2009年新春高级口译考试第一部分听力刚刚结束。听力的第一道题目，考试几大热点中的人道主义话题之下的粮食危机，我们也拭目以待下面的考试热门话题：
对于food shortage这一话题，属于08年下半年到09年上半年的加沙地带及非洲的热点话题，也是世界范围内的焦点之一。在新世界高级口课堂上我们曾经多次提提醒大家去CNN，VOA,BBC等电台关注的话题。对参加以后高级口译的考生，需要抓住考试 “时间性”和 “热点话题” 的特点。紧扣热点新闻话题，在词汇的复习上需要关注考试日期前一年的世界热点。平时可以关注CNN，VOA或者China Daily的网页，在每个时间段内总会涉及频率最高的话题即是该时间段的热们关注点。09年的最热话题大多还是集中在经济危机这一话题。相关的经济类的热门词汇可以在新世界英语口译网页上找到。
粮食危机这一话题的热门词汇应该没问题。对于听写部分考试来说，重点还是口译的基本素质---口译笔记和时间分配上。关于如何在短时间内提高基本的速记本领，我们上海新世界英语口译教研组在考前的强化串讲中，详细的介绍了短期内，迅速突破听写笔记和答题的核心要领，在这次考试中，学员可以将本次考试答案和我们考前强化培训班中提及到的高频缩写词笔记进行比较。在本次考试中，需要把一些几乎每次必考的词汇速记符号熟记于胸，先得到基本的分数。除此之外，熟词速记后节省出的时间可使其他词汇的记录更加从容不迫。
本篇考试文章选自于网络的一篇文章：
When Americans think about hunger, we usually think in terms of mass starvation in far away countries. But hunger, too, often lurks in our own backyard. In 2006, 35.1 million people, including 12.4 million children in the United States didn’t not have access to enough food for an active healthy life. Some of these individuals relied on emergency food sources and some experienced hunger. Although most people think of hungry people and homeless people as the same, the problem of hunger reaches far beyond homelessness. While the number of people being hungry or at the risk of hunger maybe surprising. It is the faces of those hungry individuals that would probably most shock you. The face of hunger is the older couple, who has worked hard for their entire lives, only to find their savings wiped out by unavoidable medical bills. Or a single mother who has to choose whether the salary from her minimum wage job will go to buy food or pay rent. Or a child, who struggles to concentrate on his school work, because his family couldn’t afford dinner the night before. A December 2007 survey estimated that 48 % of those requesting emergency food assistance were either children or their parents. Children are twice as likely to live in households where someone experiences hunger and food insecurity than adults. One in ten adults compared to one in five children live in households where someone suffers from hunger or food insecurity. Child poverty is more widespread in the United States than in any other industrialized country. At the same time, the U.S. government spends less than any industrialized country to pull its children out of poverty. We have long known that the minds and bodies of small children need adequate food to develop properly. But science is just beginning to understand the full extent of this relationship. As late as the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that only the most severe forms of malnutrition actually alter brain development. The latest empirical evidence, however, shows that even relatively mild under-malnutrition produces cognitive impairments in children which can last a life time.
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