Creativity(创造性)is the key to a brighter future, say education and business experts. Here is how schools and parents can encourage this important skill in children.
If Dick Drew had listened to his boss in 1925, we might not have a product that we now think of as very important: a new type of tape. Drew worked for the Minnesota Mining Company. At work he developed a kind of material strong enough to hold things together. But his boss told him not to think more about the idea. Finally, using his own time, Drew improved the tape, which now is used everywhere by many people. And his former company learned from its mistake. Now it encourages people to spend 15 percent of their work time just thinking and developing new ideas.
Creativity is not something one is just born with, nor is it necessarily an indicator of high intelligence. Just that a person is highly intelligent does not mean that he uses it creatively. Creativity is the matter of using the resources one has to produce new ideas that are good for something.
Unfortunately, schools have not tried to encourage creativity. With strong attention paid to test results and the development of reading, writing and mathematical skills, many educators give up creativity for correct answers. The result is that children can give back information but can’t recognize ways to use it in new situations. They may know the rules correctly, but they are unable to use them to work out practical problems.
It is important to give children choices. From an early age, children should be allowed to make decisions and understand their results. Even if it’s choosing between two food items for lunch, decision-making helps thinking skills. As children grow older, parents should let their children decide how to use their time or spend their money, but not help them too much if they make the wrong decision. The child may have a hard time, but that is all right. This is because the most important characteristic of creative people is a very strong desire to find a way out of trouble.What did the company where Dick Drew worked learn from its mistake?
| A．They encouraged people to work longer. |
| B．They discouraged people to think freely. |
| C．They asked people to spend all their work time developing new ideas. |
| D．They encouraged people to spend some of their work time considering and |
improving new ideas. Creativity is something ______.
| A．that people are born with |
| B．that depends on intelligence |
| C．that is a way of using what one has learnt to work out new problems |
| D．that is not important |
Why don’t schools try to encourage creativity?
| A．They don’t understand the importance of education. |
| B．They don’t want their students to make mistakes. |
| C．They pay too much attention to examination marks and language skills. |
| D．They think it more important to remember information. |
What should the parents do when their children decide how to spend their money?
| A．Try to help them as much as possible. |
| B．Take no notice of whatever they do. |
| C．Help them if their decision is wrong, but not too much. |
| D．Leave them as they are. |
Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because_______ .
| A．they are close in style to works in ancient times |
| B．they look like works by 19th-century painters |
| C．they draw attention to common things in life |
| D．they depend heavily on color photography |
What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?
| A．It will not be found in future works of art. |
| B．It does not have a long-lasting standard. |
| C．It is expressed in a fixed artistic form. |
| D．It is lacking in modern works of art. |
What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?
| A．They express people's curiosity about the past. |
| B．They make people interested in everyday experience. |
| C．They are considered important for variety in form. |
| D．They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation. |
Dear all,
Please read Professor Hume's email about his next lecture on Rosa Parks.
Susan Miller
Secretary
＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊
Dear Susan,
Please forward this message to students of my history class.
Besides the life story of Rosa Parks in the textbook, the students are also required to read the passage below and some related stories that can be borrowed from the school library.
Ted Hume
The early experiences of Rosa Parks(1913-2005), long known as the “mother of the civil rights movement, ”were not different from those of many African-Americans at that time. The black woman, however, turned the course of American history in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. “By sitting down, ”remarked John Lewis, “she was standing up for all Americans. ”
Among the numerous awards Parks received in her life were the Presidential Medal of Freedom(1996)and the Congressional Gold Medal(1999).
Parks died on Oct. 24, 2005. At St. Paul A. M. E. Church in Montgomery, a large crowd including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice celebrated her life. Rice said she and others, who grew up when the political activities of Parks held public attention, might not have realized her impact(影响)on their lives, “but I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here as Secretary of State. ”
After her casket(灵柩)was placed at the Capitol, U. S. President Bush, members of Congress and ordinary Americans paid their respects. In American history Parks is the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol, a very high regard usually reserved for Presidents of the United States. What is the main purpose of Susan’s email?
| A．To make arrangements for Professor Hume's class. | B．To introduce to the students Rosa Parks. |
| C．To help the students organize a lecture. | D．To answer Professor Hume's last email. |
What does the underlined word “forward” mean?
| A．Explain. | B．Send. | C．Take. | D．Read. |
The political impact of Rosa Parks lies in the fact that she .
| A．helped Condoleezza Rice achieve political success |
| B．joined the civil rights movement at a young age |
| C．made racial equality a common value in American society |
| D．set a good example in her early life for other black Americans |
How was Rosa Parks treated after her death?
| A．She was named “mother of the civil rights movement. ” |
| B．She was received by President Bush at the Capitol. |
| C．She was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. |
| D．She was honored to lie in state at the Capitol. |
The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly held image (印象) of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.
