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Gifted education
1. Gifted education (also known as Gifted and Talented Education (GATE), Talented and Gifted (TAG), is a broad term for special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented. There is no standard global definition of what a gifted student is.
2. Appropriateness of forms of gifted education is the most hotly debated aspect among educators. Some people believe that gifted education resources lack availability and flexibility. They feel that in the alternate methods of gifted education, the gifted students "miss out" on having a "normal" childhood, at least insofar as "normal childhood" is defined as attending school in a mixed-ability classroom. Others believe that gifted education allows gifted students to interact with peers that are on their level, be adequately challenged, and leaves them better equipped to take on the challenges of life.
3. While giftedness is seen as an academic advantage, psychologically it can pose other challenges for the gifted individual. A person who is intellectually advanced may or may not be advanced in other areas. Each individual student needs to be evaluated for physical, social, and emotional skills without the traditional prejudices which prescribe either "compensatory" weaknesses or "matching" advancement in these areas. A person with significant academic talents often finds it difficult to fit in with schoolmates. These pressures often wane during adulthood, but they can leave a significant negative impact on emotional development.
4. Social pressures can cause children to "play down" their intelligence in an effort to blend in with other students. "Playing down" is seen somewhat more frequently in socially acute adolescents. This behavior is usually discouraged by educators when they recognize it. Unfortunately, the very educators who want these children to challenge themselves and to embrace their gifts and talents are often the same people who are forced to discourage them in a mixed-ability classroom, through mechanisms like refusing to call on the talented student in class so that typical students have an opportunity to participate.
(Encyclopedia Wikipedia)
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Types of Money
1. To be used as money, an item must have certain characteristics: durability (the ability to be used over and over again), portability (the ability to be carried from one place to another and transferred from one person to another), divisibility (the ability to be divided into smaller units), stability in value (people who save money are confident that it will have approximately the same value when they want to buy something with it as it had when they put it into savings), acceptability (people are willing to accept money in exchange for their goods or services). Money comes in all shapes and sizes. The items used as money are a reflection of the society in which they are used. Money as a rule includes coins, paper money, checks and near money.
2. Checks or checkbook money usually make up more than 70 percent of the nation’s money supply, and nearly 90 percent of the transactions in most countries are completed by writing checks. Because checks are payable to the holder of the check on demand, checking accounts are often called demand deposits. Checks are representative money because they stand for the amount of money in a person’s account. They are generally accepted because the bank must pay the amount of the check when it is presented for payment. Checks, therefore, are considered money because they are a medium of exchange, a standard of value, and a store of value.
3. Other financial assets are very similar to money. These assets, such as savings accounts and time deposits, are called near money and are not usually considered part of the nation’s money supply. Bills of exchange are examples of near money. Though they are easily accessible, these accounts cannot be used directly to buy goods or pay debts. Depositors, for example, cannot pay bills directly from their savings accounts. Since funds in these accounts can be easily converted into cash, however, they are considered near money.
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Großrechner
1. Ein Großrechner (engl.: mainframe) ist ein sehr komplexes und umfangreiches Computersystem, das weit über die Kapazitäten eines Personal Computers und meist auch über die der typischen Serversysteme hinausgeht.
Ein Großrechner zeichnet sich vor allem durch seine Zuverlässigkeit, hohe Ein-Ausgabe-Leistung und Dimensionen aus.
2. In einem Großrechner sind sorgfältig aufeinander abgestimmte, robuste und hochgradig redundante Komponenten verbaut. Üblicherweise wird die Wartung dieser Rechner im laufenden Betrieb durchgeführt, auch Hardwareaustausch und Aufrüstungen führen zu keiner Beeinträchtigung oder gar Unterbrechung des Betriebs.
3. Im Gegensatz zu Supercomputern, die auf hohe Rechenleistungen hin entwickelt werden, ist ein Großrechner auf Zuverlässigkeit und hohen Datendurchsatz ausgelegt. Die typischen Anwendungen eines Großrechners sind in Banken, Versicherungen, großen Unternehmen und in der öffentlichen Verwaltung gegeben.
4. Röhrencomputer stellten die erste Generation dar und lösten primär militärische Aufgaben. Darauf folgende Großrechner hielten mit der Erfindung des Transistors Mitte der 1950er-Jahre zunächst hauptsächlich in Forschungseinrichtungen Einzug, etwa zur Lösung von Differentialgleichungen. Dort beanspruchten sie meist einen ganzen Raum für sich alleine, der klimatisiert werden musste, um der Hitzeentwicklung des Gerätes entgegenzuwirken.
