一、Part Ⅱ Listening Comprehension
1、Question 1 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、She can devote all her life to pursuing her passion.
B、Her accumulated expertise helps her to achieve her goals.
C、She can spread her academic ideas on a weekly TV show.
D、Her research findings are widely acclaimed in the world.
2、Question 2 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Provision of guidance for nuclear labs in Europe.
B、Touring the globe to attend science TV shows.
C、Overseeing two research groups at Oxford.
D、Science education and scientific research.
3、Question 3 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、A better understanding of a subject.
B、A stronger will to meet challenges.
C、A broader knowledge of related fields.
D、A closer relationship with young people.
4、Question 4 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、By applying the latest research methods.
B、By making full use of the existing data.
C、By building upon previous discoveries.
D、By utilizing more powerful computers.
5、Question 5 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、They can predict future events.
B、They have no special meanings.
C、They have cultural connotations.
D、They cannot be easily explained.
6、Question 6 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、It was canceled due to bad weather.
B、She overslept and missed the flight.
C、She dreamed of a plane crash.
D、It was postponed to the following day.
7、Question 7 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、They can be affected by people’s childhood experiences.
B、They may sometimes seem ridiculous to a rational mind.
C、They usually result from people’s unpleasant memories.
D、They can have an impact as great as rational thinking.
8、Question 8 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、They call for scientific methods to interpret.
B、They mirror their long-cherished wishes.
C、They reflect their complicated emotions.
D、They are often related to irrational feelings.
9、Question 9 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Radio waves.
B、Sound waves.
C、Robots.
D、Satellites.
10、Question 10 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、It may be freezing fast beneath the glacier.
B、It may have micro-organisms living in it.
C、It may have certain rare minerals in it.
D、It may be as deep as four kilometres.
11、Question 11 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Help understand life in freezing conditions.
B、Help find new sources of fresh water.
C、Provide information about other planets.
D、Shed light on possible life in outer space.
12、Question 12 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、He found there had been little research on their language.
B、He was trying to preserve the languages of the Indian tribes.
C、His contact with a social worker had greatly aroused his interest in the tribe.
D、His meeting with Gonzalez had made him eager to learn more about the tribe.
13、Question 13 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、He taught Copeland to speak the Tarahumaras language.
B、He persuaded the Tarahumaras to accept Copeland’s gifts.
C、He recommended one of his best friends as an interpreter.
D、He acted as an intermediary between Copeland and the villagers.
14、Question 14 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Unpredictable.
B、Unjustifiable.
C、Laborious.
D、Tedious.
15、Question 15 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Their appreciation of help from the outsiders.
B、Their sense of sharing and caring.
C、Their readiness to adapt to technology.
D、Their belief in creating wealth for themselves.
16、Question 16 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、They tend to be silenced into submission.
B、They find it hard to defend themselves.
C、They will feel proud of being pioneers.
D、They will feel somewhat encouraged.
17、Question 17 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、One who advocates violence in effecting change.
B、One who craves for relentless transformations.
C、One who acts in the interests of the oppressed.
D、One who rebels against the existing social order.
18、Question 18 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、They tried to effect social change by force.
B、They disrupted the nation’s social stability.
C、They served as a driving force for progress.
D、They did more harm than good to humanity.
19、Question 19 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Few of us can ignore changes in our immediate environment.
B、It is impossible for us to be immune from outside influence.
C、Few of us can remain unaware of what happens around us.
D、It is important for us to keep in touch with our own world.
20、Question 20 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Make up his mind to start all over again.
B、Stop making unfair judgments of others.
C、Try to find a more exciting job somewhere else.
D、Recognise the negative impact of his coworkers.
21、Question 21 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、They are quite susceptible to suicide.
B、They improve people’s quality of life.
C、They suffer a great deal from ill health.
D、They help people solve mental problems.
22、Question 22 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、Few people can identify its texture.
B、Few people can describe it precisely.
C、Its real value is open to interpretation.
D、Its importance is often overestimated.
23、Question 23 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、It has never seen any change.
B、It has much to do with color.
C、It is a well-protected government secret.
D、It is a subject of study by many forgers.
24、Question 24 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、People had little faith in paper money.
B、They could last longer in circulation.
C、It predicted their value would increase.
D、They were more difficult to counterfeit.
25、Question 25 is based on the recording you have just heard.
A、The stabilization of the dollar value.
B、The issuing of government securities.
C、A gold standard for American currency.
D、A steady appreciation of the U.S. dollar.
二、Part III Reading Comprehension
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
26、(1)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
27、(2)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
28、(3)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
29、(4)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
30、(5)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
31、(6)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
32、(7)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
33、(8)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
34、(9)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Overall, men are more likely than women to make excuses. Several studies suggest that men feel the need to appear competent in all (26)_____, while women worry only about the skills in which they’ve invested (27)_____. Ask a man and a woman to go diving for the first time, and the woman is likely to jump in, while the man is likely to say he’s not feeling too well.
