单选题 We find that bright children are rarely held back by mixed-ability teaching. On the contrary, both their knowledge and experience are enriched. We feel that there are many disadvantages in streaming(把...... 能力分班) pupils. It does not take into account the fact that children develop at different rates. It can have a bad effect on both the bright and not so bright child. After all, it can be quite discouraging to be at the bottom of the top grade!
Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their intellectual ability. This is only one aspect of their total personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also value personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching contributes to all these aspects of learning.
In our classrooms, we work in various ways. The pupils often work in groups: this gives them the opportunity to learn to co-operate, to share, and to develop leadership skills. They also learn how to cope with personal problems as well as learning how to think, to make decisions, to analyse and evaluate, and to communicate effectively. The pupils learn from each other as well as from the teacher.
Sometimes the pupils work in pairs; sometimes they work on individual tasks and assignments, and they can do this at their own speed. They also have some formal class teaching when this is appropriate. We encourage our pupils to use the library, and we teach them the skills they need in order to do this efficiently. An advanced pupil can do advanced work: it does not matter what age the child is. We expect our pupils to do their best, not their least, and we give them every encouragement to attain this goal.

单选题 In the passage the author's attitude towards "mixed-ability teaching" is ______.
A. critical
B. questioning
C. approving
D. objective
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】本题考核学生能否根据文章内容判断出作者对混合编班的态度。要回答该问题，首先要读懂全篇文章，特别是第一段的内容，再依次弄清四个的选项的不同含义。选项C表示持“赞同”态度，根据文章第一段的内容可以看出作者对“混合编班”持“赞同的”态度，因此答案是选项C。
单选题 By "held back" (Line 1) the author means " ______".
A. made to remain in the same classes
B. forced to study in the lower classes
C. drawn to their studies
D. prevented from advancing
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题考核学生对在具体上下文里的词组hold back 的理解。根据上下文，这个词组的意思是“阻挡，阻止……的发展”，因此选项D是答案。
单选题 The author argues that a teacher's chief concern should be the development of the student's ______.
A. personal qualities and social skills
B. total personality
C. learning ability and communicative skills
D. intellectual ability
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】本题要求考生根据文章第二段的内容判断作者的观点。从第二段的内容可以看出，作者认为教师主要关心的应该是学生的total personality(总体素质)，其中包括academic ability 或intellectual ability，personal qualities和social skills。也就是说这些能力都是total personality 的方方面面。再看下一段的第二和第三句可以得出结论，答案应该是选项B。
单选题 Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the third paragraph?
A. Group work gives pupils the opportunity to learn to work together with others.
B. Pupils also learn to develop their reasoning abilities.
C. Group work provides pupils with the opportunity to learn to be capable organizers.
D. Pupils also learn how to participate in teaching activities.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】本题要求学生看懂文章第三段的意思，并作出正确的判断。该段中的to learn to co-operate，to share，and to develop leadership skills(Line 2，Para.3)表明选项A和C都已提到，因而都不是答案。该段中的learning how to think，to make decisions，to analyse and evaluate (Lines3-4，Para．3)，包含了选项B所提的learn to develop their reasoning abilities 的内容，因此B项也是文章中提到过的。惟有选项D在段落中找不到依据，因此是该题的答案。