One topic is rarely mentioned in all the talk of improving standards in our schools: the almost complete failure of foreign-language teaching. As a French graduate who has taught for more than twenty-five years, I believe I have some idea of why the failure is so total.   55   the faults already found out in the education system as a whole-such as child-cantered learning, the “discovery”method, and the low expectations by teachers of pupils-there have been several serious     56     which have a direct effect on language teaching.

The first is the removal from the curriculum(课程)of the thorough teaching of English

57    . Pupils now do not know a verb from a noun, the subject of a sentence from its object, or the difference between the past, present, or future.

Another important error is mixed-ability teaching, or teaching in ability groups so   58    that the most able pupils are     59     and are bored while the least able are lost and    60   Bored. Strangely enough, few head teachers seem to be in favor of mixed-ability school football teams.

Progress depends on memory, and pupils start to forget immediately they stop having     61     lessons. This is why many people who attended French lessons at school, even those who got good grades, have forgotten it a few years later.  62     they never need it, they do not practice it.

Most American schools have accepted what is inevitable and     63     modem languages, even Spanish, from the curriculum. Perhaps it is time for Britain to do the same, and stop     64     resources on a subject which few pupils want or need.


55.A.Due to

B.In addition to

C.Instead of

D.In spite of

56.A.errors

B.situations

C.systems

D.methods

57.A.vocabulary

B.culture

C.grammar

D.literature

58.A.wide

B.similar

C.separate

D.unique

59.A.kept out

B.turned down

C.help back

D.left behind

60.A.surprisingly

B.individually

C.equally

D.regular

61.A.extra

B.traditional

C.basic

D.regular

62.A.Although

B.Because

C.Until

D.Unless

63.A.restored

B.absorbed

C.prohibited

D.withdrawn

64.A.wasting

B.focusing

C.exploiting

D.sharing

 

      If the world were a village of 1,000 people it would include:

• 584 Asians

• 124 Africans

• 95 Eastern and Western Europeans

• 84 Latin Americans

• 55 former Soviets ( including Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and other national groups)

• 52 North Americans

• 6 Australians and New Zealanders

The people of the village would speak:

• 165 Mandarin

• 86 English

• 83 Hindu/Urdu

• 64 Spanish

• 58 Russian

• 37 Arabic

The above list covers the mother tongues of only half the village.

One-third of the people in the village are children, and only 60 are over the age of 65. Just under half of the married women in the village have access to modem equipments.

This year 28 babies will be bom. Ten people will die, 3 of them for lack of food, 1 from can­cer. Two of the deaths will be of babies bom within the year. With the 28 births and 10 deaths, the population of the village next year will be 1,018.

In this village of 1,000 persons, 200 people receive 75 percent of the income; another 200 re­ceive only 2 percent of the income.

About one-third have access to clean, safe drinking water.

Of the 670 adults in the village, half can not read nor write.

The village has a total yearly budget (预算) , public and private, of over $3 million―$ 3 ,000 per person if it is distributed evenly. Of the total $3 million:

$ 181,000 goes to weapons and warfare

$ 159,000 to education

$ 132,000 to health care

These weapons are under the control of just 100 of the people. The other 900 are watching them with deep anxiety, wondering whether they can learn to get along together.

60. Which of the following is true about Mandarin according to the text?

A. Nearly one-third of Asian people speak Mandarin in the village.

B. About 8.25 per cent of the people speak Mandarin in the village.

C. About 16. 5 per cent of the people speak Mandarin in the village.

D. Nearly all the Mandarin-speaking people are from Asia in the village.

61. Which of the following problems is NOT mentioned in the text?

A. Poverty.             B. Education.          C. Environment.          D. Marriage.

62. The underlined part “have access to” (in Para. 4) means_____.

A. use                    B. buy                  C. produce               D. try

63. The last sentence in the text implies that most of the people long for _____.

A. a peaceful world                                 B. good education

C. better health care                               D. a life without anxiety

 

When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it.

Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.

The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality. Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: The person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell - phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents.  " Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends," he says.

If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. Consider that in 1987, there were only l million cell phones in use.  Today, something like 300 million Americans carry them. They far outnumber wired phones in the United States.

