(I): And where do you hope to be in about, say, ten years? (S): Really fast broadband is going to change the way we work. In terms of transferring big amounts of data around and stuff, it’s going to get easier and easier. So I do think that in 10 years’ time I’m certain, you know, you’ll want some “face time“ as they say for meetings and all that sort of stuff. And physically, for filming some things you’ll have to be there. But very often, it won’t matter where on earth you are in the world so I am actually planning on buying a place in Portugal or Spain and continue my post-production stuff overseas. (I): Would you recommend it as a career, or do you have any advice for people who are thinking of taking it up? (S): I would definitely encourage people to come to Britain to work in the creative industries; they are some of the best in the world in terms of content, ideas, execution. The creative talents and the technicians in this country are fantastic. My one tip would be: make sure that you’ve got that endurance, that capacity, to endure because you’re going to be faced with long hours, some difficult people and occasions where you’re paid very little. So make sure that you’re determined and focused on working in these industries. You can’t be a tourist so to speak. You know Britain is a fantastic place to work in the creative industries because there is a very huge buzz, very high training and people are really passionate about what they do. But it’s also extremely competitive and the number of places for people to work in is a lot smaller than the number of people trying to get work. So you have to be very tenacious, you have to really want to do it. It is glamorous, it’s long hard hours and you have to be pretty thick-skinned. So give it a try and if you care about it, do it. But if not, you can make a lot more money a lot more easily doing something else. (I): So, you do think young people should think before act. (S): Yes. They need to be rational. Yet I still would recommend it as a career. It’s enormously enjoyable, much more creative than most people’s jobs are, much more varied than most people’s jobs are. Financially, I hate to say it but I’m now doing really quite well. In terms of the advice I’d give to someone, don’t give up because there’ll be endless barriers in your way. You know you get all these false horizons where you think you’re about to get a big break and then, you know, it just turns into nothing. So, the cost of making mistakes is huge and keep in mind never make any mistakes. That’s the most important thing of all because you only get one chance. So that’s it — be careful don’t make any mistakes! Well as a young professional in a creative industry myself, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. And you do get to meet the nicest people. (I): OK. Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for coming on the show and talking to us. (S): My pleasure. This is the end of Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on what you have just heard. Question Six What will change Mr. Smith’s way of work? Question Seven During the interview, what does Mr. Smith indicate? Question Eight What’s the attitude of British people towards their work? Question Nine To succeed in the competitive industries, what quality is as important as being diligent? Question Ten Why can’t young professionals make any mistakes? The personal computer. The Internet. The advanced filming technology. The broadband.

Educators are seriously concerned about the high rate of dropouts among the doctor of philosophy candidates and the consequent loss of talent to a nation in need of Ph. D. candidates. Some have placed the dropouts’ loss as high as 50%. The extent of the loss was, however, largely a matter of expert guessing. Last week a well-rounded study was published. It was published. It was based on 22, 000 questionnaires sent to former graduate students who were enrolled in 24 universities and it seemed to show many past fears to be groundless. The rate of dropouts was found to be 31%, and in most cases the dropouts, while not completing the Ph. D. requirement, went on to productive work. They are not only doing well financially, but, according to the report, are not far below the income levels of those who went on to complete their doctorates. Discussing the study last week, Dr. Tucker said the project was initiated “because of the concern frequently expressed by graduate faculties and administrators that some of the individuals who dropped out of Ph. D. programs were capable of competing for the requirement for the degree. Attrition at the Ph. D. level is also thought to be a waste of precious faculty time and a drain on university resources already being used to capacity. Some people expressed the opinion that the shortage of highly trained specialists and college teachers could be reduced by persuading the dropouts to return to graduate schools to complete the Ph. D.“ “The results of our research“ Dr. Tucker concluded, “did not support these opinions.“ Lack of motivation was the principal reason for dropping out. Most dropouts went as far in their doctoral program as was consistent with their levels of ability or their specialties. Most dropouts are now engaged in work consistent with their education and motivation. Nearly 75% of the dropouts said there was no academic reason for their decision, but those who mentioned academic reason cited failure to pass the qualifying examination, uncompleted research and failure to pass language exams. Among the single most important personal reasons identified by dropouts for non-completion of their Ph. D. program, lack of finances was marked by 19%. As an indication of how well the dropouts were doing, a chart showed 2% in humanities were receiving $20, 000 and more annually while none of the Ph. D. with that background reached this figure. The Ph. D. shone in the $7, 500 to $15, 000 bracket with 78% at that level against 50% for the dropouts. This may also be an indication of the fact that top salaries in the academic fields, where most of Ph. D. tend to rise to the highest salaries, are still lagging behind other fields. As to the possibility of getting dropouts back on campus, the outlook was glum. The main condition which would have to prevail for at least 25% of the dropouts who might consider returning to graduate school would be to guarantee that they would retain their present level of income and in some cases their present job.

