英语六级阅读强化练习六

阅读强化练习六Part ⅡReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) As Colleges Make Courses Available Free Online, Others Cash InA computer in Logan, Utah, holds syllabus details, lecture notes, problem sets and exams from more than 80 Utah State University courses: but this is no secret cheat-sheet site put together by rogue hackers and pirates. Anyone, anywhere, with an Internet connection—from Bill Gates down—can log on and download these materials without cost. The site is part of the OpenCourseWare network, itself part of an educational resources movement dedicated to opening and reshaping global access to higher education.Since 2000, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology established the first OpenCourseWare site, schoolsf-including top names like Harvard and Stanford in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain-have been releasing educational materials to the public through platforms.The OpenCourseWare Consortium（联盟）which grew out of the M.I.T. project, now includes over 200 institutions worldwide and offers materials from more than 13,000 courses.The idea driving the movement is that information should be freely shared. Still, someone must pay for these materials, and with the recession squeezing university budgets, open course programs are vulnerable.For an annual cost of $125,000, or a mere 0.05 percent of the university‟s $226 million budget, Utah State‟s four-year-old OpenCourseWare program attracted 550,000 page views last year, making it one of the most popular in the United States, according to Marion Jensen, its former director.Former, because in July the university unformally cut off financing for the program, citing budget constraints. The OpenCourseWare content is now being hosted on the DigitalCommons@USU Web site, the Utah State University branch of a digital content storage that allows various institutions to share up-to-date research and knowledge.Still, an entire ecosystem of commercially oriented organizations, like the open course aggregator(聚合器)Academic Earth, has sprung up around open course materials. On a philosophical level, the idea of making money from something available free might seem questionable. But Joi Ito, chief executive of Creative Commons, which issues the licenses defining user rights to most OpenCourseWare materials, supports the mixing of free and for-profit: “I think there‟s a great deal of commercial infrastructure that needs to be created in order for this to be successful,” Mr. Ito said: “It can‟t all just be free.”Indeed, that raises a key question: how can professors and universities afford to give away the course materials that are their very livelihood?“The answer,” says James D. Y ager, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Bloomberg School of Public H ealth at Johns Hopkins University, “lies in why students pay to attend university in the first place.” What OpenCourseWare offers, he notes, is not the full university experience: “We don‟t offer the course for free, we offer the content for free,” Mr. Y ag er said by telephone in February. “Students take courses because they want interaction with faculty, they want interaction with one another. Those things are not available on O.C.W. “O.C.W.is just the publishing of the content,” he said.Moreover, O.C.W. offers no certificate and no degree, although that may soon change. Before Utah State ran short of funds, Mr. Jensen worked on a project to certify students who passed examinations after completing O.C.W. courses.If just 1 percent of the 50,000 unique monthly visitors to the Utah State OpenCourseWare site had paid a $50 exam fee, the OpenCourseWare program could have been sustainable, he said.Professor James C. Taylor at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, has been working on a similar program. He wants to take it a step further by setting up an online community of academic volunteers who would interact with students the way professors do in the classroom. With this additional support, students would come closer to approximating a residential or distance education experience at a fraction of the cost, while the university would extend its outreach to a wider group of people.Southern Queensland university already had a well-established distance learning program before joining the O.C.W. network. Since the content that it contributes to O.C.W. was developed expressly for online and distance use, it is particularly well adapted to independent learning.That could cut both ways: Schools with existing distance education programs could be reluctant to provide free open courses for fear of losing paying students.Schools have taken various approaches to online materials. Some, for example, have chosen to publish only parts of their courses online. Willem Koolhaas, director of corporate marketing communication at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, said his school posted special lectures, specifically-designed “to use for recruiting purposes”.“What we‟re doing at the moment from a recruitment and advertising perspective is the rig ht thing to do,” he said, “though if you would be talking now to the academic director of a program, they might have a different perspective.”Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, in New Hampshire, said: “We‟re in the transmission of information business. On the academic side, you want as many people as possible to hear what you have to say. On the business side, obviously it‟s an exclusive experience.”