Recently, we’ve been talking about how we need better teachers. There’s no doubt that great teacher can help in a student’s learning but here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents.
Every three years, the organization called O.E.C.D. organizes exams as part of the Program for International Student Assessment(评估), or PISA, which tests 15-year-olds on their abilities to deal with real problems. America’s 15-year-olds have not done as well as students in Singapore, Finland and Shanghai in the PISA exams.
To better understand the reasons, the PISA team, starting with four countries in 2006, and then adding 14 more in 2009, went to the parents of 5,000 students. They interviewed them about how they raised their kids and then compared it with the test results for each of those years. Two weeks ago, the PISA team published the main finding of its study.
Fifteen-year-olds whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school get much higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents don’t often read with them or not at all. Parents’ concern for their children is strongly connected with better results in PISA.
According to Schleicher, the leader of the team, just asking your children how their school day was and showing great interest in their learning can help a lot. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level is.
The study found that getting parents concerned about their children’s learning at home is more powerful than parents attending parent-teacher meetings, volunteering in classrooms, taking part in money-raising, and showing up at back-to-back nights.
To be sure, nothing can replace a good teacher. But let’s stop putting the whole duty on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make teaching more beneficial.
1. What can we learn about the organization O.E.C.D ?| A．It tests teenagers’ learning skills. |
| B．It calls for better teachers. |
| C．It organizes PISA exams every 3 years. |
| D．It compares parents from different countries. |
| A．To understand students better. |
| B．To get along well with parents. |
| C．To help students with bad test results. |
| D．To find out why students have different test results. |
| A．try to search for better teachers |
| B．put the whole duty on teachers |
| C．care about their children’s school life |
| D．ask their children to read more books. |
| A．Better Parents Are Needed | B．Better Teachers Are Appreciated |
| C．A Study by the PISA Team | D．An Interview with Parents. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Your relationship with your mom is supposed to be one of the most special relationships in your life, which makes it much harder when she says something that hurts your feelings.
Stay calm. Breathe deeply to control your emotions. It’s completely normal to feel your temper rise if she said something really mean. However, don’t immediately react or argue. Take slow, deep breaths to calm yourself.
Tell your mom that she hurt your feelings. Express yourself so your mom knows that you’ re hurt. It can be scary to approach your mom and discuss what she said, but it’s a big step.
Spend time around emotionally-supportive people. Take a break from the stress and anxiety that comes from interacting with your mom.
| A．Develop a positive mindset. |
| B．Take hurtful words to heart. |
| C．Try to use a respectful tone of voice. |
| D．You may not know how to react to her. |
| E．Admit your fault and apologize to your mom. |
| F．It may help to just walk out of the room to get some space. |
| G．Reach out to friends and loved ones who truly care about you. |
When her five daughters were young, Helene An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结). To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing oneperson. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next, she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chopsticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up.
Helene An and her family own a large restaurant business in California. However, when Helene and her husband Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975, they didn't have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Danny's mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon afterwards, Helene and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helene did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.
Eventually the girls all graduated from college and went away to work for themselves, but one by one, the daughters returned to work in the family business. They opened new restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even though family members sometimes disagreed with each other, they worked together to make the business successful. Daughter Elisabeth explains, "Our mother taught us that to succeed we must have unity, and to have unity we must have peace. Without the strength of the family, there is no business."
Their expanding business became a large corporation in 1996, with three generations of Ans working together. Now the Ans' corporation makes more than $20 million each year. Although they began with a small restaurant, they had big dreams, and they worked together. Now they are a big success.
1. Helene tied several chopsticks together to show ______.
| A．the strength of family unity |
| B．the difficulty of growing up |
| C．the advantage of chopsticks |
| D．the best way of giving a lesson |
| A．started a business in 1975 |
| B．left Vietnam without much money |
| C．bought a restaurant in San Francisco |
| D．opened a sandwich shop in Los Angeles |
| A．They did not finish their college education. |
| B．They could not bear to work in the family business. |
| C．They were influenced by what Helene taught them. |
| D．They were troubled by disagreement among family members. |
| A．How to Run a Corporation |
| B．Strength Comes from Peace |
| C．How to Achieve a Big Dream |
| D．Family Unity Builds Success |
【推荐3】Sam likes soccer. He always watches soccer games on TV. His wife Nina likes watching TV plays. One evening at 7:00, Sam watches an interesting soccer game on TV. The TV also has a good TV play. It is Nina’s favorite. She wants to watch it very much, but Sam sits before the TV. He doesn’t let Nina watch the TV play. Nina is not happy, so she goes to her mother’s home at 7:30 in the evening. When she comes into her mother’s home, her father watches that soccer game, too.
“Where is my mother, Dad?” asks Nina.
“She goes to your grandma’s home,” says her father.
“Why?”
“I want to watch the soccer game, but she likes to watch a TV play.”
1. What does Sam like?| A．Basketball. | B．Volleyball. |
| C．Soccer. | D．Baseball. |
| A．At 7:00. | B．At 7:30. |
| C．At 8:00. | D．At 8:30. |
| A．At home. | B．In the store. |
| C．In the classroom. | D．In her grandmother's home. |
| A．to do exercise | B．to play the piano |
| C．to watch TV | D．to make friends |
【推荐1】Students should be able to show what they know. Many folks take this as a self-evident truth. But I think it demands closer examination.
