Some feeling during my preparation for the postgraduate examination
There are only 9 months left before the postgraduate exam which is a nationwide exam attracting millions of students each year. Facing the fierce competitions of jobs hunting, more and more students either choose to go abroad, if they can afford the expenditure, for further study or to take the postgraduate exam. I made up my mind to take the exam several months ago, in order to escape from the rebarbative subject—maths, I choose communication which studies the human communication behavior, especially the mass communication, to be my future pursue.
Although the subject doesn’t require examinees to study maths, it does require us to take in a lot of knowledge----from journalism to communication, from advertising to public relations. This is a real challenge to me. I have to read 9 books that are included in the book list the university made out and many other literatures before taking the exam. To me, the biggest problem is not English or politics, but the two required subjects which takes up half the scores. So if I didn’t pay enough attentions to the two subjects: the journalism and communication history and the journalism and communication practices, passing the exam is just a daydream.
Let me talk about English first. English is my advantage, and I am very confident in my English ability. In cet 4 I got 97.5 and in cet 6 I got 91.5, which gives me strong impetus to get a good score in the future postgraduate exam. But there are many differences between CET and the p-exam. Firstly, the application ability is emphasized in p-exam and requires students of high level comprehensive English abilities while in CET, the exam-taking ability is the most important. Secondly, writing skill takes up 30% in the p-exam. It is implied that writing is so important that if you can write an elegant article you will definitely not get a poor score.  Last but not least, there are many subjective sectors which require the examinees to answer the questions basing on one’s own words. This is a good measure to prevent the students from guessing the right answers by choosing the options at random and can therefore test the true English ability of us.
As far as I am concerned, there are several keys to success: 1) Practice my reading ability which takes up 40% of the whole English test; 2) Pay much attention to the cultivating of writing ability. Heightening the writing ability cannot accomplish in an single action, it is a long process demanding us to practice, practice and practice. 3) I must not ignore the cloze test and the translation, especially translation which takes up 10% of the whole test. If I can score high in the translation sector, it will be a great advantage because the average scoring of that sector is only 4.8.
Politics is also very important. Many students think that politics is an easy subject that anyone can pass it easily. But I don’t think so, politics is a subject that is used to widen the gap between the examinees. There is a great difference between a person who got 80 in politics and a person who got 60. So I will not wait until the last moment to pick up the politics book, in other words, I will prepare for the politics exam from now on.
To score high in politics is not that difficult as many people think it is. Firstly, reciting ability is of extremely importance. Many people say that they don’t have to recite the book, instead they just need to understand before going to the exam room. I don’t quite agree with that. If you aren’t familiar with the politics book and can’t recite most of the contents, how can you answer the questions. So in my opinion, I will go through the book for many times in future and then finish many sets of practices in order to get a good score in the exam. Secondly, understanding ability also counts. A person who is proficient at reciting the text can’t necessarily score high in the politics exam. The key to success is it. This is a tough job and I will try my best to fully understand the contents.
The other two subjects are most important. I will talk about them in my next article.