1. From the first two paragraphs, we can know________.

A.cell phones have become as addictive as cigarettes

B.cell phone addiction is good for building personal relationships

C.people are longing to have their own cell phones

D.cell phones are the same as cigarettes

2.Cell phone addiction has caused the following effects EXCEPT________  .

A.a barrier to personal contact

B.fewer friends

C.an escape from reality

D.a serious illness

3. The underlined word "curb" in Paragraph 2 means “________. ”

A.ignore

B.control

C.develop

D.rescue

4.The example of a woman talking on the phone in the car supports the idea that________  .

A.women Use cell phones more often than men

B.talking on the phone while driving is dangerous

C.cell phones do not necessarily bring people together

D.cell phones make one - on - one personal contact easy

5.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A.Cell phones Are the New Cigarettes

B.Cell phones Are Harmful to the Society

C.The New Report about the Cell phone

D.The Disadvantages of the Cell phone

 

These days we are all conditioned to accept newness, whatever it costs. Very soon, there is no doubt that Apple's tablet (平板电脑) will seem as a vital tool of modern living to us as sewing machine did to our grandparents. At least, it will until someone produces an even smarter, thinner and more essential tablet, which, if recent history is any guide, will be in approximately six months' time. Turn your back for a moment and you find that every electronic item in your possession is as old as a tombstone. Why should you care if people laugh just because you use an old mobile phone? But try getting the thing repaired when it goes wrong. It's like walking into a pub and asking for an orange juice. You will be made to feel like some sort of time-traveler from the 1970s. "Why not buy a new one?" you will get asked.

And so the mountain of electrical rubbish grows. An average British person was believed to get rid of quite a number of electronic goods in a lifetime. They weighed three tons, stood 7 feet high, and included five fridges, six microwaves, seven PCs, six TVs, 12 kettles, 35 mobile phones and so on. Even then, the calculation seemed to be conservative. Only 35 mobiles in a lifetime? The huge number of electronic items now regularly thrown away by British families is clearly one big problem. But this has other consequences. It contributes greatly to the uneasy feeling that modem technology is going by faster than we can keep up. By the time I've learnt how to use a tool it's already broken or lost. I've lost count of the number of TV remote-controls that I've bought, mislaid and replaced without working out what most of the buttons did.

And the technology changes so unbelievably fast. It was less than years ago that I spotted an energetic businessman friend pulling what seemed to be either a large container or a small nuclear bomb on wheels through a railway station. I asked. "What have you got in there? Your money or your wife?" "Neither," he replied, with the satisfied look of a man who knew he was keeping pace with the latest technology, no matter how ridiculous he looked. "This is what everyone will have soon—even you. It's called a mobile telephone."

I don't feel sorry for the pace of change. On the contrary, I'm amazed by those high-tech designers who can somehow fit a camera, music-player, computer and phone into a plastic box no bigger than a packet of cigarette. If those geniuses could also find a way to keep the underground trains running on the first snowy day of winter, they would be making real progress for human beings. What I do regret, however, is that so many household items fall behind so soon. My parents bought a wooden wireless radio in 1947, the year they were married. In 1973, the year I went to university, it was still working. It sat in the kitchen like an old friend—which, in a way, it was. It certainly spoke to us more than we spoke to each other on some mornings. When my mum replaced it with a new-style radio that could also play cassette-tapes, I felt a real sense of loss.

Such is the over-excited change of 21st-century technology that there's no time to satisfy our emotional needs. Even if Apple's new products turn out to be the most significant tablets I very much doubt if they will resist this trend.

1.When you try getting an old mobile phone repaired, ____.

A. you are travelling through time            B. you are thought to be out of date

C. you will find everything wrong            D. you have got to buy a new one

2.Throwing away so much electronic rubbish makes the writer feel quite _____.

A. lost and upset    B. unbelievably fast

C. broken or lost     D. regularly wasteful

3.The example of the businessman implies that____.

A. the businessman mastered the latest technology   

B. mobile phones used to be quite big just years ago

C. the businessman was a very ridiculous person     

D. the writer failed to follow modern technology

4.The passage is organized in the pattern of ____.

A. time and events    B. comparison and contrast   

C. cause and effect      D. examples and analysis

5.Which of the following is conveyed in the passage?

A. The fast pace of change brings us no good.     

B. We have to keep up with new technology.

C. Household items should be upgraded quickly.   

D. We should hold on for new technology to last.

 

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网