Directions: You are expected to study this section in class. Don’t preview.

Word Pretest

For each italicized word or expression, choose the best meaning below.
1. After World War Ⅱ, the “beatniks” appeared in America who had long hair, wore strange clothes, and were strongly against social convention.
A. unconventional people
B. poor artists
C. foolish youngsters
2. Don’t try to persuade me to buy this painting , it is not worth a hill of beans.
A. a pile of coins
B. anything
C. the money that can buy a hill of beans
3. Carol flaunts before her class mates her new coat which she bought yesterday.
A. shows off
B. talks about
C. tries on
4. She has a natural aptitude for music.
A. ineptitude
B. taste
C. ability
5. She pleaded with the officer not to give her a ticket.
A. discussed with
B. argued with
C. asked in a begging way
6. My brain may be old, but it is not addled.
A. confused
B. damaged
C. stupid
7. He was the glee club manager, but he couldn’t sing a note.
A. joy club
B. singing club
C. speech club
8. His checkered career is full if ups and downs.
A. uneven
B. controlled
C. smooth
9. The child’s stubbornness infuriated the mother.
A. comforted
B. angered
C. pleased
10. Mozart was a child prodigy; he composed a symphony at the age of seven.
A. ordinary child
B. healthy child
C. unusually clever child
11. Though he was of obscure birth, he became a successful later in life.
A. hidden B. noble C. unknown

Key: 1. A 2. B 3. A 4. C 5. C 6. A
7. B 8. A 9. B 10. C 11. C

Text A

1. Background Information
2. Text: It’s Never Too Late for Success

　　You and your parents can stop worrying ─ Pasture, Edison, Darwin and lots of more were far from being geniuses in their teens. History books seldom mention it, but the truth is that many of our greatest figures were practically “beatniks” when they were teenagers. They were given to daydreaming, indecision, and they showed no promise of being doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief.
　　So, young men and women, if you suffer from the same symptoms, don’t despair. The world was built by men and women whose parents worried that they would “never amount to a hill of beans”. You don’t hear too much about their early failure because parents prefer to cite more inspiring examples.
　　A Man They Don’t Tell You About
　　If you take piano lessons and your attitude towards practicing is marked by laziness, your parents might justly complain and flaunt before you the famous picture of little Mozart in his ruffled nightshirt, playing the piano at midnight in the attic. But the point is, your parents would not show you a picture of a certain party who never showed a bit of interest in music during his formative years. In fact he never showed talent in any direction whatever. Finally put to studying law, he barely passed his final exams. It was not until he was 22 that he suddenly became fired with a great passion for music, and his name was Peter Iluitch Tschaikowsky.
　　In the science, there have been hundreds of geniuses who aimed straight at the goal from earliest years, and hundreds who showed no aptitude at all. There were the teen-age Mayo brothers, who actually assisted their father in his crude country operating room. On the other hand, Harvey Cushing, one of the world’s greatest brain surgeons, might have become a professional ballplayer if his father hadn’t pleaded that he gives medicine a try.
　　The great Pasteur’s parents were in despair because teen-age Louis did nothing but draw pictures and go fishing. Pasture was 20 years old before he became even faintly interested in science.
　　Edison Was “Addled”
　　So it goes. You have the Wright brothers, who were brilliant at engineering in their early teens, and you have Thomas Alva Edison, whose teacher tried to get him out of the class because his brain was “addled.” You have the Nobel Prize physicist Enrico Fermi, who at 17 had read enough mathematics to qualify for a doctor’s degree. And you have the great. Albert Schweitzer, who hesitated between music and the church until he was 30. Ten he started his medical studies.
　　Darwin Hated School
　　Charles Darwin’s early life was a mess. He hated school, and his father once shouted: “You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family!” He was sent to Glasgow to study medicine, but he couldn't stand the sight of blood. He was sent to divinity school and barely managed to graduate. Whereupon he gave up the whole business and shipped to the South Seas on the famous exploring ship Beagle. On that voyage, one of history’s greatest scientists was born. It was here that he collected the material for the book that would revolutionize biological science The Origin of the Species.
　　Faulkner Failed in English
　　Politics offers a familiar example of contrast. Herbert Hoover must have learned administration in the cradle. When he was at school he was chosen as football manager, though he didn’t know the game, and the glee club manager, though he couldn’t sing a note. Whatever he touched went smoothly, glee club or food for a starving Europe.
　　But one of his successors in the White House had about as checkered a youth as can be imagined. Turned down by West Point because of poor vision, Harry Truman tried a dozen jobs, including stretches in a drugstore, a bank, a bottling works, and a railroad yard. But he got there just the same.
Great writers are supposed to be born, not made, but here again there are many fascinating exceptions. William Faulkner quit school in the fifth grade and wandered around the country as a house painter and a dishwasher.
　　Once he tried attending college, but failed in freshman English and quit. He got a postmaster’s job in a small Mississippi town, and infuriated the populace by getting the mail all mixed up and closing the office whenever he felt like it.
　　And just to show that girls can be as confusing as boys, take Pearl Buck, who from early youth made it a point to write at least a few lines every day of her life. Then take Edna Ferber, whose sole ambition was to be an actress; she never even thought of writing anything until she was in her 20’s and had to take a $3-a-week job on a newspaper to help her family.
　　How about Those Prodigies?
　　And added to all the aforementioned paradoxes you have a small army of child prodigies who were graduated from college when they were 15, and are now obscure clerks in accounting departments. And you have a small army of men who were too stupid or lazy to get into or finish college and who are today presidents of the firms that hire the prodigies.
　　So who’s to say what about youth? Any young boy or girl who knows what he wants to do in life is probably the better off for it. But no teen-ager need despair of the future. He has that one special advantage over the greatest man alive ─ time! If you don’t think time counts, look at Grandma Moses. She never sold a painting till she was 80.

