instruction:
Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
question:
Possible Duplicate: What is the difference between a phrase and a clause? Can you give me an easy description of the differences in meaning between clause, phrase, and sentence?.
answer:
Phrase, clause and sentence are three of the structural units that create meaning. A phrase is a word or words that don't have much meaning on their own. If I suddenly utter the phrase My brother, you'll wonder why I said it, but if I say My brother drives, you'll feel I've said something that has meaning. There's a completeness about it, because it contains the verb drives. That makes it a clause, but it is also a sentence. But I needn't stop there. I can go on to say something else, almost without drawing breath. I can say My brother drives, but he doesn't drive very well. I've added another clause, and together they, too, make a sentence, joined by the little word but. It is perhaps helpful to see two or more clauses joined together as a clause complex, although sentence in general use describes both single and multiple clauses.


question:
I was watching this video. At around 30:00, Chomsky exaplins that he never went to Chemistry class nor to Chemistry lab and he got a A nevertheless. Then he makes a joke: 'This approach has a name. It's called No Child Left Behind' (31:12 into the video). Can you explain the joke to me? I know that No Child Left Behind is an act of Congress, but I still can't get the joke.
answer:
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a US Act of Congress which mandated that all schools which receive federal financial assistance (for the education of children from low-income families) had to administer an annual standardized test to all students. According to NCLB, each year, fifth graders must do better in the standardized test than the previous year's fifth graders. Schools that fail to achieve this for two or more consecutive years were required to take certain measures in order to 'improve the school'. As you can see, NCLB was an act centered around standardized testing. Students'and by extension their schools'performance was measured and scrutinized by the test scores. A common criticism of standardized testing is that it leads teachers to focus on test performance, instead of aiming to help students achieve in-depth understanding of the overall curriculum. Chomsky talks about how he wasn't able to successfully carry out experiments in the chemistry lab, and yet scored an A by filling out a paper with the results of the experiments, which were quite obvious. He mentions that the this test-centered approach to education had been going on for about 10 years with 'no reported progress', since, he believes, 'serious education' is different and does not focus on standardized test scores. When Chomsky mentions that this failing approach to education has a name, 'No Child Left Behind', the audience laughs and cheers in order to express their agreement with his ridicule and criticism of this act. The reason they laugh is that he refers to his chemistry lab experience as 'No Child Left Behind', even though it predates the passing of the unpopular act by several years.


question:
Does 'egoistic' and 'egotistic' mean the same thing?.
answer:

No. While similar, they have some important differences. Consider this note on usage from the Oxford Dictionaries: The words egoism and egotism are frequently confused, as though interchangeable, but there are distinctions worth noting. Both words derive from Latin ego ('I'), the first-person singular pronoun. Egotism, the more commonly used term , denotes an excessive sense of self-importance, too-frequent use of the word 'I,' and general arrogance and boastfulness. Egoism, a more subtle term , is perhaps best left to ethicists, for whom it denotes a view or theory of moral behavior in which self-interest is the root of moral conduct. An egoist, then , might devote considerable attention to introspection, but could be modest about it, whereas an egotist would have an exaggerated sense of the importance of his or her self-analysis, and would have to tell everyone