1 . Pre-school teacher Rosa Ramirez has a special way of asking her students to line up for playtime outside. “Pueden pararse si llevan puesto algo de color amarillo, como una abeja,” she tells them. In English, Ramirez would say, “You can stand up if you are wearing yellow—like a bee.” But this is the half of the school day in which she teaches completely in Spanish.
Students are not confused by her language choice. Most of the four-year-olds wearing yellow stand up as instructed. The pre-school bilingual program at Gates Street Early Education Center in Lincoln Heights is part of a growing number of bilingual education models in California and across the country. Many of them are designed to serve students from Spanish-speaking families, as well as students from other cultures, under growing evidence that learning two languages can help people from all backgrounds become stronger students.
About 3.8 million students in U.S. schools are native Spanish speakers who are not good at English. They make up a large part of about five million students nationwide identified as English language learners. English language learners are the fastest-growing population in schools and the lowest-performing, as judged by achievement tests and graduation rates. Sixty-seven percent of students with limited English skills graduated from high school after four years in 2016, compared with 84% of all students.
Language experts recommend how to improve the situation: more high-quality, long-term bilingual programs can close the achievement gap between English learners and native English Speakers after five to six years, according to research.
The programs can be hard to put into practice. Problems include a debate over the best way to teach English learners, shortages of bilingual teachers, and even the fact that bilingual programs often grow fastest in areas where upper-income parents ask for them. That’s good for children who participate, but it worries people who want to see language-minority students have equal access.
“If we can make children feel more ready and more accepted, then we’ve gone a long way to making them ready to learn, ” says Tara Fortune, an expert in children education.
1. How do the pre-school children react after hearing Rosa Ramirez's words?| A．They all stand up and try to catch bees. |
| B．Most children in yellow stand up as she asks. |
| C．They are all happy to wear new yellow clothes. |
| D．A large number of the children are confused. |
| A．To help students from other cultures study. |
| B．To help students learn as many languages as they can. |
| C．To make English popular among students abroad. |
| D．To make students from other backgrounds physically stronger. |
| A．They make up a small share of English language learners. |
| B．Sixteen percent of them fail to graduate every year on average. |
| C．They perform relatively poorly in studies. |
| D．84% of them can graduate with good scores. |
| A．It is not accepted by rich families from other cultures. |
| B．It is not a good thing if it lasts for the whole life of students. |
| C．It is common in schools with students from different backgrounds. |
| D．It is hard to introduce especially with language-minority students. |
2 . Once I told someone I wanted to get a master’s degree of fine arts in creative writing and they told me it was the second-to-worst post-graduation plan they’d ever heard from a student. Arts degrees — especially fine arts degrees, which usually come in the form of music, studio art, creative writing and theater — have been, over the years, labeled useless.
It’s true that for the most part, STEM degrees lead to higher paying jobs than liberal and fine arts degrees, and it’s understandable why young people care about a higher starting salary and financial security. Student loan debt is playing a role in the physical and mental stress of young people.
And while STEM majors usually have starting salaries that are $20,000 higher than those of liberal arts majors, by the time people reach the age of 40, the salaries between those who majored in the liberal arts and those who majored in STEM are virtually the same. For example, women who major in STEM earned nearly 50% more than social science and history majors at ages 23-25, but only 10% more by ages 38-40, a New York Times analysis reported. So even in terms of salary, which doesn’t solely determine whether or not a degree is useful, liberal arts degrees aren’t all that far behind STEM.
It seems too that since people nowadays are going to have to work longer, it’s more important than ever that we actually like and care about what we’re doing. Pursuing something enjoyable, or else a passion, is continuously found to be a key factor in maintaining healthy relationships, mental health, physical health and energy. In other words, not useless.
Art is also a method of communication. It allows people from different backgrounds, from different walks of life to communicate with each other. In a world where borders and division seem to be all over the place, we need art more than ever. We need liberal arts majors. And more than anything, we need to be able to pursue what we love with confidence, and we need to not get caught up in the “usefulness” of what we love.
