1 .

A．He thinks that time is very limited.	B．He has difficulty reading so many pages.
C．He can’t get access to the assigned book.	D．He refuses to read the assigned book.

2 . Reading the Screen

The debate on literacy is one of the most heated in education. On the one hand, there is an army of people convinced that traditional skills of reading and writing are declining. On the other hand, a large number of progressives protest that literacy is much more complicated than a simple technical mastery of reading and writing. This second position is supported by most of the relevant academic work over the past 20 years. These studies argue that literacy can only be understood in its social and technical context. In Renaissance England, for example, many more people could read than could write, and within reading there was a distinction between those who could read print and those who could manage the more difficult task of reading manuscripts (手稿). An understanding of these earlier periods helps us understand today’s “crisis in literacy” debate.

It seems that there has been an overall decline in some aspects of reading and writing—you only need to compare the newspapers of today with those of 50 years ago to see a clear decrease in vocabulary and simplification of sentence patterns.

While reading a certain amount of writing is as crucial as it has ever been in industrial societies, it is doubtful whether a fully extended grasp of either is as necessary as it was 40 years ago. While print holds much of its authority as a source of topical information, television has increasingly taken this role. The ability to write fluent letters has been weakened by the telephone and research suggests that for many people the only use for writing, outside formal education, is making shopping lists.

The decision of some car factories to issue their instructions to mechanics as a video pack rather than as a handbook might end the automatic link between industrialization and literacy. On the other hand, it is also the case that ever-increasing numbers of people make their living out of writing, which is better rewarded than ever before. Schools are generally seen as institutions where books rule—films and recorded sound have almost no place, but it is not clear that this opposition is appropriate. While you may not need to read and write to watch television, you certainly need to be able to read and write in order to make programs. Those who work in new media are anything but literate. The traditional oppositions between old and new media are inadequate for understanding the world which a young child now encounters. There is evidence that children are mastering reading and writing in order to get on to the Internet.

Nevertheless, there is a crisis in literacy and it would be foolish to ignore it. To understand that literacy may be declining because it is less central to some aspects of everyday life is not the same as reluctantly accepting this state of affairs. The production of school work with the new technologies could be a significant stimulus to literacy. How should these new technologies be introduced into the schools? It isn’t enough to call for computers in every classroom. They will stand unused unless they are properly combined with the educational culture.

1. When discussing the debate on literacy in education, the writer notes that________.

A．children can read and write as well as they used to

B．academic work has improved over the last 20 years

C．there is evidence that literacy is related to external factors

D．people’s reading skills are more important than writing skills

2. What is the writer’s main point in the 4th paragraph?

A．The printed word is both gaining and losing power.

B．The car factories’ decision brings benefits to labors.

C．Those who do manual jobs no longer need to read.

D．New media offers the best career for the literate.

3. According to the passage, what is the main problem that schools face today?

A．How to teach students the skills of reading and writing.

B．How to apply new technologies to classroom teaching.

C．Raising money to purchase technological equipment.

D．Managing the widely differing levels of literacy among pupils.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Modern communication has completely replaced writing letters.

B．New media has the potential to promote students’ literacy.

C．New technologies are inadequate for us to know about children’s world.

D．Current newspapers use more complicated sentence patterns than before.