reading + vocab

Picture this scene. It’s an English literature lesson in a UK school, and the teacher has just read an extract from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with a class of 15-year-olds. He’s given some of the students copies of No Fear Shakespeare, a kid-friendly translation of the original. For three students, even these literacy demands are beyond them. Another girl simply can’t focus and he gives her pens and paper to draw with. The teacher can ask the No Fear group to identify the key characters and maybe provide a tentative plot summary. He can ask most of the class about character development, and five of them might be able to support their statements with textual evidence. Now two curious students are wondering whether Shakespeare advocates living a life of moderation or one of passionate engagement.

Question: The writer describes the Romeo and Juliet lesson in order to demonstrate?

• how few students are interested in literature.

• how a teacher handles a range of learning needs.

• how unsuitable Shakespeare is for most teenagers.

• how weaker students can disrupt their classmates’ learning.

The practice of ‘streaming’, or ‘tracking’, involves separating students into classes depending on their diagnosed levels of attainment. At a macro level, it requires the establishment of academically selective schools for the brightest students, and comprehensive schools for the rest. Within schools, it means selecting students into a ‘stream’ of general ability, or ‘sets’ of subject-specific ability. The practice is intuitively appealing to almost every stakeholder.

Question:  What does the writer say about streaming in the this paragraph?

• It has a very broad appeal.

•  It favours cleverer students.

• It is relatively simple to implement.

• It works better in some schools than others.

Mixed-ability classes bore students, frustrate parents and bum out teachers. The brightest ones will never summit Mount Qomolangma, and the stragglers won’t enjoy the lovely stroll in the park they are perhaps more suited to. Individuals suffer at the demands of the collective, mediocrity prevails. So: is learning like hiking?

Question:  What idea is suggested by the reference to Mount Qomolangma in the paragraph?

•   students following unsuitable paths

• students attempting interesting tasks

• students not achieving their full potential

• students not being aware of their limitations

The current pedagogical paradigm is arguably that of constructivism 当前的教学范式可以说是建构主义范式, which emerged out of the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In the 1930s, Vygotsky emphasised the importance of targeting a student’s specific ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) 近侧发展区间. This is the gap between what they can achieve only with support – teachers, textbooks, worked examples, parents and so on – and what they can achieve independently. The purpose of teaching is to provide and then gradually remove this ‘scaffolding’ until they are autonomous. If we accept this model, it follows that streaming students with similar ZPDs would be an efficient and effective solution. And that forcing everyone on the same hike – regardless of aptitude – would be madness.

Question:  What does the word ‘scaffolding’ in the paragraph refer to?

• the factors which prevent a student from learning effectively

• the environment where most of a student’s learning takes place

• the assistance given to a student in their initial stages of learning

• the setting of appropriate learning targets for a student’s aptitude

The current pedagogical paradigm is arguably that of constructivism, which emerged out of the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky. In the 1930s, Vygotsky emphasised the importance of targeting a student’s specific ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD). This is the gap between what they can achieve only with support – teachers, textbooks, worked examples, parents and so on – and what they can achieve independently. The purpose of teaching is to provide and then gradually remove this ‘scaffolding’ until they are autonomous. If we accept this model, it follows that streaming students with similar ZPDs would be an efficient and effective solution. And that forcing everyone on the same hike – regardless of aptitude – would be madness.

Question: The Vygotsky model of education supports the concept of a mixed-ability class.

• True

• False

• Not Given

metropolis /məˈtrɑp·ə·lɪs/: a very large city, often the most important city in a large area or country

Which of the following is NOT a metropolis?

• Chicago

• New York

• Shanghai

• Tainan

cosmopolitan /ˌkɑːz.məˈpɑː.lɪ.t̬ən/: 1. containing or having experience of people and things from many different parts of the world. 2. someone who has experience of many different parts of the world

Which of the following is a highly cosmopolitan city?

• 
• 
• 
• 

There is also something exciting about passing on skills and knowledge that you yourself have just mastered – a certain pride and zeal, a certain freshness to the interaction between ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ that is often lost by the expert for whom the steps are obvious and the joy of discovery forgotten.

Question:  It can be rewarding to teach knowledge which you have only recently acquired.

• true

• false

• not given

A crucial aspect of constructivist theory is the role of the MKO – ‘more knowledgeable other’ – in knowledge construction. While teachers are traditionally the MKOs in classrooms, the value of knowledgeable student peers must not go unrecognised either.

Question: Some teachers are uncertain about allowing students to take on MKO roles in the classroom.

• True

• False

• Not given

According to Professor John Hattie of the Melbourne Education Research Institute there is very little indication that streaming leads to higher achievement. He ............ that, in schools which use streaming, the most significant impact is on those students placed in the bottom sets, , especially where a large proportion of them have disadvantaged backgrounds.

• hangs out

• points out

• goes out

• sticks out