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静けさが消えていくことについての特集記事

名前:日付:

場面描写で始まる冒頭、引用された声、比喩表現、締めくくりの情景を備えた雑誌の特集記事を書きます。

Listening for the last quiet places

At six o'clock on a Tuesday morning, the botanist Imre Valk stands at the edge of a drained reservoir and does nothing at all. For eleven minutes he listens. A distant tractor, a wren, the faint tick of cooling stones: that, he says, is as good as it gets.

Valk has spent the best part of a decade mapping what he calls acoustic refuges, places where no human-made sound intrudes for a quarter of an hour at a stretch. When he began, he expected to find them in the remoter reaches of the country. Instead he found that they were vanishing everywhere, shrinking like ice at the edge of a warming sea. Of the three hundred sites he surveyed, fewer than forty still qualify.

The causes are unglamorous: ring roads, delivery drones, the ceaseless hum of ventilation plants. But Valk is more interested in the consequences, which are subtler than mere irritation. Studies he cites suggest that sustained noise nudges up stress hormones even in people who claim to have grown accustomed to it. Habituation, he argues, is not the same as immunity; we simply stop reporting a cost that we continue to pay.

Not everyone is persuaded. Critics point out that cities have always been noisy, and that the clatter of a nineteenth-century street would make a modern commuter wince. Valk concedes the point with a shrug. "Noise is not new," he says. "What is new is that there is no longer anywhere to retreat to."

That, perhaps, is the heart of the matter. Silence has become a scarce resource and, like most scarce resources, it is beginning to be sold. Hotels advertise rooms free of electronic hum; some retreats charge a small fortune for the privilege of being told to say nothing. It is a curious irony that something once available to anyone with a field and a free afternoon should now come with a price tag.

Valk has little patience for such enterprises. His own modest campaign aims to have a handful of the surviving refuges protected, much as ancient woodland is. Whether it succeeds is hard to say. As the light strengthens over the reservoir, a car door slams somewhere beyond the trees, and his eleven minutes are over. He writes the time in his notebook and, with the air of a man making a modest entry in a ledger, closes it.

トーン、イメージ、効果

最も適切な選択肢を選びましょう。

Which opening is best suited to a magazine feature?
- a) This article discusses the problem of noise in cities.
- b) Noise is a problem for many people nowadays.
- c) At six o'clock on a Tuesday morning, a botanist stands at the edge of a reservoir and does nothing at all.
"Shrinking like ice at the edge of a warming sea" is an example of which device?
- a) metaphor
- b) personification
- c) litotes
- d) simile
"Habituation is not the same as immunity." What does the writer imply?
- a) People who stop noticing noise are still affected by it.
- b) Noise protects people from stress.
- c) People never get used to noise.
- d) Noise has no effect on health.
"Valk concedes the point with a shrug." What does the shrug suggest?
- a) He is angry with his critics.
- b) He accepts the point without feeling threatened by it.
- c) He has no interest in his own research.
- d) He is unable to answer the criticism.
Silence has become a ___ resource.
- a) sparse
- b) scarce
- c) meagre
- d) slender
Which ending is most effective for a feature article?
- a) In conclusion, noise is a serious problem.
- b) Therefore, more research is needed.
- c) He writes the time in his notebook and closes it, like a man making an entry in a ledger.
Which phrase attributes a claim most cautiously?
- a) Everyone knows that
- b) Studies he cites suggest that
- c) It has been proved beyond doubt that
- d) There can be no question that

文を完成させよう

各文を完成させるために、1語か、かっこ内の語の形を入力しましょう。

Valk has spent the best part ___ a decade mapping acoustic refuges.
Valk has little patience ___ such enterprises.
Of the three hundred sites he surveyed, fewer ___ forty still qualify.
It is a curious irony that something once available ___ anyone with a free afternoon should now cost money.
Critics point ___ that cities have always been noisy.
He wants a few refuges protected, much ___ ancient woodland is.
The refuges were vanishing everywhere, ___ like ice at the edge of a warming sea. (shrink)

