要約文を選ぶ問題。国際教養に合格できるレベルの受験生にとっては読むスピードの問題。また、小児科医がテーマ、ということで一般大学受験生にも一読の価値がありそうです。医療問題はどの学部でも出題される可能性があるので、高齢者医療、臓器移植、脳の働きなどについての英文は読んでおくとよいでしょう。
こういう問題は、まず選択肢を読んでからやるとよい、といったことがよく言われますが、まず英文を段落ごとに自分でまとめながら読んだ後、自分のまとめを手掛かりに選択肢を読んで解答できることが合格には求められます。ただし、解答方法は受験生の英語力により異なります。
① Imagine watching a train go by. You are looking for one face in the window. Car after car passes. If you become distracted or inattentive, you risk missing the person. Or, if the train picks up too much speed, the faces begin to blur and you can't see the one you are seeking. "That's what primary care medicine is like," Victoria Rogers McEvoy told me. McEvoy is a tall, lean woman in her fifties with short-cropped blond hair and steady eyes. She practices general pediatrics in a town west of Boston. "It's much harder than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, because the haystack is not moving. Each day there is a steady flow of children before your eyes. You are doing baby checks, examinations for school, making sure each child is up to date on his vaccinations. It can become routine and you stop observing closely. Then you have the endless number of kids who are irritable and have a fever, and it's almost always a virus or a throat infection. They can all blur. But then there's that one time it's a life-threatening disease."
1 Paragraph ① describes[C the difficulty of noticing children who are seriously ill among the large number who are only suffering from minor problems.]語法:..., you risk missing the person.他動詞riskは目的語に名詞(代名詞)or動名詞。
②"The blessing of pediatrics, but also its curse, is that almost all of the children who come to the office turn out to be healthy or to have a minor problem," McEvoy continued. A blessing, of course, that the kids are fine, but a curse because the continual flow of minor problems can cause you to lose concentration. With that in mind, she asks herself one key question each time she sees a child, in essence the same question doctors who work in emergency rooms ask about each patient: Does he or she have a serious problem? "Every pediatrician should consider that as soon as the child comes into the room." And because many of the patients are infants and small children who cannot communicate what they are feeling, "your powers of observation have to be particularly acute."
2 Paragraph ② describes[E the importance of being continually on the look out for signs of a serious disease in the children who are brought to see you.]文法:... almost all of the children who ... almostは副詞。almost of the children..., almost childrenは×。センターレベルでは必須。
③ Essentially the doctor gets all the information from the parents, which means she has to consider both the parents' degree of familiarity with their child and their emotional reaction to the possibility that something is wrong. This reaction can be extreme: some parents deny the existence of a serious problem; others exaggerate what is normal because of their anxiety. Parents have reported that their child was lacking in energy and not eating, information that would trigger a high level of concern in the doctor; but with one glance she would see the child playing happily on the examining table and grinning. "The story was completely exaggerated, and you knew immediately that the kid was not seriously sick." Then there was the opposite, where a mother said that her baby felt a little warm but was otherwise okay. McEvoy was stunned to see the child breathing rapidly and lying weak in her mother's arms. The child had pneumonia. McEvoy, like all pediatricians, looks for certain key features. Does the child smile, play with toys, actively walk or crawl, or is she passive, not resisting when a medical instrument is placed on her chest?
3 Paragraph ③ describes[F the necessity of judging the nature of the parent's response to the child's illness when considering the information they provide.]
言い換え(この場面で):when a medical instrument is placed on her chest=when a stethoscope is applied to her chest.こんなことは特に覚える必要はないですが、動詞によって前置詞が異なることは英語の面白いところ。もちろん意味のニュアンスに違いがあるのでしょうが。
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