Public school teaching, in the opinions of home school advocates, is（）

A.systematic
B. inefficient
C. uninteresting
D. superficial

For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing.

I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I’m NOT French, I’m not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach.

For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah ’ab or sooken.

Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.

1个月

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7.03

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11.09

12.83

In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of the only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames.

The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today’ s people—especially those born to families who have lived in the U. S. for many generations--apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren’t likely to get any taller. "In the general population to- day, at this genetic, environmental level, we’ve pretty much gone as far as we can go," says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their in- crease in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world.

Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients—notably, protein—to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height—5’9" for men, 5’4" for women—hasn’t really changed since 1960.

Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and can- not easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. "There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism," says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University.

Genetic maximums can change, but don’t expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass. , ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, "you could use today’s data and feel fairly confident.\

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Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it (1) develop a point of view. But this hasn’t stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing (2) the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras — they’re neat (3) for your PC, but they’re not suitable for everyday picture taking.

The fans are wrong. More than anything else, digital cameras are radically (4) what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography (5) we know, it is beginning to seem out of (6) with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder (7) , saving pictures as digital (8) and watching them on TV is no less practical — and in many ways more (9) than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be (10) .

Paper is also terribly (11) . Pictures that are incorrectly framed, (12) , or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints.

The digital medium changes the (13) . Still images that are (14) digitally can immediately be shown on a computer (15) , a TV screen, or a small liquid crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that (16) an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, (17) being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted (18) .

What’s it like to (19) with one of these digital cameras It’s a little like a first date — exciting, confusing and fraught with (20) .

Travelers who fly frequently economy class.

Travelers who fly frequently business class.

Travelers who fly occasionally during holidays.

Travelers who fly economy class once in a while.

Top managers often find it very difficult to manage conflict. They know that conflict over issues is natural and even necessary. Reasonable people，making decisions under conditions of uncertainty，are likely to have honest disagreements over the best path for their company’s future. Management teams whose members challenge one another’s thinking develop a more complete understanding of the choices, cerate a richer range of options. Ultimately they are able to make the kinds of effective decisions necessary in today’s competitive environments. But, unfortunately, healthy conflict can quickly turn unproductive. A comment meant as a substantive remark can be interpreted as a personal attack. (8) Personalities frequently become closely connected with issues. Because most executives are proud of their ability to make rational decisions，they find it difficult even to acknowledge—let alone manage—this emotional，irrational dimension of their behavior.

The challenge is familiar to anyone who has ever been part of a management team. (9) The managers should be encouraged to argue without destroying their ability to work as a team.

In a study，in 4 of the 12 companies，there was little or no substantive disagreement over major issues and therefore little conflict to observe. But the other 8 companies experienced considerable conflict. In 4 of them，the top-management teams handled conflict in a way that avoided interpersonal hostility or discord. (10) They described the way they work as a team as‘open’，‘fun’，and ‘productive’. The executives vigorously debated the issues，but they wasted little time on carefully considering and posturing. As one put it, ’I really don’t have time. ’Another said, ’We don’t gloss over the issues：we hit them straight on. But we’re not political, ’ Still another observed of her company’s management team, ’We scream a lot，then laugh，and then resolve the issue. ’

The other four companies in which issues were contested were less successful at avoiding interpersonal conflict. Their top teams were plagued by intense hostility. (11) When executives described their colleagues to us，they used words such as‘manipulative’, ‘secretive’.‘burned out’，and‘political’. The teams with minimal interpersonal conflict were able to separate substantive issues from those based on personalities. (12) How did they do that After analyzing the observations of the teams’ behavior, the experts found that their companies used the same tactics for managing interpersonal conflict. For instance，team members worked with more, rather than less, information and debated on the basis of facts.