Unit 7
into, be a type of, fall under, belong to, be a part of, fit into, be grouped with, and be associated with.
Exercises: Write two paragraphs based on the following topic sentences with the classification strategy.
1. High school teachers tend to sort their students into the following categories: perpetual studier, average studier, crammer and never studier. Ideas for reference:
The perpetual studier studies until really late at night.
The average studier studies sufficiently but doesn‘t work more than necessary. The crammer studies only when the threat of taking that class over is very great. Sample:
The perpetual studier is a rare breed indeed. They usually write about three pages of notes a day regardless of how much material the teacher covers. They don‘ t talk to anyone except to answer questions. When a perpetual studier goes home, before he does anything else, he takes out all his books and begins studying for the classes that he has the next day. He studies until really late at night, stopping only once or twice for a quick snack. The majority of students fall into a category called the average studier. This person studies sufficiently but doesn‘t work more than necessary. When he studies for a test, he will look over the notes taken, reread appropriate pages in the textbook, and study with a friend sometimes. Overall, he may put in anywhere from two to six hours a day studying during the week leaving Friday and Saturday for his social life and then spend from four to eight hours studying on Sunday. The third type of studier is the crammer. This type of person studies only when the threat of taking that class over is very great. When he studies for a test, he doesn‘t begin until the night before or the morning of the test. He spends most of his time doing anything that doesn‘t have to do with school. Their homework is last on their list of things to do. But before they do such a deed, they will rack their brains trying to think of something else to do. Cleaning the room even takes precedence over homework — not to mention sleep. It can be argued, of course, that there should be a fourth category — the never studier, one who quite literally never studies not even at the very last minute. But then, this person doesn‘t remain classified as a student for very long.
2. In Shanghai, the most popular English language examinations include, among others, TEM 4, TEM 8, Interpreter Certificate, TOFEL, and IELTS. Ideas for reference:
There are regional differences between the five tests. The five tests differ in their compulsoriness.
Testees are also divided on the purposes for which they take the five tests. Sample:
In Shanghai, the most popular English language examinations include, among others, TEM 4, TEM 8, Interpreter Certificate, TOEFL, and IELTS. There are some differences between these tests. The first three, TEM 4 (short for ―Test for English Majors Band 4‖), TEM 8 and Interpreter Certificate, are domestic tests, and among them Interpreter Certificate is a local one, peculiar to the city. Both TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and IELTS (International English Language Testing System) are international tests, organized by the American and British
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educational authorities respectively. The five tests differ in their compulsoriness. The first two are compulsory: almost all college English majors are required to take them; the other three fall under the optional group. Besides, testees are also divided on the purposes for which they take the five tests. They sit in the two mandatory tests for their bachelor‘s degree, while the Interpreter Certificate is popular because it helps when a holder of it is looking for a job. Unlike them, participants in the two international English tests are usually planning to receive higher education in English-speaking countries.
VII Listening Exercises
A. Listen to the report — “Go to the Head of the Class.” Write in the second column of the
table below the five ideas that can help you leap to the top of the class. Then listen to the report again, and write in the third column of the table the key words and phrases that best illustrate each idea. The first one is already given as an example. 1 2 Make reading automatic. key to school success / take practice / automatic reader / read with expression / read with a sense of meaning Win equal opportunity in same classroom / different educations / no the classroom. equal-opportunity education / discuss with the teacher / let the teacher know what‘s on your mind Learn to think. Have classmates help. Educate at home. lower mental process – rote learning / higher mental processes – problem-solving, analyzing, interpreting / improve thinking skills / gain in rote learning teamwork / cooperative learning / reward / peer pressure / bonuses / self-esteem / value of cooperation / better attitudes toward classmates home / better predictor of success / great impact / homework and reading / given priority / parents / encourage and praise / family members / talk and do things together 3 4 5
B. After listening, discuss the following two questions.
1. Do you agree with the saying ―Inside almost every poor to average student, there‘s a smart kid yearning to get out‖?
2. What can you do to help bring your ―smart kid‖ out?
Script
Go to the Head of the Class
How smart are you? How much can you learn? How high can you climb? Until now, schoolchildren seemed frozen in place. An average student in second or third grade paddled along, just fair to middling, until graduation from high school. A poor student languished at the bottom of each successive class. Studies showed that more than four out of five students began and ended schools at the same level of performance.
