So long as teachers fail to distinguish between teaching and learning, they will continue to undertake to do for children that which only children can do for themselves. Teaching children to read is not passing reading on to them. It is certainly not endless hours spent in activities about reading. Douglas insists that“ reading cannot be taught directly and schools should stop trying to do the impossible”.
Teaching and learning are two entirely different processes. They differ in kind and function. The function of teaching is to create the conditions and the climate that will make it possible for children to devise the most efficient system for teaching themselves to read. Teaching is also public activity. It can be seen and observed.
Learning to read involves all that each individual does to make sense of the world of printed language. Almost all of it is private, for learning is an occupation of the mind, and that process is not open to public scrutiny.
If teacher and learner roles are not interchangeable ,what then can be done through teaching that will aid the child in the quest(探索)for knowledge? Smith has one principal rule for all teaching instructions. “Make learning to read easy, which means making reading a meaningful, enjoyable and frequent experience for children. ”
When the roles of teacher and learner are seen for what they are, and when both teacher and learner fulfill them appropriately, then much of the pressure and feeling of failure for both is eliminated. Learning to read is made easier when teachers create an environment where children are given the opportunity to solve the problem of leaning to read by reading.he problem with the reading course as mentioned in the first paragraph is that _______________.
A.it is one of the most difficult school courses |
B.students spend endless hours in reading |
C.reading tasks are assigned with little guidance |
D.too much time is spent in teaching about reading |
.he teaching of reading will be successful if _______________.
A.teachers can improve conditions at school for the students |
B.teachers can enable students to develop their own way of reading |
C.teachers can devise the most efficient system for reading |
D.teachers can make their teaching activities observable |
The underlined word“ scrutiny” most probably means“______________”.
A.inquiry | B.observation |
C.control | D.suspicion |
According to the passage, learning to read will no longer be a difficult task when ______________.
A.children become highly motivated |
B.teacher and learner roles are interchangeable |
C.teaching helps children in the search for knowledge |
D.reading enriches children’s experience |
The main idea of the passage is that ______________.
A.teachers should do as little as possible in helping students learn to read |
B.teachers should encourage students to read as widely as possible |
C.reading ability is something acquired rather than taught |
D.reading is more complicated that generally believed |
When I met him,I had a lot of anger inside of me. I’ve lived my whole life in Spanish Harlem,but in my neighborhood,there are shoot-ups all the time. I know kids who have been shot or beaten up. I have friends who ended up in prison. I could have ended up that way,too,but Mr. Clark wouldn’t let that happen.
Mr. Clark worked long hours,making sure I did my work. My grades rose. In fact,the scores of our whole class rose. One day,he took our class to see The Phantom of the Opera,and it was the first time some kids had ever been out of Harlem. Before the show,he treated us to dinner at a restaurant and taught us not to talk with our mouths full. We did not want to let him down. Mr. Clark was selected as Disney’s 2000 Teacher of the Year. He said he would draw three names out of a hat;those students would go with him to Los Angeles to get the award. But when the time came to draw names,Mr. Clark said,“You’re all going.”
On graduation day,there were a lot of tears. We didn’t want his class to end. In 2001,he moved to Atlanta,but we always kept in touch. He started giving lectures about education,and wrote a bestselling book based on his classroom rules,The Essential. In 2003,Mr. Clark took some of us on a trip to South Africa to deliver school supplies and visit the orphanages(孤儿院).It was the most amazing experience of my life. It’s now my dream to one day start a group of women’s clubs,helping people from all backgrounds.Without Mr. Clark,the writer ________.
A.might have been put into prison |
B.might not have won the prize |
C.might have joined a women’s club |
D.might not have moved to Atlanta |
How many students’ names were finally drawn out of a hat by Mr. Clark?
A.None. | B.Three. |
C.Fiftyfive. | D.All. |
What can we learn from the passage?
