Most parents prize the diversity within their children's public schools. They know that learning to cooperate and excel in a diverse, real-world setting is a key to success in the 21st-century workplace and marketplace. But how "diverse" and "real-world" is a school that does not have any minority teachers? The bad news today is that some 40 percent of America's public schools have no teachers of color. The good news is that we have an opportunity to recruit and encourage more Americans of color to enter the teaching profession. And our success in doing so can have a powerfully positive impact on student achievement. Obviously, a teacher's effectiveness depends, first and foremost, on his or her skills and high expectations, not on the teacher's color. Yet we also know that children of color—40 percent of the student population and rising—benefit in important ways by having some teachers who look like them, who share similar cultural experiences, and who serve as role models demonstrating that education and achievement are things to be respected. Bear in mind that teachers do not teach only facts and "content". They also model appropriate behaviors and teach by personal example. And for many children, the teachers and other adults in their school are the most important authority figures outside of their home. So it is important to expose children to a diverse teaching staff—and to diverse role models—within each of our schools. Where we have an urban school with an all-minority staff or a suburban school with an all-white staff, we are giving students a stunted educational experience. Issues of diversity are especially relevant today, as public schools are redoubling their commitment to raising standards and closing achievement gaps. We need to seize every opportunity to boost the achievement of poor and minority students. I believe—and an impressive body of research confirms—that recruiting and retaining more minority teachers can be crucial to our success. NEA has made it a core strategic priority to increase the recruitment and retention of teachers of diverse backgrounds. Beyond NEA's own programs, we are joining with other organizations to create the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teacher Workforce. But we can't do it alone. States and school districts need to develop programs to assist teacher's aides—large numbers of whom are minorities—to advance their education and become fully licensed teachers. Other programs can reach out to minorities still in school, offering encouragement and incentives to enter the teaching profession. At the same time, states must ensure that relevant tests do not bar promising minority candidates from entering the profession. In a school ______, students will learn how to survive successfully in a competitive society.

The small mountain village was ______ by the snow for more than one month.

Science and technology actually help to ______ the useful and pleasant parts of traditional culture.

By the end of the Middle Ages the technological systems called cities had long since become a central feature of Western life. In 1600 London and Amsterdam each had populations of more than 100,000, and twice that number【C1】______in Paris. Also, the Dutch, English, Spanish, and French were beginning to【C2】______global empires.【C3】______and trade produced a【C4】______merchant class that helped to【C5】______an increasing desire for such【C6】______as wine, coffee, tea, cocoa, and tobacco. These merchants set a【C7】______of life aspired to by the wider populace.【C8】______the beginning of the 18th century, capital resources and banking systems were well enough established in Great Britain to【C9】______investment in mass-production【C10】______that would satisfy some of these middle-class aspirations. The Industrial Revolution【C11】______in England, because that nation had the technological means, government encouragement, and a large and varied trade【C12】______. The first factories【C13】______in 1740, concentrating on【C14】______production. In 1740 the majority of English people wore woolen garments, but【C15】______the next 100 years the rough, often waterlogged and unhealthy woolens were【C16】______by cotton—especially after the【C17】______of the cotton gin(轧棉机)by Eli Whitney, an American, in 1793. One of the most important innovations in the weaving process was【C18】______in France in 1801 by Joseph Jacquard; his loom used cards with holes punched in them to determine the placement of threads in the warp(弯曲). This use of punched cards inspired the British mathematician Charles Babbage to attempt to【C19】______a calculating machine based on the same principle. Although this machine never became fully practical, it【C20】______the great computer revolution of the 20th century."

The girl was in low spirits because her throat infection left her very ______ and made her solo at the party impossible.

