题目内容
The phrase "A Law of Nature" is probably rarer in modern scientific writing than was the case some generations ago. This is partly due to very natural objection to the use of the word "law" in two different senses. Human societies have laws. In primitive societies there is no distinction between law and custom. Some things are done, others are not. This is regarded as part of the nature of things, and generally as an unalterable fact. If customs change, the change is too slow to be observed, later on kings could make new laws, but there was no way of getting rid of old ones. The Greek democracies made the great and revolutionary discovery that a community could consciously make new laws and repeal old ones. So for us a human law is something which is valid only over a certain number of people for a certain period of time.
Laws of Nature, however, are not commands but statements of facts. The use of the same word is unfortunate. This would do away with the idea that a law implies' a law-maker. But the difference between the two uses of the word is fundamental. If a piece of matter does not obey a Law of Nature it is not punished. On the contrary, we say that the law has been stated incorrectly. Certainly many of them have. Nevertheless, these inaccurately stated laws are of immense practical and theoretical value.
The main topic of this passage is that ______.
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若磁盘的写电流波形如下图所示，图中①波形的记录方式是(6)；②波形的记录方式是(7)。
(52)
Bilingual Education
Bilingual education in America is hundreds of years old, hardly a "new" issue. In 1837, Pennsylvania law required that school instruction be given on an equal basis in German as well as English. In fact, that example provides us with a fairly concise definition of bilingual education, the use of two languages for instruction. But, almost a century later, as America was being pulled into World War I, foreign languages were seen as unpatriotic. Public pressure routed the German language from the curriculum, although nearly one in four high school students was studying the language at the time. Some states went even further. Committed to a rapid assimilation(同化)of new immigrants, and suspicious of much that was foreign, these states prohibited the teaching of any foreign language during the first eight years of schooling.
Despite the long history of bilingual education in this country, many school districts never really bought into the concept. In districts without bilingual education, students with a poor command of English had to sink or swim (or perhaps, more accurately, "speak or sink"). Students either learned to speak English as they sat in class—or they failed school, an approach sometimes referred to as language submersion. If submersion was not to their liking, they could choose to leave school. Many did.
Bilingual education had a rebirth in the 1960s, as the Civil rights movement brought new attention to the struggles of many Americans temporarily without citizenship, including non-English speakers trying to learn in a language they did not understand. And, unlike the 1800s, by the 1960s and 1970s education had become less an option and more a necessity, the access to economic success. To respond to this need, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act in 1968. This act provided federal financial incentives, using what some people call "a carrot approach," to encourage schools to initiate bilingual education programs. Not all districts chased the carrot.
From the start, the Bilingual Education Act was fraught with problems. The act lacked concrete recommendations for implementation and did not specify standards. Individual school districts and, in some cases, even individual schools, experimented with different approaches. In too many cases, the act simply failed to serve the students it was meant to serve.
During the early 1970s, disappointed parents initiated lawsuits. In 1974, the Supreme Court heard the case of Lau v. Nichols. This class action lawsuit centered around Kinney Lau and 1,800 other Chinese students from the San Francisco area who were failing their courses because they could not understand English. The Court affirmed that federally funded schools must "correct the language deficiency" of these students. Teaching students in a language they did not understand was not an appropriate education. The Court's decision in Lau v. Nichols prompted Congress to pass the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA). Under this law, school districts must take positive steps to provide equal education for language-minority students by eliminating language barriers.
Typically in the bilingual approach, limited English proficiency (LEP) students learn English as a second language while taking other academic subjects in their native language. The transitional approach begins by using the native language as a bridge to English-language instruction. Academic subjects are first taught using the native language, but progressively the students transition to English, to their new language. This is the most widely used approach. The maintenance, or developmental, approach emphasizes the importance of maintaining both languages. The goal is to create a truly bilingual student, one who acquires English while maintaining competence in the native language. Students are instructed in both languages. English as a Second
Part A
Directions: Read the following three texts. Answer the questions on each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
The advantages and disadvantages of a large population have long been a subject of discussion among economists. It has been argued that the supply of good land is limited. To food a large population, inferior land must be cultivated and the good land worked intensively. Thus, each person produces less and this means a lower average income than could be obtained with a smaller population. Other economists have argued that large population gives more scope for specialization and the development of facilities (便利设施) such as ports, roads and railways, which are not likely to be built unless there is a big demand to justify them.
One of the difficulties in carrying out a worldwide birth control program lies in the fact that official attitudes to population growth vary from country to country depending on the level of industrial development and the availability of food and raw materials. In the developing country where a vastly expanded population is pressing hard upon the limits of food, space and natural resources, it will be the first concern of the government to place a limit on the birthrate, whatever the consequences may be. In a highly industrialized society the problem may be more complex. A decreasing birthrate may lead to unemployment because it results in a declining market for manufactured goods. When the pressure of population on housing declines, prices also decline and the building industry is weakened. Faced with considerations such as these, the government of a developed country may well prefer to see a slowly increasing population, rather than one which is stable or in decline.
A small population may mean ______.
The acid rain destroys the protection on tree leaves, which makes the plants more vulnerable to disease.
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