user: (Q).
Diane's heart felt leaden as she prepared to leave. Each face she looked at, she knew she was seeing for the last time. As if she were dying and they all were going to live on. Oh, why must I leave? Now, when all of you are about to put on the martyr's crown, how can you cast me out? I want to die with you. I do not want to go on, stumbling through this world alone. For years these people had been her only family. When she was a child, her faith was preached and practiced openly all over the south of France. The crusade was already twenty years old then, but the perfecti still taught crowds of people in the streets of great cities like Toulouse and Beziers, still won converts away from the Church of Rome. From the lords and ladies in their castles to the peasants on the mountainsides, over half the people were Cathars. Now this year, one thousand two hundred forty-four, might come to be remembered as the year Catharism in France disappeared. From now on there would be nothing but a remnant in hiding, having to sneak about. No, she didn't want to live that way. She longed to throw herself down and beg Bishop Bertran once again to let her stay. But duty pressed down upon her like a mail shirt. It was burdensome, but it protected her from error. She quietly made ready. Before long, Diane and Roland were standing on the northeast wall amid a group of perfecti. From a family that had taken refuge on Mont Segur had come a red and green costume for Diane, the tunic and hose of a well-to-do boy, an equerry. They had cut her hair short and tucked it under a cap topped with a long partridge feather. They had sewn the red cross back on Roland's black surcoat, and had made one for Diane's tunic from a gentlewoman's crimson scarf. A rope to form a sling was tied around her waist and another around her knees. Roland was similarly tied. According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: What is probably true about Diane? Options:  A. not enough information  B. she is eager to leave her hometown  C. she wants to see the world  D. she is attached to her hometown
(A).
D


(Q).
I end this small run of blog posts with the question posed by Professor Brian Boyd at the beginning of our evening: Do we want to close the achievement gap? We know we can close the gap. It’s been done or almost been done before in Scottish education, but the answers have been ignored as they pass us by. The simple clue is this: poverty is single biggest predictor of achievement, and according to research (Hammonds sic, reference required), aged 10, a child living in poverty is 60% less likely to get to university. Boyd borrowed from his own mother’s report card to ask us what kind of education we desire. Is it the academic success at all costs route, or is there another option we need to value as much, if not more? His mother’s report card, one that prevented her from becoming a secondary school pupil in Glasgow, is filled with G and FG, until the last point: Character and conduct - excellent. What kind of pupils do we want to develop in Scotland? What do we value in our assessment system? Opening up opportunity for all is a tough game to play when the examination system rewards only certain types of behaviour, few of them related to what the Curriculum for Excellence says we stand for. In his own small community in East Kilbride, three secondary schools enter a period of meltdown as the local rag sets about creating its own local league table of performance, with those three ‘teams’ in competition for the top spot (or at least not the bottom one). Therefore, we must stop basing “the gap” largely on attainment. First of all, Boyd would like us to remove the traditional, and non-sensical academic/vocational divide. Is the law or medicine degree we value not vocational? (Are all General Practitioners not Plumbers, as Dr Murray on the panel suggests?) According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: The writer probably thinks that: Options:  A. middle income students will do better in school and in life  B. wealthy students will do better in school and in life  C. the poor will outperform the rich in their studies and careers  D. not enough information
(A).
B


(Q).
His eyes were open and his head bobbed around at an impossible angle. He was sitting in about forty feet of water, stone dead, one arm pinned between the rocks. As best I could tell, he had been dead when he landed there. The mud and ooze around him were as serene and smooth as he was. The cop who was assisting me swam over and made a palms up gesture. I shrugged back at him and began to work the body loose. The corpse had only one leg, and as I worked I wondered what he had been doing in the lake. I got the arm free and kicked toward the quicksilver surface above me. The body turned bloated and heavy when I broke water with it, and it took three of us to load it into the police launch. I dried off and got a coke out of the cooler. It was getting to be another Texas scorcher, and the sunlight bouncing off the surface of the lake felt like it had needles in it. My mouth was dry from breathing canned air and the carbonation burned like fire. Winslow, from the sheriff's office, sat down next to me. 'I appreciate this, Dan,' he said. 'No problem.' Sam Winslow and I had grown up together about twenty miles outside Austin in a little town called Coupland. We'd fought a lot as kids, and there were still plenty of differences in our politics and educations. But being on the police and fire rescue squad had brought me closer to him again, and I was glad of it. A private detective needs all the friends he can get. 'What do you make of it?' I asked him. 'Accidental drowning, looks like.' I raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. 'He's got a bump on the head that could have come off a rock. We'll see what the coroner says.' 'Any idea who he is?' Winslow shook his head. He'd gained weight in his face recently and his jowls vibrated with the gesture. According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: How long did the retrieval of the body probably take? Options:  A. a week  B. not enough information  C. 15 minutes  D. a few days
(A).


assistant: C