Ironically, it is often success that leads people to flirt with failure. Praise won for (28)_____ a skill suddenly puts one in the position of having everything to lose. Rather than putting their reputation on the line again, many successful people develop a handicap—drinking, (29)_____, depression—that allows them to keep their status no matter what the future brings. An advertising executive (30)_____ for depression shortly after winning an award put it this way: “Without my depression, I’d be a failure now; with it, I’m a success ‘on hold’.”
In fact, the people most likely to become chronic excuse makers are those (31)_____ with success. Such people are afraid of being (32)_____ a failure at anything that they constantly develop one handicap or another in order to explain their failure.
Those self-handicapping can be an effective way of coping with performance anxiety now and then, in the end, researchers say, it will lead to (33)_____. In the long run, excuse makers fail to live up to their true (34)_____ and lose the status they care so much about. And despite their protests to the (35)_____, they have only themselves to blame.
35、(10)
A、heavily
B、obsessed
C、realms
D、reciprocal
E、contrary
F、legacies
G、fatigue
H、hospitalized
I、momentum
J、viciously
K、heaving
L、potential
M、mastering
N、ruin
O、labeled
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
36、36. A study found that there are similar changes in brain structure between those who are bilingual from birth and those who start learning a second language later.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
37、37. Unlike traditional monolingual programs, bilingual classrooms aim at developing students’ ability to use two languages by middle school.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
38、38. A study showed that dual-language students did significantly better than their peers in reading English texts.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
39、39. About twenty years ago, bilingual practice was strongly discouraged, especially in California.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
40、40. Ethnically and economically balanced bilingual classrooms are found to be helpful for kids to get used to social and cultural diversity.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
41、41. Researchers now claim that earlier research on bilingual education was seriously flawed.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
42、42. According to a researcher, dual-language experiences exert a lifelong influence on one’s brain.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
43、43. Advocates of bilingual education argued that it produces positive effects though they may be limited.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
44、44. Bilingual speakers often do better than monolinguals in completing certain tasks because they can concentrate better on what they are doing.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
【A】Brains, brains, brains. People are fascinated by brain research. And yet it can be hard to point to places where our education system is really making use of the latest neuroscience (神经科学) findings. But there is one happy link where research is meeting practice: bilingual (双语的) education. “In the last 20 years or so, there’s been a virtual explosion of research on bilingualism,” says Judith Kroll, a professor at the University of California, Riverside.
【B】Again and again, researchers have found, “bilingualism is an experience that shapes our brain for life,” in the words of Gigi Luk, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, one of the hottest trends in public schooling is what’s often called dual-language or two-way immersion programs.
【C】Traditional programs for English-language learners, or ELLs, focus on assimilating students into English as quickly as possible. Dual-language classrooms, by contrast, provide instruction across subjects to both English natives and English learners, in both English and a target language. The goal is functional bilingualism and biliteracy for all students by middle school. New York City, North Carolina, Delaware, Utah, Oregon and Washington state are among the places expanding dual-language classrooms.
【D】The trend flies in the face of some of the culture wars of two decades ago, when advocates insisted on “English first” education. Most famously, California passed Proposition 227 in 1998. It was intended to sharply reduce the amount of time that English-language learners spent in bilingual settings. Proposition 58, passed by California voters on November 8, largely reversed that decision, paving the way for a huge expansion of bilingual education in the state that has the largest population of English-language learners.
【E】Some of the insistence on English-first was founded on research produced decades ago, in which bilingual students underperformed monolingual (单语的) English speakers and had lower IQ scores. Today’s scholars, like Ellen Bialystok at York University in Toronto, say that research was “deeply flawed”. “Earlier research looked at socially disadvantaged groups,” agrees Antonella Sorace at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “This has been completely contradicted by recent research” that compares groups more similar to each other.
【F】So what does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment—which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention. Saying “Goodbye” to mom and then “Guten Tag” to your teacher, or managing to ask for a crayola roja instead of a red crayon (蜡笔), requires skills called “inhibition” and “task switching”. These skills are subsets of an ability called executive function.
【G】People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “Bilinguals can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.
【H】Do these same advantages benefit a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don’t yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn’t begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood.
【I】Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind—both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.
【J】About 10 percent of students in the Portland, Oregon, public schools are assigned by lottery to dual-language classrooms that offer instruction in Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, alongside English. Jennifer Steele at American University conducted a four-year, randomized trial and found that these dual-language students outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school-year’s worth of learning by the end of middle school. Because the effects are found in reading, not in math or science where there were few differences, Steele suggests that learning two languages makes students more aware of how language works in general.