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A heat engine
1. In thermodynamics, a heat engine is a system that performs the conversion of heat or thermal energy to mechanical work. It does this by bringing a working substance from a high temperature state to a lower temperature state. A heat «source» generates thermal energy that brings the working substance in the high temperature state. The working substance generates work in the «working body» of the engine while transferring heat to the colder «sink» until it reaches a low temperature state. During this process some of the thermal energy is converted into work by exploiting the properties of the working substance. The working substance can be any system with a non-zero heat capacity, but it usually is a gas or liquid.
2. In general an engine converts energy to mechanical work. Heat engines distinguish themselves from other types of engines by the fact that their efficiency is fundamentally limited by Carnot's theorem. Although this efficiency limitation can be a drawback, an advantage of heat engines is that most forms of energy can be easily converted to heat by processes like exothermic reactions (such as combustion), absorption of light or energetic particles, friction, dissipation and resistance. Since the heat source that supplies thermal energy to the engine can thus be powered by virtually any kind of energy, heat engines are very versatile and have a wide range of applicability.
3. Heat engines are often confused with the cycles they attempt to mimic. Typically when describing the physical device the term «engine» is used. When describing the model the term «cycle» is used.
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A cordless telephone
1. Cordless phones first appeared around 1980. George Sweigert, an amateur radio operator and inventor from Cleveland, Ohio, is largely recognized as the father of the cordless phone. A cordless telephone is a telephone with a wireless handset that communicates via radio waves with a base station connected to a fixed telephone line, usually within a limited range of its base station (which has the handset cradle). The base station is on the subscriber premises, and attaches to the telephone network the same way a corded telephone does.
2. The base station on subscriber premises is what differentiates a cordless telephone from a mobile telephone. Current cordless telephone standards, such as PHS and DECT, have blurred the once clear-cut line between cordless and mobile telephones by implementing cell handover, various advanced features, such as data-transfer and even, on a limited scale, international roaming. In these models, base stations are maintained by a commercial mobile network operator and users subscribe to the service.
3. Cordless phones can operate without a power cord or cable attached to a fixed electricity supply such as an outlet, generator, or other centralized power source, allowing greater mobility. But unlike a corded telephone, a cordless one needs mains electricity to power the base station. The cordless handset is powered by a rechargeable battery, which is charged when the handset sits in its cradle.
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Metabolism
1. Metabolism is the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories. Catabolism breaks down organic matter, for example to harvest energy in cellular respiration. Anabolism uses energy to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.
2. The chemical reactions of metabolism are organized into metabolic pathways, in which one chemical is transformed through a series of steps into another chemical, by a sequence of enzymes. Enzymes are crucial to metabolism because they allow organisms to drive desirable reactions that require energy and will not occur by themselves, by coupling them to spontaneous reactions that release energy. As enzymes act as catalysts they allow these reactions to proceed quickly and efficiently. Enzymes also allow the regulation of metabolic pathways in response to changes in the cell's environment or signals from other cells.
3. The metabolism of an organism determines which substances it will find nutritious and which it will find poisonous. For example, some prokaryotes use hydrogen sulfide as a nutrient, yet this gas is poisonous to animals. The speed of metabolism influences how much food an organism will require, and also affects how it is able to obtain that food.
4. A striking feature of metabolism is the similarity of the basic metabolic pathways and components between even vastly different species. For example, the set of carboxylic acids that are best known as the intermediates in the citric acid cycle are present in all known organisms, being found in species as diverse as the unicellular bacteria Escherichia coli and huge multicellular organisms like elephants. These striking similarities in metabolic pathways are likely due to their early appearance in evolutionary history, and being retained because of their efficacy.
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Civil courts
1. In England, simple civil actions, for example family matters such as undefended divorce, are normally heard in either the Magistrates’ Courts or the County Courts.
There's no jury in a Magistrates' Court. Family cases may go оn appeal from the Magistrates' Court to the County Courts. The County Court also hears complex first instance civil cases, such as contract disputes, compensation claims, consumer complaints about faulty goods or services, and bankruptcy cases. Juries are now rare in civil actions, so normally the judge considers both law and fact.
2. More complex civil cases, such as the administration of estates and actions for the recovery of land, are heard in the High Court of Justice, which is divided into three divisions: Family, Chancery and Queen's Bench. From the High Court cases may go on appeal to the civil division of the Court of Appeal, which can reverse or uphold a decision of the lower courts. Its decisions bind all the lower civil courts. Civil cases may leapfrog from the High Court to the House of Lords, bypassing the Court of Appeal, when points of law of general public importance are involved.