Total words: 90 words
Total Reading Time______
_______
The text is base on “It’s Never Too Late for Success” by Charles D. Rice in Better College Reading, eds. by Marvin S. Zuckerman and Gerald F. Wojcik, Los Angeles Valley College.

Detailed Study of Text A

◆ Reading Skill ─ Skimming
Skim the text and then answer the following questions.
1. What is the title of the article?
2. Who is the author of the article?
3. What are the subheadings of the article?
4. The first paragraph points our ______.
A. many of our greatest figures were not great in their teens
B. all of our greatest figures were not great in their teens
C. many of our greatest figures were not great in their teens.
5. The author’s chief purpose is to show that _______.
A. most successful adults were failures when they were teenagers,
B. sometimes teenagers who fail or show no signs of great worth or talent turn out to be greatly successful as adults.
C. Early schooling is not important for later success.
6. What is the author’s attitude toward young people?
A. disapproving
B. hopeful
C. despairing

According to the text, decide whether each of the following statements is true or false.
7. ______ Mozart was not interested in music until he was 22.
8. ______ Cushing might have become a professional ballplayer if he hadn’t become a surgeon instead.
9. ______ Before he wrote the book The Origin of the Species, Darwin wanted to become a priest.
10. ______ Truman showed great skill as a leader and organizer all through his youth.
11. ______ It is possible for child prodigies to become obscure clerks accounting departments.
12. ______ Grandma Moses never sold a painting till she was 80 years old.

Key: 1.It’s Never Too Late for Success
2.Charles D.Rice
3. (1)．A Man They Don’t Tell You About
　(2)．Edison Was “Addled”
　(3)．Darwin Hated School
　(4)．Faulkner Failed in English
　(5)．How About Those Prodigies?
4. C 5. B 6. B 7. T 8. T 9. F 10. F 11. T 12. T

Vocabulary Building
Ⅰ. Fill in the blanks with the correct forms of the given words.

Decision　 prefer　 mark　　 fire 　aim
Physical 　mess 　ship　house 　act
1. Your room is in a ________. Tidy it up at once.
2. She is a good wife. She always considers her husband’s ______ when she prepares the meals.
3. Having lost his job, he wanders in the street ______ every day.
4. There is no ______ difference between these two kinds of fish.
5. At the ______ moment, his comrades came to rescue him.
6. All the goods there are ready for ______.
7. He is afraid of his father who has a ______ temper.
8. Is it true that men are ______ strong than women?
9. He talks a lot about changing his bad habits but he never takes any ______.
10. Many people will benefit from the government’s ______ scheme.

Key:1. mass 2. preference 3. aimlessly 4. marked 5. decisive
6. shipment 7. fire 8. physically 9. action 10.housing

II. Fill in the blanks with words which are often confused.
1. attitude, aptitude
a. Does she show any ______ for music?
b. He shows a very positive ______ to his work.
2. count, account
a. He had to submit ______s of his expenditure.
b. I felt that all my years there ______ for nothing.
c. We ______ the passengers and found two were missing.
3. talent, intelligence
a. She possesses a remarkable ______ for music.
b. When the water pipe burst, the child had the ______ to turn off water at the main.

Key:1.a. aptitude b. attitude
2.a. account b. ccount c. count
3.a. lent b. intelligence

Ⅲ. Glossary
junior senior undergraduate postgraduate
doctorate postdoctoral scholarship grant
degree-holder certificate faculty tutor
teaching assistant associate professor curriculum discipline
elective course compulsory course liberal arts alumna

4. Cloze
Fill in each blank with one suitable word.

Education is not an end, but a means to an end. In ______ words, we do not educate children ______ for the purpose of educating them, our purpose is to fit them for life.
In many modern countries it ______ for some time been fashionable to think that, by free education for all, one can solve all the problems of society and build a perfect nation. But we can already see that free education for all is not enough: we find in ______ countries a far larger number of people with university degrees ______ there are jobs for them to fill. Because of their degrees, they ______ to do what they think “low” work; and, in fact, work with the hands is thought to be dirty and shameful in such countries.
But we have only to think a moment to ______ that the work of a completely uneducated farmer is far more important than ______ a professor. We can live ______ education, but we die if we have no food. ______ no one cleaned our streets and took the rubbish away from our houses, we should get terrible diseases in our towns.
In fact, when we say that all of us must be educated to fit us for life, it means that we must be ______ to do whatever job is suited to our brain and ability, and to realize that all jobs are necessary to society, that it is very ______ to be ashamed of one’s work, or to scorn someone else’s. only such a type of education can be called valuable to society.

Key : 1. other 2. only 3. has 4. few 5. find 6. refuse
7. find 8. that 9. without 10. If 11. willing 12. unnecessary