Today we have a(an) tendency to label obesity as a disgrace. The overweight are sometimes pictured in the media with their faces covered. Stereotypes associated with obesity include laziness, lack of will power, and lower prospects for success. Teachers, employers, and health professionals have been shown to harbor biases against the obese. Even very young children tend to look down on the overweight, and teasing about body build has long been a problem in schools. Here’s a familiar version of the boy-meets-girl situation. A young man has at last plucked up courage to invite a dazzling young lady out to dinner. She has accepted his invitation and he is overjoyed. He is determined to take her to the best restaurant in town, even if it means that he will have to live on memories and hopes during the month to come. When they get to the restaurant, he discovers that this ethereal creature is on a diet. She mustn’t eat this and she mustn’t think that. Oh, but of course, she doesn’t want to spoil his enjoyment. Let him by all means eat as much fattening food as he wants: it’s the surest way to an early grave. They spend a truly memorable evening together and never see each other again. What a miserable lot dieters are! You can always recognize them from the sour expression on their faces. They spend most of their time turning their noses up at food. They are forever consulting calorie charts; gazing at themselves in mirrors; and leaping on to weighing-machines in the bathroom. They spend a lifetime fighting a losing battle against spreading hips, protruding tummies and double chins. Some swage all-out war on FAT. Mere dieting is not enough. They exhaust themselves doing exercises, sweating in sauna baths, being pummeled and massaged by weird machines. The really wealthy diet-mongers pay vast sums for “health cures“. For two weeks they can enter a nature clinic and be starved to death for a hundred guineas a week. Don’t think it’s only the middle-aged who go in for these fads either. Many of these bright young things you see are suffering from chronic malnutrition: they are living on nothing but air, water and the goodwill of God. Dieters undertake to starve themselves of their own free will; so why are they so miserable? Well, for one thing, they’re always hungry. You can’t be hungry and happy at the same time. All the horrible concoctions they eat instead of food leave them permanently dissatisfied. Wonder food is a complete food, the advertisement says. Just dissolve a teaspoonful in water. A complete food it may be, but not quite as complete as a juicy steak. And, of course, they’re always miserable because they feel so guilty. Hunger just proves too much for them and in the end they lash out and devour five huge guilt-inducing cream cakes at a sitting. And who can blame them? At least three times a day they are exposed to temptation. What utter torture it is always watching others tucking into piles of mouth-watering food while you munch a water biscuit and sip unsweetened lemon juice! What’s all this self-inflicted torture for? Saintly people deprive themselves of food to attain a state of grace. Insanity people do so to attain a state of misery. It will be a great day when all the dieters in the world abandon their slimming courses; when they hold out their plates and demand second helpings! Thinner isn’t always better. A number of studies have concluded that normal-weight people are in fact at higher risk of some diseases compared to those who are overweight. And there are health conditions for which being overweight is actually protective. For example, heavier women are less likely to develop calcium deficiency than thin women. Likewise among the elderly, being somewhat overweight is often an indicator of good health.