ライティング課題

少しずつ消えつつある工芸、場所、伝統について、雑誌向けの特集記事を書きましょう。場面描写で書き始め、あなたが創作した人物の発言を少なくとも1つ引用し、直喩またはメタファーを少なくとも1つ使い、懐疑的な見方にも触れ、情景で締めくくってください。

280〜340語

文章を確認する

冒頭は、テーマを述べるのではなく、具体的な場面にしました。
引用の動詞を添えて、短く自然に聞こえる引用を入れました。
的確な直喩またはメタファーを少なくとも1つ使い、説明しすぎませんでした。
懐疑的な見方や反対の見方に、公平に触れました。
文の長さに変化をつけ、in conclusion のようなまとめの表現は避けました。
冒頭と響き合う情景や仕草で締めくくりました。

解答

トーン、イメージ、効果

c) At six o'clock on a Tuesday morning, a botanist stands at the edge of a reservoir and does nothing at all.意外な細部を伴う具体的な場面は、読者を引き込みます。ほかの書き出しは、単にテーマを告げたり述べたりしているだけです。
d) similelike という語は直接の比較をするので、これは直喩（simile）です。メタファーなら、the refuges were ice と言うことになります。
a) People who stop noticing noise are still affected by it.要点は、何かに慣れても、その害がなくなるわけではないということです。
b) He accepts the point without feeling threatened by it.ここでの shrug は、気楽な受け入れを示しています。その点は事実ですが、彼の主張を損なうものではありません。
b) scarceScarce resource は、希少になったものを表す決まったコロケーションです。Sparse は薄く散らばっているものを表し、meagre と slender は、見つけにくくなったものではなく、人が持っている少ない量（meagre resources）を表します。
c) He writes the time in his notebook and closes it, like a man making an entry in a ledger.特集記事は、情景や仕草で終わることがよくあります。ほかの結びは、要約したり、結論を機械的に述べたりしています。
b) Studies he cites suggest thatSuggest は主張を控えめに保ち、情報源に帰属させます。ほかの表現は確実性を誇張しています。

文を完成させよう

ofThe best part of は「〜の大部分」という意味です。
for / withPatience for と patience with のどちらも正しい形です。
thanFewer than は、数を伴う比較表現です。
toAvailable to someone が通常の形です。
outTo point out は「ある事実に注意を向ける」という意味です。
asMuch as は「〜と同じように」という意味です。
shrinking分詞 shrinking は、避難所がどのように消えていったかを表しています。

解答例

On the second floor of a building with no lift, above a shop that sells only buttons, Dalia Reyes bends over a torn map of the Aldermoor hills and begins, very gently, to mend it.

Reyes is one of perhaps a dozen people in the country who repair paper maps by hand. She learned the trade from a retired surveyor, who paid her in tea and sharp criticism. Her tools are few: a bone folder, a jar of wheat paste, tissue so thin that it clings to the air. "You are not fixing the map," she says. "You are persuading it to forget it was ever damaged."

The work is slow. A single fold, worn through after decades in a coat pocket, may take an afternoon. Customers are mostly walkers and the families of the recently deceased, who arrive carrying an atlas annotated in a hand that nobody else will recognise. Reyes treats such pencil notes as sacred, working around them as a gardener works around a seedling.

The difficulty, of course, is that nobody needs her any more. A phone can show the same hills, in real time, and with a blue dot to say where you are standing. Reyes does not disagree. "A screen tells you where you are," she admits. "A map tells you where you might go, and who went there before you." It is a fine line, and one that few of her customers could articulate, but they feel it in the hands.

Her business survives, narrowly, thanks to a small number of loyal clients and a waiting list that she suspects is mostly sentimental. She has taken on one apprentice, a nervous student who, for the first month, was not allowed to touch the paste.

By late afternoon the Aldermoor map lies flat and almost whole, a faint seam running across its highest ridge. Reyes holds it to the window, and the light passes through the hills like a thought.