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2015年12月英语四级考试真题

编辑:

1970-01-01

Section B

Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Eachstatement contains information given in one of the paragraphs.Identify the paragraphfrom which the information is derived.You may choose a paragraph more than once.

Joy: A Subject Schools Lack Becoming educated should not require giving up pleasure.

A.When Jonathan Swift proposed, in 1729, that the people of Ireland eat their children, he insisted itwould solve three problems at once : feed the hungry masses, reduce the population during a severedepression, and stimulate the restaurant business.Even as a satire (讽刺), it seems disgusting andshocking in America with its child-centered culture.But actually, the country is closer to hisproposal than you might think.

B.If you spend much time with educators and policy makers, you'll hear a lot of the following words :"standards,""results,""skills,""self-control,""accountability," and so on.I have visited someof the newer supposedly "effective" schools, where children shout slogans in order to learn self-control or must stand behind their desk when they can't sit still.

C.A look at what goes on in most classrooms these days makes it abundantly clear that when peoplethink about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makeschildhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right.

D.I'm a mother of three, a teacher, and a developmental psychologist.So I've watched a lot ofchildren-talking, playing, arguing, eating, studying, and being young.Here's what I've come tounderstand.The thing that sets children apart from adults is not their ignorance, nor their lack ofskills.It's their enormous capacity for joy.Think of a 3-year-old lost in the pleasures of finding outwhat he can and cannot sink in the bathtub, a 5-year-old beside herself with the thrill of putting

together strings of nonsensical words with her best friends, or an 11-year-old completely absorbedin a fascinating comic strip.A child's ability to become deeply absorbed in something, and deriveintense pleasure from that absorption, is something adults spend the rest of their lives trying toreturn to.

E.A friend told me the following story.One day, when he went to get his 7-year-old son from soccerpractice, his kid greeted him with a downcast face and a sad voice.The coach had criticized himfor not focusing on his soccer drills.The little boy walked out of the school with his head andshoulders hanging down.He seemed wrapped in sadness.But just before he reached the car door,he suddenly stopped, crouching (蹲伏) down to peer at something on the sidewalk.His face wentdown lower and lower, and then, with complete joy he called out, "Dad.Come here.This is thestrangest bug I've ever seen.It has, like, a million legs.Look at this.It's amazing." He looked upat his father, his features overflowing with energy and delight."Can't we stay here for just aminute? I want to find out what he does with all those legs.This is the coolest ever."

F.The traditional view of such moments is that they constitute a charming but irrelevant byproduct ofyouth-something to be pushed aside to make room for more important qualities, like perseverance(坚持不懈), obligation, and practicality.Yet moments like this one are just the kind of intenseabsorption and pleasure adults spend the rest of their lives seeking.Human lives are governed bythe desire to experience joy.Becoming educated should not require giving up joy but rather lead tofinding joy in new kinds of things: reading novels instead of playing with small figures, conductingexperiments instead of sinking cups in the bathtub, and debating serious issues rather than stringingtogether nonsense words, for example.In some cases, schools should help children find new,more grown-up ways of doing the same things that are constant sources of joy: making art, makingfriends, making decisions:

G. Building on a child's ability to feel joy, rather than pushing it aside, wouldn't be that hard.It wouldjust require a shift in the education world's mindset (思维模式).Instead of trying to get children towork hard, why not focus on getting them to take pleasure in meaningful, productive activity, likemaking things, working with others, exploring ideas, and solving problems? These focuses are not

so different from the things in which they delight.

H. Before you brush this argument aside as rubbish, or think of joy as an unaffordable luxury in anation where there is awful poverty, low academic achievement, and high dropout rates, thinkagain.The more horrible the school circumstances, the more important pleasure is to achieving anyeducational success.

I.Many of the assignments and rules teachers come up with, often because they are pressured bytheir administrators, treat pleasure and joy as the enemies of competence and responsibility.Theassumption is that children shouldn't chat in the classroom because it hinders hard work; instead,they should learn to delay gratification (快乐) so that they can pursue abstract goals, like going to

college.

J.Not only is this a boring and awful way to treat children, it makes no sense educationally.Decadesof research have shown that in order to acquire skills and real knowledge in school, kids need towant to learn.You can force a child to stay in his or her seat, fill out a worksheet, or practicedivision.But you can't force the child to think carefully, enjoy books, digest complex information,or develop a taste for learning.To make that happen, you have to help the child find pleasure inlearning-to see school as a source of joy.

K.Adults tend to talk about learning as if it were medicine: unpleasant, but necessary and good foryou.Why not instead think of learning as if it were food--something so valuable to humans thatthey have evolved to experience it as a pleasure ?

L.Joy should not be trained out of children or left for after-school programs.The more difficult achild's life circumstances, the more important it is for that child to find joy in his or her classroom."Pleasure" is not a dirty word.And it doesn't run counter to the goals of public education.It is, infact, the precondition.

46.It will not be difficult to make learning a source of joy if educators change their way of thinking.

47.What distinguishes children from adults is their strong ability to derive joy from what they aredoing.

48.Children in America are being treated with shocking cruelty.

49.It is human nature to seek joy in life.

50.Grown-ups are likely to think that learning to children is what medicine is to patients.

51.Bad school conditions make it all the more important to turn learning into a joyful experience.

52.Adults do not consider children's feelings when it comes to education.

53.Administrators seem to believe that only hard work will lead children to their educational goals.

54.In the so-called "effective" schools, children are taught self-control under a set of strict rules.

55.To make learning effective, educators have to ensure that children want to learn.

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