if they are looking to go on to college or university before entering the employment market.

　　Learning to spell is important because being able to spell correctly adds so much to your skills and abilities, especially when it comes to finding a college or university place, or entering the job market for the first time. Writing a decent CV (简历) and completing the application correctly is vital in the effort to make a good impression. It was reported recently that employers rejected the vast majority of 1,000 job applications submitted by graduates simply because of bad spelling.

　　Could our use of technology be the reason for bad spelling? Although not proven, there have been concerns in recent years that the rise of text messaging and "chatspeak" used in social media could be leading to a reduction in literacy, as abbreviations (缩写) become commonly used by children. Opinions differ on this possibility. Some research suggests that this may not necessarily be true, but other studies have shown that in some cases it is a cause for concern.

　　But the end of school education may be too late. Obviously, the main time for learning is during childhood when most people can achieve a reasonable level of spelling to help their overall literacy. But it is perhaps surprising that many adults have extremely poor spelling and struggle with common words such as embarrass, occasion and restaurant.

　　语篇解读：本文是一篇议论文。文章主要讨论了为什么学习拼写很重要。

　　4．Children's difficulty in learning spelling lies in the fact that ________.

　　A．they don't know how to read

　　B．the rules are difficult to master

　　C．many words are long and complex

　　D．the letters don't match speech sounds

　　解析：选D　细节理解题。由第一段中的"The problem with English spelling is that the letters do not correspond to (与......相对应) speech sounds."可知，英语拼写的困难在于字母与发音不一致。

　　5．The underlined word "decent" in Paragraph 3 can best be replaced by "________"．

　　A．quick B．good­quality

　　C．recent D．well­meaning

　　解析：选B　词义猜测题。由画线词后的"completing the application correctly"和"make a good impression"以及第三段最后一句可推断，要在求职时留下好印象必须要有一份得体的、相当不错的简历。由此可知，decent意为"相当不错的"，故选B。

6．We may conclude from Paragraph 4 that ________.