Passage Two Nowadays there is a remarkable consensus among educators and business and policy leaders on one key conclusion: we need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century. Right now we’re aiming too low. Competency in reading and math — the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing – is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise: utterly necessary but insufficient. Today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here’s what they are: Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are“global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages” — not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history. Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economy — the ones that won’t get outsourced or automated – “put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos,” says Marc Tucker, an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Traditionally that’s been an American strength, but schools have become less daring in the back-to-basics climate of NCLB. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that’s where most new breakthroughs are made. It’s interdisciplinary combinations — design and technology, mathematics and art – “that produce YouTube and Google,” says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what’s coming at them and distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t. “It’s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it,” says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education. Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today’s work place.‘‘Most innovations today involve large teams of people,” says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. “We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures.”Questions 6-10 are based on Passage Two. If the workers are global trade literate, they should be______.
A. global citizens even when they are kids
B. armed with foreign cultures and languages
C. living in big cities rather than in small towns
D. good at doing business with peoples over the world
A.从下列单词中选择恰当的词填空,每个词只能用一次。 People traveling long distances 51 have to decide 52 they would prefer to go by land, sea, or air. 53 anyone can positively enjoy sitting in a train for 54 than a few hours. Train compartments soon get cramped and stuffy. It is almost impossible to take your mind 55 the journey. Reading is only a 56 solution, for the monotonous rhythm of the wheels clicking on the rails soon lulls you to sleep. 57 the day, sleep comes in snatches. At night,when you really wish to go to sleep, you rarely 58 to do so. If you are lucky, enough to get a couchette, you spend 59 the night staring at the small blue light in the ceiling, or fumbling to find your passport when you 60 a frontier. Inevitably, you arrive at your destination almost exhausted. 60()
Passage Two Why is our appetite so powerful a driver of our behavior If that question has long defied easy answers, it’s no wonder. Understanding a single biological unit — the heart, the lungs — is hard enough. Understanding a process as complex as appetite — one that involves taste, smell, sight, brain chemistry, gut chemistry, metabolism and, most confounding of all, psychology — is exponentially harder.