And just because someone’s primary job isn’t in their field of study — a writer who teaches high school for example— doesn’t make the degree useless. It just means that their way of finding a stable income is different. The same goes for artists who have to work multiple jobs to support themselves. They might have to find other means of supporting themselves and their artistry. It might be copy editing or it might be tutoring.
So I am going to graduate school, and I am going to graduate school for writing. I might be paying rent by way of overnight restaurant shifts — there’s so much I’m not sure of. But one thing I am sure of is this — I would rather be a writer working two jobs to pay my bills than be no writer at all.
1. A New York Times analysis report is mentioned in Paragraph 3 to ______.| A．analyse the potential value of different majors |
| B．put forward the opinion on majors by example |
| C．prove the argument against arts degrees wrong |
| D．demonstrate the link between majors and incomes |
| A．Following one’s dream of arts keeps one in good condition. |
| B．Doing what one loves builds up one’s self-confidence in arts. |
| C．Mastering arts improves one’s understanding of different jobs. |
| D．Developing a love for arts helps one maintain passion for work. |
| A．unavoidable | B．common |
| C．traditional | D．acceptable |
| A．Students learning arts are more concerned about the value of life. |
| B．People tend to place income in the first place when choosing majors. |
| C．The man who doesn’t love his work won’t stick with the job for long. |
| D．Graduates can find a broader space of development in the field of arts. |
3 . When a big exam is coming up, you probably feel anxious about any wasted time and want to begin school as soon as you probably can.
But tens of thousands of British high school students will soon be getting up later. They’re taking part in a new experiment by Oxford University to see if later classes can improve their exam results.
Grades 10 students in the UK have to take the nationwide General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams. They have to pass these exams in order to study more advanced courses, and later apply for universities.
The Oxford University project means that GCSE students from more than 100 schools across England will start school at 10 am, more than one hour later than the current start time (8:50 am).
The project is based on scientific evidence that teenagers are “out of sync(同步)” with traditional school hours, the Telegraph reported. And what they need is more sleep in the morning.
“We know that something funny happens when you’re a teenager, in that you seem to be out of sync with the world,” said professor Colin Epsie, who is leading the study. “Your parents think it’s because you are lazy and opinionated（固执己见的）and everything will be OK if you could get to sleep earlier. But science is telling us that teenagers need to sleep more in the mornings.”
Everyone follows a natural cycle of sleep and wakefulness. Biology has decided that teenagers go to sleep around midnight and don’t feel fully awake until 9-10 am, according to scientists. That’s two hours later than adults. And their body clocks stay like this until the age of around 21 for males, and 19 for females.
“Society provides school for learning, but the brain provides sleep. So we are exploring the possibility that if you delay the schools start time until 10 am, that will improve learning performance,” said Epsie.
The results could be positive, based on previous studies.
An early study at the UK’s Monkseaton High School in 2009 found that starting an hour later improved grades in core subjects by 19 percent.
The Oxford project is expecting to publish the results in 2018. It’s time to wait and see whether scientists will give us an excuse to get up late.
1. According to the article, students who take part in the Oxford University project_______.| A．will start school one hour earlier |
| B．will be guaranteed more sleeping time in the morning |
| C．will perform better academically than those who don’t participate |
| D．will no longer have to take GCSE exams |
| A．children and adults have different natural cycles of sleep and wakefulness |
| B．getting up late is a sign of laziness in the eyes of most British parents |
| C．the Oxford University project is targeted at all British high schools |
| D．there is still no scientific evidence that supports a late school start time |
| A．Critical | B．Uninterested |
| C．Optimistic | D．Doubtful |
| A．It’s never too late to learn | B．An excuse to get up late |
| C．The later you get up, the better you’ll learn | D．Wake up late to excel |
4 . Every time the results of the international PISA test are released, the United States gets another opportunity to whip itself for students’ unsatisfying performance.
