听力原文: As you prepare to become elementary school teachers, you'll be hearing a lot of discussions about the relevance of teaching penmanship. Now years ago when I was studying education in college, reading, writing and arithmetic were the basics of elementary school education. It went without saying that writing meant first and foremost penmanship. That is, the neatness of a child's handwriting. It was considered so important that sometimes prizes were even awarded for the best handwriting. But when we move ahead a few decades into the 1980s, we see teachers and administrators and even parents telling us that teaching penmanship is a waste of time. With computers, they said, children can successfully manipulate the keyboard or mouse of their home computers before they can even hold a pencil.
This change in attitude had an impact on the classroom. In your homework for this week you'll be looking at what statewide curricular standards in the US say about penmanship. You'll see that in many states penmanship has been deemphasized in a required curriculum, especially in the later years of elementary school. In California, for example, the curriculum calls for fourth-grade students to... and I quote, "write fluently and legibly in cursive or grades." But after this, the curriculum makes no further mention of penmanship in Grades Five, Six or beyond. Any higher level of quality or neatness is simply not among the curricular objectives. Your assignment is to look at what the curricular standards for all fifty states say about penmanship.
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A. It's now taught with the aid of computers.
B. It isn't considered as important today as it was in the past.
Children today learn it earlier than those did in the past.
D. A lot of time is spent teaching it.
A.The animals over-fertilize the soil.B.Dead plant roots can't hold the soil together.
A. The animals over-fertilize the soil.
B. Dead plant roots can't hold the soil together.
C. The wrong types of plants are left standing.
D. There is a buildup of plant and animal matter.
听力原文: Today, I'd like to talk about some of the changes land can undergo, specifically desertification. That's the process through which land becomes part of a desert. Now a desert is defined as a place that receives a certain maximum amount of rainfall. But you may not know that it usually takes more than just a lack of water to turn productive land into a desert. There are several specific human activities that when combined with a lack of rainfall encourage desertification. For example, over-cultivation, growing more crops than soil can support. The soil loses its nutrients, so it needs either to be fertilized or to be left unused for at least a season. But if neither of these things happens, if these nutrients in the soil don't get replaced, the damaged soil stops producing. Another cause of desertification is overgrazing. That's when the grasses and trees and shrubs of an area are expected to feed more animals than they reasonably can. Too many animals eating in the same area will kill the vegetation. And it's because it's the roots of this vegetation that hold much of the soil together, when too much of the vegetation dies, the soil corrodes. But maybe the most paradoxical example of human behavior. that can lead to desertification is irrigation. It may seem to run counter to common sense to say that introducing water into an area can cause it to become more like a desert. But there are plenty of bad irrigation practices that do just that. Bringing in too much salty water and then not providing adequate drainage for it will till the soil with salt, and turn the area into a desert.
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A. It receives more nutrients than it can absorb.
B. It becomes oversaturated with water.
C. It loses the ability to support insect life.
D. It loses nutrients that aren't replaced.
A.Over 87,000 workers will lose their jobs in auto companies.B.Many people will have t
A. Over 87,000 workers will lose their jobs in auto companies.
B. Many people will have to say bye-bye to their high salaries.
C. The employees' laid-off has a great impact on the American business.
D. America can no longer take a lead in world economy.