An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seen to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious(叛逆的) and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds: they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation(商议) and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don’t want to rock the boat.”
So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends.” My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me,” says 17-years-old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I’m going out clubbing. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”
Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenager rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in out social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over.” What is the popular images of teenagers today?
| A．They worry about school | B．They dislike living with their parents |
| C．They have to be locked in to avoid troubles | D．They quarrel a lot with other family members |
The study shows that teenagers don’t want to ___
| A．share family responsibility | B．cause trouble in their families |
| C．go boating with their family | D．make family decisions |
Compared with parents of 30 years age, today’s parents___.
| A．go to clubs more often with their children | B．are much stricter with their children |
| C．care less about their children’s life | D．give their children more freedom |
According to the author, teenage rebellion____.
| A．may be a false belief | B．is common nowadays |
| C．existed only in the 1960s | D．resulted from changes in families |
You're in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation:
“I can't believe it--a Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn't it beautiful? And it's a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome. ”
They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It's nice and the price is right. You've never heard of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. They must know. So, you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes.
Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too. This is the secret of undercover marketing. Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.
Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don't pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation----consumers between the age of 18 and 34. It is a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don't trust ads.
So advertising agencies hire young actors to “perform” in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice deceptive(骗人的), but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative. “Look at traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing. ”
However, one might ask what exactly is “real” about of young women pretending to be enthusiastic about a sweater? Advertising executives would say it's no less real than an ad. The difference is that you know an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. You don' t know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance. The two attractive young women were talking so that they could ________.
| A．get the sweater at a lower price | B．be heard by people around |
| C．be admired by other shoppers | D．decide on buying the sweater |
Lorenzo Bertolla is __________.
| A．a very popular male singer | B．an advertising agency |
| C．a clothing company in Rome | D．the brand name of a sweater |
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
| A．The two girls are in fact employed by the Lorenzo Bertolla Company. |
| B．The MTV generation tend to be more easily influenced by ads. |
| C．Traditional advertising is becoming less effective because it's too direct. |
| D．Undercover marketing will surely be banned soon by the government. |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Two Attractive Shoppers | B．Lorenzo Bertolla Sweaters |
| C．Ways of Advertising | D．Undercover Marketing |
Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling．Recycling in the home is very important of course．However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need．We are dealing with the results of that over–consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place．
The total amount of packaging has increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005．It now makes up a third of a typical household’s waste in the UK．In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard．
Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment．The UK, for example, is running out of it for burying this unnecessary waste．If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect．Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy．The solution is not to produce such items in the first place．Food waste is a serious problem, too．Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need．However, few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example．
But this is not just about supermarkets．It is about all of us．We have learned to associate packaging with quality．We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality．This is especially true of food．But it is also applied to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary．
There are signs of hope．As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realize just how much unnecessary materials are collected．We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb．What does the underlined phrase “that over-consumption” refer to?
| A．Using too much packaging． |
| B．Recycling too many wastes． |
| C．Making more products than necessary． |
| D．Having more material than is needed． |
The author uses figures in Paragraph 2 to show ___________．
| A．the tendency of cutting household waste |
| B．the increase of packaging recycling |
| C．the rapid growth of supermarkets |
| D．the fact of packaging overuse |
According to the text, recycling ___________．
| A．helps control the greenhouse effect |
| B．means burning packaging for energy |
| C．is the solution to gas shortage |
| D．leads to a waste of land |
What can be inferred from Paragraph 4?
| A．Unpackaged products are of bad quality． |
| B．Supermarkets care more about packaging． |
| C．It is improper to judge quality by packaging． |
| D．Other products are better packaged than food． |
What can we learn from the last paragraph?
| A．Fighting wastefulness is difficult． |
| B．Needless material is mostly recycled． |
| C．People like collecting recyclable wastes． |
| D．The author is proud of their consumer culture． |