2. 职称英语
  3. In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction—back before i

In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction—back before i

游客2024-03-08  61
问题     In junior high school, one of my classmates had a TV addiction—back before it was normal. This boy— we’ll call him Ethan—was an encyclopedia (百科全书) of meaningless content, from "The A-Team" to "Who’s the Boss?". Then one day Ethan’s mother made him a bold offer. If he could go a full month without watching any TV, she would give him $200. None of us thought he could do it. But Ethan quit TV, just like that. His friends offered to let him cheat at their houses on Friday nights. Ethan said no. One month later, Ethan’s mom paid him $200. He went out and bought a TV, the biggest one he could find.
    Since there have been children, there have been adults trying to get them to cooperate. The Bible repeatedly commands children to heed their parents and proposes that disobedient children be stoned to death or at least have their eyes picked out by birds. Over the centuries, the stick has lost favor, in most cases, to the carrot. Today the tiny bribes (贿赂) —a sticker for using the toilet or a cookie for sitting still in church—start before kids can speak in full sentences.
    In recent years, hundreds of schools have made these transactions more businesslike, experimenting with paying kids with cold, hard cash for showing up or getting good grades. I have not met a child who does not admire this trend. But it makes adults profoundly uncomfortable. Teachers complain that we are rewarding kids for doing what they should be doing of their own will. Psychologists warn that money can actually make kids perform worse by cheapening the act of learning. Parents predict widespread slacking after the incentives go away. The debate has become a battle for the larger war over why our kids are not learning at the rate they should be despite decades of reforms and budget increases.
    But all this time, there has been only one real question, particularly in America’s lowest-performing schools: Does it work? To find out, a Harvard economist did something education researchers almost never do: He ran a randomized experiment in hundreds of classrooms in multiple cities. He used mostly private money to pay 18,000 kids a total of $6. 3 million and brought in a team of researchers to help him analyze the effects. The result is that money is not enough. But for some kids, it may be part of the solution. In the end, we all want our children to grow into self-motivated adults. The question is, how do we help them get there? [br] What does the word "slacking" (Line 5, Para. 3) mean?
选项 A、Being lazy in study.
B、Making an effort in study.
C、Cheating.
D、Complaining.
答案 A
解析 由题干中的“slacking”定位到第三段倒数第二句语义理解题。第三段主要讨论给孩子物质奖励对孩子学习表现的负面影响，由此推测slacking含有贬义色彩。定位句意为：家长们预言，一旦奖励消失，将会出现大范围的________。结合句意可知，A)“学习偷懒”为本题答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3515156.html
相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)