专四听写文本

1. Teaching and Learning

Teaching is supposed to be a professional activity requiring long and complicated training as well as official certification. The act of teaching is looked upon as a flow of knowledge from a higher source to an empty container. The student’s role is one of receiving information, while the teacher’s is one of sending it.

There is a clear distinction assumed between one who is supposed to know and another, usually, younger person who is supposed not to know. However, teaching needn’t be a province of a sp ecial group of people nor need it looked upon as a technical skill .Teaching can be more like guiding and assisting than forcing information into a supposedly empty head. If you have a certain skill, you should be able to share it with someone. You don’t h ave to get certified to convey what you know to someone else or to help them in their attempts to teach themselves.

2. Comets

In recent years, scientists’ investigation of comet has increased because of a growing interest in the origin of the sun and planets. Scientists want to learn how comets are formed. They think such information will help to explain the origin of the solar system.

The word “comet” comes from Greek and means “hairy object”. In history comets have a special place. People believed that they brought

the news of death, destruction or military victories.

The tails of comet provided views with spectacular sights at night. Comet tails are millions of kilometers long. The tails frequently reach lengths of 250 million kilometers and more.

The most famous comet of history is called Halley’s Comet, which appears every 76 years. It was named for Edward Halley, a British astronomer. He predicted the appearance of the comet in 1758,16 years after his death. Halley’s comet is extremely bright and has two tails. In the 20th century it returned in 1910 and 1986.

3. Foreign Language Study

The knowledge of a foreign language is an important part of an education. A person cannot be considered truly educated if he knows only one language. Nevertheless, the importance of learning a foreign language is often underestimated.

English is one of the most commonly used languages in international communication. Some speakers of English mistakenly argue that it is unimportant for them to learn another language for communicative purposes. They think that everyone else should know English. But there are still billions of people who do not speak English, and many of these people have limited education opportunities. If English speakers do not make the effort to learn to communicate in other languages, they should not expect others to gain the knowledge of English.