PISA stands for the Programme for International Student Assessment, sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA 2015 is the sixth PISA study that has been conducted since 2000 and involves more than 70 participating countries.
PISA has the following characteristics:
? It is the world’s largest international survey in education. ? It surveys students aged about 15 years.
? It assesses students’ preparedness for adult life.
Undertaking PISA is important because the results of the test can be used:
? to indicate how well prepared students in a country/economy are for learning once they leave school; ? to identify areas for improvement over time by schools, education systems, and governments; and
? to allow a comparison of student performance and the learning environment between different countries. 1.2. Components of PISA 2015 ?
1.2.1. Cognitive test
42 students from each school will be randomly sampled to complete a 2-hour computer-based test consisting of questions in science, mathematics, reading, and Collaborative Problem Solving. ?
1.2.2. Questionnaires
These students will also be asked to complete a 30 minutes Student Questionnaire on the computer either directly after the test sections or at a later time. ?
1.2.3. Financial Literacy assessment
After the cognitive test and questionnaires, a sub-sample of 10-11 students will take a computer-based Financial Literacy(FL) assessment. The 65-minute Financial Literacy assessment tests students’ knowledge of personal finances and their ability to apply it to their financial problems.
56. According to the manual, each participating student of PISA should ____________. A. be aged more than 15 years old
B. be of or above the average level in their classes C. spend 215 minutes for the programme D. carry out all the tasks on the computer
57. What can we know about PISA from the passage?
A. There will be over seventy countries participating in the seventh PISA in 2018.
B. Top PISA scorers are more likely to succeed in their adult life than lower score owners. C. PISA will compare students’ personal performance based on their learning environment. D. The FL assessment is specially intended for students who are suffering financial problems.
B
In today’s China, exchanges between Chinese and English-speakers are increasingly frequent. English skills are important to Chinese if China wishes to play a stronger role on the world stage. However, the general English level of the Chinese people is on the decline.
China’s ranking in the 2015 EF English Proficiency Index dropped 10 drops. The Middle Kingdom was ranked 47th out of 70 countries rated, and is now on par with several Latin American countries. The report triggered widespread discussion in China：in an increasingly international nation, why is the peoples’ level of English getting worse?
A decline in the English level of the Chinese people is no accident. With China’s exam-based education
system, worsening English is inevitable. English education in China is too focused on grammar and ignored oral practice. This results in students that are often too scared to speak, for fear of making a mistake. Exam-based courses make it so students merely learn for the test, not learn the language.
In Latin America, nations do not have a rigorous exam system for English, but focus on promoting the
language itself. Such programs that promote English include Chile’s “English Opens Doors,” program, Panama’s “Panama Bilingual Education Program,” and Mexico’s “10 Million People Plan.” Brazil, which also has a government program, is ranked first in the region for English.
The Chinese government should first think about how to reduce the amount of pressure on students taking exams in order to promote change in the current system of rote English education. This is the most important step.
Everyone has been recently focused on overseas returnees. The number of Chinese studying abroad has rapidly multiplied in past years. At the same time, the number of overseas returnees is increasing as well. The job market is also increasingly competitive for them and it is often more difficult for returnees to find a suitable job than it is for domestic graduates.
Difficulties and pressure in the job market for overseas returnees deters a number of Chinese from studying abroad. As a result, the number of Chinese with high-level English, carefully perfected abroad, has been reduced. This could be a major reason for why English is getting worse overall in China.
While China’s overall level of English has declined, it has not affected China’s huge emphasis on English education and training. China remains one of the nations that is most committed to the study of English. 58. What do the underlined phrase “on par with” most probably mean? A. superior to B. relative to C. parallel to D. equal to 59. What does the writer want to do with this article?
A. To advise the Chinese government to reform its exam-based education. B. To analyze the reasons why China’s general English level is on the decline.
C. To report the phenomenon that there is a decline in English level of Chinese people. D. To compare the different ways of learning English between China and Latin America. 60. What measure can help improve English level of Chinese people? A. Stopping testing English in the educational examination system. B. Reducing the amount of pressure on students studying English. C. Encouraging more students to study in Latin American countries.
D. Focusing more on expressive abilities and less on grammatical exams.
C
The Oxford dictionary has announced its word of the year. It’s spelled ... Actually, it isn’t spelled at all, because it contains no letters, just a “face with tears of joy” emoji.
“The fact that English alone is proving not enough to meet the needs of 21st-century digital communication is a huge change,” says Caspar Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries. When one of his dictionary colleagues suggested using an emoji instead
of the word “emoji”, “lightbulbs went off”. Until recently, Grathwohl, who is 44, avoided using emojis altogether because he worried that he would look as if he “was trying to get in on teen culture”. “I felt inauthentic. But I think there was a tipping point this year. It’s now moved into the mainstream.”
Some 76% of the UK adult population owns a smartphone, and of those, between 80% and 90% use emojis. Worldwide, six billion are sent daily. The “face with tears of joy” is the most used, representing 20% of all UK and 17% of all US emoji use. It has overtaken the standard smiley-face emoji in popularity, which may mean that emoji users are moving towards exaggeration or irony or fun, or that all this emoji use has brought everyone to a higher
emotional plane. Even if you don’t send emojis yourself, you will probably receive them.
