Read With Greater Speed Do you have difficulty reading in class If so, a special reading program that helps match sounds with letters could speed up your brain. At least one out of every five elementary school students in the U. S. has trouble learning to read, even when the students are good at other subjects. (1) Researchers from Yale University, U.S., studied a group of children from New York and Connecticut State. As part of the study, 37 struggling readers received special tutoring. Every day, instructors worked with them on recognizing how written letters represent units of sound called phonemes (音素). (2) By the end of the school year, these children could read faster than before. They also made fewer mistakes, and understood more of what they read than they could earlier in the year. As part of their study, the researchers used a special machine to take action photos of the students’ brains. (3) This is the same part of the brain that becomes active when good readers read. This activated brain area appears to include a structure that helps people recognize familiar written words quickly. In lower level readers, this structure remains inactive. A year later, the brain structure was still working hard in the students who had cone through the special tutoring, and they continued to do well in reading tests. (4) However, some researchers still doubt the study. (5) A. Many adults are interested in matching sounds with letters. B. The students also practiced reading aloud and spelling. C. The biggest challenge for many of these kids, scientists say, is matching sounds with letters. D. Another group in the study who went through a more traditional reading program didn’t show the same progress. E. The pictures showed an increase in activity in the back of the brain on the left side. F. They believe that reading without making any noise or linking words to sounds is more efficient.
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Of late, there have been several posts suggesting that America has no culture or that what culture it has is somehow inferior to that of other societies. Of course, it cannot be both. To suggest that America has, in some sense, an inferior culture is to grant that it has a culture.America most definitely has culture and the culture of America is easily the most dominant of the world, whether it is McDonald’s in the heart of what as once the center of the Evil Empire, or Arnold Schwarzenagger storming across German theatres, or Disneyland sending the French snobs into hysteria, American culture dominates Europe as never before. And it is not just Europe. Enter any shopping center in Asia and the odds are that the music blasting over the sound system is American pop music. Madonna look like speak Mandarin Chinese.Often, American culture is derided by the so-called "intellectuals". (And by that , I do not mean the traditional definition of those who use their intellect to make a living as, ina increasingly service economy, there are few people today who would not fit into that category but, rather, people who fancy themselves as in some way gifted to impose their views upon the rest of us, to save us from ourselves. )What is it about American culture that annoys the "intellectuals" so much It is precisely that which differentiates it from other cultures, particularly the cultures of Europe("intellectuals " tending to be Europhiles). Whereas European culture (and, indeed, most pre-industrial cultures ) sprang from their traditions of aristocracy and the subservience of the ruling class, American culture serves the middle-class, the vulgar, if you will. Where-as European culture is concerned with what is exclusive and aloof, American culture is concerned with what is common and accessible. You don’t need classes in school in rock music appreciation or the finer aspects of eating pizza.Some have suggested that America is doomed because it has no culture. But the contrary is more likely the case. In spite of the best efforts of the multi cultural fascists,America has yet to fulfill its manifest destiny primarily because its culture is not only dominating and assimilating immigrants from every corner of the world, it is, indeed reaching out to every corner of the world and creating a world community, a community centered on the individual, every individual not just those gifted with expensive tastes. Which of the following would the author most probably agree to as to describing American culture()