Vicious and dangerous sports should be banned by law. When you think of the tremendous technological progress we have made, it’s amazing how little we have developed in other respects. We may speak contemptuously of the poor old Romans because they relished the orgies of slaughter that went on in their arenas. We may despise them because they mistook these goings-on for entertainment. We may forgive them condescendingly because they lived 2000 years ago and obviously knew no better. But are our feelings of superiority really justified? Are we any less blood-thirsty? Why do boxing matches, for instance, attract such universal interest? Don’t the spectators who attend them hope they will see some violence? Human beings remain as bloodthirsty as ever they were. The only difference between ourselves and the Romans is that while they were honest enough to admit that they enjoyed watching hungry lions, tearing people apart and eating them alive, we find all sorts of sophisticated arguments to defend sports which should have been banned long age; sports which are quite as barbarous as, say, public hangings or bearbaiting. It is really incredible that in this day and age we should still allow hunting or bull-fighting, that we should be prepared to sit back and watch two men batter each other to pulp in a boxing ring, that we should be relatively unmoved by the sight of one or a number of racing cars crashing and bursting into flames. Let us not deceive ourselves. Any talk of the sporting spirit’ is sheer hypocrisy. People take part in violent sports because of the high rewards they bring. Spectators are willing to pay vast sums of money to see violence. A world heavyweight championship match, for instance, is front page news. Millions of people are disappointed if a big fight is over in two rounds instead of fifteen. They feel disappointment because they have been deprived of the exquisite pleasure of witnessing prolonged torture and violence. There is an undeniable truth that a fairly large amount of people lose their lives in extreme sports activities. It is known to all that most extreme sports are carried out in very atrocious natural circumstances which may lead to unpredictable dangers. To make things worse, a fair number of participants hold inadequate knowledge of both the requirements of extreme sports and the skills to tackle emergent problems they will encounter. All those factors together result in the seemingly dangerous-and-demanding sports which are considered a waste of time in people’s mind. Objectively speaking, participating in extreme sports benefits people in various aspects involving the proof of self-worth and forming valuable characters. As the comment mentions, the television live show of extreme sports is, in some people’s perspective, an awful propaganda of risking lives. We may get back to the basic question that why those people want to risk their lives in such a “meaningless activity“. And why should we ban violent sports if people enjoy them so much? You may well ask. The answer is simple: they are uncivilized. For centuries man has been trying to improve himself spiritually and emotionally — admittedly with little success. But at least we no longer tolerate the sight madmen cooped up in cages, or public floggings of any of the countless other barbaric practices which were common in the past. Prisons are no longer the grim forbidding places they used to be. Social welfare systems are in operation in many parts of the world. Big efforts are being made to distribute wealth fairly. These changes have come about not because human beings have suddenly and unaccountably improved, but because positive steps were taken to change the law. The law is the biggest instrument of social change that we have and it may exert great civilizing influence. If we banned dangerous and violent sports, we would be moving one step further to improve mankind. We would recognize that violence is degrading and unworthy of human beings.

PASSAGE TWO

PASSAGE THREE

There has been much chatter about bank loans to local governments’ financing vehicles, widely regarded as one of the main risks face the Chinese economy. Set up by local 【S1】______ governments to borrow money for infrastructure investments, and these vehicles are rather like Western companies’ special 【S2】______ purpose vehicles. They have played an important role in stimulating the Chinese economy and helping it to recover from the global financial crisis. But they face a problem, either: The 【S3】______ bank loans they have received have increased extraordinary. 【S4】______ Local governments at levels have set up their investment 【S5】______ companies, some of which are directly controlled by the leaders responsible for fundraising for their pet projects. These companies take a variety of forms dependable on the industries 【S6】______ and sectors they belong to. There are thousands of such companies across the country, in which sometimes are even irregular. Some of 【S7】______ them, particularly those operating at the county-level, will not be able to service their debts. It is thus reasonable to be alarmed. But it is still too late to say that the level of non-performing bank loans will 【S8】______ increase drastically even we cannot estimate the precise 【S9】______ number and amount of loans given to local governments until the formal assessment is completed at the end of this year. To general the special vehicles’ business model we have 【S10】______ to go back in history.