3. Decisions of the House of Lords arc binding on all other courts but not necessarily on itself. The court of the House of Lords consists of twelve life peers appointed from judges and barristers. The quorum, or minimum number, of law lords for an appeal hearing is normally three, but generally there is a sitting of five judges.
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Manufactured Building Materials
1. One of the building materials used in a construction is a brick. The production of a brick was industrialized in the 19th century. Earlier it was a process of hand-molding. Later it was superseded by «pressed» bricks. It was a mass production by a mechanical extrusion process. In this way clay was squeezed by «pressed» through a rectangular die as a continuous column and sliced to size by a wire cutter. Periodically fired kilns were used. Bricks were moved slowly on a conveyor belt. New methods considerably reduced the cost of a brick. That's why it became one of the constituent building materials of the age.
2. Rapid development of timber technology was in the 19th century in North America. It could be explained by large softwood fir's forests and pine trees. There they were used as industrial methods. Steam- and water-powered sawmills began producing standard-dimension timbers in the 1820s. The production of cheap machine-made nails began in the 1830s. It provided other necessary ingredient – a balloon frame. That made possible a major innovation in building construction.
3. The first example was a warehouse erected in Chicago in 1832 by George W. Snow. There was a great demand for small buildings of alt types settled on North American continent. Light timber frame provided a quick, flexible, inexpensive solution to this problem. Heavy timbers and complex joinery were abandoned in the balloon frame system.
4. The building walls were framed with 5x10-centimetre (2x4-mch) vertical members. They were placed at 40 centimeters (16 inches) from the centre. This supplied a roof and floor Joists, usually 5x25 centimeters (2x10 inches) and placed 40 centimeters (16 inches) apart and were capable of spanning up to six meters (20 feet).
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What is law?
1. The English word "law" means various forms of behavior. Some laws are descriptive: they simply describe how people, or even natural phenomena, usually behave. An example is the law of gravity; another is laws of economics. Other laws are prescriptive − they prescribe how people ought to behave. For example, the speed limits are laws that prescribe how fast we should drive.
2. In all societies, relations between people are regulated by prescriptive laws. Some of them are customs - that is informal rules of social and moral behavior. Some are rules we accept if we belong to particular social and cultural groups. And some are laws made by nations and enforced against all citizens.
3. Customs need not be made by governments, and they need not be written down. We learn how we are to behave in society through the instruction of family and teachers, the advice of friends, etc. Sometimes, we can break these rules without any penalty. But if we continually break the rules, other members of society may criticize us, or refuse to have anything to do with us. The rules of social instructions are more formal than customs, carrying penalties for those who break them. Sports clubs, for example, often have detailed rules for their members. But if a member breaks a rule and refuses to accept any punishment, the club may ask him or her to leave the club.
4. However, when governments make laws for their citizens, they use a system of courts and the police to enforce these laws. Of course, there may be instances where the law is not enforced against someone - such as when young children commit crimes, or when certain people are able to escape justice by using their money or influence.
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SAP – eine Weltfirma aus der Provinz
1. Die SAP (Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung) befindet sich in der kleinen Stadt Walldorf bei Heidelberg. Die Firma ist im Jahre 1972 gegründet. Sie hat etwa 7000 Software-Spezialisten und ist mit einem Jahresumsatz von 2,7 Milliarden Euro das fünftgrößte Softwarehaus der Welt. Die Produkte R/2 und R/3 z.B. ersparen einem Unternehmen Finanzbuchhaltung, Produktionssteuerung, Auftragsbearbeitung oder Controlling. Zusammen mit MICROSOFT hat SAP die offene Standardschnittstelle “Bapi” entwickelt. Mit Hilfe dieser Schnittstelle kann jeder Internet-Nutzer auf die nötigen Softwareanwendungen zugreifen.
2. Die SAP stellt hauptsächlich die deutschen Uniabsolventen ein. Fast 80 Prozent der Mitarbeiter haben studiert. Bewerber, die mit dem Unternehmen zusammen Diplomarbeibeiten geschrieben oder dort ein Praktikum absolviert haben, werden bevorzugt. Wer eingeladen wird, den erwarten mehrere Gespräche im Personalbereich. Wichtiges Kriterium: Paßt der Bewerber ins Team?
3. Mitarbeiter, die an besonders arbeitsintensiven Projekten teilnehmen, erhalten in der Regel eine Extraprämie. Gleichzeitig können die Mitarbeiter SAP-Aktien um 15 Prozent günstiger als der Börsenkurs kaufen.
4. Als Einstellungskriterium gilt auch: man muß bereit sein, immer neue Herausforderungen zu suchen und auch große Aufgaben nicht zu scheuen. SAP stellt am liebsten Absolventen frisch von der Uni ein.
