This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
这里是VOA特别英语教育报道。
This week in our Foreign Student Series the subject is grades.
本周我们的“外国学生系列”节目的话题是：等级。
Most American colleges and universities use the grading system of A, B, C, D and F. An A is worth four points, a B three points, a C two points and a D one point. Getting a grade like a B-plus or a C-minus adds or subtracts a few tenths of a point. An F is a failing grade worth zero toward a student's grade point average.
大多数美国院校都使用A，B，C，D和F的等级评定体系。一个A相当于4分，B3分，C2分和D1分。得到一个类似B+或者C-的等级会加上或减去几个0.1分。F是相对学生平均等级分来说未过关的等级，相当0分。
A small number of colleges -- perhaps about twenty nationally -- reject the traditional grading system. The Evergreen State College, for example, was established in nineteen sixty-seven and has never used letter or number grades. Evergreen State is a public four-year college in the northwestern city of Olympia, Washington. It has more than four thousand students, including twenty-six international students currently.
少数的学院--全国也许大约20所--拒绝传统的评定体系。举例来说，常青州学院创立于1967年，并且从未使用字母或分数评定等级。常青州学院是一所位于华盛顿州，奥林匹亚市区西北部的4年制公立学院。它拥有4，000多名学生，这其中包括当前26名国际学生。
Evergreen State is organized into programs taught by teams of professors. Each program brings together different subjects and extends in length over two or three quarters. Students are required to do a major research project at the end of each program.
常青州学院有一些课题研究，这是由一队教授组织的。每一个课题把不同的学科知识穿插在了一起，同时在时间长度上也延续到了2或3个季度以上。在每一课题结束的最后阶段，学生会被要求设计一个主要的研究项目计划。
The professors write detailed evaluations of the students. These are combined with evaluations written by the students themselves. Students also meet with their professors to discuss their work.
教授撰写对学生详细的评语。这些是与学生的自我评价做对比的。学生也与教授见面来讨论他们的评语工作。
The director of admissions, Doug Scrima, says employers and graduate schools like these evaluations, called narratives. He says they show more about the quality of students' work than traditional grades do.
注册主任Doug Scrima称，雇主和研究生院校欣赏这些评价资料，也被称作叙述。他说这些评语与传统的等级相比能更好地表现学生学业的质量。
Most teachers would probably agree that traditional grades are sometimes unfair. But professors at big schools say there is not enough time to write evaluations for each student in large classes. Some classes have hundreds of students.
大多数教师或许会同意传统等级有时是不公正的的观点。但是在大型学院的教授称，他们并没有足够的时间来为大班级的每一位学生撰写这些评语。一些班级拥有数百名学生。
Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a small women's school that does not use grades. Kathleen O'Brien is the chief academic officer. She says letter grades do not effectively document learning or provide good direction to students. She says even at big schools there are classes small enough to give evaluations. But she says the American university system is not organized to accept this kind of change.
威廉斯康星州密尔沃斯市区的Alverno学院是一所不采用等级的小规模女子学院。Kathleen O'Brien 是主要的学院官员。她说，字母等级不能有效地证明学术所得或为学生提供良好的指路方向。她称即使在大型学院里也只有班级足够小才能给写评语。但是她又说美国大学体系没能有条理到能采用这这种改变方式的程度。
We will talk more about grades next week. But first, let us know how you feel about grades. You can submit comments on this story and find earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series at www.unsv.com.
下周我们将会更多地讨论等级。但是首先让我们了解你对等级的看法。你可以在这个题材上提交评论还可以在www.unsv.com网站上搜索我们早期的“外国学生系列”报道。