【K】The research of Gigi Luk at Harvard offers a slightly different explanation. She has recently done a small study looking at a group of 100 fourth-graders in Massachusetts who had similar reading scores on a standard test, but very different language experiences. Some were foreign-language dominant and others were English natives. Here’s what’s interesting. The students who were dominant in a foreign language weren’t yet comfortably bilingual; they were just starting to learn English. Therefore, by definition, they had a much weaker English vocabulary than the native speakers. Yet they were just as good at interpreting a text. “This is very surprising,” Luk says. “You would expect the reading comprehension performance to mirror the vocabulary—it’s a cornerstone of comprehension.”
【L】How did the foreign-language dominant speakers manage this feat? Well, Luk found, they also scored higher on tests of executive functioning. So, even though they didn’t have huge mental dictionaries to draw on, they may have been great puzzle-solvers, taking into account higher-level concepts such as whether a single sentence made sense within an overall story line. They got to the same results as the monolinguals, by a different path.
【M】American public school classrooms as a whole are becoming more segregated by race and class. Dual-language programs can be an exception. Because they are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and economically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures.
【N】Several of the researchers also pointed out that, in bilingual education, non-English-dominant students and their families tend to feel that their home language is heard and valued, compared with a classroom where the home language is left at the door in favor of English. This can improve students’ sense of belonging and increase parents’ involvement in their children’s education, including behaviors like reading to children. “Many parents fear their language is an obstacle, a problem, and if they abandon it their child will integrate better,” says Antonella Sorace of the University of Edinburgh. “We tell them they’re not doing their child a favor by giving up their language.”
【O】One theme that was striking in speaking to all these researchers was just how strongly they advocated for dual-language classrooms. Thomas and Collier have advised many school systems on how to expand their dual-language programs, and Sorace runs “Bilingualism Matters,” an international network of researchers who promote bilingual education projects. This type of advocacy among scientists is unusual; even more so because the “bilingual advantage hypothesis” is being challenged once again.
【P】A review of studies published last year found that cognitive advantages failed to appear in 83 percent of published studies, though in a separate analysis, the sum of effects was still significantly positive. One potential explanation offered by the researchers is that advantages that are measurable in the very young and very old tend to fade when testing young adults at the peak of their cognitive powers. And, they countered that no negative effects of bilingual education have been found. So, even if the advantages are small, they are still worth it. Not to mention one obvious, outstanding fact: “Bilingual children can speak two languages!”
45、45. When their native language is used, parents can become more involved in their children’s education.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
K、K
L、L
M、M
N、N
O、O
P、P
It is not controversial to say that an unhealthy diet causes bad health. Nor are the basic elements of healthy eating disputed. Obesity raises susceptibility to cancer, and Britain is the sixth most obese country on Earth. That is a public health emergency. But naming the problem is the easy part. No one disputes the costs in quality of life and depleted health budgets of an obese population, but the quest for solutions gets diverted by ideological arguments around responsibility and choice. And the water is muddied by lobbying from the industries that profit from consumption of obesity-inducing products.
Historical precedent suggests that science and politics can overcome resistance from businesses that pollute and poison, but it takes time, and success often starts small. So it is heartening to note that a programme in Leeds has achieved a reduction in childhood obesity, becoming the first UK city to reverse a fattening trend. The best results were among younger children and in more deprived areas. When 28% of English children aged two to 15 are obese, a national shift on the scale achieved by Leeds would lengthen hundreds of thousands of lives. A significant factor in the Leeds experience appears to be a scheme called HENRY, which helps parents reward behaviours that prevent obesity in children.
Many members of parliament are uncomfortable even with their own government’s anti-obesity strategy, since it involves a “sugar tax” and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Bans and taxes can be blunt instruments, but their harshest critics can rarely suggest better methods. These critics just oppose regulation itself.
The relationship between poor health and inequality is too pronounced for governments to be passive about large-scale intervention. People living in the most deprived areas are four times more prone to die from avoidable causes than counterparts in more affluent places. As the structural nature of public health problems becomes harder to ignore, the complaint about overprotective government loses potency.
In fact, the polarised debate over public health interventions should have been abandoned long ago. Government action works when individuals are motivated to respond. Individuals need governments that expand access to good choices. The HENRY programme was delivered in part through children’s centres. Closing such centres and cutting council budgets doesn’t magically increase reserves of individual self-reliance. The function of a well-designed state intervention is not to deprive people of liberty but to build social capacity and infrastructure that helps people take responsibility for their wellbeing. The obesity crisis will not have a solution devised by left or right ideology—but experience indicates that the private sector needs the incentive of regulation before it starts taking public health emergencies seriously.