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The Business of Weddings
1. Though the odds may be barely in their favor, every couple who goes to the altar believes that they will make that trip only once in their lives. They want the day to be perfect, and they are asking for much more than good weather. They want the most beautiful clothes, the freshest flowers, the prettiest music, and the best food. No one, especially not the bride — nor her family who will foot the bill — is in any mood to economize.
2. A quick look at any bride magazine will reveal that plenty of attractive goods and services compete for a share of the wedding budget. Beside the obvious choices of rings, dresses, flowers, and photographs, there are the less apparent expenses: a lavish cake, a rehearsal dinner, a reception, music for both the ceremony and the reception, tips, and even napkins and matchbooks printed with the couple's names and the wedding date.
3. As the arrangements are generally complicated, there are plenty of services that can be hired to help with the planning and execution of the ceremony. There is also an amazing amount of free advice covering every aspect of the wedding: planning the photographs, selecting the wedding rings, choosing the flowers, picking the honeymoon spot, and so on. One magazine lists over 350 such pamphlets that can be had for the asking, published of course by businesses who have something to offer. Considering that weddings do more than 12 billion dollars worth of business annually in the U.S. alone, such activity isn't surprising.
4. What is surprising, is that no one company dominates the industry. It seems that when people plan for a day as special to them as a wedding, they resist standardization. They turn instead to the small local suppliers known to them or to their friends. Family members or friends often serve as photographers, caterers and musicians. This not only helps bring the wedding cost down, it makes it more personal. What about the couple that doesn't want to take part in this billion dollar industry? They can go to city hall and get married for less than the price of a hamburger.
(World English)
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Electrical engineering
1. Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century. The first electrical engineer was probably William Gilbert who designed the versorium: a device that detected the presence of statically charged objects. He was also the first to draw a clear distinction between magnetism and static electricity and is credited with establishing the term electricity. In 1775 Alessandro Volta's scientific experimentations devised the electrophorus, a device that produced a static electric charge, and by 1800 Volta developed the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the electric battery.
2. Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. This field first became an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electric power distribution and use. It now covers a wide range of subfields including electronics, digital computers, power engineering, telecommunications, control systems, RF engineering, and signal processing.
3. Electrical engineering may include electronic engineering. Where a distinction is made, usually outside of the United States, electrical engineering is considered to deal with the problems associated with systems such as electric power transmission and electrical machines, whereas electronic engineering deals with the study of electronic systems including computers, communication systems, integrated circuits, and radar. From a different point-of-view, electrical engineers are usually concerned with using electricity to transmit electric power, while electronic engineers are concerned with using electricity to process information.
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Radar applications
1. The information provided by radar includes the bearing and range (and therefore position) of the object from the radar scanner. It is thus used in many different fields where the need for such positioning is crucial. The first use of radar was for military purposes: to locate air, ground and sea targets. This evolved in the civilian field into applications for aircraft, ships, and roads.
2. In aviation, aircraft are equipped with radar devices that warn of obstacles in or approaching their path and give accurate altitude readings. The first commercial device fitted to aircraft was a 1938 Bell Lab unit on some United Air Lines aircraft. Such aircraft can land in fog at airports equipped with radar-assisted ground-controlled approach systems in which the plane's flight is observed on radar screens while operators radio landing directions to the pilot.
3. Marine radars are used to measure the bearing and distance of ships to prevent collision with other ships, to navigate, and to fix their position at sea when within range of shore or other fixed references such as islands, buoys, and lightships. In port or in harbour, vessel traffic service radar systems are used to monitor and regulate ship movements in busy waters. Police forces use radar guns to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads.
4. Meteorologists use radar to monitor precipitation. It has become the primary tool for short-term weather forecasting and watching for severe weather such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, winter storms, precipitation types, etc. Geologists use specialized ground-penetrating radars to map the composition of Earth's crust.
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International Business – With a Twist
1. Some of the world's most accommodating businessmen specialize in getting you what you want at a fair market price. But they're businessmen with a difference — they're smugglers who deal only in what's illegal. A smuggling operation is complex, so it has to be businesslike. It has managers who plan trips, make deals, and arrange for purchases and pick-ups. It has travelers who deliver the goods, and specialists who recruit and train them. In fact, smugglers frequently have legitimate businesses on the side. A travel agency is helpful because the modern smuggler is a world traveler. When a gold smuggler was arrested recently, he had airline tickets "from Geneva to Bangkok by way of Frankfurt, Nicosia, Istanbul, Beirut, Vancouver, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, and Jakarta."
