Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. 90% of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for 10 15 minutes a day, and then other teachers who basically teach it for 60 to 70 minutes a day — which really for handwriting is pretty much. Many adults remember learning that way — by copying letters over and over again. Today’ s thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write. Handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency — writing without having to think about it. Fluency continues to develop up until high school. But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more because of computers and voice recognition programs. But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we learned from a spokeswoman for the College Board, which administers the SAT college admission test. More than 75 percent of students choose to print their essay on the test rather than write in cursive.
[语篇解读] 文章介绍了在键盘普及的年代美国的书法教学情况。 1．We can learn ________ from Paragraph 1. A. teaching handwriting is a basic requirement in teaching job B. most teachers prefer to teach handwriting C. teachers spend little time in teaching handwriting D. a keyboard has taken the place of the handwriting entirely [解析] 推理判断题。根据第一段中“90% of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting”可知书法教学是基本的教学要求，A项为正确推论。根据“One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting”可知，很多老师不愿意教书法课，B项错误；根据第一段末句可知C项错误；根据全段判断，只是说键盘普及使一些人认为书法渐渐过时了，D项错误。 [答案] A 2．Which of the following is WRONG for traditional handwriting in the USA? A. The students are taught by practicing a long period. B. The letters are repeated many times. C. Handwriting includes two skills. D. To write in cursive is taught first. [解析] 细节认定题。根据第二段可知，传统的书法教学重复很多遍并且持续时间长，因此A、B两项内容正确。根据第三段第一句可知C项内容正确；根据最后一段第二句可知D项内容错误。 [答案] D 3．The underlined word “legibility” in Paragraph 3 means ________. A. easy to read B. complex C. unexpected D. unreadable [解析] 推测词义题。根据下文“which means forming the letters so they can be read”可推测画线词的意思是“清楚，易读”。 [答案] A 4．The best title for the passage is ________. A. How to improve handwriting in school B. Right or wrong: the death of handwriting C. Handwriting involves two skills D. Handwriting lessons are on the way out [解析] 标题归纳题。作者对美国书法教学的现状作了叙述，没有自己的主观评论，故选择B。A项没有涉及，C项只是其中一部分内容，D项只是一部分人的观点。 [答案] B 5．The author’ s attitude towards whether still to learn handwriting in school is________. A. negative B. objective C. critical D. optimistic [解析] 态度判断题。根据全文的叙述，作者只是将美国书法教学的现状和不同人的观点呈现出来，并没有发表自己的见解，因此作者持客观的态度。[答案] B [长难句解读] One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting.今年公布的一项研究发现，大约每四个教师中就有三个说他们不准备教书法了。published this year为过去分词短语作后置定语，found后面为宾语从句，其中又含有一个宾语从句they are not prepared to teach handwriting。
Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of sad tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired official in the department of foreign affairs, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya’s mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed(诊断) with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband’s funeral. “Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him,” she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she had an operation and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her deal with her grief. Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her twenty-six-year-old daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into Politkovskaya’s apartment, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. “Anna had so much on her mind,” Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. “And she was trying to finish her article.” Politkovskaya was a special reporter for the small newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and, like most of her work, the piece focused on the terror that can be seen all over the southern republic of Chechnya. This time, she had been trying to report repeated cruel acts done by people faithful to the Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who are in favour of Russia. In the past seven years, Politkovskaya had written dozens of accounts of life during wartime; many had been collected in her book “A Small Corner of Hell: reports from Chechnya.” Politkovskaya was far more likely to spend time in a hospital than on a battlefield, and her writing bore frequent witness to robbery, and the uncontrolled cruelty of life in a place that few other Russians—and almost no other reporters—cared to think about. 1. Politkovskaya’s father died of ______. A. tiredness B. a heart disease C. an attack D. an accident 【答案与解析】答案B。从第2句中的“…had died of a heart attack…”可知B选项是正确答案。C选项attack是“攻击”的意思，而文中出现的是heart attack，“心脏病”，因此C选项偷换了概念；其他选项与文中相关的表述不相干。 2. F