How far do emojis function as a language? “There’s a lot of prejudice against emojis,” Vyvyan Evans, a professor in linguistics at Bangor University, says. “A lot of people think they are a backward step, but this
misunderstands the nature of human communication.” The picture is more complicated, with emojis offering both greater freedom and limitations than verbal language. “Emoji isn’t a language as such. They don’t develop in the way that the natural language does. But they are working according to the same principles of communication as the spoken language. What is the value of an emoji? I think I can prove this with an ordinary sentence.” There is a pause. “I love you,” he says. “Crikey(哎呀), I love you.” He says it again. The first time I think he means it; the second time we both know he doesn’t. “The meaning is coming from extra-language factors,” he says. “Emojis are performing the same function in digital speech.”
Like any sort-of language, emoji is evolving. “I do think they are subtle(微妙) and rich,” Grathwohl says. “They can mean different things to different people. The fact that we are using emoji in combination to express more complex ideas and experiences is one of the most fun and playful parts of the whole words. Will emoji finally come to look something more like traditional language that we understand?” he asks. “That would be interesting.” 61. The sentence “lightbulbs went off” (Para 2) means that ______________. A. the president became embarrassed and annoyed B. the president suddenly realized he was outdated C. the suggestion was immediately adopted D. the suggestion started a heated discussion
62. The “face with tears of joy” is more popular than smiley-face emoji, which means that _______________. A. emoji is changing constantly
B. smiley-face emoji is too traditional
C. adults have more sorrow than joy in their daily life D. people like to express their emotions in a richer way
63. Vyvyan Evans uses the sentence “I love you” as an example (Para 4) to prove that _____. A. emoji can express the real meaning behind words B. emoji is different from the natural language C. people feel free to use emoji in communication D. emoji will limit people in expressing their feelings
64. Which of the following statement might Grathwohl agree with? A. emoji is too childish for adults
B. people have the same explanation for an emoji C. using emoji can add fun to communication D. emoji won’t develop into a language
D
“Hypotheses,” said Medawarin 1964, “are imaginative and inspirational in character”; they are “adventures of the mind”. He was arguing in favour of the position taken by Karl Popper that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico-deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive.
The myth(误区) of scientific method is that it is inductive: that the formulation of scientific theory starts with the basic, raw evidence of the senses — simple, fair, unprejudiced observation. Out of these sensory data — commonly referred to as “facts” — generalisations will form. The myth is that from a disorderly collection of factual information an orderly, relevant theory will somehow come out. However, the starting point of induction is an impossible one.
There is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation. Every act of observation we make is a function of what
we have seen or otherwise experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or exploratory nature starts with some expectation about the outcome. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide the motivation for the inquiry（探究），and influence the method. It is in the light of an expectation that some observations are held to be relevant and some irrelevant, that one method is chosen and others abandoned, that some experiments are conducted and others are not.
Hypotheses arise by guesswork, or by inspiration, but having been started they can and must be tested
thoroughly, using the appropriate method. If the predictions you make as a result of deducing certain consequences from your hypothesis are not shown to be correct then you abandon or adjust your hypothesis. If the predictions turn out to be correct then your hypothesis has been supported and may be kept until such time as some further test shows it not to be correct. Once you have arrived at your hypothesis, which is a product of your imagination, you then move on to a strictly logical and thorough process, based upon deductive argument — therefore the term “hypothetico-deductive”.
So don’t worry if you have some idea of what your results will tell you before you even begin to collect data; there are no scientists in existence who really wait until they have all the evidence in front of them before they try to work out what it might possibly mean. The closest we ever get to this situation is when something happens by accident; but even then the researcher has to make a hypothesis to be tested before being sure that, for example, a medicine might prove to be a successful solution to bacterial(细菌) infection.
The hypothetico-deductive method describes the logical approach to much research work, but it does not
describe the psychological behaviour that brings it about. The psychological behaviour is a much more complicated process — involving guesses, reworkings, corrections, and above all inspiration, in the deductive as well as the hypothetic component. However, describing the logical approach is like writing the final thesis(毕业论文) or
published papers of research work. These theses and papers have been, quite properly, organised into a more logical order so that the worth of the output may be evaluated independently of the behavioural processes by which it was obtained. It is the difference, for example between the academic papers with which Crick and Watson demonstrated the structure of the DNA molecule(分子) and the fascinating book The Double Helix in which Watson (1968)
described how they did it. From this point of view, the scientific method may more usefully be thought of as a way of writing up research rather than as a way of carrying it out.
65. What is right about the deductive method and the inductive method according to the author? A. They cannot exist in a research at the same time.
B. The former one is of greater importance than the latter. C. The latter one is more scientific than the former one. D. The former is closer to the nature of scientific research.
66. Which of the following best supports the author’s main opinion shown in paragraph 2? A. Usually facts are more convincing than predictions.
B. People always observe based on what they have seen or experienced. C. It is impossible to generalize disorder facts into orderly theories. D. People all begin scientific work with the observation of evidences. 67. Which of the following about a hypothesis is right？
A. It functions as a guide in the process of a scientific research.
B. It works as a means that can help make unprejudiced observations. C. It is an expectation unrelated to guesswork and inspiration. D. It is a prediction which will be arrived at sooner or later.
68. According to the author, a good scientific research is a process _____________________. A. starting from details and ending in generalisations
