Going to school means learning new skills and facts in different subjects. Teachers teach and students learn, and many scientists are interested in finding ways to improve both teaching and learning processes.
Sian Beilock and Susan Leving, two psychologists at the University of Chicago, are trying to learn about learning. In a new study about the way kids learn math in elementary school, Beilock and Levine found a surprising relationship between what female teachers think and what female students learn: If a female teacher is uncomfortable with her own math skills, then her female students are more likely to believe that boys are better than girls at math. “If these girls keep getting math-anxious female teachers in later grades, it may create a snowball effect on their math achievement,” Levine told Science News. The study suggests that if these girls grow up believing that boys are better at math than girls are, then these girls may not do as well as they would have if they were more confident.
Just as students find certain subjects to be difficult, teachers can find certain subjects to be difficult to learn—and teach. The subject of math can be particularly difficult for everyone.
The new study involved 65 girls, 52 boys and 17 first-and second-grade teachers in elementary schools in the Midwest. The students took math achievement tests at the beginning and end of the school year, and the researchers compared the scores.
The researchers also gave the students tests to tell whether the students believed a math superstar had to be a boy. Then the researchers turned to the teachers: To find out which teachers were anxious about math, the researchers asked the teachers how they felt at times when they came across math, such as when reading a sales receipt. A teacher who got nervous looking at the numbers on a sales receipt, for example, was probably anxious about math.
Boys, on average, were unaffected by a teacher’s anxiety. On average, girls with math-anxious teachers scored lower on the end-of-the-year math tests than other girls in the study did. Plus, on the test showing whether someone thought a math superstar had to be a boy, 20 girls showed feeling that boys would be better at math—and all of these girls had been taught by female teachers with math anxiety.
According to surveys done before this one, college students who want to become elementary school teachers have the highest levels of anxiety about math. Plus, nine of every 10 elementary teachers are women, Levine said.
【小题1】Sian Beilock and Susan Levine carried out the new research in order to ___________.

D
Parties, iPods, concerts, movies, TV shows, video games, traffic. All of these things of the modern world make life entertaining and enjoyable. But our 21^st-century lifestyle is also loud and, if we don’t take notice, it can have an effect on our hearing.
Most teenagers don’t think about hearing loss. But if you experience any of the following symptoms（症状）, you may already be hearing damaged: you make efforts to hear normal talk, you have to turn up the TV or radio so high that others complain, you watch other people’s expressions to understand what they are saying, you ask people to repeat themselves, you misunderstand what people are saying or you hear ringing in your ears.
iPods and other MP3 players are as common as the clothes you wear, and just as fashionable. But if you turn up an iPod to more than 60 percent of its maximum volume（最大音量）, and listen to music for more than an hour, you are asking for trouble. And, it does not matter if the music you play is classical, rock or heavy metal.
Some researchers find that young people who break the so-called 60-percent/60-minute rule in listening to iPods are at the risk of suffering hearing loss.
Why is an iPod dangerous? With ear buds placed directly in the ear canal and high-volume music played over a long period of time, it’s like working in a loud factory all day, being a maintenance（修理）person under a jet airplane or using a jackhammer（手提钻）on a building site.
Similarly, iPod music can cause a short time or permanent（永久的）hearing damage. A loud iPod can cause a ruptured（破裂的）eardrum and, over time, may cause permanent damage to the tiny hairs in the inner ear. If these tiny hairs are damaged, they cannot effectively send sounds to the auditory nerves（听觉神经）that connect to the brain. If this happens, hearing loss becomes permanent.
【小题1】Which of the following shows that you are suffering hearing loss?

Even if these chemicals are still in experimental stages, they _____ to be a number one hit.