The patient is not in good condition

Richard Satava

When we think of Hollywood—a term I use loosely to describe American movie production in general, not simply films made in Los Angeles—we think of films aimed at amusing audiences and making money for producers. During the early years of the new century, as workers won their demands for higher wages and a shorter working week, leisure assumed an increasingly important role in everyday life. Amusement parks, professional baseball games, nickelodeons, and dance halls attracted a wide array of men and women anxious to spend their hard earned dollars in the pursuit of fun and relaxation. Yet of all these new cultural endeavors, films were the most important and widely attended source of amusement. For a mere five or ten cents, even the poorest worker could afford to take himself and his family to the local nickelodeon or storefront theatre. Taking root in urban working-class and immigrant neighborhoods, cinemas soon spread to middle-class districts of cities and into small communities throughout the nation. "Every little town that has never been able to afford and maintain an opera house," observed one journalist in 1908, "now boasts one or two 'Bijou Dreams'." By 1910, the appeal of film was so great that nearly one-third of the nation flocked to the cinema each week; ten years later, weekly attendance equaled 50 percent of the nation's population. Early films were primarily aimed at entertaining audiences, but entertainment did not always come in the form of escapist fantasies. Many of the issues that dominated progressive—era polities were also portrayed on the serene. "Between 1990 and 1917," observes Kevin Brownlow: "literally thousands of films dealt with the most pressing problems of the day—white slavery, political corruptions, gangsterism, loansharking, slum landlords, capital vs. labor, racial prejudice, etc." While most of these films were produced by studios and independent companies, a significant number were made by what we might call today "special interest groups". As films quickly emerged as the nation's most popular form of mass entertainment, they attracted the attention of a wide range organizations that recognized the medium's enormous potential for disseminating propaganda to millions of viewers. We can almost be sure that a "nickelodeon" is ______.

This spacious room is______furnished with just a few articles in it.

Emerging from the 1980 census is the picture of a nation developing more and more regional competition, as population growth in the Northeast and Midwest reaches a near standstill. This development—and its strong implications for U.S. politics and economy in years ahead—has enthroned the South as America's most densely populated region for the first time in the history of the nation's head counting. Altogether, the U.S. population rose in the 1970s by 23.2 million people—numerically the third largest growth ever recorded in a single decade. Even so, that gain adds up to only 11.4 percent, lowest in American annual records except for the Depression years. Americans have been migrating south and west in larger number since World War Ⅱ, and the pattern still prevails. Three sun belt states—Florida, Texas and California—together had nearly 10 million more people in 1980 than a decade earlier. Among large cities, San Diego moved from 14th to 8th and San Antonio from 15th to 10th—with Cleveland and Washington .D.C, dropping out of the top 10. Not all that shift can be attributed to the movement out of the snow belt, census officials say, Nonstop waves of immigrants played a role, too—and so did bigger crops of babies as yesterday's "baby boom" generation reached its child bearing years. Moreover, demographers see the continuing shift south and west as joined by a related but newer phenomenon: More and more, Americans apparently are looking not just for places with more jobs but with fewer people, too. Some instances: Regionally, the Rocky Mountain states reported the most rapid growth rate—37.1 percent since 1970 in a vast area with only 5 percent of the U.S. population. Among states, Nevada and Arizona grew fastest of all: 63.5 and 53.1 percent respectively. Except for Florida and Texas, the top 10 in rate of growth is composed of Western states with 7.5 million people—about 9 per square mile. The flight from over crowdedness affects the migration from snow belt to more bearable climates. Nowhere do 1980 census statistics dramatize more the American search for spacious living than in the Far West. There, California added 3.7 million to its population in the 1970s, more than any other state. In that decade, however, large numbers also migrated from California, mostly to other parts of the West. Often they chose—and still are choosing—somewhat colder climates such as Oregon, Idaho and Alaska in order to escape smog, crime and other plagues of urbanization in the Golden State. As a result, California's growth rate dropped during the 1970s, to 18.5 percent—little more than two thirds the 1960s growth figure and considerably below that of other Western states. Discerned from the perplexing picture of population growth the 1980 census provided, America in 1970s ______.

The pattern of weather in the last few weeks ______ the norm for this time of year.

The football match was televised ______ from the Government stadium.

