Alarming tendency

According to specialists engaged in research in primary school education, there is a tend (1) away from acquiring fundamental knowledge by young people. Illiterate (2) is growing and numerous demonstrations of ignorant (3) in many fields make teachers despair (4). It was expected that parents were still reading books to their young children or teaching them to do some simple mathematical calculate (5) as it used to be earlier. But this assume (6) was broken by the recent study carried out by British education (7).

This research demonstrates lack of base (8) skills in the traditional 3Rs (reading, writing and arithmetics), which is simply believe (9). The results published recently show that one in seven children has sufficient (10) knowledge of simple maths and cannot even do a simple multiply (11), such as 5x5. The results also show that a three (12) of the children in this age group cannot count up to 100 and do not know what express (13) such as half and a quarter, refer to. Moreover, only half of the children have any understanding of the decimal system for measure (14) and money, and only one in thirty can accuracy (15) read the temperature on a thermometer. As regards English, more than a quarter have not learnt to read with any confide (16) and have problems with the alphabet; meanwhile another 25% are able (17) to spell the easiest words. It looks like parents’ neglect (18) has resulted in their children’s learning problems.

13. Образуйте соответствующее однокоренное слово.

Television and reading

M any people believe that watching television has resulted in low (1) reading standards in schools. Actually, the link between television and print (2) books is not as simple as that. In many cases, television actually courage (3) people to read. For example, when a book is turned into a TV series, the book sales often go up.

One study of this link examined six-year-old children view (4) a special program at school. The series was designed to encourage love of books as well develop basic mechanism (5) skills of reading. Each program is an animal (6) film of a children’s book. The story is read aloud while certainly (7) key phrases from the book appear on the screen beneath the picture. Whenever a word is read, it is also light (8) on the TV screen.

One find (9) was that watching these programs was very important to children. If anything prevention (10) them from watching a program, they were very appoint (11). What’s more, they wanted to read the books the series were based on. The programs also gave children more confident (12) when reading these books. As a result, familiar (13) with the stories, they would sit in pairs and read the books loud (14) to each other. They also showed great

sympathize (15) to the characters seen on the screen while discussing the book.

14. Образуйте соответствующее однокоренное слово.

DÉJÀ VU

Have you ever been in a situation in which you suddenly thought “I’ve been here before”? That strange sense (1) of having had exactly the same experience at some know (2) time in the past is called déjà vu. Most people have had this feeling at one time or another, but no-one has come up with a satisfy (3) explanation of what déjà vu actually is.

There are the usual eccentricity (4) theories concerning memories of a previous life, or of some long-forgotten “out-of-body experience”. Others maintenance (5) that a déjà vu is the memory of a past dream in which the future was revealed. Need (6) to say, few scientists take these theories very seriously.

Psychology (7) have made several attempts to explain the phenomenon. Perhaps the most reason (8) one involves a simple function (9) of the brain’s electrical circuit (10). What happens is this: the brain accident (11) stores what you see as a memory before it is registered in the conscious (12). So when, moments later, you actually become conscious of the scenery (13), you find that you already have a memory of it depth (14) in your mind.

15. Выберите подходящее слово из предложенных четырех вариантов.