英语泛读教程4下课文+译文(Unit 8-15)精选.doc

Unit 8 1 Text Revision Time Goes Online by Tim Ewington Home learning is critical to exam success and the computer industry is strengthening links between family and school. Free internet access at home is a huge step in making online education accessible to everybody. As students start to sweat in the run-up to their exams, many of them are turning to the web to supplement their knowledge. The following text is a description of some websites of this in Britain. The tension is rising in the Kelly household. Two dates are ingrained in the familys collective consciousness: May 22 and June 19. They mark the first and the last of Paulas written GCSE1 exams. “All the time I feel that I need to do a lot more revision. I know I must get down to it,” says 15-year-old Paula, who is a student at Victoria College in Belfast. “Its not so much my parents who are putting pressure on me, though I know my mums a bit uptight, but I have two older brothers and a sister and they all say that they were doing a lot more revision at this stage than I am.” Across the country, 700 000 students and their families will heave a collective sigh of relief when the exam season comes to an end. “Even my granny is telling me to do more revision,” says another 15-year-old, Steve Burgess from West Yorkshire, who is sitting nine GCSEs. “The dog seems to be the only one who doesnt use the dreaded ‘R word every time he sees me.” When exams were invented so too was revision, but two inventions have transformed the way we prepare. A generation ago, revision notes became a lucrative industry, published under such imprints as Brodies and York. The second, to which Paula and Steves generation is turning, is the internet. The leading exam revision site is GCSE Bitesize, from the BBC. It received almost 750 000 hits each week in mid-March, and expects to double that number this month. Channel 4s more broadly based service, Homework High, which helps students aged 9 － 16 with their homework, is claiming