It doesn‘t have to be that way. Benjamin Bloom, a professor of education at the University of Chicago, supervised two separate research projects. In each, students were selected at random and provided with private teachers. With this one-to-one instruction, below-average students climbed to better-than-average, while average students outperformed 98 percent of the boys and girls in
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conventional classrooms.
Bloom identified and tested five remarkable simple ideas aimed at reproducing in the classroom the most effective components of one-to-one instruction: attention, feedback, support, encouragement, and self-esteem.
Here are the five ideas that can help you leap to the top of the class:
1. Make reading automatic. Reading is the key to school success and, like any skill, it takes practice. A child learns to walk by practicing until he no longer has to think about how to put one foot in front of the other. And you do the same thing when you learn to read. You are not an automatic reader until you can read with expression, with a sense of meaning of the sentences rather than read one word at a time, without expression or meaning.
2. Win equal opportunity in the classroom. Sitting in the same classroom, different students get very different educations. Teachers often tend to give most of their attention to a handful of students, usually the top third of the class. If you think that you are not getting an equal-opportunity education, discuss it with your teacher. Let your teacher know what‘s on your mind. Just raising the question will make your teachers take a closer look at what they‘re doing. 3. Learn to think. Are you learning to remember information — or to use it? Do you memorize a math formula, or do you learn how it applies to all the circles of your life? According to Bloom, about 95 percent of today‘s teaching focuses on the ―lower mental process‖ — rote learning of grammar, multiplication tables, historical names and dates. Most teachers spend very little time on the ―higher mental processes.‖ — problem-solving, analyzing and interpreting. When you improve your thinking skills there is a gain in rote learning too. Knowing what an idea or a principle means, and how it can be applied, helps you learn better and remember longer.
4. Have classmates help. More and more schools are trying teamwork or, as educators call it, ―cooperative learning.‖ There are a number of ways to organize these teams, but two things are essential. First, youngsters need a reward — praise, a certificate of recognition — for doing well as a team. Second, the teams‘ success must depend on how well each member learns. It‘s the good side of peer pressure. There are also important bonuses to team study. Self-esteem goes up. Students learn the value of cooperation and develop better attitudes toward classmates with different social backgrounds or physical handicaps.
5. Educate at home. According to the experts, what happens in your home is a better predictor of success in school than in any I.Q. or achievement test. The home environment has great impact on how a child learns. It is as important as the quality of teachers or curriculum. In the homes of top achievers, homework and reading are given priority over play or television; parents encourage their children‘s intellectual interests and praise school achievement. Family members talk together and do things together.
Inside almost every poor to average student, there‘s a smart kid yearning to get out. With these ideas, we can help to unlock that potential.
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Section Five Further Enhancement
I. Text II
1. Lead-in Questions
Do you find college life always exciting? If not, what kind of frustrations do you have?
2. Text II
College Pressures
(Abridged) William Zinsser
I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today; economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains; only victims.
―In the late 1960s,‖ one dean told me, ―the typical question that I got from students was ?Why is there so much suffering in the world?‘ or ?How can I make a contribution?‘ Today it‘s ?Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?‘‖ Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: ―They‘re trying to find an edge — the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.‖
Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale‘s official system of grading, A means ―excellent‖ and B means ―very good.‖ Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practice where they will make a lot of money.
The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the ―gentleman‘s C,‖ when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses — music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion — that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don‘t know if they are getting As or Cs, and I don‘t care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They can‘t.
Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most
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