“It‟s pretty hard to imagine how an elite in stitution like us or like Harvard or Stanford or any of the other top schools would stay in business if they didn‟t have some aspect of the program that was still relatively complicated and difficult to get to,” Mr. Argenti said. Reflecting that, Tuck does not offer complete sets of course material.For lesser-known schools, the Internet offers an economical and easy way to showcase their strengths—almost any school can upload content in hopes of making a name for itself. Online, it is the quality of the material, rather than the brand name or ranking, that counts most.“In some sense, Google does level the playing field,” Mr. Jensen of Utah State said. “If you produce good content and people link to you, Google‟s going to recognize that.”Still, schools with an established reputation may have a head start. In December 2009, 33 percent of page views of Open Y ale Courses, and 26 percent of M.I.T.‟s page views, came from direct traffic—significantly more than the 15 percent that come directly to the Utah State University site.Reputation makes a difference when procuring public funds for these projects as well. To help raise the $3.6 million that it costs annually to operate its Web site, M.I.T. holds semiannual fund-raising campaigns and has recently set up an underwriting（包销）program.Mr. Carson, the M.I.T. external relations director, compared the institute‟s O.C.W. program to National Public Radio, the U.S. public broadcaster. “We‟re putting information out there for the public good, and we think the sources o f support are going to be very similar,” he said. M.I.T. has seen a roughly 70 percent year-on-year growth in funding over recent years, which Mr. Carson said was a good gauge of the site‟s public value.“Freely sharing materials over the Internet creates an incentive for universities to improve themselves,” said Catherine Casserly, former director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation, which finances many OpenCourseWare projects. “I think that by putting some of the spectacular professors, and putting their approaches and instructional strategies that they use with their students in front of the world, it sets a new benchmark for all of us to learn from,” she said, “and I think that‟s actually one of the incredible powers of this open educational resource.”1.The OpenCourseWare network is part of an educational resources movement engaged in ________.2.What is the idea that propels the movement of the OpenCourseWare Consortium?3.From a philosophical perspective, the idea that people can make money from something free is ________.4.James D. Y ager said that the OpenCourseWare doesn‟t offer________.5.As for the program of James C. Taylor, he wants to ________.6.According to the author, what measures have some schools adopted to online materials?7.The most important thing for an online school is ________.8.If schools want to gain public funds to support their projects, ________ plays an important role.9.Mr.Carson holds that they are publishing information out online for the sake of ________.10.According to Catherine Casserly, universities are inspired to improve themselves via thePart ⅣReading Comprehension (Reading in Depth)(25 minutes)Section AY ou know you‟re an extreme parent if:“...your child, who does not have a documented learning disability, has more than three tutors.”“...you imagine that your child is going to play p rofessional sports even though no coach has predicted this outcome.”“...you have your child take 30 practice SA T exams before the actual test.”These real-life examples come from Michael Thompson, a psychologist who has seen extreme parenting on the front lines for many years, and who has been called in by schools across the U.S. to guide parents on how to tone it down. Thompson acknowledges that parents want the best for their children. But he warns parents against overestimating their roles in a child‟s development, which can lead to extreme behavior and a crooked sense of how the kids are doing.He recalls a mother who challenged her son‟s high school guidance counselor after he suggested several colleges based on the student‟s academics. When she expres sed her disappointment, the guidance counselor explained: “Y our son is not in the top half of the class.” The mother‟s response: “Y es, but nobody told me he was in the bottom half.” Extreme parenting is driven by the parent who believes “they are the engine of how their children will turn out,” Thompson says.The trouble comes when parents cross the line from healthy involvement to trying to pave a straight line to success. And it‟s not always a bright line. About 10 years ago, Psychology Today columnist Hara Estroff Marano began investigating a dramatic rise in depression on college campuses. She spoke to about 400 college counselors. In almost every case she says she heard the same thing: “These kids have no coping skills. They‟d been overprotected by par ents who were pushing them to achieve—who were shielding them from bumps to have a straight shot at success.”This informs Marano‟s view of extreme parenting, which involves parents who don‟t give their children enough latitude to experience failure. “Y ou know you‟re an extreme parent when you take over tasks for your kids,” Marano says, “Or you solve their math problems for them. Or you ask them to do something, like tie their shoes, and get impatient, so you end up tying them.”47.Tompson warns that in a child‟s development parents should ________.48.According to the recall of Thompson, after the son‟s high school guidance counselorrecommended several colleges, the mother ________the counselor.49.From the study of Hara Estroff Marano, nearly all colleg e counselors agreed that kids arelacking in ________.50.Parents overprotected their children with the purpose of giving them ________.51.In the view of Marano, children of extreme parents haven‟t enough freedom to ________.Section