阅读理解 From Taiwan to Algeria, thousands of foreigners (47) to U.S. universities to study. Those who come praise the libraries and the research facilities. Others praise the informality of the classroom where teachers encourage students to analyze and question what they read. Still others praise the (48) at universities, which pushes students to be creative thinkers as well as (49) thinkers. Yet, despite the high quality of many universities, tests given by the United Nations reveal there are some (50) in the educational quality in U.S. schools. Some call it "cultural illiteracy." This means that on general-knowledge questions concerning world topics, these students (51) very low. For example, many thought that the population of the U. S. was (52) than that of the P. R. C. (中国). Some said that Picasso painted in the twelfth century. Many did not even know when Christopher Columbus came to America. Another area Where students performed (53) was geography. The United States (54) sixth among ten nations. This survey showed that students in Sweden, Germany and Japan all did better than U.S. students. Britons, Italians, and Russians did worse. Most (55) was that 14 percent of the students tested in U.S. schools could not find their own country on a map. These students also had little knowledge about where Vietnam or India is. Although U.S. and Russian students were good at locating each other''s countries, they (56) geographical knowledge about the rest of the world. WORD BANK [A] scored [F] less [K] weaknesses [B] properly [G] lacked [L] critical [C] disturbing [H] atmosphere [M] became [D] enter [I] flock [N] larger [E] acquired [J] ranked [O] poorly