PISA is the Program for International Student Assessment, a test administered to students in 79 countries around the world. It allows critics on both sides of the school-reform debate to peer at the results of other nations, compare them to the U.S. outcomes and find examples that appear to confirm their own beliefs about why our 15-year-olds are not at the best in science, math and reading. Those opposed to standardized testing and accountability measures look at Finland’s high scores and point out that in that country, there are no mandatory standardized tests until the end of senior year of high school. Children are encouraged to play more. Their school days are shorter and no one attempts to hold teachers accountable according to a rigid set of rules. The students are given very little homework. The nation’s scores and ranking have slid over the past decade, but it still consistently outshines the U.S.
Meanwhile, fans of more regular testing are likely to hold up Singapore and South Korea as models. Singapore’s curriculum is highly scripted and pretty much the same across the nation — something that the Obama administration hoped to achieve through its Common Core curriculum. Teachers continually prepare students for hard tests and depend heavily on worksheets and drills. South Korean families depend heavily on private tutoring to help their children perform well on high-stakes tests. Students in these two countries also outperform American students on the PISA test.
But if Finland, Singapore and South Korea are all doing better than America, that suggests there may be a factor at play other than how students are taught. And indeed there is something that all three of these nations, and every other country that outranks America on the PISA test, have in common: lower rates of child poverty. “Socio-economically disadvantaged students across OECD countries are almost three times more likely than advantaged students not to attain the baseline level of proficiency (能力) in science,” PISA reported in a 2018 paper.
Though America is by most measures a wealthy country, it is one with many poor people. A 2017 UNICEF report looked at the relative child poverty rates of 41 well-off nations. America ranked seventh from the bottom.
“Because in every country, students at the bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution,” A 2013 study by Stanford University researchers concluded.
There’s no getting around it: This is a shameful situation in a developed, wealthy nation. When poverty equates to lower academic performance, people pass that poverty from one generation to the next. Until they are willing to face that problem and take bold measures against it, the nation’s rankings will always be limited.
For various reasons, PISA results aren’t the ultimate measure of how well a nation’s schools are doing. But when it comes to measuring the effects of income inequality, PISA offers a powerful lesson for the United States: If they want a better educated population, they cannot ignore their culpability in allowing so many children to grow up in poverty.
1. We can learn from the passage that PISA is a test______.| A．administered to all the students around the world |
| B．reflecting students’ ability in science, math and reading |
| C．causing criticism from the educational authorities in the US |
| D．held by the United Nations annually for 15-year-old students |
| A．The US government has taken measures to handle poverty issues. |
| B．Scores of students from Finland in PISA have improved in recent years |
| C．The case in Singapore is used as opposition against standardized testing |
| D．For students in South Korea, the help from teachers in schools is not enough |
| A．The 2013 study by Stanford University researchers. |
| B．There are many test takers from lower class in the US. |
| C．The US ranked the seventh among 41 well-off countries. |
| D．The US average performance is poorer than other countries. |
| A．To present different opinions of the school-reform debate in the US. |
| B．To argue poverty contributes to the low ranking of the US in PISA. |
| C．To illustrate that the US students performed poorly academically. |
| D．To compare the education systems in the US and other countries |
5 . In 1968 Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson set an intelligence test for a class of primary school children at "Oak School" (an invented name) in San Francisco. The teachers were told that the intelligence test bad two purposes. Firstly, it would measure the IQ of the children and secondly it would predict 20% of students who, no matter what their performance to date was like, would be likely to make the most progress during the next school year. The teachers were then told who the predicted top improvers would be.
At the end of the school year, eight months later, the intelligence test was carried out again and, perhaps not surprisingly, the results showed that the 20% of children who had been predicted to improve the most, did in fact do so. They showed, on average, an increase of 12 IQ points on the test, compared with an increase of only 8 points for the other children.