46、46. Why is the obesity problem in Britain so difficult to solve?
A、Government health budgets are depleted.
B、People disagree as to who should do what.
C、Individuals are not ready to take their responsibilities.
D、Industry lobbying makes it hard to get healthy foods.
It is not controversial to say that an unhealthy diet causes bad health. Nor are the basic elements of healthy eating disputed. Obesity raises susceptibility to cancer, and Britain is the sixth most obese country on Earth. That is a public health emergency. But naming the problem is the easy part. No one disputes the costs in quality of life and depleted health budgets of an obese population, but the quest for solutions gets diverted by ideological arguments around responsibility and choice. And the water is muddied by lobbying from the industries that profit from consumption of obesity-inducing products.
Historical precedent suggests that science and politics can overcome resistance from businesses that pollute and poison, but it takes time, and success often starts small. So it is heartening to note that a programme in Leeds has achieved a reduction in childhood obesity, becoming the first UK city to reverse a fattening trend. The best results were among younger children and in more deprived areas. When 28% of English children aged two to 15 are obese, a national shift on the scale achieved by Leeds would lengthen hundreds of thousands of lives. A significant factor in the Leeds experience appears to be a scheme called HENRY, which helps parents reward behaviours that prevent obesity in children.
Many members of parliament are uncomfortable even with their own government’s anti-obesity strategy, since it involves a “sugar tax” and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Bans and taxes can be blunt instruments, but their harshest critics can rarely suggest better methods. These critics just oppose regulation itself.
The relationship between poor health and inequality is too pronounced for governments to be passive about large-scale intervention. People living in the most deprived areas are four times more prone to die from avoidable causes than counterparts in more affluent places. As the structural nature of public health problems becomes harder to ignore, the complaint about overprotective government loses potency.
In fact, the polarised debate over public health interventions should have been abandoned long ago. Government action works when individuals are motivated to respond. Individuals need governments that expand access to good choices. The HENRY programme was delivered in part through children’s centres. Closing such centres and cutting council budgets doesn’t magically increase reserves of individual self-reliance. The function of a well-designed state intervention is not to deprive people of liberty but to build social capacity and infrastructure that helps people take responsibility for their wellbeing. The obesity crisis will not have a solution devised by left or right ideology—but experience indicates that the private sector needs the incentive of regulation before it starts taking public health emergencies seriously.
47、47. What can we learn from the past experience in tackling public health emergencies?
A、Governments have a role to play.
B、Public health is a scientific issue.
C、Priority should be given to deprived regions.
D、Businesses’ responsibility should be stressed.
It is not controversial to say that an unhealthy diet causes bad health. Nor are the basic elements of healthy eating disputed. Obesity raises susceptibility to cancer, and Britain is the sixth most obese country on Earth. That is a public health emergency. But naming the problem is the easy part. No one disputes the costs in quality of life and depleted health budgets of an obese population, but the quest for solutions gets diverted by ideological arguments around responsibility and choice. And the water is muddied by lobbying from the industries that profit from consumption of obesity-inducing products.
Historical precedent suggests that science and politics can overcome resistance from businesses that pollute and poison, but it takes time, and success often starts small. So it is heartening to note that a programme in Leeds has achieved a reduction in childhood obesity, becoming the first UK city to reverse a fattening trend. The best results were among younger children and in more deprived areas. When 28% of English children aged two to 15 are obese, a national shift on the scale achieved by Leeds would lengthen hundreds of thousands of lives. A significant factor in the Leeds experience appears to be a scheme called HENRY, which helps parents reward behaviours that prevent obesity in children.
Many members of parliament are uncomfortable even with their own government’s anti-obesity strategy, since it involves a “sugar tax” and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Bans and taxes can be blunt instruments, but their harshest critics can rarely suggest better methods. These critics just oppose regulation itself.
The relationship between poor health and inequality is too pronounced for governments to be passive about large-scale intervention. People living in the most deprived areas are four times more prone to die from avoidable causes than counterparts in more affluent places. As the structural nature of public health problems becomes harder to ignore, the complaint about overprotective government loses potency.
In fact, the polarised debate over public health interventions should have been abandoned long ago. Government action works when individuals are motivated to respond. Individuals need governments that expand access to good choices. The HENRY programme was delivered in part through children’s centres. Closing such centres and cutting council budgets doesn’t magically increase reserves of individual self-reliance. The function of a well-designed state intervention is not to deprive people of liberty but to build social capacity and infrastructure that helps people take responsibility for their wellbeing. The obesity crisis will not have a solution devised by left or right ideology—but experience indicates that the private sector needs the incentive of regulation before it starts taking public health emergencies seriously.
48、48. What does the author imply about some critics of bans and taxes concerning unhealthy drinks?
