If you are going to write textbooks or ______ tests, you"ve got to know the levels of the students well.
A. create
B. compose
C. produce
D. dispose
The U.S. Department of Labor statistics indicate that there is an oversupply of college-trained workers and that this oversupply is increasing. Already there is an overabundance of teachers, engineers, physicists and other specialists. Yet colleges and graduate schools continue every year to turn out highly trained people to compete for jobs that aren"t there. The result is that graduates cannot enter the professions for which they were trained and must take temporary jobs which do not require a college degree. These "temporary" jobs have a habit of becoming permanent.On the other hand, there is a tremendous need for skilled workers of all sorts: carpenters, electricians, mechanics, and TV repairmen. These people have more work than they can handle and their annual incomes are often higher than those of college graduates. The old distinction that white-collar workers make a better living than blue-collar workers no longer holds true.The reason for this situation is the traditional myth that a college degree is a passport to a prosperous future. Parents begin telling their children this myth before they are out of grade school. Under this pressure the kids fall in line. Whether they want to go to college or not doesn"t matter. Everybody should go to college.One result of this emphasis on a college education is that many people go to college who do not belong there. Of the sixty percent of high school graduates who enter college, half of them do not graduate with their class. Many of them drop out within the first year. Some struggle on for two or three years and then give up. By "many people go to college who do not belongthere," the author means that ______.
A. many people who are not fit for college education go to college
B. many people who don"t have adequate financial support go to college
C. many people who go to college drop out within one or two years
D. many people who go to college find the courses are not interesting
The city has always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th century cafes of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and politics, to the Left Bank bars of modem Paris, where Picasso talked about modem art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare.And yet, city life isn"t easy. Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are depressing. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs (损害) our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self control. While it"s long been recognized that city life is exhausting, this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.One of the main forces at work is a complete lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartments overlook a lawn. Even these glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban life.This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone (里程碑). For the first time in history, the majority of people live in cities. Instead of inhabiting wide open spaces, we"re crowded into concrete jungles, surrounded by traffic and millions of strangers. In recent years, it"s become clear that such unnatural surroundings have important implications for our mental and physical health, and can powerfully alter how we think.This research is also leading some scientists to dabble (涉足) in urban design, as they look for ways to make the city less damaging to the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can be a big help. People have just come to realize that ______.
A. human attention is a scarce resource
B. city life can make people very tired
C. the city is an engine of intellectual life
D. an urban environment is damaging to the brain