45. The term \ A. get fired
B
If it is not only possible but even easy to predict which ten-year-old boys are at greatest risk of growing up to be persistent offenders (惯犯), what are we doing with the information? The last thing that we should do is to wait until their troubles have increased in adolescence and then attack them with the new Criminal Justice Bill.
If this bill becomes law, more young people will be drawn into prisons and all the evidence shows that this worsens rather than improves their future. The introduction of short sharp punishment will simply give more young people a taste of something else they don’t need and if you want to train someone to be anti-society, \of this report.
The Cambridge Institute of Criminology comes up with five key factors that are likely to make for adolescence crimes: a low income family, a large family, parents regarded by social workers to be bad at raising children, parents who themselves have a criminal record, and low intelligence in the child. Of the 63 boys in the sample who had at least three of them when they were ten, half became criminals—compared with only a fifth of the sample as a whole. Three more factors make the prediction more accurate: being judged troublesome by teachers at the age of ten, having a father with at least two criminal records and having another member of the family with a criminal record. Of the 35 men who had at least two of these factors in their background, 18 became persistent offenders and 8 more were in trouble with the law. The role of the schools is recognized as extremely important. The most reliable prediction of all on the futures of boys came from teachers’ ratings of how troublesome they were at the age of ten. If the information is there in the classroom, there must be a response that brings more attention to those troublesome children: a search for things to give them praise rather than academic achievement, a refusal to allow them to go on playing truant, and a promoting of ambition and opportunity which should start early in their school careers. 46. According to the author, adolescence crimes should be dealt ______. A. before they become adolescents B. when they are put into prison C. when they are in the period of adolescence D. when the problem becomes serious
47. The number of young offenders could be reduced by the way of ______. A. setting new legal system
B. helping with their academic performance C. applying brief periods of severe punishment D. knowing about their backgrounds
48. Ten-year-old children likely to become offenders are usually______. A. spoilt children from small families B. bright children in a poor family
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B. get paid C. lose their health D. lose part of wages
C. slow children with many brothers and sisters D. children whose parents gain wealth dishonestly
49. The writer concludes that potential offenders could be helped by ______. A. making less trouble through self discipline B. being given more encouragement at school C. being permitted to leave school as they like D. stricter treatment from teachers
C
I am beginning to wonder whether my grandmother isn’t right when she complains, as she frequently does, that children nowadays aren’t as well-behaved as they used to be. Whenever she gets the opportunity, she recounts in detail how she used to be told to respect the elders and betters. She was taught to speak only when she was spoken to, and when she went out on her own, she was reminded to say 'please' and 'thank you'. Children in her day, she continues, were expected to be seen and not heard, but these days you are lucky if you ever hear parents telling their children to mind their p’s and q’s.
If you give her the chance, she then takes out of her drawer the old photograph album which she keeps there, and which she never tires of displaying. Of course when you look at pictures of her parents, you feel sure that, with a father as stern-looking as that, you too would have been \the photographs, he is always clutching (抓住) his coat with one hand, while in the other he holds a thin walking stick. Beside him sits his wife, with their children around her: Granny and her elder brothers. It always occurs to me that perhaps those long, stiff, black clothes were so clumsy to a little girl, that she hadn’t enough breath left to be talkative, let alone mischievous (淘气的). It must have been a dull and lonely life too, for she stayed mainly at home during her childhood, while her brothers were sent away to school from an early age. Despite their long black shorts and their serious expressions in the photographs, I always suspect that their lives were considerably more enjoyable than hers. One can imagine them telling each other to shut up or mind their own business, as soon as their parents were out of sight.
Going to see Granny on Sundays used to be a terrible experience. We would always be warned in advance to be on our best behavior, since my mother made a great effort to show how well brought up we were, in spite of our old, comfortable clothes, our incomprehensible (to Granny) slang, and our noisy games in the garden. We had to change into what Granny described as our \table. We were continually being ordered to sit up straight, to take our elbows off the table, to wait till everybody had been served, not to wolf down our food, nor to talk with our mouths full. At length we would be told to ask to be excused from the table and ordered to find quiet occupations for the rest of the day. We were always very bad-tempered by the evening, and would complain angrily all the way home.
Yet though we hated the Sunday visit, we never questioned the rules of good manners themselves. I remember being greatly shocked as a child to hear one of my friends telling her
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father to shut up. I knew I could never have spoken like that to my father and it would never have occurred to me to do so.