A、They are not aware of the consequences of obesity.
B、They have not come up with anything more constructive.
C、They are uncomfortable with parliament’s anti-obesity debate.
D、They have their own motives in opposing government regulation.
It is not controversial to say that an unhealthy diet causes bad health. Nor are the basic elements of healthy eating disputed. Obesity raises susceptibility to cancer, and Britain is the sixth most obese country on Earth. That is a public health emergency. But naming the problem is the easy part. No one disputes the costs in quality of life and depleted health budgets of an obese population, but the quest for solutions gets diverted by ideological arguments around responsibility and choice. And the water is muddied by lobbying from the industries that profit from consumption of obesity-inducing products.
Historical precedent suggests that science and politics can overcome resistance from businesses that pollute and poison, but it takes time, and success often starts small. So it is heartening to note that a programme in Leeds has achieved a reduction in childhood obesity, becoming the first UK city to reverse a fattening trend. The best results were among younger children and in more deprived areas. When 28% of English children aged two to 15 are obese, a national shift on the scale achieved by Leeds would lengthen hundreds of thousands of lives. A significant factor in the Leeds experience appears to be a scheme called HENRY, which helps parents reward behaviours that prevent obesity in children.
Many members of parliament are uncomfortable even with their own government’s anti-obesity strategy, since it involves a “sugar tax” and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Bans and taxes can be blunt instruments, but their harshest critics can rarely suggest better methods. These critics just oppose regulation itself.
The relationship between poor health and inequality is too pronounced for governments to be passive about large-scale intervention. People living in the most deprived areas are four times more prone to die from avoidable causes than counterparts in more affluent places. As the structural nature of public health problems becomes harder to ignore, the complaint about overprotective government loses potency.
In fact, the polarised debate over public health interventions should have been abandoned long ago. Government action works when individuals are motivated to respond. Individuals need governments that expand access to good choices. The HENRY programme was delivered in part through children’s centres. Closing such centres and cutting council budgets doesn’t magically increase reserves of individual self-reliance. The function of a well-designed state intervention is not to deprive people of liberty but to build social capacity and infrastructure that helps people take responsibility for their wellbeing. The obesity crisis will not have a solution devised by left or right ideology—but experience indicates that the private sector needs the incentive of regulation before it starts taking public health emergencies seriously.
49、49. Why does the author stress the relationship between poor health and inequality?
A、To demonstrate the dilemma of people living in deprived areas.
B、To bring to light the root cause of widespread obesity in Britain.
C、To highlight the area deserving the most attention from the public.
D、To justify government intervention in solving the obesity problem.
It is not controversial to say that an unhealthy diet causes bad health. Nor are the basic elements of healthy eating disputed. Obesity raises susceptibility to cancer, and Britain is the sixth most obese country on Earth. That is a public health emergency. But naming the problem is the easy part. No one disputes the costs in quality of life and depleted health budgets of an obese population, but the quest for solutions gets diverted by ideological arguments around responsibility and choice. And the water is muddied by lobbying from the industries that profit from consumption of obesity-inducing products.
Historical precedent suggests that science and politics can overcome resistance from businesses that pollute and poison, but it takes time, and success often starts small. So it is heartening to note that a programme in Leeds has achieved a reduction in childhood obesity, becoming the first UK city to reverse a fattening trend. The best results were among younger children and in more deprived areas. When 28% of English children aged two to 15 are obese, a national shift on the scale achieved by Leeds would lengthen hundreds of thousands of lives. A significant factor in the Leeds experience appears to be a scheme called HENRY, which helps parents reward behaviours that prevent obesity in children.
Many members of parliament are uncomfortable even with their own government’s anti-obesity strategy, since it involves a “sugar tax” and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s. Bans and taxes can be blunt instruments, but their harshest critics can rarely suggest better methods. These critics just oppose regulation itself.
The relationship between poor health and inequality is too pronounced for governments to be passive about large-scale intervention. People living in the most deprived areas are four times more prone to die from avoidable causes than counterparts in more affluent places. As the structural nature of public health problems becomes harder to ignore, the complaint about overprotective government loses potency.
In fact, the polarised debate over public health interventions should have been abandoned long ago. Government action works when individuals are motivated to respond. Individuals need governments that expand access to good choices. The HENRY programme was delivered in part through children’s centres. Closing such centres and cutting council budgets doesn’t magically increase reserves of individual self-reliance. The function of a well-designed state intervention is not to deprive people of liberty but to build social capacity and infrastructure that helps people take responsibility for their wellbeing. The obesity crisis will not have a solution devised by left or right ideology—but experience indicates that the private sector needs the incentive of regulation before it starts taking public health emergencies seriously.
50、50. When will government action be effective?
A、When the polarised debate is abandoned.