In some countries where racial prejudice is acute, violence has so come to be taken for granted as a means of solving differences, that it is not even questioned. There are countries where the white man imposes his rule by brute force, there are countries where the black man protests by setting fire to cities and by looting and pillaging. Important people on both side who would in other respects appear to be reasonable men, get up and calmly argue in favor of violence—as if it were a legitimate solution, like any other, what is really frightening, what really fills you with despair, is the realization that when it comes to the crunch, we have made no actual progress at all. We may wear collars and ties instead of war-paint, but our instincts remain basically unchanged. The whole of the recorded history of the human race, that tedious documentation of violence, has taught us absolutely nothing. We have still not learnt that violence never solves a problem but makes it more acute. The sheer horror, the bloodshed and the suffering mean nothing. No solution ever comes to light the morning after when we dismally contemplate the smoking ruins and wonder what hit us. The truly reasonable men who know where the solutions lie are finding it harder and harder to get a hearing. They are despised, mistrusted and even persecuted by their own kind because they advocate such apparently outrageous things as law enforcement. If half the energy that goes into violent acts were put to good use, if our efforts were directed at cleaning up the slums and ghettos, at improving living-standards and providing education and employment for all, we would have gone a long way to arriving at a solution. Our strength is undermined by having to mop up the mess that violence leaves in its wake. In a well-directed effort, it would not be impossible to fulfill the ideals of a stable social program. The benefits that can be derived from constructive solutions are everywhere apparent in the world around us. Genuine and lasting solutions are always possible, providing we work within the framework of the law. Before we can even begin to contemplate peaceful co-existence between the races, we must appreciate each other's problems. And to do this, we must learn about them: it is a simple exercise in communication, in exchanging information. "Talk, talk, talk," the advocates of violence say, "all you ever do is talk, and we are none the wiser." It's rather like the story of the famous barrister who painstakingly explained his case to the judge. After listening to a lengthy argument the judge complained that after all this talk, he was none the wiser. "Possible, my lord," the barrister replied, "none the wiser, but surely far better informed." Knowledge is the necessary prerequisite to wisdom; the knowledge that violence creates the evils it pretends to solve. Which can best replace the word "acute" (Para. 1)?

Should doctors ever lie to benefit their patients—to speed recovery or to conceal the approach of death? In medicine as in law, government, and other lines of work, the requirements of honesty often seem dwarfed by greater needs: the need to shelter from brutal news or to uphold a promise of secrecy. What should doctors say, for example, to a 46-year-old man coming in for a routine physical checkup who, though he feels in perfect health, is found to have a form of cancer? If he asks, should the doctor deny that he is ill, or minimize the gravity of the illness? Doctors confront such choices often and urgently. At times, they see important reasons to lie for the patient's own sake. In their eyes, such lies differ sharply from self-serving ones. Studies show that most doctors sincerely believe that the seriously ill do not want to know the truth about their condition, and that informing them risks destroying their hope, so that they may recover more slowly, or deteriorate faster, perhaps even commit suicide. As one physician wrote: "Ours is a profession which traditionally has been guided by a precept that transcends the virtue of uttering the truth for truth's sake, and that is, as far as possible 'do no harm'." Armed with such a precept, a number of doctors may slip into deceptive practices that they assume will "do no harm" and may well help their patients. But the illusory nature of the benefits such deception is meant to produce is now coming to be documented. Studies show that, contrary to the belief of many physicians, an overwhelming majority of patients do want to be told the truth, even about grave illness, and feel betrayed when they learn that they have been misled. We are also learning that truthful information, humanely conveyed, helps patients cope with illness. Not only do lies not provide the "help" hoped for by advocates of benevolent deception, they invade the autonomy of patients and render them unable to make informed choices concerning their own health. Lies also do harms to those who tell them: harm to their integrity and, in the long run, to their credibility. Lies hurt their colleagues as well. The suspicion of deceit undercuts the work of the many doctors who are scrupulously honest with their patients; it contributes to the spiral of lawsuits and of "defensive medicine", and thus it injures, in turn, the entire medical profession. Doctors think that lying to their patients is ______.

The history of responses to the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli (1444—1510) suggests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli's work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamed Botticelli in favor of his fellow Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors, Botticelli's work remained outside of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in obscure churches and private homes.) The primary reason for Botticelli's unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up until the mid-nineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because his work, for the most part, did not seem to these observers to exhibit the traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example, Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for Botticelli's unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to that of classical art. In any case, when viewers began to examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli's work to the tradition of fifteenth-century Florentine art, his reputation began to grow. Analyses and assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, as well as by the writer Pater (although he, unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli's personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli's work, especially the Sistine frescoes, did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other fifteenth-century Florentines—features such as skillful representation of anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued that Botticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves—rather, that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Home's emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to appreciate Botticelli's achievements. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

Difficult as it is

The old gentleman was a very ______ looking person, with grey hair and gold spectacles.

When one applies for a job position, one needs to ______ one's resume

em>Questions 14 to 17 are based on the following conversation. At the end of the conversation, you will be given 15 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the conversation./em> Which of the following statements is CORRECT about Mary?

International students are almost always invited