However, my childhood was much freer than Granny’s. I went to school with my brother and I played football with him and his friends. We all spoke a common language, and we got up to the same mischief. I would have died if I had had to stay indoors, wear a tight dress, and sew.
But I do sometimes look wistfully (惆怅地) at an old sampler which hangs in the hall, which was embroidered (刺绣) by an even more distant relative—my great-great-aunt, of whom, regrettably, no photograph remains. It was done as an example of her progress in learning. The alphabet is carefully sewn in large colored childish letters from A to Z, and below it a small verse reads:
Mary Saunders is my name,
And with my needle I worked the same, That by it you may plainly see What care my parents have for me.
It must have taken that little five-year-old months and months of laborious sewing, but, in a circle in a bottom corner of the sampler, there is a line: \50. The writer’s grandmother will complain that ______. A. children used to be mischievous B. children behave worse than they did in the past C. children are often reminded of what to do D. children are very badly behaved 51.Visiting Granny on Sundays was a terrible experience because ______. A. the writer was not so well raised as she was required to pretend B. Granny continually warned the writer to be on her best behavior C. Granny was always describing the writer’s \ D. the writer was always blamed for not behaving well 52. From Paragraph 4, we can infer that the writer ______. A. seldom spoke to her father in the way her friend did B. was never questioned about the rules of good manners C. never doubted the value of the strict rules at that time D. was worried that her friend’s father would be shocked 53. The writer looked wistfully at the sampler, because______. A. it was embroidered by a relative. B. she wished she could sew herself.
C. it called to mind the values of good old days. D. she had no photographs of Mary Saunders.
54. By sewing \ A. suggested she was unhappy then B. indicated happiness was hard to gain C. expected we would find happiness in sewing D. hoped happiness would be everlasting
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D
In golf, we talk about handicaps. The lower the handicap, the better the golfer. A golfer with a handicap of 12 tends to play better than one with a handicap of 20.
It means that for a golf course that normally takes a professional 72 strokes (击球) over 18 holes to play, a 12-handicap golfer would complete his full game with a score of 84 strokes.
When it comes to creative thinking, is there such a handicap system? Can we describe a person as a 12-handicap in his creative thinking ability?
Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no such system yet for creative thinking. But we all suffer from a handicap when it comes to creative thinking. Some of us are better players at such an activity, with ideas flowing freely. Some of us are average or green hands at such thinking, failing often and feeling very frustrated.
But don’t fear. Creative thinkers can be like golfers striving to reduce their handicaps. It takes learning and practice, and re-learning and re-practice until you become better at it. How do you learn to be a creative thinker? Just like the game of golf, you need to have an interest. Is your interest purely social, business or personal? Do you have a desire to improve? Most golfers challenge themselves to reduce their handicaps for personal satisfaction and enjoyment, so do you have this burning desire to be a better creative thinker? Next comes the learning process. Some golfers are self-taught. They learn from watching golf tournaments live or on TV. They watch videotapes of golf professionals. They read golf books.
To self-teach yourself in creative thinking, you can buy books on the subject or borrow books from community and university libraries. Some creative books list a bibliography (书目) of other useful reference books on the same subject. If you are resourceful, you can visit as many schools, colleges, universities, or community libraries as possible. You need to think about what you read. Study the different creative thinking processes and methods, and experiment with them on your own or among friends. Practice makes you remember better. Practice also makes perfect, as the saying goes. Many golfers take up lessons from teaching professionals rather than learning from friends who might not teach correctly. If you can, sign up for creative-thinking lessons offered by famous companies.
Don’t just attend the creative-thinking courses. Be a committed student, always following up on what you have learned and exploring more. Although I train teams in creativity and innovation, I am still reading widely on the subject, reflecting on my company’s methods, improving on the teaching of methods, and experimenting with and adapting to new techniques.
The greatest handicap is yourself, your own mind. If you have been brought up to believe that you are not creative and you keep telling yourself or people that you are not creative, then you are not helping yourself. A golfer who has a negative self-image is also ruining himself and his game.
Cancel the negative self-image from your mind. Each time the negative thought flashes in your mind, replace it with a positive self-image, such as \can be a creative thinker.\肯定) this new image daily, several times a day. It might
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