B、When ideological differences are resolved.
C、When individuals have the incentive to act accordingly.
D、When the private sector realises the severity of the crisis.
Home to virgin reefs, rare sharks and vast numbers of exotic fish, the Coral Sea is a unique haven of biodiversity off the northeastern coast of Australia. If a proposal by the Australian government goes ahead, the region will also become the world’s largest marine protected area, with restrictions or bans on fishing, mining and marine farming.
The Coral Sea reserve would cover almost 990,000 square kilometres and stretch as far as 1,100 kilometres from the coast. Unveiled recently by environment minister Tony Burke, the proposal would be the last in a series of proposed marine reserves around Australia’s coast.
But the scheme is attracting criticism from scientists and conservation groups, who argue that the government hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the Coral Sea, or in other marine reserves in the coastal network.
Hugh Possingham, director of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, points out that little more than half of the Coral Sea reserve is proposed as a ‘no take’ area, in which all fishing would be banned. The world’s largest existing marine reserve, established last year by the British government in the Indian Ocean, spans 544,000 km² and is a no-take zone throughout. An alliance of campaigning conservation groups argues that more of the Coral Sea should receive this level of protection.
“I would like to have seen more protection for coral reefs,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. “More than 20 of them would be outside the no-take area and vulnerable to catch-and-release fishing”.
As Nature went to press, the Australian government had not responded to specific criticisms of the plan. But Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University, says that the reserve does “broadly protect the range of habitats” in the sea. “I can testify to the huge effort that government agencies and other organizations have put into trying to understand the ecological values of this vast area,” he says.
Reserves proposed earlier this year for Australia’s southwestern and northwestern coastal regions have also been criticized for failing to give habitats adequate protection. In August, 173 marine scientists signed an open letter to the government saying they were “greatly concerned” that the proposals for the southwestern region had not been based on the “core science principles” of reserves—the protected regions were not, for instance, representative of all the habitats in the region, they said.
Critics say that the southwestern reserve offers the greatest protection to the offshore areas where commercial opportunities are fewest and where there is little threat to the environment, a contention also levelled at the Coral Sea plan.
51、51. What do we learn from the passage about the Coral Sea?
A、It is exceptionally rich in marine life.
B、It is the biggest marine protected area.
C、It remains largely undisturbed by humans.
D、It is a unique haven of endangered species.
Home to virgin reefs, rare sharks and vast numbers of exotic fish, the Coral Sea is a unique haven of biodiversity off the northeastern coast of Australia. If a proposal by the Australian government goes ahead, the region will also become the world’s largest marine protected area, with restrictions or bans on fishing, mining and marine farming.
The Coral Sea reserve would cover almost 990,000 square kilometres and stretch as far as 1,100 kilometres from the coast. Unveiled recently by environment minister Tony Burke, the proposal would be the last in a series of proposed marine reserves around Australia’s coast.
But the scheme is attracting criticism from scientists and conservation groups, who argue that the government hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the Coral Sea, or in other marine reserves in the coastal network.
Hugh Possingham, director of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, points out that little more than half of the Coral Sea reserve is proposed as a ‘no take’ area, in which all fishing would be banned. The world’s largest existing marine reserve, established last year by the British government in the Indian Ocean, spans 544,000 km² and is a no-take zone throughout. An alliance of campaigning conservation groups argues that more of the Coral Sea should receive this level of protection.
“I would like to have seen more protection for coral reefs,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. “More than 20 of them would be outside the no-take area and vulnerable to catch-and-release fishing”.
As Nature went to press, the Australian government had not responded to specific criticisms of the plan. But Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University, says that the reserve does “broadly protect the range of habitats” in the sea. “I can testify to the huge effort that government agencies and other organizations have put into trying to understand the ecological values of this vast area,” he says.
Reserves proposed earlier this year for Australia’s southwestern and northwestern coastal regions have also been criticized for failing to give habitats adequate protection. In August, 173 marine scientists signed an open letter to the government saying they were “greatly concerned” that the proposals for the southwestern region had not been based on the “core science principles” of reserves—the protected regions were not, for instance, representative of all the habitats in the region, they said.
Critics say that the southwestern reserve offers the greatest protection to the offshore areas where commercial opportunities are fewest and where there is little threat to the environment, a contention also levelled at the Coral Sea plan.
52、52. What does the Australian government plan to do according to Tony Burke?
A、Make a new proposal to protect the Coral Sea.
B、Revise its conservation plan owing to criticisms.
C、Upgrade the established reserves to protect marine life.
D、Complete the series of marine reserves around its coast.
Home to virgin reefs, rare sharks and vast numbers of exotic fish, the Coral Sea is a unique haven of biodiversity off the northeastern coast of Australia. If a proposal by the Australian government goes ahead, the region will also become the world’s largest marine protected area, with restrictions or bans on fishing, mining and marine farming.
