四川省广安一中高考英语短文语法填空和阅读类暑假选练(10).doc

【陕西省 2014 五校联考】 阅读下列四篇短文 , 从每小题后所给的 A、 B、 C、 D 四个选项中 , 选出最佳选项 , 并在答题卡 上将该选项涂黑。 LAST week, the College Board announced that it was revising the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) in an effort to make it more acceptable to test-takers, teachers, college admission officers and the public more generally. Test-takers who receive lower scores than they have hoped for are likely to be concerned about their academic future. It ’s no wonder that it ’s hard to discuss the test without negative feelings. The SAT isn ’ t perfect. Like any test, it can be misused, and may reflect unequal educational opportunities. Even before the announcement of the SAT ’s redesign, experts were discussing the test ’s limitations. Writing in The NewYorker , Elizabeth Kolbert described its questions as limi ted: “Critical thinking was never called for, let alone curiosity or imagination. ” But the SAT provides an effective measure of a person ’s ability to reason through verbal( 文字性的 ) and mathematical materials, a skill required in college. Although there are conflicting reports on the issue, a study published in the journal Educational and Psychological Measurement in 2011 found that the SAT can meaningfully add to the prediction of a student ’s first -year college academic performance, above his grades in high school alone. The fact that the SAT can help predict this is, to me, an astonishing achievement that cannot be ignored. We cannot afford to ignore tests because they fall short of perfection or make us uncomfortable. But there ’s a better way to make the SAT more acceptable in the long run: We should expand the types of tests we use so as to more fully reflect what students can do. What if, in addition to the SAT, students were offered new tests that measured more diverse abilities? For future artists or musicians, there are tests that measure creative thinking — a largely ignored ability by the SAT. For future engineers, there are tests that measure their sense of space. And n