As the US wakes up to China’s rising status (地位) as an economic and strategic competitor, US parents are urging their children to learn Chinese, reports Julian Borger.
The US is being swept by a rush to learn Mandarin (普通話) -- from wealthy New York mothers hiring Chinese nannies (保姆) for their small children to a defence department education project in Oregon.
The forces driving Mandarin’s momentum (勢頭) are parental ambition for children facing a future in which China is almost certain to be a major player, and the government is worried about that America may get left behind in that new world.
The bottleneck is the supply of teachers. Mandarin instructors are difficult to import and difficult to train. There are visa problems in bringing over teachers from China but the biggest barrier is cultural. Teaching in Asia is generally done by rote and the change to western, interactive styles of instruction can be a large leap（跳越）.
On the other hand, it requires enormous firmness for westerners to learn a language like Chinese, with its thousands of written characters. According to the Asia Society in New York, all of America’s teacher-training institutions turn out only a couple of dozen homegrown Mandarin teachers.
One way to ease the shortage is to find native Mandarin speakers and use fast-track methods to train them. However, the majority of Chinese-Americans grew up speaking Cantonese, the dialect（方言）spoken in Hong Kong, where their parents came from. Many are themselves signing on as Mandarin students at the private language schools springing up on the west coast.
Title : in the USA
走進文言文系列答案科目：高中英語 來源：2011-2012學年福建省三明一中高一下學期第二次月考英語試卷（帶解析） 題型：閱讀理解
United States and Canada are multicultural countries with many national, religious and cultural differences, where people attach great importance to individualism—the uniqueness among people. Teachers value the qualities that make each student special and different. You can see such values through their educational systems. For example, students needn’t memorize lots of information. Instead, they work independently and find answers on their own. There are discussions for children to show their own ideas and opinions.
By contrast, people have the same language, history, and culture in most Asian societies. As a result, Asia’s educational system reflects society’s belief in group goals and purposes rather than individualism. Children in China, Japan, and Korea learn to work together and help one another in assignments. And the teaching methods are often very formal and serious. In class, teachers give lectures while students listen and take notes. Discussion is replaced by reciting rules of information that have been memorized.
These two systems both have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage in Japan is that there is much more math and science than American students learn by the end of high school. In addition, students study more hours each day and more days each year than North Americans do. The difficult system also prepares students for a society that place emphasis on discipline and self-control. However, while memorization is an important learning method in Japanese schools, yet many students admit forgetting much of the information that they have memorized after exams.
On the other hand, the educational system in North American has an advantage that students learn to think for themselves, which prepares them for a society that values creativity. The disadvantage is that when they graduate from high school, they haven’t recited as many basic rules and facts as students in other countries have.
【小題1】People in multicultural countries such as the US or Canada lay more stress on __________.
| A．team work | B．self-control | C．discipline | D．individualism |
| A．There is not much discussion. |
| B．Learning to think for themselves |
| C．Learning much less math and science |
| D．They haven’t memorized basic rules and facts. |
| A．Supportive | B．Opposite | C．Objective | D．Subjective |
| A．cultural differences in countries such as the United States or Canada |
| B．comparisons of educational system between North America and Asia |
| C．there are more advantages of Asian education system of than that of North American |
| D．there are more disadvantages of Asian education system than that of North American |
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科目：高中英語 來源：2010-2011浙江溫州八校高一下學期期末考試英語試卷 題型：閱讀理解
Following the nuclear at the Fukushima (福島) nuclear power station in Japan, Germany has decided to abandon the use of nuclear energy sooner than it had planned.
Germany was planning to cut its use of nuclear power slowly over 25 years. But now, the government has speeded up its program. Germany’s government has said that seven of its 17 nuclear reactors (反應堆) will stop working for three months for safety checks.
Nuclear power has been very unpopular in Germ
any since the Chernobyl (切爾諾貝利) nuclear reactor disaster in Ukraine (烏克蘭) in 1986. Since then, the country has been working on developing new resources of energy.
The plan to give up nuclear power will cost the country at least 150 billion euros (1.4 trillion yuan)) in investment. Experts say this will likely lead to a rise in electricity prices.
Some experts think Germany is setting a good example for countries such as the US to follow. Germany now gets 23 percent of its energy from nuclear power –about as much as the US.
However, France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power, shows no sign of changing its policy.
【小題1】
We can most probably read the article _______.
| A．in a newspaper | B．in a pamphlet(小冊子) |
| C．in an advertisement | D．in a textbook |
| A．Germany to develop its new resources of energy |
| B．Nuclear power no longer popular in Germany |
| C．Germany to have safety checks for some nuclear reactors |
| D．Germany to end its nuclear energy program |
| A．In both the US and Germany, approximately a quarter of their energy are from nuclear power now. |
| B．The explosion of some Fukushima nuclear reactors has quickened Germany’s pace to abandon nuclear energy. |
| C．France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power, will follow Germany and cut its use of it at any cost. |
| D．The Chernobyl nuclear disaster seemingly cast a huge shadow over the Germans, making them increasingly suspicious of the safety of nuclear energy. |
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科目：高中英語 來源：2011屆湖南省瀏陽一中高三第二次月考英語卷 題型：閱讀理解
As the US wakes up to China’s rising status (地位) as an economic and strategic competitor, US parents are urging their children to learn Chinese, reports Julian Borger.