But the fact is that no results of any test were used to predict who would be the top performers. Instead, the lucky children who the teachers were told would be the top improvers were given this label as a matter of chance. This study shows that the label that you are given, and your interaction(互动) with others who notice that label, can have a big influence on the results that you achieve. This phenomenon(现象)has been called the Rosenthal effect. It is also known as the Pygmalion effect, related most famously to the George Bernard Show play Pygmalion , which shows the effect that two men have in changing an untidy flower girl into a well-spoken lady.
For ethical (道德的)reasons the researchers at "Oak School!" only concentrated on trying to produce positive results in the children's performance. However, it is worth asking yourself what the effects on 20% of students considered least likely to improve in the following school year might have been. A frightening thought.
1. What did the study find about the predicted top performers at the end of the school year?| A．They showed more interest in tests. | B．They really made the most progress. |
| C．They became less confident than before. | D．They were as intelligent as the other children. |
| A．According to the teachers' judgement. | B．Based on the test results. |
| C．By chance. | D．Openly. |
| A．They might be willing to accept positive results. |
| B．They would likely have frightening thoughts. |
| C．They would likely make the least progress. |
| D．They might work much harder than before. |
| A．The Rosenthal effect | B．A play by Bernard Shaw. |
| C．A school in San Francisco. | D．The labels given to children. |
6 . We talk continuously about how to make children more “resilient (有恢复力的)”, but whatever we’re doing, it’s notworking. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?
Nassim Taleb invented the word “antifragile” and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune (免疫的) system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens (过敏原) in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.
Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive (剥夺) them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.
It’s not the kids’ fault. In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s as cable TV and later the Internet exposed everyone, more and more, to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less. Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.
Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence. Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth. Norwegian play researchers Ellen Sandseter warned: “We may observe an increased anxiety or mental disorders in society if children are forbidden from participating in age adequate risky play.”
They wrote those words in 2011. Over the following few years, their prediction came true. Kids born after 1994 are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression than did the previous generation.
What can we do to change these trends? We can’t guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go—and let them grow.
1. Why does the author mention the immune system in Paragraph 2?| A．To stress its importance. | B．To analyze the cause of anxiety. |
| C．To question the latest discovery. | D．To help understand a new word. |
| A．they are concerned about their children’s safety |
| B．they want to keep children from being teased |
| C．parent-monitored activities are a must |
| D．children are not independent enough |
| A．promote children’s resilience |
| B．strengthen children’s friendship |
| C．reduce children’s risky behavior |
| D．develop children’s leadership skills |
| A．Stop trying to perfect your child. |
| B．It takes great courage to raise children. |
| C．Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. |
| D．The more exposed the children are to the risks, the more resilient they would become. |
7 . One day, I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physical problem, while the student claimed a perfect score. I was elected as their arbiter (仲裁人). I read the examination problem: “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer (气压计).” The student had answered, “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of it is the height of the building.”
The student had really answered the question completely, but the answer didn’t confirm his competence in physics. I suggested the student try again. I gave him six minutes to answer the question, warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. Five minutes later, he said he had many answers and dashed off one, which read “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, use the physical formula (公式) to calculate the height of the building.”
At this point, my colleague had to accept it, and then the student made almost full marks. I couldn’t help asking the student what the other answers were. He listed many others and then added, “Probably the best is to take the barometer to the administrator and said to him, ‘Sir, here is a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of the building, 1 will give it to you.”‘
Then, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
The name of the student was Bohr who later was famous all over the world. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.
1. The student got a zero at the beginning because .| A．the teacher wasn’t satisfied with him. |
| B．his answer wasn’t complete or correct |
| C．his answer didn’t show his knowledge of physics |
| D．the teacher didn’t fully understand his answer |
| A．the administrator told Bohr the height |
| B．the student knew the expected answer |
| C．the author preferred Bohr’s last answer |
| D．the teacher was a very stubborn person |
| A．instructors can teach students how to think |
| B．arbiters can help students to get high scores |
| C．teachers should make students use physical formulas |
| D．students should be given more freedom in thinking |
| A．Critical | B．Optimistic |
| C．Objective | D．Ambiguous |
8 . On June 17, 1774, the officials from Maryland and Virginia held a talk with the Indians of the Six Nations. The Indians were invited to send boys to William and Mary College. In a letter the next day they refused the offer as follows:
We know that you have a high opinion of the kind of learning taught in your colleges, and that the costs of living of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you must know that different nations have different ways of looking at things, and you will therefore not be offended if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the college of the northern provinces: they were taught all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad manners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods — they were totally good for nothing.
We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we refuse to accept it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, teach them all we know, and make men of them.
1. The passage is about ____.| A．the talk between the Indians and the officials |
| B．the colleges of the northern provinces |
| C．the educational values of the Indians |
| D．the problems of the Americans in the mid-eighteen century |
| A．express their opinions on equal treatment |
| B．politely refuse a friendly offer |
| C．show their pride |
| D．describe Indian customs |
| A．it would be better for their boys to receive some schooling |
| B．they were being insulted by the offer |
| C．they knew more about science than the officials |
| D．they had better way of educating young men |
| A．young women should also be educated |
| B．they had different goals of education |
| C．they taught different branches of science |
| D．they should teach the sons of the officials first |
In our grandparents’ time, it was unthinkable. In our parents’ time, it was unusual and nobody spoke openly about counseling. These days, more and more schools are asking for this service and it is considered a necessity for most. Why is it? What has changed in the last fifty years to have made counseling at schools so important?
“One reason is that we expect schools to do more to protect their pupils than we did in the past,” says school counselor, Mike Hudson. “Also, our society doesn’t work as well as it should. Many parents are either under pressure of work or face the economic problems of unemployment, while children are under more and more pressure to do well at school. Many pupils feel they are pushed to their limits by their parents and teachers.”
Most school children face some kind of relationship problem at some stage with family members, teachers or other pupils, so it helps to have somebody to talk to.
From the pupil’s point of view, it is easier to talk to a counselor in confidence rather than a family member or teacher. This solution is less embarrassing to pupils, who are not forced to face the person that they had problems with in the first place. They can calmly talk things through without arguments.
School counselors advise not only students but also their teachers and parents, and offer other services as well, such as deciding learning disabilities or assisting parents and guardians to make the correct decisions about their children’ s education.
Counselors can help students with problems ranging from the most serious, like a death in the family, to what an adult would consider really trivial, like an argument with a friend.
In a society that is becoming more and more stressful, this service is providing children with a supportive way to express their fear and worries.
1. Why is school counseling becoming important?
| A．Pupils are not well protected in school. |
| B．Parents can’t help their children in learning. |
| C．Parents and pupils are under too much pressure. |
| D．The relationship between parents and schools is worse. |
| A．bear high pressure themselves |
| B．are the guarantee of school success |
| C．have more responsibilities than teachers |
| D．are more likely to be accepted when pupils have problems |
| A．unimportant | B．puzzling |
| C．difficult | D．urgent |
| A．The development of school counseling. |
| B．The reasons for school counseling’s popularity. |
| C．The advantages and disadvantages of school counseling. |
| D．The comparison of the past and present school counseling. |
10 . When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance，the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as entertainment, but certainly not an education priority（优先）. This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception(视角) that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotive（情感的）meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.
The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our curiosities our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses.
So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.
1. According to paragraph 1, students ________.| A．regard music as a way of entertainment |
| B．disagree with their parents on education |
| C．view music as an overlooked subject |
| D．prefer the arts to science |
| A．compare it with rock music |
| B．show music identifies a society |
| C．introduce American musical traditions |
| D．prove music influences people’s lifestyles |
| A．approach the world from different angles |
| B．explore different phenomena of the world |
| C．express people’s feeling in different ways |
| D．explain what it means to be human differently |
| A．Music education deserves more attention. |
| B．Music should be of top education priority. |
| C．Music is an effective communication tool. |
| D．Music education makes students more imaginative. |