A.It was in Harlem that we saw The Phantom of the Opera for the first time. |
B.Mr. Clark taught us not to talk with our mouths full,and we did. |
C.Mr. Clark was selected as Disney’s 2000 Teacher of the Year in Los Angeles. |
D.In 2003,Mr. Clark moved to Atlanta,and he always kept in touch with us. |
It is a matter of common observation that although money income keeps going up over the years, we never seem to become richer. Prices are rising continuously. This condition is what we call inflation: the money supply is becoming inflated so that each unit of it becomes less valuable. We have got used to higher and higher rates of inflation in recent years. What could be bought twenty years ago for one pound now costs well over 2 pounds. And at present this rate of inflation seems to be rising rather than falling. If in the real world our money incomes go up at the same rate as prices do. One might think that inflation doesn’t matter. But it does .When money is losing value it also loses one of the qualities of a good money—stability(稳定)of value. It is no longer acceptable as a store of value; and it becomes an unsuitable means of delayed payment. Nobody wants to hold a wasting possession, so people try to get rid of money as quickly as possible. Inflation therefore simply simulates(刺激)our spending and discourages saving.From the passage we can know that inflation is a situation in which________.
A.everyone’s incomes rise |
B.money will hold its value |
C.we can watch our money grow |
D.money constantly loses its value |
In the writer’s view, if incomes and prices rise at the same rate, ________.
A.inflation may still be a problem |
B.we have nothing to worry about |
C.inflation is no longer a problem |
D.we will become richer and richer |
Under inflation people are likely to ________.
A.go to the bank more often than usual |
B.save more money since their incomes rise |
C.spend money quickly rather than to save it |
D.keep money at home instead of going to banks |
We can conclude according to the passage that ________.
A.the writer is a government official |
B.the writer is worried about inflation |
C.the writer encourages people to spend money |
D.the writer has become richer because of inflation |
Clay Wanner began to gather a group of architects in Las Vegas a few years ago,to ask them what it would take to design a public school that used 50 percent less energy, cost much less to build and obviously improved student learning. “I think half of them fell off their chairs, ” Wanner says.
Wanner manages school facilities (设施) for Clark County, Nevada,a district roughly the size of Massachusetts. By 2018,143,000 additional students will enter the already crowded public education system. Wanner needs 73 new schools to house them. Four architecture teams have nearly finished designing primary school prototypes (样品);they plan to construct their schools starting in 2009. The district will then assess how well the schools perform, and three winners will copy those designs in 50 to 70 new buildings.
Green schools are appearing all over, but in Clark County,which stands out for its vastness, such aggressive targets are difficult because design requirements like more natural light for students go against the realities of a desert climate. “One of the biggest challenges is getting the right site orientation(朝向),” Mark McGinty, a director at SH Architecture, says. His firm recently completed a high school in Las Vegas. “You have the same building, same set of windows, but if its orientation is incorrect and it faces the sun, it will be really expensive to cool.”
Surprisingly, the man who is responsible for one of the most progressive green-design competitions has doubts about ideas of eco-friendly buildings. “I don’t believe in the new green religion,” Wanner says.“Some of the building technologies that you get are impractical. I’m interested in those that work. ”But he wouldn’t mind if some green features inspire students. He says he hopes to set up green energy systems that allow them to learn about the process of harvesting wind and solar power. “You never know what’s going to start the interest of a child to study math and science,”he says.How did the architects react to Wanner’s design requirements?
A.They lost balance in excitement. | B.They expressed little interest. |
C.They showed strong disbelief. | D.They burst into cheers. |
Which order of steps is followed in carrying out the project?
A.Design—Prototype—Assessment—Construction. |
B.Design—Assessment—Prototype—Construction. |
C.Assessment—Design—Prototype—Construction. |
D.Assessment—Prototype—Design—Construction. |
What makes it difficult to build green schools in Clark County?
A.The large size. | B.Limited facilities. |
C.Poor natural resources. | D.The desert climate. |
What does Wanner think of the ideas of green schools?
A.They are out of date. | B.They are questionable. |
C.They are advanced. | D.They are practical. |
History is rich with 'eureka' moments: scientists from Archimedes to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are said to have had flashes of inspiration while thinking about other things. But the mechanisms(机理) behind this psychological phenomenon have remained unclear. A study now suggests that simply taking a break does not bring on inspiration — rather, creativity is fostered by tasks that allow the mind to wander.
The discovery was made by a team led by Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler, psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The researchers presented 145 undergraduate students with two 'unusual uses' tasks that gave them two minutes to list as many uses as possible for everyday objects such as toothpicks, clothes hangers and bricks.