The US is being swept by a rush to learn Mandarin (普通話) -- from wealthy New York mothers hiring Chinese nannies (保姆) for their small children to a defence department education project in Oregon.
The forces driving Mandarin’s momentum (勢頭) are parental ambition for children facing a future in which China is almost certain to be a major player, and the government is worried about that America may get left behind in that new world.
The bottleneck is the supply of teachers. Mandarin instructors are difficult to import and difficult to train. There are visa problems in bringing over teachers from China but the biggest barrier is cultural. Teaching in Asia is generally done by rote and the change to western, interactive styles of instruction can be a large leap（跳越）.
On the other hand, it requires enormous firmness for westerners to learn a language like Chinese, with its thousands of written characters. According to the Asia Society in New York, all of America’s teacher-training institutions turn out only a couple of dozen homegrown Mandarin teachers.
One way to ease the shortage is to find native Mandarin speakers and use fast-track methods to train them. However, the majority of Chinese-Americans grew up speaking Cantonese, the dialect（方言）spoken in Hong Kong, where their parents came from. Many are themselves signing on as Mandarin students at the private language schools springing up on the west coast.
Title : 【小題1】 in the USA
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科目：高中英語 來源：2012屆山西大學附屬中學高三4月月考英語試卷（解析版） 題型：閱讀理解
Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.
"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," thundered a magazine article last year. Species are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface, dead.
But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong: things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the "bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.
Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of mil-lions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics(謀略)to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warming — probably the biggest environmental threat — but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.
The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation(沙漠化) has been accelerating over the last 30 years". But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by about 15 per cent.
Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale, director of Greenpeace UK, said, "There are important examples, such as acid rain and ozone, where things aren't as bad as predicted, and that's because behavior has changed."
1.In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, what is Lomborg's main argument?
|
A．Our planet is in bad shape. |
|
B．The world's environment is improving. |
|
C．The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. |
|
D．Conservation efforts have been successful. |
2.What is Lomborg's main accusation of environmentalists?
|
A．They scared people into making donations. |
|
B．They overturned our basic assumptions about the world's environment. |
|
C．They changed their behavior toward the environment. |
|
D．They only told people bad news about the environment. |
3.The underlined word "depleting" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to "____".
|
A．reducing |
B．limiting |
C．expanding |
D．accelerating |
4.According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
|
A．The total area of forests in the world has increased significantly. |
|
B．The effects of global warming are not as bad as first expected. |
|
C．It appears that the bald eagle will now survive. |
|
D．In the last 50 years the number of whales has increased. |
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科目：高中英語 來源：2013屆度江蘇省高二第一學期期中考試英語題 題型：閱讀理解
Why does a large education nation like China have so few world renowned scientists as the US? Educationists from China and the US try to find out the answer to questions like this at a forum on the basic education strategy.
The forum, held recently, was jointly organized by the Education Development Research Center of the Ministry of Education in China and the Postgraduate School of the University of Pennsylvania in the US. It aims to find out similarities and differences that exist between two countries in their educational system.
While some educationists in China keep a doubtful eye to the country’s educational system in recent years. Their American counterparts give a positive answer to the basic education in China, saying that it is still one of the best in the world.
An American educationist told reporters that the basic education in the US was criticized in recent years due to its political tendency. On the contrary, Chinese government’s stress on basic education and qualified teachers has set a good example.
At primary and middle school, pupils in China did better in math and science lessons than the US pupils. However, few grow to be world “masters”. Why? Educationists attributed this to China’s stress on examination rather than students’ interest.
Deputy Director of the postgraduate school of Pennsylvania University said American teachers encouraged students to focus on their strong points. In China, students are driven to study to pass the entrance examination test and they do not pay much attention to their own interest.
At the forum, director of the Education Development Research Center Mr. Zhang said in the future, the research center would make its middle and long-term basic education strategy by taking some references from other countries including the US.
He also revealed that for a long time in the future, China would make a breakthrough in setting the policy for quality education.
1.This passage is mainly about _________.
A. quality education development in the future
B. why China’s education cultivates(培養(yǎng)) few world masters
C. China’s good basic education
D. genius education at the primary stage
2.The underlined word “renowned” in the first paragraph probably means ________
A. famous B. active C. qualified D. experienced
3.Few pupils in China who did better in math and science lessons than the US pupils grow to be
world “masters”, because _________
A. The US government spends more money on basic education
B. American pupils are cleverer than Chinese pupils
C. basic education in China is not as successful as that of the US
D. Chinese people pay less attention to students’ interest
4. China’s educational system will _______ in the future.
A. help students to study even harder to pass the examination
B. apply more attention to quality education referring to systems of other countries
C. allow students to pay more attention to their own interest without their test results
D. copy the educational system in the US
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