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发表于 2016-7-11 18:37:10
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1. The phrase "watered down" in the sentence "The statutory requirement for pupils to learn a science subject will be watered down under a new curriculum introduced next year." (para. 1) can best be replaced by which of the following?
(A) removed completely (B) reduced much in force
(C) revised greatly (D) reinforced to a certain extent
2. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
(A) The government had to use financial incentives to attract more science teachers.
(B) Some of the secondary school science teachers are not adequately qualified.
(C) The new science GCSE will include the benefits and risks of contemporary scientific developments.
(D) A harder science GCSE will also be introduced as a compulsory course.
3. What is Professor Blakemore's opinion about the new requirement of science GCSE?
(A) He fully appreciates the government's motives in revising GCSE science courses.
(B) He holds that most students entering university have mastered enough science knowledge as needed.
(C) He argues that reducing the requirement for "hard" science in schools will lead to more problems.
(D) He thinks that lack of public confidence in science will not affect the progress of science policy.
4. The results at North Chadderton upper school piloting the new "softer" GCSE have shown that ____
(A) the new "softer" GCSE has proved quite successful
(B) the science examination is much easier than the previous ones
(C) the new course is most relevant to students' daily life
(D) most students have achieved average grades in science
5. When the critics cite the example of television chef Nigella Lawson in their comment, their purpose is
(A) to advise students to get rid of snacking from the fridge
(B) to compare that new "softer" GCSE with the television show of cooking
(C) to show that the new course is not more difficult to follow than the chef's advice
(D) to illustrate the significance and benefits of eating proper meals
Questions 6-10
Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, and Lord Smith, the former culture secretary, have launched a campaign to stem the flow of famous writers' archives being sold to universities in America. They are leading a 15-strong group of eminent literary figures demanding tax breaks, government funding and lottery cash to help British institutions match the bids of their rich American rivals. The campaign comes amid fears that the papers of Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day, may go abroad. All three are understood to have been approached recently by agents acting for institutions in America.
In recent years British authors whose papers have been sold abroad include the novelists Peter Ackroyd, Julian Barnes and Malcolm Bradbury and the playwrights David Hare and Tom Stoddard. The works of JM Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh are already held abroad. In 1997, a year before his death, Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, sold his archive for about ~500,000 to Emory University 'in Atlanta.While taxpayers may be happy to fund purchases of famous paintings so that they remain in the country and be put on show, it is less clear what the immediate benefit would be in paying for authors' archives to be kept here.
Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons culture select committee, said public money should be spent on "more pressing" projects. "The fact that archives such as this go abroad is, I'm afraid, the reality of the world," he said, "We have many artifacts in the UK that belong to other cultures." The campaign argues, however, that valuable research sources are being lost. Foreign institutions sometimes charge for access to the material and, as the authors retain copyright, the papers cannot be made available on the internet.
"This is about our cultural heritage as well as the obvious research opportunities, said Motion, whose campaign group includes Michael Hohoyd, the biographer and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, and Richard Ovenden, keeper of special collections at Oxford University. They are calling for the culture secretary to be given the authority to delay the export of items considered a significant part of the national heritage to enable British institutions to put together bids. The campaigners want an increase in direct grants and the removal of Vat from unbound papers, which increases the cost of purchases in this country.
Smith, who was culture secretary from 1997-2001, said: "It won't cost the Treasury an arm and a leg--we're talking pennies, really." The campaigners say American universities are targeting young British writers and offering between ~50,000 and ~300,000 for their of notebooks, manuscripts and letters. Joan Winterkorn, a broker who negotiated the sale of the papers of Laurence Olivier and the writers Kenneth Tynan and Peter Nichols to the British Library, said the cream of British archive material will continue to be "up for grabs" unless the tax laws are changed. "American universities are increasingly creating a working relationship with younger and younger writers, so this is not something that is going to go away," she said.
It is understood that an academic from one American institution was flown to London this month with a specific brief to "hobble" ishiguro at the Booker prize dinner in London. Ishiguro, 50, who was nominated for his novel Never Let Me Go and who won the Booker in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, has not yet made a decision, according to his spokeswoman. She said he had been approached by a number of US universities. Arnold Wesker, best known for his plays Roots and Chips with Everything, sold three tons of letters, manuscripts and papers to an American university in 2000. "1 was offered a derisory ￡60,000 from the British Library and ~100,000 from the University of Texas at Austin--there was no contest," said Wesker, 73. "1 would much sooner have had my work here in London but the gap was too large ... it is a shame."
A source close to Rushdie, whose papers stretch back to the publication of his first novel, Grimus, in 1975, said he had received "scores" of approaches from America. The author, who now lives mainly in New York, said this weekend that he had "no immediate plans" to sell his archive. Were he to sell abroad, it is likely that there would be a public outcry given the amount of taxpayers' money spent on his protection following the Satanic Verses affair. Zadie Smith, the author of White Teeth, which won the Whitbread award in 2000, has also received "several approaches from buyers," according to a friend. The University of Texas at Austin spends an estimated ~3m a year on its collections. It specializes in British and lrish writers and includes the papers of George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Edith Sitwell among its possessions.
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