Part A

Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing [A],[B],[C] or [D]. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)

Text 1

The grammar school boy from Stratford-Upon-Avon has landed a scholarly punch after groundbreaking research showed that Shakespeare does benefit children's literacy and emotional development, but only if you can act him out.

A study found that a "rehearsal room" approach to teaching Shakespeare broadened children's vocabulary and the capacity of their writing as well as their emotional literacy.“The research shows that the way actors work makes a big difference to the way children use language and also how they think about themselves," Jacqui O'Hanlon of Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which commission the study, said.

The randomised control trial involved hundreds of year 5 pupils-aged nine and ten-at 45 state primary schools that had not been previously exposed to RS Pedagogy.They were split into target and control groups and asked to write for example a message in bottle as Ferdinand after the shipwreck in The Tempest. The target group was given a 30-minute drama-based activity to accompany the passage.

The peer-reviewed results showed that the target group of pupils drew on a wider vocabulary, used words, classed as more sophisticated or rarer, and wrote at greater length. They also appear to be more comfortable writing in role. While [control] pupils imagine how they themselves would react to being shipwrecked, [target] children put themselves in the shoes of literary character and express that character's emotion.

The Time to Act Study also found that while controlled pupils relied on desert island cliches, such as palm trees, target pupils were more expansive [giving] a broader picture of the sky, the sea and the atmospheric conditions.

O'Hanlon said she had been most surprised by the emotional literacy that was evident in the children's writing, and that they were more resilient in their writing more hopeful. She added" the emotional understanding was very evident and it is probably related to the rehearsal room process, where you are used to trying to imagine your way through. They were comfortable in describing different emotional states and part of what you do in drama is to put yourself in different shoes." The study showed the importanceof embedding our in education, she said.

But could the results be re replicated with any old dramatists? O'Hanlon said more research would be needed but suggested that Shakespeare's use of 20,000 words,compared with the everyday 2, 000 words gave a massive expansion of language into a children's lives, which was combined with children using their whole bodies to bring words to life.

1.The “rehearsal room" approach requires pupils to        

[A]rewrite the lines from Shakespeare

[B] watch RSC actors' performances

[C] play the roles in Shakespeare

[D]study drama under RSC artists

2.The study divided the pupils into two groups to find whether        

[A]the change ininstruction enhance learning outcomes

[B] expanding vocabulary helps develop reading fluency

[C] emotion affects understanding of sophisticated workers

[D] the classroom activity stimulates interest in the arts

3. Control pupil's reliance on desert island cliches shows their        

[A]weakness in description

[B] omission of small details

[C] casual style of writing

[D]the preference for big words

4.What can promote children's emotional literacy according to O'Hanlon?

[A] Writing in an imaginative manner.

[B]Identifying with literacy characters.

[C] Drawing inspiration from nature.

[D] Centralizing on real life situations.

5.It can inferred from the last paragraph that        

[A]a the new teaching method may work best with Shakespeare

[B] the language of Shakespeare may be formidable for pupils

[C]other old dramatists maybe included in primary education

[D] the pupils may be reluctant to work on other old dramatists