朋友A君，四十余岁，自认为是引导新潮流的电影理论家。实际上成“家”还差那么一丁点。最近著系列小文，专论电影艺术的“物质还原性”。举凡“物质还原性”与吾国电影艺术发展十大关系。因其系列而引起电影理论界注意。何谓电影艺术的“物质还原性”，则未加阐明。更显“十大关系”如云山雾罩，高深莫测。于是有诸多热心电影理论又对追随新流派十分敏感之青年，口中笔下，不乏“物质还原性”一语。虽不甚了了，却以其似乎昭昭，力图亦使人昭昭。同行更因对此理论不甚了了，深感才学浅薄，孤陋寡闻，耻于问津。种种座谈会上，信口引用，加以发挥，以其昏昏，使人更昏昏。昏昏者，不懂也。不懂毕竟有些不光彩，人之讳也。于是昏昏者也伪作昭昭然。

American Values I. Individual freedom A. The one value every American would agree upon B. The 【T1】______of American values 【T1】______ C. Individual rights are guaranteed in the 【T2】______ 【T2】______ D. 【T3】______are small, owned by an individual or a family 【T3】______ II. 【T4】______ 【T4】______ A. Education is regarded as the key to opportunity. B. Americans take 【T5】______to learning. 【T5】______ C. Internships, extracurricular activities are considered important. D. 【T6】______is valued. 【T6】______ E. Americans decide their major field of study and select courses. F. The belief “be all that you can be“ emanates from 【T7】______. 【T7】______ III. Concept of family A. 【T8】______ — Alien to most cultures in the world 【T8】______ — To bring about the happiness of 【T9】______ — Children disagree, even argue with their parents 【T9】______ B. Host families — Foreign students are invited into Americans’ homes — Visitors can do 【T10】______in host families IV. Privacy 【T10】______ A. Privacy is important to Americans. B. Individual privacy may make it difficult to 【T11】______. V Reasons for American values 【T11】______ A. Individualism stems from American 【T12】______. B. Early settlers had to be self-sufficient and 【T13】______. 【T12】______ C. The positive spirit enables Americans to take risks. 【T13】______ D. American heroes are 【T14】______. VI. Suggested attitude toward values 【T14】______ A. Avoid 【T15】______ B. Evaluate a culture by its own standards 【T15】______American Values Good morning, everybody. In today’s lecture, we shall start a new topic on American studies; that is American values. If you asked most Americans what the cultural values in the U.S. are, you might get some blank stares, or a statement of some basic beliefs. The question may seem simple, but the answer is quite complex. In a society as highly diverse as the United States, there is likely to be a multitude of answers. Since America is a country of immigrants, American culture has been enriched by the values and belief systems of virtually every part of the world. Consequently, it is impossible to be comprehensive. Nevertheless, a few selected values are at the core of the American value system. The first is definitely individual freedom. It’s the one value that nearly every American would agree upon. Whether you call it individual freedom, individualism, or independence, it is the cornerstone of American values. It permeates every aspect of our society. The concept of an individual’s having control over his or her own destiny influenced the type of government that was established here, and individual rights are guaranteed in the United States Constitution. These rights are so protected in our judicial system that, even though Americans may complain that criminals sometimes “get away with murder“, most people believe it is better to free a few guilty persons than to imprison one person who is innocent. While our economic system may be dominated by large corporations, the majority of American businesses are small, and many are owned by an individual or a family. It is part of the “American dream“ to “be your own boss“, and being an entrepreneur is one of the most appealing ways to improve one’s economic future. The second American value I want to talk about is choice in education. Education is often regarded as the key to opportunity, including financial security. Americans take a pragmatic approach to learning, so what one learns outside the classroom through internships, extracurricular activities and the like is often considered as important as what is learned in the classroom. Consequently, lifelong learning is valued which results in many adult and continuing education programs. Americans have many choices. In school they decide their major field of study, perhaps with or without their parents’ influence, and students even get to select some of their courses. These “elective“ courses often confuse foreign students who may expect a more rigid curriculum. The belief that Americans should “be all that you can be“ emanates from the heritage descended by early settlers. Since the majority of the early settlers were Protestant, they believed that they had a responsibility to improve themselves, to be the best they could be, to develop their talents, and to help their neighbors. That is to say, they believe that they have certain missions to fulfill in the world. These convictions have not only influenced our educational system, but are often reflected in U.S. foreign policy. Afterward, I’d like to say something about Americans’ concept of family. Another aspect of American society that may bewilder non-Americans is the family. The nuclear family structure is so alien to most cultures in the world that it is often misunderstood. The main purpose of the American family is to bring about the happiness of each individual family member. The traditional family values include love and respect for parents, as well as for all members of the family. However, the emphasis on the individual and his or her right to happiness can be confusing. It allows children to disagree, even argue with their parents. While in most other cultures such action would be a sign of disrespect and a lack of love, it is not the case in the United States. It is simply a part of developing one’s independence. Many foreign students and visitors are welcomed by host families, who invite them into their homes for dinner or to join in family activities. Frequently visitors are told to “make themselves at home“ and, at times, may appear to be “left alone“. It certainly is nice to be treated as an honored guest in someone’s home, but one of the highest compliments that an American can give foreign guests is to treat them like members of the family, which means to give them the “freedom of the house“ to do what they want, to “raid the refrigerator“ on their own, or to have some quiet time alone. The last value I want to emphasize is privacy. Privacy is important to Americans. The notion of individual privacy may make it difficult to make friends. Because Americans respect one’s privacy, they may not go much beyond a friendly “hello“. Ironically, it is usually the foreigner who must be more assertive if a friendship is to develop. Finally, are you interested in the reasons that have shaped today’s American values? The rugged individualism valued by most Americans stems from our frontier heritage. For much of our country’s history, there was a frontier. That experience greatly influenced American attitudes. Early settlers had to be self-sufficient which forced them to be inventive. Their success gave them optimism about the future, a belief that problems could be solved. This positive spirit enables Americans to take risks in areas where others might only dream, resulting in tremendous advances in technology, health and science. The American frontier also created our heroes: the self-reliant, strong-willed, confident individual who preferred action to words and always tried to treat others fairly. Many of these characteristics are represented by the myth of the American cowboy, and the more modern versions personified in movies by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone. We can even look to “future“ centuries and admire similar qualities in the heroes of the Star Trek and Star Wars movie series. OK, in a nutshell, no matter what changes the next century brings or whether you agree with American values, the opportunity to visit the United States and to observe Americans first-hand is an experience well worth the effort. Be careful not to be ethnocentric, but to evaluate a culture by its own standards. Be aware that you’ll help shape American attitudes, just as they will influence you.

(S)=Mr. Smith (I)=Interviewer (I): Hello and welcome to our talk show. In the next few minutes we’re going to be seeing what it’s like to live and work as a young professional in the UK. Creative industries play a key role in the UK’s economic growth. It’s a sector which covers activities such as architecture, publishing, film, fashion, music, radio and TV, and software. And it accounts for almost ten percent of the UK economy. Creative industries often attract young people who feel naturally drawn to them, in the hope that they can make their mark, their fortune or both, whilst expressing themselves in their chosen field. That’s the dream but what are the realities? Today, we are pleased that our reporter Mark managed to bring a distinguished young creative professional from the film industry to our talk show. Welcome, Mr. Smith. (S): Thanks. (I): Mr. Smith. You are a young professional who works in the UK’s burgeoning creative sector and you won’t be short of opinions. Would you tell us what’s your specific job in the film industry? (S): OK. I’m a film and video editor. (I): I see now you’ve become rather successful. And would you share with us your experience when you first plunged into this field? (S): Breaking into the industry is very difficult. And certainly for the first two years that I was trying to break in I had to spend a lot of time working as a carpenter. Or doing whatever I could, painting and decorating, to get by, whilst you are pursuing contacts really. But then when you get more and more established, you get more and more contacts and at the same time you got to perform better. Afterward, it gets much easier. (I): And do you have to work long hours? (S): Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours per day, it’s not unusual. There are limits set within the law, but of course everyone does usually do whatever’s required to get the material in the can. (I): What about the social side of things? Do you go out much? Do you have time to go out much? (S): In terms of meeting people it’s a bit complicated. I often work on my own, so I’m effectively directing myself doing camera work and then I’ll go edit, and then I’ll be totally absorbed in editing. To some extent, I’m completely on my own for days at a time working on a project. On other projects which are much more collaborative, you meet an awful lot of people, and obviously you’ve got a lot in common and with some of them I’ve developed really very good relationships that could be called friendships. So yeah, socially it can be great. (I): You have a great social life with the people that you work with but organizing social life outside of that, if you’re working seventy-two-hour weeks, can be pretty rough. Do you think so? (S): Yeah. The flip-side of the coin is that if you’re not working at all, you’ve got all the time in the world. But remember that people who work in other industries don’t really understand your stop-start lifestyle. So it can take extra effort to meet up with people. This is the end of Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard. Question One Which is not mentioned as an activity in creative industries? Question Two Who are often attracted by creative industries in the UK? Question Three Why did Mr. Smith, a film and video editor, once work as a carpenter? Question Four Why does Mr. Smith have to work 14 to 16 hours every day? Question Five What is said about Mr. Smith’s social life? Architecture. Teaching. Fashion. Software.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by British author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A London-based “consulting detective“ whose abilities border on the fantastic, Holmes is known for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to adopt almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science to solve difficult cases. Holmes’ Knowledge ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the most naive way that he might be what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar system. “You appear to be astonished, “ Holmes said, smiling at my expression. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.“ “But the Solar System!“ I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?“ he interrupted impatiently. One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it. Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life, “ and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deduction appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’ s inmost thought. Deceit, according to him, was impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer. “From a drop of water, “ said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.“ This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justified it. Watson describes Holmes as “bohemian“ in his habits and lifestyle. Described by Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles as having a “cat-like“ love of personal cleanliness, Holmes is an eccentric with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, Watson says: Although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, he keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece. He had a horror of destroying documents. Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away saved by their owner.