The Coral Sea reserve would cover almost 990,000 square kilometres and stretch as far as 1,100 kilometres from the coast. Unveiled recently by environment minister Tony Burke, the proposal would be the last in a series of proposed marine reserves around Australia’s coast.
But the scheme is attracting criticism from scientists and conservation groups, who argue that the government hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the Coral Sea, or in other marine reserves in the coastal network.
Hugh Possingham, director of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, points out that little more than half of the Coral Sea reserve is proposed as a ‘no take’ area, in which all fishing would be banned. The world’s largest existing marine reserve, established last year by the British government in the Indian Ocean, spans 544,000 km² and is a no-take zone throughout. An alliance of campaigning conservation groups argues that more of the Coral Sea should receive this level of protection.
“I would like to have seen more protection for coral reefs,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. “More than 20 of them would be outside the no-take area and vulnerable to catch-and-release fishing”.
As Nature went to press, the Australian government had not responded to specific criticisms of the plan. But Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University, says that the reserve does “broadly protect the range of habitats” in the sea. “I can testify to the huge effort that government agencies and other organizations have put into trying to understand the ecological values of this vast area,” he says.
Reserves proposed earlier this year for Australia’s southwestern and northwestern coastal regions have also been criticized for failing to give habitats adequate protection. In August, 173 marine scientists signed an open letter to the government saying they were “greatly concerned” that the proposals for the southwestern region had not been based on the “core science principles” of reserves—the protected regions were not, for instance, representative of all the habitats in the region, they said.
Critics say that the southwestern reserve offers the greatest protection to the offshore areas where commercial opportunities are fewest and where there is little threat to the environment, a contention also levelled at the Coral Sea plan.
53、53. What is scientists’ argument about the Coral Sea proposal?
A、The government has not done enough for marine protection.
B、It will not improve the marine reserves along Australia’s coast.
C、The government has not consulted them in drawing up the proposal.
D、It is not based on sufficient investigations into the ecological system.
Home to virgin reefs, rare sharks and vast numbers of exotic fish, the Coral Sea is a unique haven of biodiversity off the northeastern coast of Australia. If a proposal by the Australian government goes ahead, the region will also become the world’s largest marine protected area, with restrictions or bans on fishing, mining and marine farming.
The Coral Sea reserve would cover almost 990,000 square kilometres and stretch as far as 1,100 kilometres from the coast. Unveiled recently by environment minister Tony Burke, the proposal would be the last in a series of proposed marine reserves around Australia’s coast.
But the scheme is attracting criticism from scientists and conservation groups, who argue that the government hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the Coral Sea, or in other marine reserves in the coastal network.
Hugh Possingham, director of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, points out that little more than half of the Coral Sea reserve is proposed as a ‘no take’ area, in which all fishing would be banned. The world’s largest existing marine reserve, established last year by the British government in the Indian Ocean, spans 544,000 km² and is a no-take zone throughout. An alliance of campaigning conservation groups argues that more of the Coral Sea should receive this level of protection.
“I would like to have seen more protection for coral reefs,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. “More than 20 of them would be outside the no-take area and vulnerable to catch-and-release fishing”.
As Nature went to press, the Australian government had not responded to specific criticisms of the plan. But Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University, says that the reserve does “broadly protect the range of habitats” in the sea. “I can testify to the huge effort that government agencies and other organizations have put into trying to understand the ecological values of this vast area,” he says.
Reserves proposed earlier this year for Australia’s southwestern and northwestern coastal regions have also been criticized for failing to give habitats adequate protection. In August, 173 marine scientists signed an open letter to the government saying they were “greatly concerned” that the proposals for the southwestern region had not been based on the “core science principles” of reserves—the protected regions were not, for instance, representative of all the habitats in the region, they said.
Critics say that the southwestern reserve offers the greatest protection to the offshore areas where commercial opportunities are fewest and where there is little threat to the environment, a contention also levelled at the Coral Sea plan.
54、54. What does marine geologist Robin Beaman say about the Coral Sea plan?
A、It can compare with the British government’s effort in the Indian Ocean.
B、It will result in the establishment of the world’s largest marine reserve.
C、It will ensure the sustainability of the fishing industry around the coast.
D、It is a tremendous joint effort to protect the range of marine habitats.
Home to virgin reefs, rare sharks and vast numbers of exotic fish, the Coral Sea is a unique haven of biodiversity off the northeastern coast of Australia. If a proposal by the Australian government goes ahead, the region will also become the world’s largest marine protected area, with restrictions or bans on fishing, mining and marine farming.
