TEXT V

(http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-26/)

In the last bubble, by saying “Maybe you should”, the boss implies that the employee needs to:

TEXT I

Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say

By MATT RICHTEL
Published: November 1, 2012

There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.

The researchers note that their findings represent the subjective views of teachers and should not be seen as definitive proof that widespread use of computers, phones and video games affects students’ capability to focus.

Even so, the researchers who performed the studies, as well as scholars who study technology’s impact on behavior and the brain, say the studies are significant because of the vantage points of teachers, who spend hours a day observing students.

The timing of the studies, from two well-regarded research organizations, appears to be coincidental.

One was conducted by the Pew Internet Project, a division of the Pew Research Center that focuses on technology-related research. The other comes from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that advises parents on media use by children. It was conducted by Vicky Rideout, a researcher who has previously shown that media use among children and teenagers ages 8 to 18 has grown so fast that they on average spend twice as much time with screens each year as they spend in school.

Teachers who were not involved in the surveys echoed their findings in interviews, saying they felt they had to work harder to capture and hold students’ attention […]

The surveys also found that many teachers said technology could be a useful educational tool. In the Pew survey, which was done in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project, roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more selfsufficient researchers.

But nearly 90 percent said that digital technologies were creating “an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/education/technologyis- changing-how-students-learn-teachers-say.html)

In the opening sentence, the surveys mentioned indicate that teachers assume digital technology can be:

TEXT IV

A: Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?
B: Yes, of course.
A: Great! I never could before!

(http://iteslj.org/c/jokes.html)

The word “great” was chosen in the dialogue to express:

TEXT VI

This is a dialogue between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry, in which the former, an artist, is telling the latter, his friend, about Dorian Gray’s beauty:

“(…) The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”

(WILDE, Oscar. The picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Classics, 1994 [1891]. p. 10).

The sentence “If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.” is an example of zero conditional. It was written in that form because it expresses something that, for the character, is a(n):

TEXT II

Communicative language teaching

Communicative language teaching rose to prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s as a result of many disparate developments in both Europe and the United States. First, there was an increased demand for language learning, particularly in Europe. The advent of the European Common Market led to widespread European migration, and consequently there was a large population of people who needed to learn a foreign language for work or for personal reasons. At the same time, children were increasingly able to learn foreign languages in school. The number of secondary schools offering languages rose worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s as part of a general trend of curriculum-broadening and modernization, and foreign-language study ceased to be confined to the elite academies. In Britain, the introduction of comprehensive schools meant that almost all children had the opportunity to study foreign languages.

This increased demand put pressure on educators to change their teaching methods. Traditional methods such as grammar translation assumed that students were aiming for mastery of the target language, and that students were willing to study for years before expecting to use the language in real life. However, these assumptions were challenged by adult learners who were busy with work, and by schoolchildren who were less academically able. Educators realized that to motivate these students an approach with a more immediate payoff was necessary.

The trend of progressivism in education provided a further pressure for educators to change their methods. Progressivism holds that active learning is more effective than passive learning, and as this idea gained traction in schools there was a general shift towards using techniques where students were more actively involved, such as group work. Foreign-language education was no exception to this trend, and teachers sought to find new methods that could better embody this shift in thinking.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_language_teaching)

When the text mentions “a more immediate payoff”, reference is made to a:

TEXT VI

This is a dialogue between Basil Hallward and Lord Henry, in which the former, an artist, is telling the latter, his friend, about Dorian Gray’s beauty:

“(…) The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”

(WILDE, Oscar. The picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Classics, 1994 [1891]. p. 10).

The interrogative form of the opening sentence is: