These days, college applicants are applying to more colleges because online and common applications make the process easier.
For many families, the most important thing colleges can do is show them the money, especially this year; the weak economy makes parents nervous.
| A．Besides, top colleges are facing changes in the population. |
| B．What contributes to it? |
| C．But a mistake can be costly if it happens. |
| D．But top colleges ignore them. |
| E．They have international students who know English. |
| F．It can mean several acceptances to choose from. |
| G．They cannot afford college as planned. |
As a writer, I know about winning contests – and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard on a story only to receive a rejection letter from the publisher. I also know the pressure of trying to live up to a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn’t win the contest again? That’s the strange thing about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and destroyed hopes can resurface in our children.
A revelation (启示) came last week when I asked her, “Don’t you want to win again?” “No,” she replied, “I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade.”
I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously (自发地) told them. Telling myself that I was merely an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first grade was quickly “guided” by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her first music lesson. I had turned her contest into my contest without even realizing it.
Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting my daughter’s experience.
While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with more steps, putting myself far enough away to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while I will be reminding myself that children need room to experiment, grow and find their own voices.
1. What do we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．A lot of amusements compete for children’s time nowadays. |
| B．Children have lots of fun doing mindless activities. |
| C．Rebecca is much too busy to enjoy her leisure time. |
| D．Rebecca draws on a lot of online materials for her writing. |
| A．She was constantly under pressure to write more. |
| B．Most of her stories had been rejected by publishers. |
| C．She did not quite live up to her reputation as a writer. |
| D．Her road to success was full of pain and frustrations. |
| A．She believed she possessed real talent for writing. |
| B．She was sure of winning with her mother’s help. |
| C．She wanted to share her stories with readers. |
| D．She had won a prize in the previous contest. |
| A．trying not to let her daughter enjoy her own life |
| B．trying to get her daughter to do the thing as the author wished |
| C．making sure that her daughter would win the contest |
| D．helping her daughter develop real skills for writing |
3 . Four Habits to Help You Succeed
We will want to succeed, whether it’s in losing weight or learning the guitar. For those who have tried and failed, success seems difficult to understand. Why does one person succeed where another person fails?
1. Identify your core (核心) values.
Finding your core values is in line with creating inner motivation.
2. Pick a goal and focus on it.
Choose one goal to start something large enough that will give you a sense of achievement, while adjusting well to your core values. Focus is key here.
3. Set a deadline for success.
Set a date for success. Identify when you hope to achieve your goal.
4.
Failure can’t be avoided when you take risks. Many people give up far too early. Use failure. Treat it as a good thing, and march on!
| A．The more focused you are on one goal, the higher chance you have of success. |
| B．Make the right decision. |
| C．I’ve made a list of four habits to help you set goals and achieve them. |
| D．Stick to your goal. |
| E．Keep it realistic, while not giving you too much time. |
| F．Sit and reflect on what you value most. |
| G．Push yourself to be courageous, and take that next step. |
4 . Children start out as natural scientists, eager to look into the world around them. Helping them enjoy science can be easy; there’s no need for a lot of scientific terms or expensive lab equipment. You only have to share your children’s curiosity (好奇). Firstly, listen to their questions. I once visited a classroom of seven-year-olds to talk about science as a job. The children asked me “textbook questions” about schooling, salary (薪水) and whether I liked my job. When I finished answering, we sat facing one another in silence. Finally I said, “Now that we’re finished with your lists, do you have questions of your own about science?”
After a long pause, a boy raised his hand, “Have you ever seen a grasshopper (蚱蜢) eat? When I try eating leaves like that, I get a stomachache. Why?”
This began a set of questions that lasted nearly two hours.
Secondly, give them time to think. Studies over the past 30 years have shown that, after asking a question, adults typically wait only one second or less for an answer, no time for a child to think. When adults increase their “wait time” to three seconds or more, children give more logical (符合逻辑的), complete and creative answers.
Thirdly, watch your language. Once you have a child involved in a science discussion, don’t jump in with “That’s right” or “Very good”. These words work well when it comes to encouraging good behavior (行为). But in talking about science, quick praise can signal that discussion is over. Instead, keep things going by saying “That’s interesting” or “I’d never thought of it that way before”, or coming up with more questions or ideas.
Never push a child to “Think”. It doesn’t make sense, children are always thinking, without your telling them to. What’s more, this can turn a conversation into a performance. The child will try to find the answer you want, in as few words as possible, so that he will be a smaller target (目标) for your disagreement.
Lastly, show; don’t tell. Real-life impressions of nature are far more impressive than any lesson children can learn from a book or a television program. Let children look at their fingertips through a magnifying glass (放大镜), and they’ll understand why you want them to wash before dinner. Rather than saying that water vaporates (蒸发), set a pot of water to boil and let them watch the water level drop.
1. According to the passage, children are natural scientists, and to raise their interest, the most important thing for adults to do is _______.| A．let them see the world around |
| B．share the children’s curiosity |
| C．explain difficult phrases about science |
| D．supply the children with lab equipment |
| A．any questions |
| B．any problems |
| C．questions from textbooks |
| D．any number of questions |
| A．ask them to answer quickly |
| B．wait for one or two seconds after a question |
| C．tell them to answer the next day |
| D．wait at least for three seconds after a question |
| A．The second and third. |
| B．The fourth and fifth. |
| C．The fifth. |
| D．The seventh. |
| A．tell their children stories instead of reciting facts |
| B．offer their children chances to see things for themselves |
| C．be patient enough when their children answer questions |
| D．encourage their children to ask questions of their own |
The main reason for violence acts are the films and cartoons that fill the children’s time. They want to do everything they watch on TV and never think of the consequences, and they may hurt a classmate or a teacher.
On the other hand, parents are not fully satisfied with the children’s results obtained in classes and they consider private classes would have better results.
When a teacher has to watch 30 students in class he can’t probably see what each of them is doing, how he is writing, or if he understands the explanations. At home the teacher can explain in details everything the child doesn’t understand as many times as he considers proper.
And many times the child grows fond of the teacher at home, who becomes his best friend, and who helps him whenever he needs someone to talk to.
However, the best solution would be a mixture between the education received at school and that at home, because school makes children communicate and socialize. Keeping a child at home for fear there might happen something bad to him only makes the child’s character weak and prevents him from knowing what real life is. Staying in a crystal ball only does harm to the child.
All in all, schools have been created to help children, not to harm them, so it’s best to keep children in these special places, where they learn, laugh, have fun and make new friends.
1. The writer’s purpose in writing the text is to ________.
| A．teach parents the ways to keep their children safe |
| B．show solutions to developing children’s character |
| C．explain the main reason for violence acts in schools |
| D．analyze an education problem and give opinions |
| A．Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Classes |
| B．Who is to Blame, Parents or Schools? |
| C．Which Is Better, School Study or Home Study? |
| D．The Relationship between Teachers and Children |
| A．A toy that can be used for entertainment. |
| B．A safe and comfortable environment. |
| C．A round object that is made of crystal. |
| D．An obstacle that is hard to overcome. |
| A．violence TV programs have bad effects on children’s behavior |
| B．the teacher at home is more patient than the teacher at school |
| C．children today are weak from lack of sense of right and wrong |
| D．there are too many students in class for a teacher to teach |
Any society which is interested in equality of opportunity and standards of achievement must regularly test its pupils. The standards may be changed—no examination is perfect — but to have no tests or examinations would mean the end of equality and of standards. There are groups of people who oppose this view and who do not believe either in examinations or in any controls in schools or on teachers. This would mean that everything would depend on luck since every pupil would depend on the efficiency, the values and the purpose of each teacher.
Without examinations, employers will look for employees from the highly respected schools and from families known to them--- a form of favoritism will replace equality. At the moment, the bright child from ill-respected school can show certificates to prove he or she is suitable for the job, while the lack of certificate indicates the unsuitability of a dull child attending a well-respected school. This defence of excellence and opportunity would disappear if examinations were taken away, and the bright child from a poor family would be a prisoner of his or her school’s reputation, unable to compete with the child from the favored school.
The opponents of the examination system suggest that examinations are an evil force because they show differences between pupils. According to these people, there must be no special, different, academic class. They have even suggested that there should be no form of difference in sport or any other area: all jobs or posts should be filled by unsystematic selection. The selection would be made by people who themselves are probably selected by some computer.
1. The underlined word “favoritism” in paragraph three is used to describe the phenomenon that _______.
| A．bright children also need certificate to get satisfying jobs. |
| B．children from well-respected schools tend to have good jobs. |
| C．poor children with certificates are favored in job markets. |
| D．children attending ordinary schools achieve great success. |
| A．Schools for bright children would lose their reputation. |
| B．There would be more opportunities and excellence. |
| C．Children from poor families would be able to change their schools. |
| D．Children’s job opportunity would be affected by their school reputation. |
| A．jobs should not be assigned by systematic selection. |
| B．computers should be selected to take over many jobs. |
| C．special classes are necessary to keep the school standards. |
| D．schools that win academic subjects should be done away with. |
| A．schools and certificates. | B．examination and equality. |
| C．opportunity and employment. | D．standards and reputation. |
7 . Everyone knows about straight-A students. We see them frequently in TV situation comedies and in movies like Revenge of the Nerds. They get high grades, all right, but only by becoming dull laborers, their noses always stuck in a book. They are not good at social communication and look clumsy while doing sports.
How, then, do we account for Domenica Roman or Paul Melendres?
Roman is on the tennis team at Fairmont Senior High School. She also sings in the choral group, serves on the student council and is a member of the mathematics society. For two years she has maintained A's in every subject. Melendres, a freshman at the University of New Mexico, was student body president at Valley High School in Albuquerque. He played soccer and basketball well, exhibited at the science fair, and meanwhile worked as a reporter on a local television station. Being a speech giver at the graduation ceremony, he achieved straight A's in. his regular classes, plus bonus points for A's in two college-level courses.
How do super-achievers like Roman and Melendres do it? Brains aren't the only answer. “Top grades don't always go to the brightest students,” declares Herbert Walberg, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has conducted major studies on super-achieving students. “Knowing how to make the most of your innate abilities counts for more. Much more.”
In fact, Walberg says, students with high IQ sometimes don't do as well as classmates with lower IQ. For them, learning comes too easily and they never find out how to get down.
Hard work isn't the whole story, either. “It's not how long you sit there with the books open,” said one of the many straight-A students we interviewed. “It's what you do while you're sitting.” Indeed, some of these students actually put in fewer hours of homework time than their lower-scoring classmates.
The kids at the top of the class get there by mastering a few basic techniques that others can readily learn.
1. The underlined word “nerds” can probably be __________| A．dull bookworms lacking sports and social skills |
| B．successful top students popular with their peers |
| C．students with certain learning difficulties |
| D．born leaders crazy about social activities |
| A．Most TV programs and films are about straight-A students. |
| B．People have unfavorable impression of straight-A students. |
| C．Everyone knows about straight-A students from TV or films. |
| D．Straight-A students are well admired by people in society. |
| A．they are born cleverer than others | B．they work longer hours at study |
| C．they make full use of their abilities | D．they know the shortcut to success |
| A．The interviews with more students. | B．The role IQ plays in learning well. |
| C．The techniques to be better learners. | D．The achievements top students make. |
| A．IQ is more important than hard work in study. |
| B．The brightest students can never get low grades. |
| C．Top students certainly achieve all-around developments. |
| D．Students' with average IQ can become super-achievers. |
We'd just finished John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I've read it many times.”
But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I've taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel's terrible logic-the giving way of dreams to fate.
For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school-one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan's upper classes-into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph.D.'s.
Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn't always read from the expected point of view.
About The Red Pony, one student said, “it's about being a man, it's about manliness.” I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth's soliloquies read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck's writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they're all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.
Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
1. The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to __________.| A．realize our dreams | B．give support to our life |
| C．smooth away difficulties | D．awake our emotions |
| A．Because they spent much time reading it. | B．Because they had read the novel before. |
| C．Because they came from a public school. | D．Because they had similar life experiences. |
| A．she was a literary-minded girl | B．her parents were immigrants |
| C．she couldn't fit in with her class | D．her father was then in prison |
| A．creatively | B．passively | C．repeatedly | D．carelessly |
| A．introduce classic works of literature | B．advocate teaching literature to touch the heart |
| C．argue for equality among high school students | D．defend the current testing system |
Little wonder the latest survey concludes that the extent and type of hospital teaching available differ a great deal across the country. It is found that half the hospitals in England which admit children have no teacher. A further quarter have only a part-time teacher. The special children’s hospitals in major cities do best; general hospitals in the country and holiday areas are worst off. From this survey, one can estimate that fewer than one in five children have some contact with a hospital teacher—and that contact may be as little as two hours a day. Most children interviewed were surprised to find a teacher in hospital at all. They had not been prepared for it by parents or their own school. If there was a teacher they were much more likely to read books and do math or number work; without a teacher they would only play games.
Reasons for hospital teaching range from preventing a child falling behind and maintaining the habit of school to keeping a child occupied, and the latter is often all the teacher can do. The position and influence of many teachers was summed up when parents referred to them as “the library lady” or just “the helper”. Children tend to rely on concerned school friends to keep in touch with school work. Several parents spoke of requests for work being ignored or refused by the school. Once back at school children rarely get extra teaching, and are told to catch up as best as they can.
Many short-stay child-patients catch up quickly. But schools do very little to ease the anxiety about falling behind expressed by many of the children interviewed.
1. Which of the following statements is true?| A．Every child in hospital receives some teaching. | B．Not enough is known about hospital teaching. |
| C．Hospital teaching is of poor quality. | D．The special children's hospitals are worst off. |
| A．hospital teaching across the country is similar |
| B．each hospital has at least one part-time teacher |
| C．all hospitals surveyed offer education to children |
| D．only one-fourth of the hospitals have a full-time teacher |
| A．not welcomed by the children and their parents | B．necessary |
| C．not welcomed by the hospitals | D．capable |
| A．hospital teachers | B．schoolmates | C．parents | D．school teachers |
| A．unfavorable towards children receiving education in hospitals |
| B．in favor of the present state of teaching in hospitals |
| C．unsatisfied with the present state of hospital teaching |
| D．satisfied with the results of the latest survey |
My students were middle managers, financial analysts and financiers from state owned enterprises and global companies. They were not without talent or opinions, but they had been shaped by an educational system that rarely stressed or rewarded critical thinking or inventiveness. The scene I just described came in different forms during my two years’ teaching at the school. Papers were often copied from the Web and the Harvard Business Review. Case study debates were written up and just memorized. Students frequently said that copying is a superior business strategy, better than inventing and creating.
In China, every product you can imagine has been made and sold. But so few well developed marketing and management minds have been raised that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.
With this problem in mind, partnerships with institutions like Yale and MIT have been established. And then there’s the “thousand talent scheme”: this new government program is intended to improve technological modernization by attracting top foreign trained scientists to the mainland with big money. But there are worries about China’s research environment. It’s hardly known for producing independent thinking and openness, and even big salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.
At last, for China, becoming a major world creator is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities. Nor is it about gathering a group of well-educated people and telling them to think creatively. It’s about establishing a rich learning environment for young minds. It’s not that simple.
1. Why does the author feel disappointed at his students?| A．Because there is one group presenting a catering service. |
| B．Because the six groups made projects for restaurant chains. |
| C．Because all the students copied a case for the difficult topic. |
| D．Because the students’ ideas were lacking in creativeness. |
| A．China can make and sell any product all over the world |
| B．high pay may not solve the problem of China’s research environment |
| C．cooperation with institutions has been set up to make a Chinese brand |
| D．the new government program are aimed at encouraging imagination |
| A．Look for a New Way of Learning. | B．Reward Creative Thinking. |
| C．How to Become a Creator. | D．Establish a technical Environment. |
