The standardized educational or psychological tests, which are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning or promoting students, employees and military personnel, have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the dally press, and even in Congress. The target is wrong, for, in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance. How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.Standardized tests should be considered in this context: they provide a quick, objective method of getting some kind of information about what a person has learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the empirical evidence concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.In general, the tests work most effectively when the traits or qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined (for example, ability to do well in a particular course of training program) and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined, for example, personality or creativity. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized. According to the passage, standardized tests work most effectively when ______.
A. the user knows how to interpret the results in advance
B. the objectives are most clearly defined
C. the persons who take the test are intelligent or skillful
D. they measure the traits or qualities of the tests
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Trees should only be pruned when there is a good and clear reason for doing so and, fortunately, the number of such reasons is small. Pruning involves the cutting away of overgrown and unwanted branches, and the inexperienced gardener can be encouraged by the thought that more damage results from doing it unnecessarily than from leaving the tree to grow in its own way.First, pruning may be done to make sure that trees have a desired shape or size. The object may be to get a tree of the right height, and at the same time to help the growth of small side branches which will thicken its appearance or give it a special shape. Secondly, pruning may be done to make the tree healthier. You may cut diseased or dead wood, or branches that are rubbing against each other and thus cause wounds. The health of a tree may be encouraged by removing branches that are blocking up the centre and so preventing the free movement of air.One result of pruning is that an open wound is left on the tree and this provides an easy entry for disease, but it is a wound that will heal. Often there is a race between the healing and the disease as to whether the tree will live or die, so that there is a period when the tree is at risk. It should be the aim of every gardener to reduce which has been pruned smooth and clean, for healing will be slowed down by roughness. You should allow the cut surface to dry for a few hours and then paint it with one of the substances available from garden shops produced especially for this purpose. Pruning is usually without interference from the leaves and also it is very unlikely that the cuts you make will bleed. If this does happen, it is, of course, impossible to paint them properly. What was the author"s purpose when writing this passage
A. To give practical instruction for pruning a tree.
B. To give a general description of pruning.
C. To explain how trees develop diseases.
D. To discuss different methods of pruning.
Why the inductive and mathematical sciences, after their first rapid development at the culmination of Greek civilization, advanced so slowly for two thousand years—and why in the following two hundred years a knowledge of natural and mathematical science has accumulated, which so vastly exceeds all that was previously known that these sciences may be justly regarded as the products of our own times—are questions which have interested the modern philosopher not less than the objects with which these sciences are more immediately familiar.The explanation which has become commonplace, that the ancients employed deduction chiefly in their scientific inquiries, while the modems employ induction, proves to be too narrow. For all knowledge is founded on observation, and proceeds from this by analysis, by induction and deduction, and if possible by verification, or by steps which are indeed parts of one method.A failure to employ adequately any one of these partial methods, an imperfection in the arts and resources of observation and experiment, carelessness in observation, neglect of relevant facts—these are the faults which cause all failures to ascertain truth; but this statement does not explain why the modem is possessed of a greater virtue, and by what means he attained his superiority. Much less does it explain the sudden growth of science in recent time.The attempt to discover the explanation of this phenomenon in theantithesis(对立面;对照;对仗) of "facts" and "theories"—in the neglect among the ancients of the former, and their too exclusive attention to the latter—proves also to be too narrow, as well as open to the charge of vagueness. Theories, if true, are facts—a particular class of facts indeed, generally complex, and if a logical connection subsists between their constituents, have all the positive attributes of theories.Nevertheless, this distinction, however inadequate it may be to explain the source of true method in science, is well founded, and suggests an important character in true method. A theory, on the other hand, if true has all the characteristics of a fact, except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means. To convert theories into facts is to add simple verification, and the theory thus acquires the full characteristics of a fact. The statement "theories are facts" may be called ______.
A. a metaphor
B. a paradox
C. an appraisal of the inductive and deductive methods
D. a pun
The standardized educational or psychological tests, which are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning or promoting students, employees and military personnel, have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the dally press, and even in Congress. The target is wrong, for, in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance. How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.Standardized tests should be considered in this context: they provide a quick, objective method of getting some kind of information about what a person has learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the empirical evidence concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.In general, the tests work most effectively when the traits or qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined (for example, ability to do well in a particular course of training program) and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined, for example, personality or creativity. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized. It can be inferred from the passage that
A. the present standardized tests should be canceled
B. the result of the present test cannot accurately reflect the testees" abilities
C. the value of standardized tests lies in their proper interpretation
D. special methods must be applied to the result of standardized tests
Deception and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be cheated, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights" Entertainments.If we respect only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, and that petty fears and petty pleasure are but the shadow of reality. This is always exciting and great.By closing the eyes and falling asleep, by allowing to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely false foundation. Children, who play life, differentiate its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. If a man should give us an account of the realities he saw, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop. Or a dwelling-house and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and great. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all ages. And we are enabled to understand at all what is great and noble only by the continuing understanding and immersing of the reality that surrounds us.The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had as fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. The author is primarily urging the readers to ______.
A. look to the future for enlightenment
B. appraise the present for its true value
C. honor the wisdom of the past ages
D. spend more time in leisure activities