BPassage One“Nothing matters more to a child‟s education than good teachers.” Anyone who‟s ever had a Ms. Green or a Mr. Miller whom they remember fondly instinctively knows this to be true. And while “Who‟s teaching my kid?” is an im portant question for parents to ask, there may be an equally essential (and rarely remarked upon) question—“Who‟s teaching my kid‟s teachers?”On Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went to Columbia University‟s Teachers College, the oldest teacher-training school in the nation, and delivered a speech blasting the education schools that have trained the majority of the 3.2 million teachers working in U.S. public schools today. “By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation‟s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre（普通的）job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom,” he said to an audience of teaching students who listened with curiosity.Duncan‟s speech raises another question: If most teacher colleges are “mediocre,” does that mean the teachers they produce are equally ordinary?One of the major problems with answering that question, says David Steiner, New Y ork‟s education commissioner, is that we simply don‟t know, can‟t know. It is nearly impossible in many states to tell which teachers produce the best student outcomes, let alone which teacher colleges.Which brings people like Steiner to a central concern: What good are teachers‟ credentials if we can‟t tell how much their students are learning?To that end, Duncan said, “I am urging every teacher-education program today to make better outcomes for students the primary mission.” He suggested that more states adopt a model currently being used in Louisiana in which student test scores in grades 4-9 are traced back to their teachers, who are in turn traced back to their place of training, whether it be an education school or an alternative certification program.“If you want to get more-effective teachers, one of the obvious places to begin is to look at the supply side.” says George Noel l, a researcher at Louisiana State University. Although such measures may seem a punishment to education schools, that‟s not the point. Rather, the ideal situation would be to have schools use the feedback to improve the quality of their instruction.Concern over the ability of teacher colleges to produce effective teachers has long existed. As Duncan points out, one of his predecessors, Richard Riley, put education colleges on notice a full decade ago. The difference, as Duncan never misses an opportunity to say, is that the Federal Government now has financial incentives through which to effect change.Smart as they may be, trace-back programs are still likely to meet resistance. “Who wakes up one morning and says, …I want to be publicly accountable?‟ ”says Noell. “That‟s kind of scary for anybody. Nobody wants to be embarrassed.”52.What do we know about Ms. Green or Mr. Miller in Paragraph One?53.The speech delivered by Arne Duncan at Columbia University was about ________.54.Why did Duncan recommend adopting the model being used in Louisiana?55.What was Richard Riley‟s opinion about teacher colleges?56.What do we know about trace-back programs according to the passage?Passage T woRates of depression and anxiety are rising in the modern world. Proposed remedies arenumerous. And one that is reaping growing attention is meditation, and mindfulness meditation in particular.The aim is simple: to pay attention—be “mindful”. Typically, a teacher will ask you to sit upright, in an alert position. Then, they will encourage you to focus on something straightforward, like the in- and out-flow of breath. The aim is to nurture a curiosity about these sensations—not to explain them, but to know them.It‟s a way of concentratin g on the here and now, thereby becoming more aware of how the here and now is affecting you. It doesn‟t aim directly at the removal of stresses and strains. In fact, it is very hard to develop the concentration necessary to follow your breath, even for a few seconds. What you see is your mind racing from this memory to that moment. But that‟s the trick: to observe, and to learn to change the way you relate to the inner sufferings. Therein lies the route to better mental health.Mindfulness, then, is not about ecstatic（入迷的）states. It‟s mostly pretty boring and dull. Moreover, it is not a fast track to delightful happiness. It can, in fact, be quite unsettling, as works with painful experiences, to understand them better and thereby get to the root of problems.Research into the benefits of mindfulness seems to support its claims. People prone to depression, say, are less likely to have depressive episodes if they practice meditation. Stress goes down. But it‟s more like going on a journey than taking a pill. Though meditation techniques can be learned quickly, it‟s no instant remedy and requires discipline.Mindfulness is a practice aimed at caring for yourself. Then, it‟s about knowing yourself better, something recognized as a crucial part of living well. I t‟s striking that today we often don‟t take the time to do so. Hence, perhaps, many of the ills of the western world.But mindfulness says: make the time to step back, and here‟s a way to do it. It encourages you to be more aware of life, and promises that mindfulness is a source of insight and hope.57.What does the author tell us about mindfulness meditation?58.The aim of mindfulness meditation is ________.59.How can we approach better mental health through mindfulness meditation?60.Why does the author say mindful meditation is “more like going on a jou rney than taking a pill” (Line3, Para.5)?61.According to the passage many of the ills of the western world come from ________.。