Text 7A1-II

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken. 1916 (adapted).  

Text 1 – How children learn languages

Questions 31 to 39

How long does it take to learn a language?

READ TEXT I AND ANSWER THE FIVE QUESTION THAT FOLLOW IT

TEXT I

National Assessment Reform: Core Considerations for Brazil

    Education has been an integral part of Brazil’s success story. With expanded access to basic education and improvements in literacy rates, young Brazilians are entering today’s workforce with higher levels of education than previous generations. This educational progress has contributed to and benefited from the economic growth that helped improve living standards and, during the first decade of the millennium, lifted more than 29 million people out of poverty. Trend data from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that Brazil’s increasing school participation rates have been realised alongside progress in education quality. This is a remarkable achievement considering that many of the new students progressing through the education system come from disadvantaged backgrounds and often lack the socio-economic support that helps enable learning. Nevertheless, PISA also reveals that the overall performance of Brazil’s education system is well below the OECD average and other emerging economies, such as parts of China and the Russian Federation. One reason for this is Brazil’s high share of students who do not achieve baseline proficiency, or Level 2 in PISA. Results from PISA 2018 show that 50% of Brazilian students failed to reach Level 2 in reading, meaning they can only complete basic tasks. Brazil’s share of low-performers was even higher in Mathematics and Science (68% and 55%, respectively). At the other end of the spectrum, few students in Brazil were able to answer more difficult PISA questions, like inferring neutrality or bias in a text, which require skills that are increasingly important in today’s world. The new approach to education, set out in the BNCC, aims not only to ensure that all students achieve basic cognitive skills but also develop the higher-order skills needed to solve complex problems of everyday life.

Adapted from: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/333a6e20- en.pdf?expires=1728831657&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=CD292865CAA9F4B A019D2FE4378B5D2D

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.

Text

Should schools just say no to pupils using phones?

14th July 2024

Natalie Grice – BBC News

“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for a child never to have a smartphone. I think it’s part of a balanced life. You’ve got to live in your own time.”

These are not the words you might expect to hear from a teacher at a school that has never in its history allowed pupils under sixth form age to use a mobile phone on the premises.

But Sarah Owen, deputy head at Stanwell School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, was simply expressing a personal opinion, rather than the school’s view about a young person’s wider life.

It is clear that she and the school have very firm opinions on what is best for children while they are on school grounds.

For Stanwell pupils in years 7 to 11, that has always meant no phones. Not in lessons, not in the corridor, not at breaktimes.

It is such a long-established rule that it presumably comes as no surprise to pupils and parents when they join the school, which is starting to seem as if it may have been ahead of a growing curve.

In the past few years, a number of schools across Wales and further afield have introduced total bans on mobiles. While Stanwell only asks pupils to keep phones switched off in their bags, others require the devices to be handed in at the start of the day.

Llanidloes High School in Powys is one which has implemented this policy in the past few years and Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St Davids, Pembrokeshire, followed suit at the start of this year.

Sarah Owen has been at Stanwell School since 2000 and says that there has always been a no phone policy in the school. For Sarah, it is a question not of trying to impinge on their students’ freedom, but of giving them vital time away from mobile life, for welfare as well as educational reasons.

“We genuinely believe this is in their best interests,” she said. “Phone addiction and screen addiction and scrolling, the loss of concentration, the loss of soft skills around listening and interacting with others, that’s something we need to be concerned about as a society generally.”

“We want children to be interacting with each other, having conversations, playing football, having those connections and interactions with other people.”

Sarah also believes it gives pupils relief from the possibility of being “photographed, filmed, mocked in some way – that’s not a nice way for children to live”. She said she wanted her pupils to have “some sanctuary from the anxiety of feeling so scrutinised and looked at”. 

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles