Switching off the television may help prevent children from getting fatter, even if they do not change their diet or increase the amount they exercise,“ US researchers said last week. A study of 192 third and fourth graders, generally aged eight and nine, found that children who cut the number of hours spent watching television gained nearly two pounds less over a one-year period than those who did not change their television diet. The findings are important because they show that weight loss can only be the result of a reduction in television viewing and not any other activity. Ameri can children spend an average of more than four hours per day watching television and videos or playing video games, and rates of childhood being very fat have doubled over the past 20 years. In the study, presented this week to the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in San Francis co, the researchers persuaded about 100 of the students to reduce their television viewing by one-quarter to one-third. Children watching fewer hours of television showed a significantly smaller increase in waist size and had less body fat than other students who continued their normal television viewing, even though neither group ate a special diet or took part in any extra exercise. One explanation for the weight loss could be the children unstuck to the television may simply have been moving around more and burning off calories. Another reason might be due to eating fewer meals in front of the television. Some studies have suggested that eating in front of the TV encourages people to eat more. 9.What do we know about the findings of the study? 10.Why are the findings important? 11.What accounts for the findings? Children will get absent-minded if they play video games. Children will get healthier if they change their diet. Children will improve their grades if they stop watching TV. Children will lose weight if they spend less time watching TV.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled How to Establish a Healthy Living Style? You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. 1. 越来越多的人开始崇尚简单、健康的生活方式； 2. 造成这种现象的原因； 3. 我们可以……

Ten years ago, Joe Allen began studying a diverse group of seventh graders near the University of Virginia, where he’s a professor. One of Allen’s main concerns was how these kids dealt with peer pressure, and how deeply they felt the pressure to【C1】________to what the crowd was doing. According to every pop theory of【C2】________, peer pressure is danger. Being able to resist it should be considered a sign of character strength. But a funny thing happened as Allen continued to follow these kids every year for the next 10 years: the kids who felt more peer pressure when they were 12 or 13 were turning out better. Notably, they had much higher-quality relationships with friends, parents, and【C3】________ partners. Their need to fit in, in the early teens, later【C4】________itself as a willingness to accommodate—a necessary【C5】________of all reciprocal relationships. The self-conscious kid who spent seventh grade convinced that everyone was watching her and learned to be attuned (与……合拍) to【C6】________changes in others’ moods. Years down the road, that【C7】________sensitivity lead to empathy (移情) and social adeptness. Meanwhile, those kids who did not feel much peer pressure to smoke, drink, and【C8】________in seventh grade didn’t turn out to be the independent-minded stars we’d imagine. Instead, what was notable about them was that within five years they had a much lower GPA (grade point average). The kid who could say no to his peers turned out to be less engaged, all around, socially and【C9】________. Basically, if he was so detached that he didn’t care what his peers thought, he probably wasn’t【C10】________by what his parents or society expected of him, either. A) adolescence E) morally I) smuggle M) motivated B) trivial F) conform J) academically N) romantic C) component G) subtle K) manifested O) heightened D) shoplift H) ignited L) nutrient

A pioneering headteacher is calling for all secondary schools to follow his lead and start classes at 11 am, allowing teenagers two hours extra in bed. Dr. Paul Kelley, head of Monkseaton Community High School in North Tyneside, said it would mean the end of “teenage zombies“ dozing off in lessons before lunch, after experiments showed teenagers could have different body clocks from adults and younger children. Russell Foster, an Oxford professor of neuroscience, tested the memory of 200 Monkseaton pupils at 9 am and 2 pm using pairs of words, and discovered a 9% improvement in the afternoon. Students correctly identified 51% of word pairs in the later session, compared with 42% in the morning. Tayler McCullough, 15, one of the test subjects, said the majority of students would welcome the extra hours in bed. “I’m extremely hard to get up in the morning. One or two people like to get to school early, but most of us would be up for going in later, I’m sure it would make a big difference to our learning ability.“ Kelley believes firmly a change of school timetable will have a significant impact on exam performance. He said: “Teenagers aren’t lazy. We’re depriving them of the sleep they need through purely biological factors beyond their control. This has a negative impact on their learning, and possibly on their mental and physical health. We’ve just learnt of this, but it is vital that we act on it.“ “The research carried out by Professor Foster showed that, from the age of 10, our internal body clocks shift, so it’s good for young people to stay in bed. The “time shift“ is two hours on average, so teenagers should get up two hours later. We are making teenagers irritable by making them get up early.“ He wants his school’s governors to approve his plan and put the new timetable in place before the opening of Monkseaton’s new £20m school building, the most technologically advanced in the country, in September. Kelley has a history of groundbreaking teaching methods. In January, he carried out a trial at Monkseaton High that found pupils scored up to 90% in a GCSE science paper after one session involving three 20-minute bursts put in between with 10-minute breaks for physical activity. The 48 year-nine pupils had not covered any part of the GCSE science syllabus before the lessons. In 1998, Kelley established a scheme with the Open University bridging the divide between school and university by allowing sixth formers to study undergraduate modules alongside their A-levels. Kelley hopes his latest idea will be just as successful. “We have to be sensible and practical. But this proves that, by starting later, children’s learning improves, as does their health.“

groundbreaking impractical successful sensible

在大多数中国城市，晚饭以后商家就关门了，但是上海却不会这么早就入睡。一度以夜生活和其文化闻名于世的上海经过几十年的消沉，又开始重获昔日的盛名。随着上海经济的迅速发展。在过去的十年中，上海的夜生活确实丰富起来了。在市区，人们可以以各种方式消磨夜晚，受欢迎的夜总会大多到凌晨2点才关门。此外，上海拥有各种剧院，在那里人们可以欣赏到话剧、马戏(acrobatics)、申国传统戏剧、音乐会等，上海的夜生活正日趋成熟。

Taker up her first job at school. Spend her summer holiday. Study for her Master’s degree. Study as an exchange student.

He was a man full of responsibility for German citizens. He was a man with little courage to face the threat of war. He was an eccentric man who loves hot weather. He was a man of many talents with a sense of idealism.

An ancient Greek philosopher once wrote that laughter is what makes us human—that it defines us as a species. Much more recent developments in biology and behavioral science suggest that not only humans but also rats and dolphins laugh; nonetheless, laughter is one of the most important aspects of human social life and self-expression. Laughter starts very soon after an infant is born—almost as soon as crying—and it serves many different social and psychological functions, from sharing our joy to intimidating and insulting other people. In many parts of the world, making other people laugh is considered a great gift, and comedy has always been a vital part of culture and art—perhaps precisely because of the com plex, significant role of laughter in everyday life. Humans begin laughing when they are about forty days old; in the 19th century, Charles Darwin verified this number by observing his own newborn daughter. Darwin also suggested an explanation for the sounds she made: we want to show one another that we are happy or delighted. Pleasure lies at the base of what Darwin called “real“ laughter; most people still think of laughing this way, as a fundamentally social act that helps us relate to one another by communicating positive feelings. It’s an easily verifiable fact that everyone laughs louder and more frequently in groups than when alone. And Darwin and one of his colleagues also demonstrated that it is easy for human beings to tell when someone is faking a laugh or a smile. Because of a certain muscle in the human face—the zygomaticus major, or muscle of joy—our eyes sparkle when we are genuinely happy. Comedy and laughter have played and still play a vital role in artistic production in western culture. Comedy as we know it—that is, staged performances intended to induce laughter in viewers or audience members—was born in ancient Greece. During the next several centuries. Italy. England. France and Germany all developed strong comic traditions—especially in Italy, where a theater tradition called the commedia dell’arte was born. Traveling performers played comic songs and put on puppet shows and plays to amuse crowds of viewers. This continued across Europe for hundreds of years, even as major cities developed and acting troupes settled into more permanent theaters. Even the American version of the television stand-up comedian is also very old, and can be traced back to the court fool or jester in the middle ages and the Renaissance. Human beings may not be the only animals who laugh—but for centuries we have made it a central part of being human. 16.What do we learn about laughter? 17.What indicates a real laughter according to Darwin? 18.What do we learn about comedy? 19.What is the function of earwax? Human beings are the only animals who can laugh. One starts laughing when he is about six months old. Laughter has many functions other than expressing joy. Almost all the animals can laugh in some way.

The sparkling of eyes. The opening of mouth. The movement of muscles. The blinking of eyes.

A soft cloth. Mineral oil. The little finger. A cotton swab.

Should girls go to school only with other girls? Is it better for boys to attend all boys schools? Educators at school for girls in Washington D.C. believe children in classes of the same sex do better, but other experts say there is no real evidence to support that idea. They believe there are other more important things that make a school effective. Excel Academy is the first all-girl school in Washington, D.C. that is independently operated and sup ported by taxpayers. It was established in 2007 and opened its doors in 2008. One of its students is Anyreah Clavijo who is 10 years old. Anyreah attended kindergarten in a class room with boys. She says boys have different interests from girls. She has now been at Excel for the last, five years and praises it. “They would like support me and tell me that I can do it. They make me feel like I’m loved and that I’m the smartest person in the world,“ Anyreah said. The Excel Academy provides free education to children from families without much money. It serves more than 600 girls from preschool, the youngest children to grade five. Three meals are served each day. Kaye Savage established the school and leads it as its chief executive officer. She says that when boys and girls are taught together, the teachers teach for the boys. She says boys are a little louder and much more active than the girls. In her opinion that makes girls second-class citizens in their own class rooms and schools. But Galen Sherwin at the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, disagrees. She says the ACLU thinks that the evidence, in her words, is not really there to support claims that same sex classrooms pro duce better results. “Similarities between boys and girls are much greater and more relevant than any differences. Certainly any differences that exist are not relevant from an educational standpoint,“ Sherwin said. Elaine Weiss is an education expert at the Economic Policy Institute. She believes other considerations besides same sex classes have a bigger effect on children success in school. Ms. Weiss says everything that happens in children’s early development is important. This includes their mother’s age and how they feel during pregnancy, and whether the children attend a pre-kindergarten program to help get ready tor school. “They start for example in pre-school, so they’re addressing some of that early gap before kids get to kindergarten. They keep their classes relatively small, so that teachers can have a one-to-one conversation and interaction with students. They have enriching after-school opportunities,“ Weiss said. And Anyreah Clavjjo is not sure if she will always attend an all-girl program, but she is happy where she is. 23.What if boys and girls are taught together according to Kaye? 24.What is the viewpoint of Sherwin? 25.What is important for children’s success in school according to Weiss? It is the first same sex school. It is located in New York city. It began to admit students in 2008. It charges students a high tuition fee.

Why We Need Good Teachers [A] The relative decline of American education at the elementary-and high-school levels has long been a national embarrassment as well as a threat to the nation’s future. Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world. Now, ranked against European schoolchildren, America does about as well as Lithuania, behind at least 10 other nations. Within the United States, the achievement gap between white students and poor and minority students stubbornly persists—and as the population of disadvantaged students grows, overall scores continue to fall. [B] For much of this time—roughly the last half century—professional educators believed that if they could only find the right teaching method, all would be well. They tried New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language—but nothing seemed to achieve significant or lasting improvements. [C] Yet in recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size or the textbook, the teaching method or the technology, or even the curriculum, is the quality of the teacher. Much of the ability to teach is innate (天生的)—an ability to inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms that some people instinctively possess. Teaching can be taught, to some degree, but not the way many graduate schools of education do it, with a lot of boring or marginally relevant theorizing and teaching method. In any case the research shows that within about five years, you can generally tell who is a good teacher and who is not. [D] It is also true and unfortunate that often the weakest teachers are degraded to teaching the neediest students, poor minority kids in inner-city schools. For these children, teachers can be make or break. “The research shows that kids who have two, three, four strong teachers in a row will eventually excel, no matter what their background, while kids who have even two weak teachers in a row will never recover,“ says Kati Haycock of the Education Trust and coauthor of the 2006 study “Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality.“ [E] Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones. But here is the rub. Although many teachers are caring and selfless, teaching in public schools has not always attracted the best and the brightest. There once was a time when teaching was one of the few jobs not denied to women and minorities. But with social progress, many talented women and minorities chose other and more highly compensated fields. One recent review of the evidence by McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, showed that most schoolteachers are recruited from the bottom third of college-bound high-school students. [F] At the same time, the teachers’ unions have become more and more powerful. In most states, after two or three years, teachers are given lifetime tenure (长期聘用). It is almost impossible to fire them. In New York City in 2008, three out of 30,000 tenured teachers were dismissed for cause. The statistics are just as eye-popping in other cities. The percentage of teachers dismissed for poor performance in Chicago between 2005 and 2008 was 0.1 percent. In Akron, Ohio, zero percent. In Toledo, 0.01 percent In Denver, zero percent in no other socially significant profession are the workers so insulated from responsibility. The responsibility does not just fall on the unions. Many principals don’t even try to weed out the poor performers. Year after year, about 99 percent of all teachers in the United States are rated “satisfactory“ by their school systems; firing a teacher invites a costly court battle with the local union. [G] Over time, inner-city schools, in particular, surrendered to a defeatist mindset The problem is not the teachers, went the thinking—it’s the parents (or absence of parents); it’s society with all its distractions and pathologies (病态); it’s the kids themselves. Not much can be done, really, except to keep the assembly line moving through “social promotion,“ regardless of academic performance, and hope the students graduate. Or so went the conventional wisdom in school superintendents’ offices from Newark to L.A. By 1992, “there was such a dramatic achievement gap in the United States, far larger than in other countries, between socioeconomic classes and races,“ says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. “It was a scandal of monumental proportions, that there were two distinct school systems in the U.S., one for the middle class and one for the poor.“ [H] In the past two decades, some schools have sprung up that defy and refute what former president George W. Bush memorably called “the soft bigotry (偏执成见) of low expectations.“ Generally operating outside of school bureaucracies as charter schools, programs like KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) have produced inner-city schools with high graduation rates (85 percent). KIPP schools don’t cherry-pick-^they take anyone who will sign a contract to play by the rules, which require some parental involvement. And they are not one-shot wonders. There are now 82 KTPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and, routinely, they far outperform the local public schools. KIPP schools are mercifully free of red tape and bureaucratic rules. KIPP schools require longer school days and a longer school year, but their greatest advantage is better teaching. [I] It takes a certain kind of teacher to succeed at a KIPP school or at other successful charter programs, like YES Prep. KIPP teachers carry cell phones so students can call them at any time. The dedication required makes for high burnout rates. It may be that teaching in an inner-city school is a little like going into the Special Forces in the military, a calling for only the chosen few. [J] Yet those few are multiplying. About 20 years ago, a Princeton senior named Wendy Kopp wrote her senior thesis proposing an organization to draw graduates from elite schools into teaching poor kids. Her idea was to hire them for just a couple of years, and then let them move on to Wall Street or wherever. Today, Teach for America (TFA) sends about 4,100 graduates, many from Ivy League colleges, into inner-city schools every year. Some (about 8 percent) can’t cope with it, but most (about 61 percent) stay in teaching after their demanding two-year tours. Two thirds of TFA’s 17,000 graduates are still involved in education and have become the core of a reform movement that is having real impact. The founders of KIPP, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, are TFA products. So is the most aggressive reformer in education today, Michelle Rhee, the education chancellor of the District of Columbia, who is trying to loosen the hold of the teachers’ union on a school system that for years had the highest costs and worst results in the nation. [K] It is difficult to remove the educational establishment. In New Orleans, a hurricane was required: since Katrina, New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out Using nonunion charter schools, New Orleans has been able to measure teacher performance in ways that the teachers’ unions have long and bitterly resisted. Under a new Louisiana law, New Orleans can track which schools produce the best teachers, forcing long-needed changes in school curricula.