Statue of Liberty and Brexit in one English exam proved too much for more than 30,000 German school students, who are protesting in an online petition.

在一次英语考试中，关于自由女神像和“英国脱欧”的问题让3万名德国学生难以应付，以至于他们发起了一场网上抗议。

They say the texts they had to analyse were "unfair" -- stuffed with highly literary and outdated vocabulary.

学生们表示，他们必须进行分析的文章很“不公平” --全是高度的文学性和过时的词汇。

Baden-Wurttemberg state officials, however, called the texts "appropriate" and defended the exam board.

然而，巴登符腾堡州的官员却表示，这些文章是“合适的”，并为考试委员会辩护。

They were part of the teenagers' crucial Abitur school-leaving exams. One task was to comment on two contrasting cartoons about Brexit, titled "Project Fantasy" and "The Realities".

这些文章是青少年关键的Abitur考试中的一部分。其中一项任务是就标题为《项目幻想》和《现实》的两副关于“英国脱欧”的漫画进行论述。

That required some current affairs knowledge, besides English comprehension.

除了对英语的理解之外，这还要求考生对一些时事知识的了解。

About 31,000 students sat the English exam in the south-west German state but the petition launched last month has collected more than 35,000 signatures.

这一位于德国西南部的联邦州约有31000名学生参加了此次英语考试，但上个月发布的请愿书收集到了超过35000个签名。

They ask the region's education authorities to adapt the marking system in light of the "unfair" difficulties posed by the texts -- and give some examples. This year's Abitur "is not comparable with those of previous years", they argue.

他们要求该地区的教育部门根据考试的“不公平”的难度调整评分系统，并给出范例。他们认为，今年的高考“与往年无法比拟”。