For a generation now, school reform has meant what students must be taught and carried out by standardized（标准化的）tests.
Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose that next year almost every student passed the tests. What would the reaction be from people? Would they shake their heads in respect and say, “Damn, those teachers must be good!”?
Of course not. Such remarkable success would be used as evidence that the tests were too easy and it needs to raise standards. “High standards” really means “standards that all students will never be able to meet”. My little thought experiment uncovers a truth that we have been taught to respond with doubt whenever all members of any group are successful. In America, success doesn’t count unless it is got by only a few.
Consider widespread complaints about “grade inflation（膨胀）” in higher education. Many people don’t even bother to stress that grades have risen over time. They simply point to how many students get A’s right now. The goal, in other words, isn’t to do well but to defeat other people who are also trying to do well. Grades in testing should be used to announce who’s beating whom. A school’s final task, apparently, is not to help everyone learn but to prepare the game so that there will always be losers.
This makes no sense in any situation. Perhaps, for example, we can defend rating states or nations based on the quality of their air, health care or schools, but ranking them is foolish. School testing ranking doesn’t lead to improvements in performance but tends to hold us back from doing our best. It makes productive teamwork less likely and leads all concerned to focus not on meaningful improvements but on trying to beat everyone else.
Most of all, it encourages the false belief that excellence is a zero-sum game. It would be more reasonable to rescue the spirit of the concept: Everyone may not succeed, but at least in theory all of us could.
1.What did the writer’s thought experiment prove?
A.Good teachers represent higher test scores.
B.Excellence is regarded as a rare thing.
C.American tests are usually too easy.
D.Students don’t meet the test standards.
2.What does the writer think American schools seem to do?
A.Promote teachers to teach better. B.Remove the belief of beating others.
C.Help all students do well at school. D.Ensure the existence of failures.
3.What is the writer’s attitude towards schools testing ranking?
A.Disapproving. B.Optimistic.
C.Sympathetic. D.Unconcerned.
4.What is the best title for the text?
A.How Can Students Succeed? B.Why Can’t Everyone Get A’s?
C.What Standards Do Schools Set? D.Who Get Best Grades at School?
Shakespeare’s Globe Exhibition & Theatre Tour is a unique international resource to explore Shakespeare’s works. Open all year round, it gives you an opportunity to learn more about the most famous playwright(剧作家)，Shakespeare, and helps you seek to further the experience and international understanding of him.
Group Visits to the Exhibition &Theatre Tour
Opening Hours
Exhibition: Monday—Sunday 9:00a.m.-5:.0p.m
Theatre Tours:
November-February 9:30a.m.-4:30p.m
March-October Monday: 9:30a.m.-5:00p.m
Tuesday-Saturday 9:30a.m.-12:30p.m Sunday 9:30a.m.-11:30a.m
Groups of 15 people or more are required to pre-book their visit, and each group will have its own guide for free. To make a reservation, please fill in a group request form and return it to us via email.
Exhibition and Theatre Tour Prices
Adult:£15.00 Senior(60+)£13.50 Student( with valid ID)£11.50 Child(5-15) £8.00
Complimentary: Every 16th person is free
• Getting here
Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, London SE19DT,UK
We have currently improved security, with all bags being checked. Please arrive in good time, and do not bring any large bags and check the calendar before your visit or call 44(0)20 7902 1500 to find out about our latest opening times.
Visitors are advised to arrive by public transport or by taxi. There is a car park on Thames Exchange on the north side of Southwark Bridge ( open 24 hours, seven days a week). Cabs may be found all year round on Southwark Bridge. It may also be possible to pick one up from outside the entrance hall on New Globe Walk.
Where to eat
Swan at Shakespeare's Globe serves modern British seasonal food for dinner, afternoon tea or drinks, which is a beautiful bar and restaurant set over two floors, available for pre- and post-theatre dining.
Swan Restaurant
Monday-Friday 12noon-2:30p.m.& 6:00p.m-10:30p.m
Saturday: 12noon-3:30p.m.&6:00p.m
Sunday: 12noon-9:00p.m.
1.If a group of 20 children visit the Exhibition &Theatre Tour , what is required for them to do?
A.They need to hire a guide themselves.
B.They must be accompanied by an adult.
C.They have to pay £ 160 for tickets in total.
D.They need to make a reservation in advance.
2.Which of the following applies to visitors?
A.They're able to get a taxi near Southwark Bridge.
B.They can park on the south side of Southwark Bridge.
C.They are required to deposit their bags before entering.
D.It's more convenient to drive there than taking public transport.
3.What can we know about Swan Restaurant?
A.Afternoon tea is not served on Sunday.
B.It serves traditional seasonal food for dinner.
C.It is closed from 3 p. m. to 5 P. m. on workdays.
D.It serves three meals, drinks and afternoon tea.
Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.
