In Britain and other countries,young people sometimes take a"gap year",a year off between high school and college.This idea never gained a big following in America.Recent news reports have suggested that interest may be growing,though there are no official numbers. Charles Deacon,.Dean of Admissions at Georgetown University in Washington,D.C.,estimates that in the current first-year class of 1,600 students,only about 25 decided to take a year off.He says this number hasn't changed much over the years. Mr.Deacon says the most common reason for taking a"gap year"is to have a chance to travel,but he says international students may take a"gap year"to meet requirements at home for military duty. Some high school graduates see a year off as a chance to recover after twelve years of required education,but it can also give students a chance to explore their interests.Students hoping to be doctors,for example,could learn about the profession by volunteering in a hospital. Many colleges and universities support gap-year projects by permitting students to delay their admission.Expels say students can grow emotionally and intellectually as they work at something they enjoy. The Harvard admissions office has an essay on its Web site called"Time Out or Bum Out for the Next Generation.''It praises the idea of taking time off to step back,think and enjoy gaining life experiences outside the pressure of studies.It also notes that students are sometimes admitted to Harvard or other colleges partly because they did something unusual with that time. Of course,a gap year is not for everyone.Students might miss their friends who go on directly to college,and parents might worry that their children will decide not to go to college once they take time off.Another concern is money.A year off,away from home,can be costly. Holly Bull's job is to specialize in helping students plan their gap year.She notes that several books have been written about this subject.She says these books along with media attention and the availability of... What can we learn from the passage? A) Charles Deacon doesn't support the idea of the students'taking a"gap year" B) Parents might disagree with the program,concerned about their children's future. C) Books and media have contributed to the students'interest in school learning. D) Experts agree taking a year off will benefit the students emotionally and physically.
B
Roslyn Hing School on long Island recently started a pilot program using iPads in some classrooms. A growing number of schools across the U.S.are multimedia,history through gamse and math with step-by -step animation of complex problems. As part of a pilot program,Roslyn High School handed out 47 iPads on Dec.20,2010 to the students and teachers in two humanities classes. The school district hopes to provide iPads eventually to all 1,100 of its students. The iPads are to be used in class and at hom during the school year to replace texbooks,allow students to correspond with teachers and tum in papers and homework tasks,and preserve a rocord of student work in digital files. "It allows us to extend the classes beyond _ "said larry Reiff,an English teacher at Roslyn who now posts all his course mateials online. But educators are still divided over whether practices to give every student a laptop have made a difference academically. "Thre is very little evidence that kids learn more,faster of better by using these machines,"said Larry Cuban,a retried professor of eduction at Staford University."IPads are excellent tools to attract kids,but then the fieshness wears off and you eget int hard-core problems of teaching and learning." But school leaders say the iPad is not just a cool new toy but rather a powerful and multifunctional tool with a number of applications,including thousands with educational uses. "If there isn't an application that does something I need ,there will be sooner or later,"said Mr.Reiff,who said he now used an application that includes all of Shakespare's plays. The program of using iPads in class is _ . A) widely accepted by most schools in the United States B) only an experimental one carried out in some schools C) a compulsory one carried out by the U.S government D) encouraged and organized by the iPad company
B
(Q).
Most children have heard their parents at one time or another yell "sit up straight!" or "don't slouch!" In the past, this was usually heard at the dinner table as children ate dinner. But these days, it is also heard around another activity-video games. Ten-year old Owaish Batliwala, from Mumbai, India, admits he spends three to four hours each day playing games on his tablet computer. His mother Mehzabin became concerned when her son started saying that his neck hurt. She said, "My son started having neck problems around June or July. The pain slowly spread to his hand and his back. He plays for hours on the iPad and mobile phone. This is what has caused the problem." Sadia Vanjara is a physical therapist. She says the number of young children with chronic pain in their necks, arms and shoulders is on the rise. Dr. Vanjara says the pain is not from aging, accidents or disease. It is from poor posture, or body position, while playing video games. "They are not aging, they haven't had an accident, their age is like, under 10, they are not complaining, the blood reports are fine, their x-rays are fine, their MRI's are fine, then where is the culprit ? And that is the very common thing that is happening amongst all children and that is smart phones and the gadgets ." This is a problem in many parts of the world. But there are more smartphone users in India than anywhere else in the world, except China. Networking equipment company Cisco estimates that the number of smartphone users in India will increase from 140 million today to 651 million by 2020. 19-year old student Nida Jameel says she feels pain in the finger which holds the weight of her smartphone most of the day. She says she uses her smartphone 24/7. This means 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or all the time. "As I use phone 24/7 (all day) like, so probably yeah, it was because of the phone, continuous usage and Snapchat, Whatsapp, more and more you know social media coming, so like phone is the center of everything." Dr. Vanjara says the best... This passage most probably comes from _ . A) an amusement magazine B) a news report C) a travelling booklet D) a health magazine
(A).
D