PASSAGE ONE

PASSAGE FOUR

As you can see in the two excerpts below, people hold different opinions toward whether students should be allowed to use apps to share answers to their assignments. Do you believe that these apps will help student’s learning, or will encourage cheating? Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the opinions from both sides; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Excerpt 1 Will New Math App Facilitate Cheating or Learning? Stephen Veliz, TLH blogger PhotoMath, which bills itself as a “smart camera calculator, “ is a new app for iOS and Windows smartphones that utilizes the phone’s camera to solve math problems for users. I don’t often get overly excited about new apps these days, but this thing is truly amazing. My immediate reaction was, of course, to lament over why this tool wasn’t available as I struggled through high school math. Once you get past the coolness factor, PhotoMath should force us to deal with some fundamental questions about the use of tools like this in our schools. I shared the app with a group of my 11th grade students this morning and their immediate reaction was elation over how easy their homework would be from now on. But once we talked about the app’s potential for a little while, students began to appreciate PhotoMath as a tool that could help them learn. You see, in addition to providing the user with a solution, PhotoMath also provides all of the steps that go into solving a problem. That could be extremely powerful for struggling students, if used correctly. So how do we define that fine line between cheating and proper use of the tools that emerging technologies provide? I think that can be answered in the same way that I would answer questions about many tech tools that students are using, whether or not we as educators approve. We can either shut our classroom door to the tool — as many have done with smartphones — or we can embrace the tool, incorporate it into what we are doing and teach students how to use the tool in a responsible and productive way. But no matter what our attitude is, students will be using them anyway. Excerpt 2 A Chinese Internet Giant Has an App to Help Students Cheat on Their Homework Chinese teens have it rough pretty with schoolwork—students in Shanghai spend an average of nearly three hours per weeknight on homework. So it’s no wonder that many smartphone-wielding students are turning to technology to lessen their load, including an app developed by internet search giant Baidu that lets them crowdsource their homework questions. The company’s mobile app “Homework Helper, “ launched this year, and has been downloaded at least 5 million times. Users can either take a photo of their homework questions or type them in by hand. Other users who answer the questions in online forums are rewarded with virtual e-coins when their answers are deemed correct. The coins can be used to buy everything from photo frames to iPhones and Lenovo laptops. A staff member for Homework Helper said through the company’s messaging service that the app’s answers were correct around 80% of the time. Asked about the dubious morality of the app, the staffer admitted: “I think this is a kind of cheating. Basically it creates a platform where students can buy answers while some others can sell answers. “ Students, unsurprisingly, seem to like apps like this, but parents are less enthusiastic. “Once she gets stuck on a problem, she turns to these apps for answers and loses the ability to think independently, “ said one mother of a middle school student. Teachers also voice their concern. “Although we welcome high-technology in education, this is a too clever way to use it. More or less it will encourage students to LOOK FOR answers, not to CREATE their own answers, “ comments a teacher from a prestigious high school in Shanghai.