Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy study at the American Enterprise Institute, which is a nonprofit organization that does research on many public topics. He says that a long summer vacation doesn’t make sense in today’s world.
Can American students afford to take a summer vacation? In a summer vacation, millions of children spend valuable time sending messages, watching TV, playing video games and doing shopping in the mall. They will also be putting their academic futures at risk.
Summer vacation once made sense in the past when you didn’t need an education to get a good job. But now things have changed. For today’s students, academic skills are important to students’ future success, but such skills are affected in the summer time. Many other countries don’t give children an American style summer vacation. They offer no more than seven consecutive (连续的) weeks of vacation. Most American school districts offer up to thirteen weeks. To compete in the global marketplace, Americans must be prepared to go up against international competitors.
Summer vacation also causes challenges for today’s families. In the 1960s, more than 60% of families had a stayathome Mum. Now, two thirds of American children live in households where every adult works. For these families, summer vacation can be more a burden than a break. Someone must watch the kids.
But the biggest problem may be how summer vacation hurts academic achievement. Researchers have found that disadvantaged students lose ground in the summer time.
Any good suggestion? Yes. A longer school year does not have to be an invitation to hard boring work. Rather, it should allow time-pressed teachers to conduct richer and more imaginative lessons. Students would have more time to devote to sports, music and the arts.
To conclude, a long summer vacation can be a great thing. But in the 21st century, it may also be outdated. （313 words）
Title：About
| Theme |
A long summer vacation doesn’t make sense in today’s world. |
|
| Basic Information |
Vacation length |
●In other countries: no more than 7 weeks ●In the USA: mostly |
| Students’ activities |
●Sending messages and watching TV ●Playing video games ●Doing |
|
| Causing |
Making parents watch kids at home |
|
| Hurting |
Making disadvantaged students |
|
| Students should study richer and more imaginative |
||
| Summer vacation can be great but may be |
单词拼写
In most colleges and universities the examination is used as a chief means of deciding whether a student succeeds or fails in mastering a particular subject. Although it does the job quite efficiently, side effects are also enormous.
To begin , examinations lower the standards of teaching. Since teachers are often judged
examination results, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques. No subjects can be taught successfully merely through being approached with intent to take examinations. In addition, the most undesirable effect is
. examinations encourage bad study habits. As
examination score is the only criterion for his academic performance, a student is driven to memorize mechanically rather
to think creatively.
In fact, few. us admit that examinations can contribute anything really important to the students’ academic development. If that is the case,
cannot we make a change and devise something more efficient and reliable than examinations?
语法填空
阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。
It has become acceptable for people to say that women work less than men and therefore deserve less! It may have been true in the past when women were expected to stay at home and look after children, but women have changed over the years. They have “come out”! Gone ______ (be) the days when they toiled (辛苦) the kitchen stove all day long; they are now aware of their needs and are willing to fight for them. They expect to be given the respect they deserve, both at home and at work. They have realized
_____ intellectual potential and have determined to do something about it!
Women on two wheels have become______ familiar sight on the roads of most Asian countries during the past few years. It is common to find a woman
______ (take) her children on her bicycle to school and then reaching her office in time.
“Super woman”______ she is, it is rather difficult to combine a career and a decent home life. She needs to feel
_____ (support). She may arrive at work feeling as if she has already done a full day’s job.
______ colleagues doubt her passion to her job, she will feel sad. At the same time, women of today expect their partners to contribute towards childcare and household chores.
Today’s women are learning to avoid situations that make them feel more stressed and it is a hard struggle. ______ ______ ______all this, the new woman, “the superpower” has arrived. She still believes in the power and value of a family unit and she holds it in high esteem (尊重).
书面表达
天津市养宠物的家庭越来越多，对此，“天津中学生英语报”组织了一场讨论：城市内是否可以养宠物。请参考下图的各类信息，介绍讨论情况，并说明自己的观点和建议。
注意： 词数不少于100字；
可以适当增减情节，使行文连贯；
开头已经写好。
| 支持养宠物 |
反对养宠物 |
你的观点 |
   |
   |
…… |
Recently we had a heated discussion on whether people should keep pets at home in cities.
阅读表达
阅读表达。阅读下面短文，并根据题目要求用英语回答问题（请注意问题后的字数要求）。
How do you keep a library when you’ve got no room for your books? With rising rents and record numbers of young people having to move with their parents, it’s clear that we are a moving generation.
As a student in Leeds I moved three times in four years; in London it was seven times in three years. Regularly having to load our possessions into laundry bags and boxes takes a lot of our finance and energy, but the effect on our book collections is rarely considered.
Keeping a collection of beloved books in a damp flat with no shelves, which you’ll probably have to move out of in six months’ time, is a challenge. Deciding which books to keep and which to reject becomes increasingly difficult. Do you hold on to the books you know you’ll reread or do you keep the to-be-read pile intact (完好无损的) ?
Donating books to a charity shop or local school may be virtuous, but when you haven’t had time to read them since your last move, it becomes depressing. There’s a copy of Much Ado About Nothing I’ve been moving around with for nearly a decade because it is the only piece of Shakespeare in the marketplace.
“Just buy a Kindle!” you might argue — but for many people, books are more than just books. They offer us an emotional connection to the past, to the person who gave them to us. They are a way to brighten up a dark flat, they are a link to home; they are the hardest thing to move and the most enjoyable thing to unpack.