Possessing a skill or piece of knowledge is not the same thing as being able to show it. This is why many smart young people hate school. Understanding, figuring out, and getting a handle on a piece of knowledge is really exciting, but have to prove to somebody else that you understand is a big fat pain in the neck.
Finding proof of student learning is a huge part of the teacher's job, and whether it is done poorly or not makes all the difference in that teacher's effectiveness. There is a huge difference between "How do I figure out if this student understands" and "How do I make this student prove to me he gets it." The first is a valuable approach; the second is the first step on the road toward wasting everybody's time.
And there's the problem. If we start with the assumption（假定）that a student who knows must be able to show his knowledge to our satisfaction, we will be traveling down the wrong road The more we demand that students prove to us that they know the stuff, the more we will design artificial tasks that demand a set of skill and knowledge entirely different from the skills and knowledge we really want to measure.
As a classroom teacher, I have to remember that the burden is on me to find a way to see what my students know; the burden is not on them to put on whatever trained monkey show I design for my own case and convenience.
It may not be the worst thing ever to say "Students should be able to show what they know." But I think it's far more useful to say, "Teachers should be able to discover what students know."
1. What does the underlined phrase in the second paragraph mean?| A．Very dangerous. | B．Very difficult. |
| C．Very annoying. | D．Very frequent. |
| A．They should be limited in number. |
| B．They are a huge burden on teachers. |
| C．They slide away from their original purpose. |
| D．They should mainly focus on effectiveness. |
| A．Students should be able to show what they know. |
| B．Teachers should be able to discover what students know. |
| C．There are many ways to find proof of student learning. |
| D．There should be better understanding between teachers and students. |
【推荐2】When you were at school, the last thing you probably wanted to do was to spend your weekends going to work. There was homework to do, sports to play and fun to have. But our parents probably persuaded us to find a job to earn some money and get some life experience. When I was a teenager I delivered newspapers to people’s homes. I then progressed to a Saturday job in a supermarket: stacking shelves and working at the checkout.
Today in the UK you are allowed to work from the age of 13, and many children do take up part-time jobs. It’s one of those things that are seen almost as a rite of passage(成人仪式). It’s a taste of independence and sometimes a useful thing to put on your CV(简历). Teenagers agree that it teaches valuable lessons about working with adults and also about managing their money.
Some research has shown that not taking up a Saturday or holiday job could be deleterious to a person later on. A 2015 study by the UK Commission on Employment and Skills found that not participating in part-time work at school age had been blamed by employer’s organizations for young adults being ill-prepared for full-time employment, but despite this, recent statistics have shown that the number of schoolchildren in the UK with a part-time job has fallen by a fifth in the past five years.
So, does this mean that British teenagers are now afraid of hard work? Probably not. Some experts feel that young people feel going out to work will affect their performance at school, and they are under more pressure now to study hard and get good exam results and a good job in the long term. However, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told BBC News that “Properly regulated part-time work is a good way of helping young people learn skills that they will need in their working lives.” In reality, it’s all about getting the right balance between doing part-time work and having enough time to study and rest.
1. How did the author feel about doing part-time jobs on weekends when he was a teenager?| A．Delighted. | B．Interested. | C．Unwilling. | D．Angry. |
| A．Learning to be independent. | B．Gaining some life experience. |
| C．Being prepared for future jobs. | D．Spending what they earn as they like. |
| A．Valuable. | B．Harmful. | C．Necessary. | D．Impossible. |
| A．Students should spend all their time on studies. |
| B．Students should have as many part-time jobs as possible. |
| C．Doing part-time jobs must affect students’ school results. |
| D．It’s important for students to balance part-time jobs and studies. |
【推荐3】Adolescence, the period of a child’s life when they are most vulnerable to outside influences, is a relatively scary time for parents. Children of this age become the target of many negative influences while at the same time they are experiencing hormones that are raging out of control.
But parents should not be fooled by their children’s rejection and rudeness. In fact children expect the constant support, guidance, and influence from their parents.
I came from a family where anger always lies just below the surface, waiting for an excuse to erupt. My parents often said that my sisters and I could tell them anything. Though they promised not to be angry at whatever we would say, they couldn’t do it. Without the emotional support from my parents during my most vulnerable years, I often found myself losing my temper easily and even doing risky behaviors.
There is no certain standard about parenting, but I knew exactly what I should not do after I became a parent. I knew the importance of establishing open communication and trust, which resulted in my proper reactions and my children’s trust.
Our home was a quiet place, a shelter for my children’s emotional well-being. My children freely shared with me what happened in their lives, whether good or bad, shocking or humorous. As their mother, I rarely raised my voice and my reactions to their telling about their improper behaviors remained calm, no matter how I felt inside.
Parenting I did was far from easy. It took patience, persistence, and consistency. Everyone hopes for beautiful relationships with their children, and everyone can have them. The theory is simple: trust is the lock—communication is the key.
1. What do we know about adolescents according to the text?| A．They cannot easily control themselves. | B．They are easily influenced by their parents. |
| C．They are eager to communicate with parents. | D．They don’t expect parents’ guidance and support. |
| A．Gentle. | B．Dishonest. | C．Hurt. | D．Careless. |
| A．By making a promise. | B．By raising her voice. |
| C．By demanding much of them. | D．By controlling her reactions. |
| A．the need of riding anger at home | B．the ways of parenting adolescents |
| C．the importance of supporting children | D．the benefit of building good relationships with children |
