As summer comes near, many children are really happy to forget about school for a few months. However, they might be taking that goal too seriously. Studies have found that children often forget between one and three months' worth of school learning during the summer months. Spelling and math abilities drop off the most, while reading is not really influenced by the time off. The main reason for this is because most children sometimes read outside of the classroom, whether newspapers, magazines, books, or video game guides. However, their math and spelling skills only get exercised in the school setting. The first purpose of summer holidays was to let farm children have time off to help work in the fields during the growing season, but this reason is no longer a good one since fewer kids actually work on farms today. Some cities in the United States, such as Los Angeles, have moved to a year-round school timetable, which may help reduce the loss of school skills that happens during the long summer holiday. To improve skills and to keep a good level of preparation, headmasters suggest trips to museums, summer camps, holidays with educational value, and visits to libraries to keep kids interested throughout the summer. There are other educational systems that provide holidays while still keeping students' skills up to date. For example, in Japan, students attend class for seven weeks in a row, followed by two weeks of holiday. This continues the whole year. In Italy, students attend class six days per week, but finish at 1: 30 pm each day, so that school does not run their life the way that it does in America, where students attend high school from 7: 45 am until 3: 00 pm each weekday. In areas where there are not enough classrooms--in Afghanistan or Somalia, for example--older students attend classes in the morning while the younger kids go to school in the afternoon. Headmasters fear that the three-month summer holiday stops the flow of learning. Just as students become used to new math problems or new ideas... What can we infer from the passage? A) Parents always read to their kids to keep reading skills. B) Summer holidays lead to the loss of all the school skills. C) Students love holidays and get their mind off learning in holidays. D) In Italy students attend classes in the late afternoon six days a week.
C
(Question)
Most children don't enjoy doing housework . Then like playing computer games rather than cleaning the rooms. But in Australia, Jim and Robert's mother, Mrs Black, has a good and proper method to get their children to do housework. Here is an example. "Mum, have you worked out next week's housework? Let Jim and me choose the cards. I can't wait. It's fun! " When Robert shouted out, his mother had already put all the cards on their big table. On the cards, there are some words like these, " sweep the floor, clean your bedroom, help mum cook, wash vegetables, make beds, feed the fish, cut the wood, clean the bathroom " and many others. Jim and Robert chose two cards for each day from Monday to Friday. Then they would hang them on the weekday task board. Jim likes to clean the bathroom, so he picked up the card "clean the bathroom ". Robert loves to make the bed so he picked up his favorite card. Jim again picked up "wash vegetables" and Robert chose " feed the fish ". Soon the two boys were happy to take away all the cards. To help the children do housework, their mother thought hard and came up with this idea. Of course, the couple did the housework on the weekends and left Jim and Robert two days free. Jim likes to _ . A) clean the bathroom B) make the bed C) feed the fish D) wash clothes
(Answer)
A
Ques: Surgical teams accidentally leave clamps, sponges and other tools inside about 1,500 patients nationwide each year. The mistakes largely result not from surgeon tiredness, but from the stress arising from emergencies or complications discovered on the operating table, the researchers reported. The study found that emergency operations are nine times more likely to lead to such mistakes, and operating-room complications requiring a change in procedure are four times more likely. It also happens more often to fat patients, simply because there is more room inside them to lose equipment, according to the study. Two-thirds of the mistakes happened even though the equipment was counted before and after the procedure, in keeping with the standard practice. Most lost objects were sponges, but also included were metal clamps and electrodes . In two cases, 11-inch retractors metal strips were forgotten inside patients. In another operation, four sponges were left inside someone. When there is significant bleeding and a sponge is placed in a patient, it can sometimes look indistinguishable from the tissue around it. The lost objects usually lay around the abdomen or hips but sometimes in the chest. They often caused tears or infections. Most patients needed additional surgery to remove the object. In other cases, patients even sensed nothing about the object, and it turned up in later surgery for other problems. To prevent such mistakes from happening, Loyola University Medical Center is becoming one of the first hospitals in the country to use sponges outfitted with bar codes. The new system was brought to Loyola through the efforts of the hospital's operating room nurses. Another effective way is to X-ray patients after surgery to reduce the likelihood of objects being left inside patients. In which of the following situations are objects most likely to be left inside a patient? A) The nurses are counting the equipment and the patient is being X-rayed. B) The surgeons are doing the last operation of the day, and everyone is exhausted. C) unexpected happens and some changes must be made in the procedure. D) A complex operation is going on according to the plan made by many experts.
Ans: C
The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a blackboard is a thing of the past. With the coming of new technologies like computers and smartphone, writing by hand has become something of nostalgic skill. However, while today's educators are using more and more technology in their teaching, many believe basic handwriting skills are still necessary for students to be successful---both in school and in life. Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says it's important to continue teaching handwriting and help children acquire the skill of writing by hand. Berninger and her colleagues conducted a study that looked at the ability of students to complete various writing tasks---both on a computer and by hand. The study, published in 2009, found that when writing with a pen and paper, participants wrote longer essays and more complete sentences and had a faster word production rate. In a more recent study, Berninger looked at what role spelling plays in a student's writing skills and found that how well children spell is tied to know well they can write. "Spelling makes some of the thinking parts of the brain active which helps us access our vocabulary, word meaning and concepts. It is allowing our written language to connect with ideas." Berninger said. Spelling helps students translate ideas into words in their mind first and then to transcribe "those words in the mind written symbols on paper or keyboard and screen," the study said. Seeing the words in the "mind's eye" helps children not only to turn their ideas into words, says Berninger, but also to spot spelling mistakes when they write the words down and to correct then over time. "In our computer age, some people believe that we don't have to teach spelling because we have spell checks," she said. "But until a child has a functional spelling ability of about a fifth grade level, they won't have the knowledge to choose the correct spelling among the options given by the computer." Which of the following best shows the role of spelling? A) Spelling improves one's memory of words. B) Spelling ability is closely related to writing ability. C) Spelling benefits the translation from words into ideas. D) Spelling slows down finding exact words to express ideas.
B