A. It is full of vitality.
B. It is non-intellectual.
C. It enhances vulgarity.
D. It scorns wealth.
Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively "Southern" —the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain’s North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension Of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic.What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascription by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences.However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern—acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models—was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern—but the Puritan ’colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the late Colonial period. Which of the following statements could most logically follow the last sentence of the passage()
A. Thus, without the cultural diversity represented by the American South, the culture of colonial America would certainly have been homogeneous in nature
B. Thus, the contribution of Southern colonials to American culture was certainly overshadowed by that of the Puritans
C. Thus, convergence, not divergence, seems to have characterized the cultural development of the American colonies in the eighteenth century
D. Thus, the culture of America during the Colonial period was far more sensitive to outside influence than historians are accustomed to acknowledge
Of late, there have been several posts suggesting that America has no culture or that what culture it has is somehow inferior to that of other societies. Of course, it cannot be both. To suggest that America has, in some sense, an inferior culture is to grant that it has a culture. America most definitely has culture and the culture of America is easily the most dominant of the world, whether it is McDonald’s in the heart of what as once the center of the Evil Empire, or Arnold Schwarzenagger storming across German theatres, or Disneyland sending the French snobs into hysteria, American culture dominates Europe as never before. And it is not just Europe. Enter any shopping center in Asia and the odds are that the music blasting over the sound system is American pop music. Madonna look like speak Mandarin Chinese. Often, American culture is derided by the so-called "intellectuals". (And by that , I do not mean the traditional definition of those who use their intellect to make a living as, ina increasingly service economy, there are few people today who would not fit into that category but, rather, people who fancy themselves as in some way gifted to impose their views upon the rest of us, to save us from ourselves. ) What is it about American culture that annoys the "intellectuals" so much It is precisely that which differentiates it from other cultures, particularly the cultures of Europe("intellectuals " tending to be Europhiles). Whereas European culture (and, indeed, most pre-industrial cultures ) sprang from their traditions of aristocracy and the subservience of the ruling class, American culture serves the middle-class, the vulgar, if you will. Where-as European culture is concerned with what is exclusive and aloof, American culture is concerned with what is common and accessible. You don’t need classes in school in rock music appreciation or the finer aspects of eating pizza. Some have suggested that America is doomed because it has no culture. But the contrary is more likely the case. In spite of the best efforts of the multi cultural fascists,America has yet to fulfill its manifest destiny primarily because its culture is not only dominating and assimilating immigrants from every corner of the world, it is, indeed reaching out to every corner of the world and creating a world community, a community centered on the individual, every individual not just those gifted with expensive tastes. The last sentence "You don’t need... eating pizza" of Paragraph 4 implies______.
A. rock music, eating pizza or the like is quite popular in the school curriculum
B. anything that concerns American pop culture is prohibited in school
C. schoolchildren are all equal in enjoying rock music and eating pizza
D. American culture is never taught to but intuitively assimilated by people
Of late, there have been several posts suggesting that America has no culture or that what culture it has is somehow inferior to that of other societies. Of course, it cannot be both. To suggest that America has, in some sense, an inferior culture is to grant that it has a culture. America most definitely has culture and the culture of America is easily the most dominant of the world, whether it is McDonald’s in the heart of what as once the center of the Evil Empire, or Arnold Schwarzenagger storming across German theatres, or Disneyland sending the French snobs into hysteria, American culture dominates Europe as never before. And it is not just Europe. Enter any shopping center in Asia and the odds are that the music blasting over the sound system is American pop music. Madonna look like speak Mandarin Chinese. Often, American culture is derided by the so-called "intellectuals". (And by that , I do not mean the traditional definition of those who use their intellect to make a living as, ina increasingly service economy, there are few people today who would not fit into that category but, rather, people who fancy themselves as in some way gifted to impose their views upon the rest of us, to save us from ourselves. ) What is it about American culture that annoys the "intellectuals" so much It is precisely that which differentiates it from other cultures, particularly the cultures of Europe("intellectuals " tending to be Europhiles). Whereas European culture (and, indeed, most pre-industrial cultures ) sprang from their traditions of aristocracy and the subservience of the ruling class, American culture serves the middle-class, the vulgar, if you will. Where-as European culture is concerned with what is exclusive and aloof, American culture is concerned with what is common and accessible. You don’t need classes in school in rock music appreciation or the finer aspects of eating pizza. Some have suggested that America is doomed because it has no culture. But the contrary is more likely the case. In spite of the best efforts of the multi cultural fascists,America has yet to fulfill its manifest destiny primarily because its culture is not only dominating and assimilating immigrants from every corner of the world, it is, indeed reaching out to every corner of the world and creating a world community, a community centered on the individual, every individual not just those gifted with expensive tastes. According to the passage, Disneyland in France______.
A. has overridden the country’s cartoon industry
B. has driven all its fans there mad
C. has encountered strong opposition
D. has enjoyed a nationwide acclaim