    A. intend        B. predict        C. arrange        D. Promise

My bookshelves are full of dust — and with good reason. When it comes to cleaning that part of my home, I suffer from the most serious case of avoidance (回避反应症).
The thing is this: when I do set out to clean and re-organize my books, which seldom happens, I place myself into a really bad situation. No sooner do I take a title from the shelf, blow off the dust, and wipe down the cover than I find myself sitting on the floor with legs crossed and my back against the wall. Pretty soon books get piled up on my legs as I am reunited with old friends.
It is as if these books have voices, and each wants to say its piece. “Remember me? I was given to you when you went into the Navy, so that you would never lack for companionship,” one whispers. Another says, “I was your first book of poems, given to you before you learned to love poetry.” And a third, “I was the book that made history so attractive to you.”
Perhaps the greatest pleasure of re-organizing my books are the surprises — or better said, reunions — that occur. During my latest book-cleaning adventure, I found one that had fallen behind the shelf: “Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.” Not an unusual title, but the words written on the first page made it very special: “With Love from Mom and Dad, Christmas 1965.” What’s this? A book on the physics of lasers（激光）. It is filled with mathematical statements, and I had bought it at a library sale when I was 12, not long after the laser had been invented. I couldn’t understand a bit of it, but I did learn what “laser” meant.
What I end up with when I empty my bookshelves is a cross-section (横剖面) of my personal history. It’s like a road cut where one sees all the layers of rock going back through time to the beginning of the simplest life forms. The books I’ve read — and kept — are not just old friends. They are my résumé.
【小题1】What could be said about the author?

Standardized exam in American public education are being reformed. Over the next four years, hundreds of university professors and testing experts will work together to design new assessment system.

The new tests will be computer-based and will measure higher-order skills ignored by the multiple-choice exams used in all states，including students’ ability to read complex texts, synthesize(合成)information and do research projects．

    Because the new tests will be computerized and will be administered several times throughout the school year, they can provide faster feedback(反馈)to teachers．If these plans work out, It’ll turn the current testing system upside down．

    One group，led by Florida，will be made up of 25 states and the District of Columbia．The group was awarded $170 million．The other group, whose membership over-laps the first，has31 states and is led by Washington．The group was given $160 million．Twelve of the 44 states are

participating in both groups but are expected eventually to choose one set of tests．

   The two groups are supposed to work in a friendly competition，though their plans are very similar．Both groups will produce tests that rely heavily on technology and both groups’ tests will include so-called performance-based tasks，designed to mirror complex，real-world situations．

   In performance-based tasks，students are given a problem－they could be told, for example, to suppose they are a mayor who needs to reduce a city’s pollution—and must write about how they would solve the problem．

   The new tests could be useful to teachers by giving them information on what their students are learning, but it might also require some mid-course adjustments.

   Over the past decade, the federal No Child Left Behind law has emphasized helping low-achieving students improve their basic reading and math by encouraging states to produce tests that measure relatively low-1evel skills. Although the Bush-era law is still on the books, two

years of Obama administration policy have been leading schools in new directions．   

1..  . What is the main idea of this passage?

   A. Obama’s education policy takes the lead.

   B. A computer-based testing system is adopted. 

C. American education system has been changed.

   D. Experts are reinventing the student testing system.

2..   Why are multiple-choice exams to be given up?

   A. Because they are not computer-based.

   B. Because they can’t test students’ higher-order skills.

   C. Because they can’t provide proper feedback for teachers.

   D. Because they can’t test students’ general reading ability.

3..   The underlined part in Para. 4 probably means________.

   A. the two groups have some shared members

   B. the other group is more demanding than the first

   C. the groups have different tasks of their own

   D. the other group does better than the first group in the task

4..   According to the passage, performance-based tasks may refer to tasks that______.

   A. are related to real-world problems

   B. have to be performed in an imaginary world

   C. teach us theories through complex problems

   D. can only be completed by relying heavily on technology

5..  . From the last paragraph, we can infer that_________.

   A. the No child Left Behind policy is not helpful

   B. the Obama administration’s policy is highly praised

   C. the two policies both emphasize math and reading abilities

   D. the two policies both emphasize the development of practical skills