1.你安排了车来飞机场接我，想得真周到。( arrange)
2.医生告诫家长吃太多垃圾食品和快餐食品对孩子身体有害。(warn)
3.通过新技术，这一开发区域为中国发展最快的区域之一。( prove)
4.我们能保证你会对我们产品和服务的质量感到满意。( guarantee)
5.他常常由于巨大的工作压力而整夜失眠，这令家人对他的健康忧心忡忡。( which)
Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words, Use your own words as far as possible.
If someone you know asks you nosy (爱管闲事的) questions, then you are not obliged to answer if you don’t want to. Here it is more important that you have some polite brush-off (拒绝), but it is still not rude for you to refuse.
If you think they shouldn’t have asked the question like ‘How much money do you earn?’, then I strongly recommend looking very shocked and saying ‘I can’t believe you just asked me that!’ and either leaving them to get out of it or moving on yourself to another subject. If they try to press you by saying ‘I was just interested…’. Then you can keep the shocked look and say ‘I’ m not telling you that with as much emphasis as you like on the ‘you’.
But what if the question isn’t quite so unforgivable? Then you need a more smiling response: ‘I can’t possibly tell you that’ or ‘I’m not telling anyone that’ or ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ But you must stand firm, because otherwise they’ll never learn and will keep expecting you to tell them your innermost secrets. There is certainly never any need to tell your secrets just because someone else told theirs.
There are questions that seem perfectly reasonable- ‘Are you planning to move?’, ‘Are you going to go back to work?’, ‘Are you going on holiday this year?’-but if answered truthfully might lead to unexpected revelations of something bad. Here you are free to tell white lies and say ‘We don’t know/ haven’t decided yet/ haven’t really thought about it’. Looking vague and changing the subject is the key here. If the question was reasonable, then it’s polite to embarrass the asker as little as possible-they were probably only making conversation in the first place.
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The Polities of Social Media
In recent years, social media has become the fastest way to reach the greatest number of people. 1. Because of this, politicians have started using it extensively to further their campaigns.
Initially, this sounds like a good idea. Politicians need to use methods that are familiar and relevant to voters, and social media is much more interactive than traditional campaign advertising. 2. By inter-acting on social media, politicians can find out what is truly important to constituents (选民). In a way, this makes the process even more democratic.
3.. In a US Senate election, a conservative organization conducted a campaign against the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. It opened several fake accounts and sent out Twitter messages accusing her of accepting bribes, Twitter found out about it and shut the accounts down, but the messages had already reached over 60,000 people, and the result stayed in search engines even longer. She lost the election to the Republican candidate, and while there are other reasons that are likely to have influenced her loss, this shows how easily false information can spread.
Of course, the false information online doesn’t only come from politicians. There are a host of other ways news sources and advertisers try to influence our views. Even respected news sites such as CNN have used staged reports related to war news, just to create a greater sense of drama. 4.. If you follow the news closely, it’s usually easy to see whether the news is more conservative or liberal leaning.
Does social media make politics more transparent or does it distort them even more? That may depend on what sites you read and how well you check your facts.
A. Perhaps the speed and extent is all that has really changed.
B. However, it can also be misused in a way that is far more effective than negative advertising.
C. Most news outlets, while supposedly unbiased(无偏见的), do have certain political preference.
D. If a politician does something ridiculous online, people notice and call them out on it.
E. A tweet or video can reach hundreds of thousands in just a few hours.
F. Users can comment on statements and make suggestions for new discussions.
What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem totally impossible. How could such extremely complex influences pass from the mother to the child? There is no connection between their nervous systems. Even the blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly. An emotional shock to the mother will affect her child, because it changes the activity of her glands and so the chemistry of her blood. Any chemical change in the mother’s blood will affect the child for better or worse. But we can not see how a looking for mathematics or poetic genius can be dissolved in blood and produce a similar liking or genius in the child.
In our discussion of instincts we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior. It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics. It may be, however, that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence. If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics, they will probably make a success of that study.
As for musical ability, it may be that what is inherited is an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or the vocal organs connections between nerves and muscles that make it comparatively easy to learn the movements a musician must execute, and particularly vigorous emotions. If these factors are all organized around music, the child may become a musician. The same factors, in other circumstance might be organized about some other center of interest. The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry. The capable fingers might develop skill in surgery. It is not the knowledge of music that is inherited, then nor even the love of it, but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill. Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other undertaking may be decided entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.
1.Which of the following statements is not true?
A.Some mothers try to influence their unborn children by studying art and other subjects during their pregnancy.
B.It is utterly impossible for us to learn anything about prenatal development.
C.The blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly.
D.There are no connection between mother’s nervous systems and her unborn child’s.
2.A mother will affect her unborn baby on the condition that ______.
A.she is emotionally shocked
B.she has a good knowledge of inheritance
C.she takes part in all kind of activities
D.she sticks to studying
3.According to the passage, a child may inherit ______.
A.everything from his mother
B.a knowledge of mathematics
C.a rather general ability that we call intelligence
D.her mother’s musical ability
4.If a child inherits something from his mother, such as an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or of the vocal organs, he will _____.
A.surely become musician
B.mostly become a poet
C.possibly become a teacher
D.become a musician on the condition that all these factors are organized around music