The Coral Sea reserve would cover almost 990,000 square kilometres and stretch as far as 1,100 kilometres from the coast. Unveiled recently by environment minister Tony Burke, the proposal would be the last in a series of proposed marine reserves around Australia’s coast.
But the scheme is attracting criticism from scientists and conservation groups, who argue that the government hasn’t gone far enough in protecting the Coral Sea, or in other marine reserves in the coastal network.
Hugh Possingham, director of the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland, points out that little more than half of the Coral Sea reserve is proposed as a ‘no take’ area, in which all fishing would be banned. The world’s largest existing marine reserve, established last year by the British government in the Indian Ocean, spans 544,000 km² and is a no-take zone throughout. An alliance of campaigning conservation groups argues that more of the Coral Sea should receive this level of protection.
“I would like to have seen more protection for coral reefs,” says Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland. “More than 20 of them would be outside the no-take area and vulnerable to catch-and-release fishing”.
As Nature went to press, the Australian government had not responded to specific criticisms of the plan. But Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at James Cook University, says that the reserve does “broadly protect the range of habitats” in the sea. “I can testify to the huge effort that government agencies and other organizations have put into trying to understand the ecological values of this vast area,” he says.
Reserves proposed earlier this year for Australia’s southwestern and northwestern coastal regions have also been criticized for failing to give habitats adequate protection. In August, 173 marine scientists signed an open letter to the government saying they were “greatly concerned” that the proposals for the southwestern region had not been based on the “core science principles” of reserves—the protected regions were not, for instance, representative of all the habitats in the region, they said.
Critics say that the southwestern reserve offers the greatest protection to the offshore areas where commercial opportunities are fewest and where there is little threat to the environment, a contention also levelled at the Coral Sea plan.
55、55. What do critics think of the Coral Sea plan?
A、It will do more harm than good to the environment.
B、It will adversely affect Australia’s fishing industry.
C、It will protect regions that actually require little protection.
D、It will win little support from environmental organisations.
三、Part IV Translation
56、 《西游记》（Journey to the West）也许是中国文学四大经典小说中最具影响力的一部，当然也是在国外最广为人知的一部小说。这部小说描绘了著名僧侣玄奘在三个随从的陪同下穿越中国西部地区前往印度取经（Buddhist scripture）的艰难历程。虽然故事的主题基于佛教，但这部小说采用了大量中国民间故事和神话的素材，创造了各种栩栩如生的人物和动物形象。其中最著名的是孙悟空，他与各种各样妖魔作斗争的故事几乎为每个中国孩子所熟知。
参考答案：
参考译文
Journey to the West is perhaps the most influential one among the four classic novels of Chinese literature, and certainly the most widely known novel abroad. This novel depicts a difficult journey of Hsuan-tsang, a famous monk who travelled through the western region of China to India to bring back the Buddhist scripture accompanied by three followers. Although the theme of the story is based on Buddhism, the novel borrows a large number of materials from Chinese folk stories and myths, creating a variety of lifelike human and animal characters. The most famous character of the novel is Sun Wukong, whose battles against various demons are familiar to almost every Chinese kid.
四、Part I Writing
57、Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the saying “Beauty of the soul is the essential beauty.” You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.
参考答案：
参考范文
As a well-known saying goes, “Beauty of the soul is the essential beauty.” It is inner beauty that truly matters. However, a host of people are now paying less attention to it. From my perspective, beauty of the soul has always been a crucial part in our life.
There are some factors accounting for my view. In the first place, beauty of the soul is a virtue in essence, which is related to everything connected with one’s happiness and success. Individuals may achieve temporary success by means of luck or trick, but only virtue is the solid foundation of success. What’s more, we should always bear in mind that it is the beauty of the soul—the power from people’s inner world—that contributes to our progress and development. Our past experience has proven that compared with those who only care about their appearance, people who keep doing good deeds are more likely to win praise and respect from others.
From what I have discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that beauty of the soul has positive effects on our life. The more we are aware of the significance of this saying, the more benefits we will get.
参考译文
正如一句名言所说：“心灵之美是本质之美”。内在美才是真正重要的。然而，现在很多人对它的关注却越来越少。在我看来，心灵之美一直在我们的生活中发挥着至关重要的作用。
有一些因素可以解释我的观点。首先，心灵之美从本质上来讲是一种美德，它与一个人的幸福和成功息息相关。人们或许可以凭借运气或计谋获得一时的成功，但只有美德才是成功的稳固基石。更重要的是，我们要时刻牢记，正是心灵之美这种源于内心的力量才能帮助我们进步与成长。过往经历已经证明，比起那些只注重外表的人，一直做好事的人更容易赢得别人的赞扬和尊重。
综上所述，我们可以肯定地得出结论：心灵之美对我们的生活有积极影响。我们越是明白这句话的重要意义，我们获得的益处就越多。
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