After the two minutes were over, participants were given a 12-minute break, during which they rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering. A fourth group of students had no break. All participants were then given four unusual-uses tasks, including the two that they had completed earlier.
Those students who had done the undemanding activity performed an average of 41% better at the repeated tasks the second time they tried them. By contrast, students in the other three groups showed no improvement.
“We’ve traditionally found that rapid-eye-movement sleep grants creative insight. That allowing the mind to wander does the same is absolutely fascinating. I think they are on to something really interesting here, ” says Sara Mednick, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside.
Participants who engaged in the undemanding task did not do any better than others on unusual-uses tasks that they encountered for the first time in the second round. “The implication (暗示) is that mind-wandering was only helpful for problems that were already being mentally chewed on. It didn’t seem to lead to a general increase in creative problem-solving ability, ” says Baird.
As well as revealing that breaks on their own do not encourage creative thinking, Baird’s work suggests an explanation for one of psychology’s great mysteries: why we zone out.
From an evolutionary perspective, mind-wandering seems totally counterproductive and has been viewed as dysfunctional because it compromises people’s performance in physical activities. However, Baird’s work shows that allowing the brain to enter this state when it is considering complex problems can have real benefits. Zoning out may have aided humans when survival depended on creative solutions.The “eureka” moments in history actually refer to some_________.
A.sudden inspirations | B.necessary discoveries |
C.great achievements | D.unexpected results |
Inspiration or creativity, according to this passage, comes about when _________.
A.your mind is in an “unusual uses” task |
B.your mind loses itself and hangs about |
C.you’ve had a break after hard mind work |
D.you’ve thought about something for long |
The word “zone out”in italics is the nearest in meaning to _________.
A.dream while sleeping | B.die away in a secret way |
C.get the solution suddenly | D.be unable to think clearly |
What do the fifth and sixth paragraphs want to state?
A.Rapid-eye-movement sleep is a high-quality sleep with a creative mind. |
B.Regular mind-wandering will lead to creative problem-solving ability. |
C.People who engage in undemanding tasks cannot do unusual-uses tasks well. |
D.Only those who’ve been thinking about a thing can come across the solution. |
It is the women who have only themselves to blame though they are mercilessly exploited (剥削) year after year. Because they tremble at the thought of being seem in public in clothes that are out of fashion, they are always taken advantage of by the designers and the big stores. Clothes which have been worn only a few times have to be put aside because of the change of fashion. When you come to think of it, only a woman is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to wear.
Changing fashions are nothing more than the intentional creation of waste. Many women spend vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been worn. Women who cannot afford to throw away clothing in this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they have. Skirts are lengthened or shortened; neck-lines are lowered or raised, and so on.
No one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to society. Fashion designers are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and durability (耐用). They are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, as long as they look right. There can hardly be a man who hasn't at some time in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shaking in a thin dress on a winter day, or delicately picking her way through deep snow in high-heeled shoes.
When comparing men and women in the matter of fashion, the conclusions to be drawn are obvious. Do the constantly changing fashions of women's clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of inconstancy and instability? Men are too clever to let themselves be cheated by fashion designers. Do their unchanging styles of dress reflect basic qualities of stability and reliability? That is for you to decide.Designers and big stores always make money _____.
A.by mercilessly exploiting women workers in the clothing industry
B.by constantly changing the fashions in women's clothing
C . because they are capable of predicting new fashions
D . because they attach great importance to quality in women's clothingThe writer would be less critical if fashion designers placed more stress on the ______ of clothing.
A.cost | B.appearance | C.suitability | D.comfort |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE? ______________
A. The constant changes in women's clothing reflect their strength of character.
B.New fashions in clothing are created for the commercial exploitation of women.
C. The fashion industry makes an important contribution to society.
D. Fashion designs should not be encouraged since they are only welcomed by women.By saying "the conclusion to be drawn are obvious" (Para 4, Line 1-2), the writer means that ____________.
A. men are more stable and reliable in character
B. men are also exploited greatly by fashion designers
C .women's inconstancy in their choice of clothing is often laughed at
D.women are better able to put up with discomfort