So what if you are already facing your second move this year and can’t bear the thought of pensioning off more of your beloved books? You start reading more. Read all the books in your current bedroom and work out if they’re worth the trip; give away as many books as you can; leave books with trusted friends to be reclaimed at a later point. Start looking at your books creatively.Why has the moving generation appeared? (no more than 15 words)
While moving, why do people often ignore their book collections? (no more than 10 words)
What makes the author keeps a copy of Much Ado About Nothing? (no more than 10 words)
What does the underlined phrase pensioning off in the last paragraph mean? (no more than 3 words)
What would you do with your books when you have to move? Give a persuasive reason. (no more than 25 words)
Psychology has a new application in the field of medicine. Many doctors, together with their patients, are looking for alternative methods of treatment of physical problems. In large hospitals, modern therapy seems to focus on the physical disease. Patients may feel they are treated like broken machines. Some doctors have recognized this as a problem. They are now using psychological therapy, in which the patient is working with the doctors against the disease with the help of medicine. The patient does not wait for the medicine and treatment to cure him or her, but instead the patient joins in the fight.
The doctor knows that a disease affects a patient's body physically. The body of the patient changes because of the disease. He is not only physically affected, but also has an emotional response to the disease. Because his mind is affected, his attitude and behavior change. The medical treatment might cure the patient's physical problems, but the patient's mind must fight the emotional ones. For example, the studies of one doctor, Carl Simonton, M. D., have shown that a typical cancer patient has predictable attitudes. She typically feels depressed, upset, and angry. Her constant depression makes her acts unfriendly toward her family, friends, doctors, and nurses. Such attitudes and behaviors prevent recovery. Therefore, a doctor's treatment must help the patient change that. Simonton's method emphasizes treatment of the “whole” patient.
The attitude of a cancer patient receiving radiation therapy, an X-ray treatment, can become more positive. The physician who is following Simonton's psychological treatment plan suggests that the patient imagine that he or she can see the tumor in the body. In the mental picture, the patient "sees" a powerful beam of radiation like a million bullets of energy. The patient imagines the beam hitting the tumor cells and causing them to shrink. For another cancer patient, Dr. Simonton asks him to imagine the medicine going from the stomach into the bloodstream and to the cancer cells. The patient imagines that the medicine is like an army fighting the diseased cells and sees the cancer cells gradually dying and his blood carry away the dead cells. Both the medical therapy and the patient's positive attitude fight the disease.
Doctors are not certain why this mental therapy works. However, this use of psychology does help some patients because their attitudes about themselves change. They become more confident because they use the power within their own minds to help stop the disease.
Another application of using the mind to help cure disease is the use of suggestion therapy. At first, the doctor helps the patient to concentrate deeply. The patient thinks only about one thing. He becomes so unaware of other things around him that he is asleep, or rather in a trance（催眠状态）. Then the physician makes “a suggestion” to the patient about the medical problem. The patient's mind responds to the suggestion even after the patient is no longer in the trance. In this way, the patient uses his mind to help his body respond to treatment.
Doctors have learned that this use of psychology is helpful for both adults and children. For example, physicians have used suggestion to help adults deal with the strong pain of some disease. Furthermore, sometimes the adult patient worries about her illness so much that the anxiety keeps her from getting well. The right suggestions may help the patient to stop being anxious. Such treatment may help the patient with a chronic（慢性的）diseases. Asthma （哮喘） is an example of a chronic disorder. Asthma is a disease that causes the patient to have difficulty in breathing. The patient starts to cough and sometimes has to fight to get the air that he or she needs. Psychology can help relieve the symptoms of this disorder. After suggestion therapy, the asthma patient breathes more easily.
Physicians have learned that the psychological method is very useful in treating children. Children respond quickly to the treatment because they are fascinated by it. For example, Dr. Basil R. Collison has worked with 121 asthmatic children in Sydney, Australia, and had good results. Twenty-five of the children had Excellent results. They were able to breathe more easily, and they did not need medication. Another forty-three were also helped. The symptoms of the asthma occurred less frequently, and when they did, they were not as strong. Most of the children also felt better about themselves. Doctors have also used suggestion to change habits like nail-biting, thumb-sucking, and sleep-related problems.
Many professional medical groups have accepted the medical use of psychology and that psychology has important applications in medicine.
What does the passage mainly discuss?
| A．How suggestion therapy benefits adults and children. |
| B．How modern therapy focuses on the disease. |
| C．Responses from the medical world. |
| D．How to use the mind against disease. |
What can we learn from the studies of Carl Simonton, M. D.?
A. The medical treatment can cure the patient's mental disease.
B. The treatment of a patient by treating the body and the mind is necessary.
C. The mental treatment is more important than medical treatment.
D. Few patients have emotional response to the disease.
The use of psychological therapy is helpful to some patients in that .
| A．the medical effect is better with psychological therapy than without it |
| B．the patients can see a powerful beam of radiation hitting their tumor cells |
| C．the patients' attitudes towards themselves have changed |
| D．the patients are easy to accept the methods the doctors use to treat them |
It can be learned from the passage that suggestion therapy cannot be used to .
| A．help adults deal with the strong pain of some diseases |
| B．help the patients with chronic diseases |
| C．help change some bad habits |
| D．help cure patients of insomnia |
According to the passage, which of the following remains unknown so far?
| A．The value of mental therapy. |
| B．The effectiveness of suggestion therapy. |
| C．The working principle of suggestion therapy. |
| D．The importance of psychology in medical treatment. |
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