2. The best places for smuggling operations are border cities and seaports. In one such city, annual sales at local stores amounted to $6,900 for every person in town. But the average person only made $3,575 per year. A tiny seaport is the world's third largest importer of Swiss watches — every year, it buys 50 watches for every person in the city. Obviously, the people in these cities are not buying all this merchandise — it is being bought by smugglers.
3. As one expert wrote, "the ingenuity of the smuggler's mind is virtually limitless." In addition to special vests for carrying gold, there are other types of smuggling equipment. A diplomat was arrested in London with 298 watches sewn into his coat lining. British officials discovered a car with a special gas tank containing 2,581 illegal watches. But some smugglers don't need special equipment. A good diamond smuggler can hide two or three small diamonds in his mouth and still carry on a normal conversation.
4. What makes people smuggle? Profit is definitely a motive. Over $1.5 billion in illegal gold alone is smuggled every year, not to mention a multi-million dollar art smuggling trade and a thriving business in illegal diamonds. But many smugglers love excitement as much as profit. As one said, "You don't feel happy unless you have a line open and somebody making a run for you".
(World English)
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The Era of Genomics
1. In the spring of 2003, the complete sequencing of the human genome was announced, officially ushering in the genomic era. Today, gene expression profiles are being used to guide therapy and inform prognosis for a number of diseases; the use of genotyping is providing a new means to assess the risk of certain diseases as well as variation in response to a number of drugs; we are understanding better the role of certain genes in the causality of certain common conditions such as obesity and allergies. Despite these advances, we are still in the infancy of understanding and utilizing the complexities of genomics in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disease.
2. Our task is still complicated nowadays by the fact that phenotypes are generally determined not by genes alone but by the interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Indeed, we have just begun to scratch the surface of possibilities that the era of genomics will provide to the practice of medicine.
3. The rapidity of these advances may seem overwhelming to the practicing physician. However, he or she has an important role to play in ensuring that these powerful technologies and sources of new information are applied with sensitivity and intelligence to the patient. Since genomics is such a rapidly evolving field, physicians and other health care professionals must continue to educate themselves so that they can apply this new knowledge to the benefit of their patients' health and well-being.
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Child Psychology
1. Generally speaking, psychology is the study of the mind and how it works. The main issues studied by psychologists include learning, cognition, intelligence, motivation, emotion, personality, and the extent to which individual differences are shaped by genetics or environment. The methods used in psychological research include observation, interviews, psychological testing, laboratory experimentation, and statistical analysis.
2. One of the fields of psychology closely connected with education is child psychology. Child psychology is the study of psychological processes of children, specifically, how these processes differ from those of adults, how they develop from birth to the end of adolescence, and how and why they differ from one child to the next.
3. The data of child psychology are gathered from a variety of sources. Observations by relatives, teachers, and other adults, as well as the psychologist’s direct observation of and interviews with a child, provide a significant amount of material. In some cases a one-way window or mirror is used so that children are free to interact with their environment or others without awareness that they are being watched. Personality tests and intelligence tests have also proved useful in understanding child development. The principle topics of child psychology include language acquisition and development, personality development, and social, emotional, and intellectual growth.
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Colour television
1. After World War II, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) began demonstrating its own sequential colour system, designed by Peter Goldmark. Combining cathode-ray tubes with spinning wheels of red, blue, and green filters, it was impressive enough that The Wall Street Journal had “little doubt that color television had reached the perfection of black and white.” Thus began a long battle between CBS and RCA (Radio Corporation of America) to decide the future of colour television which resulted in abandoning the broadcasts a few months later.
2. Then, in June 1951, RCA proudly unveiled their new system. The design used dichroic mirrors to separate the blue, red, and green components of the original image and focus each component on its own monochrome camera tube. The RCA colour system was compatible with existing black-and-white sets. It managed this by converting the three colour signals into two: the total brightness, or luminance, signal and a complex second signal containing the colour information.
3. In 1952 the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) was reformed, this time with the purpose of creating an “industry color system.” The NTSC system that was demonstrated to the press in August 1952 and that would serve into the 21st century was virtually the RCA system. It was not until the 1960s that colour television became profitable.
4. In 1960 Japan adopted the NTSC colour standard. In Europe, two different systems came into prominence over the following decade: in Germany Walter Bruch developed the PAL (phase alternation line) system, and in France Henri de France developed SECAM (système électronique couleur avec mémoire (successive colour with memory)). Both were basically the NTSC system, with some subtle modifications. These are still the standards of colour television today, despite preparations for a digital future.
(Encyclopedia Britannica)
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