In the United States elementary education begins at the age of six. At this stage nearly all the teachers are women, mostly married. The atmosphere is usually very friendly, and the teachers have now accepted the idea that the important thing is to make the chil-dren happy and interested. The old authoritarian (要绝对服从的) methods of education were discredited (不被认可) rather a long time ago-so much so that many people now think that they have gone too far in the direction of trying to make children happy and interestedrather than giving them actual instruction.
The social education of young children tries to make them accept the idea that human beings in a society need to work together for their common good. So the emphasis is on co- operation rather than competition throughout most of this process. This may seem curious, in view of the fact that American society is highly competitive; however, the need for mak-ing people sociable in this sense has come to be regarded as one of the functions of educa-tion. Most Americans do grow up with competitive ideas, and obviously quite a few as criminals, but it is not fair to say that the educational system fails. It probably does succeed in making most people sociable and ready to help one another both in material ways and through kindness and friendliness.
According to the passage, the American elementary education is supposed to make children______.
A. sensible and sensitive
B. competitive and interested
C. curious and friendly
D. happy and co-operative
For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. To keep up their work they must read letters, reports, trade publications, interoffice communications, not to mention newspapers and magazines: a never-ending flood of words. In 【C1】______ a job or advancing in one, the ability to read and comprehend 【C2】______ can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate fact is that most of us are 【C3】______ readers. Most of us de-velop poor reading 【C4】______ at an early age, and never get over them. The main deficiency 【C5】______ in the actual stuff of language itself--words. Taken individually, words have 【C6】______ meaning until they are strung together into phrased, sentences and paragraphs. 【C7】______ , however, the untrained reader does not read groups of words. He laboriously reads one word at a time, often regressing to 【C8】______ words or passages. Regression, the tendency to look back over 【C9】______ you have just read, is a common bad habit in reading. Another habit which 【C10】______ down the speed of reading is vocalization-sounding each word either orally or mentally as 【C11】______ reads.
To overcome these bad habits, some reading clinics use a device called an 【C12】______ ,which moves a bar (or curtain) down the page at a predetermined speed. The bar is set at a slightly faster rate 【C13】______ the reader finds comfortable, in order to "stretch" him. The accelerator forces the reader to read fast, 【C14】______ word-by-word reading, regression and subvocalization, practically impossible. At first 【C15】______ is sacrificed for speed. But when you learn to read ideas and concepts, you will not only read faster, 【C16】______ your compre-hension will improve. Many people have found 【C17】______ reading skill drastically improve dafter some training. 【C18】______ Charles Au, a business manager, for instance, his reading rate was a reasonably good 172 words a minute 【C19】______ the training, now it is an excellent 1,378 words a minute. He is delighted that how he can 【C20】______ a lot more reading material in a short period of time.
【C1】______
A. applying
B. doing
C. offering
D. getting
The underlined word "sociable" in the passage most probably means being______.
A. fond of talking freely
B. friendly with other people
C. concerned about social welfare
D. happy at school
Nonverbal (非语言的) communication has to do with gestures, movements and close-ness of two people when they are talking. The scientists say that those gestures, movements and so on have meaning which words do not carry.
For example, the body distance between two speakers can be important. North Ameri-cans often complain that South Americans are unfriendly because they tend to stand close to the North American when speaking, while the South American often consider the North American to be "cold" or "distant" because he keeps a greater distance between himself and the person he is speaking to. The "eye contact" provides another example of what we are calling nonverbal communication. Scientists have observed that there is more eye contact between people who like each other than there is between people who don't like each other.
The length of time that the person whom you are speaking to looks at your eyes indi-cates the amount of interest he has in the things you are talking about.
On the other hand, too long a gaze can make people uncomfortable. The eyes apparent-ly play a great part in nonverbal communication. Genuine warmth or interest, shyness or confidence can often be seen in the eyes. We do not always consider a smile to bea sign of friendliness. Someone, who is always smiling, and with little apparent reasons, often makes us uneasy.
According to the passage, nonverbal communication______.
A. is a method often used by people who cannot speak
B. can tell something that words cannot
C. can be used to talk with people who cannot bear
D. is less used than words