翻译题
Forget smart uniforms and small classes. The secret to excellent grades and thriving students is teachers. 【F1】One American study found that in a single year's teaching the top 10% of teachers impart three times as much learning to their pupils as the worst 10% do. 【F2】Another suggests that, if black pupils were taught by the best quarter of teachers, the gap between their achievement and that of white pupils would disappear. But efforts to ensure that every teacher can teach are hindered by the powerful myth that good teachers are born, not made. 【F3】Government policies, which often start from the same assumption, seek to raise teaching standards by attracting high-flying graduates to join the profession and urging bad teachers to leave. The premise that teaching ability is something you either have or don't is mistaken. A new breed of teacher-trainers is founding a rigorous science of pedagogy. The aim is to make ordinary teachers great, just as sports coaches help athletes of all abilities to improve their personal best. Done right, this will revolutionise schools and change lives. Education has a history of moving clumsily from one miracle solution to the next. The best of them even do some good. Teach for America, and the dozens of organisations it has inspired in other countries, have brought ambitious, energetic new graduates into the profession. And dismissing teachers for bad performance has boosted results in Washington, DC, and elsewhere. But each approach has its limits. Teaching is a mass profession: it cannot grab all the top graduates, year after year. 【F4】When poor teachers are fired, new ones are needed—and they will have been trained in the very same system that failed to make fine teachers out of their predecessors. By contrast, the idea of improving the average teacher could revolutionise the entire profession. What teachers fail to learn in universities and teacher-training colleges they rarely pick up on the job. They become better teachers in their first few years as they get to grips with real pupils in real classrooms, but after that improvements tail off. This is largely because schools neglect their most important pupils: teachers themselves. If this is to change, teachers need to learn how to impart knowledge and prepare young minds to receive and retain it. 【F5】Teacher-training institutions need to be more rigorous—rather as a century ago medical schools strengthened the capacities of doctors by introducing systematic curriculums and providing clinical experience. Big changes are needed in schools, too, to ensure that teachers improve throughout their careers.
【答案解析】①本句为复合句，包含that引导的宾语从句，在从句中又包含一个倍数的表达。②介词短语in a single year's teaching在从句中作时间状语，限定宾语从句主干部分所述情况的时间范围。数词+times+as much+不可数名词+as…表示“……是……的几倍”。句末的do指的是前文impart learning to their pupils。句末的the worst 10％后省略了of teachers。
【答案解析】①本句为并列复合句，主句中包含and连接的两个并列分句。When引导的从句作时间状语，说明何时需要新教师；第二个分句中包含that引导的定语从句，修饰先行词the very same system，说明这种体系的缺陷。②此外，本句中的predecessors本意是指“前任”，在此处是指“之前的老师”。