Generations of children who sat through endless lessons of “chalk and talk” in front of a bossy teacher can take some relief. But the “chalk and talk” method helped them achieve better exam results. Modern classroom techniques may make school days a good deal happier, but contentment(满足) is not the road to success in examinations, according to university researchers.
Their three-year study, monitoring the progress of 2000 teenagers, tried to measure the influence of the “boredom factor” in 17 selected schools in the north of England. The researchers also found that the old-fashioned approach(方法) of teachers ordering pupils about is still alive and producing results. Their conclusions were welcomed yesterday by educationists who were worried by the shift to less formal lessons.
The pupils in the latest study were asked to award teachers marks to measure how frequently they followed or ignored today's fashion for “child-centred” education. A five-point scale was given to spot the teachers who always told them what they should know and what to write down. “It was significant and not anything you would get by chance or accident. Certainly, when you compare the pupil's interest and attitude to school, there is a quite definite and highly significant difference,” one of the researchers said. But the rankings were turned upside down when the team of four researchers looked at how the children did in examination. The sort of methods now frowned upon(不赞同) actually improve the final grades.
The researchers said,“There is nothing wrong with old-fashioned, didactic(说教性的) teaching in the fight place, even if it isn't the flavor at the moment.” However, he insisted the best teachers had always mixed the two techniques to match the needs of pupils, although certain examinations forced some to concentrate more on dictation and learning by rote(死记硬背).
小题1:University researchers have discovered that _______.
A．modern teaching methods provide students with entertainment
B．students taught by modern techniques are happy and successful
C．traditional teaching methods help students score higher
D．students like old teaching better than modern teaching at school小题2:We can infer from Paragraph 3 that _______.
A．child-centred education promotes friendship among children
B．the research findings are not significant enough for a conclusion
C．those who show greater interest in school did better in exams
D．those who don't show much interest in school may turn out to score higher in tests小题3:The researchers suggest that _______.
A．more old methods be used in teaching
B．students be taught how to score high in exams
C．dictation be used as one of the best teaching methods
D．old and new methods be used together小题4:The best title for this text would be _______.
A．The Examinationbased Teaching
B．Rote Learning Was the Winner
C．The Problem of Child-centred Education
D．The Problem of the Traditional Method
