When it comes to schooling， the Herrera boys are no match for the Herrera girls. Last week， four years after she arrived from Honduras， Martha， 20， graduated from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. She managed decent grades while working 36 hours a week at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her sister， Marlin， 22， attends a local community college and will soon be a certified nurse assistant. The brothers are a different story. Oscar， 17， was expelled two years ago from Fairfax for carrying a knife and later dropped out of a different school. The youngest， Jonathan， 15， is now in a juvenile boot camp after running into trouble with the law. “The boys get sidetracked more，” says the kids' mother， Suyapa Landaverde. “The girls are more confident.”
This is no aberration. Immigrant girls consistently outperform boys， according to the preliminary findings of a just-completed， five-year study of immigrant children——the largest of its kind， including Latino， Chinese and Haitian kids——by Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Though that trend holds for U.S.-born kids as well， the reasons for the discrepancy among immigrants are different. The study found that immigrant girls are more adept at straddling cultures than boys. “The girls are able to retain some of the protective features of [their native] culture” because they're kept closer to the hearth， says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco， “while they maximize their acquisition of skills in the new culture” by helping their parents navigate it.
Consider the kids' experiences in school. The study found that boys face more peer pressure to adopt American youth culture——the dress， the slang， the disdain for education. They're disciplined more often and， as a result， develop more adversarial relationships with teachers——and the wider society. They may also face more debilitating prejudices. One teacher interviewed for the study said that the “cultural awareness training” she received as part of her continuing education included depictions of Latino boys as “aggressive” and “really macho” and of the girls as “pure sweetness.”
Gender shapes immigrant kids' experiences outside school as well. Often hailing from traditional cultures， the girls face greater domestic obligations. They also frequently act as “cultural ambassadors，” translating for parents and mediating between them and the outside world， says Carola Suarez-Orozco. An unintended consequence： “The girls get foisted into a responsible role more than the boys do.” Take Christina Im， 18， a junior at Fairfax who arrived from South Korea four years ago. She ranks ninth in a class of 400 students and still finds time to fix dinner for the family and work on Saturdays at her mother's clothing shop. Her brother? “He plays computer games，” says Im.
The Harvard study bears a cautionary note： If large numbers of immigrant boys continue to be alienated academically——and to be clear， plenty perform phenomenally——they risk sinking irretrievably into an economic underclass. Oscar Herrera， Martha's dropout brother， may be realizing that. “I'm thinking of returning to school，” he recently told his mother. He ought to look to his sisters for guidance.
1. In the opening paragraph， the author introduces his topic by
[A]posing a contrast
[B]justifying an assumption
[C]making a comparison
[D]explaining a phenomenon
2. The statement “they also frequently act as ‘cultural ambassadors’”(Line two， Paragraph 4) implies that
[A]they work as a translator for their parents
[B]they help their parents have a better understanding of the foreign culture
[C]they encourage their parents to go into the outside world
[D]their parents help them realize their dream of becoming an ambassador.
3. Immigrant boys do not fare well in the outside world because of the following reasons， except that
[A]American youth culture has a bad influence on the boys
[B]people have prejudice against them
[C]their sense of responsibility is not as strong as that of the girls
[D]they do not get well along with the teachers and the outside world
4. Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco have eventually found in their study that
[A]the immigrant boys should not be allowed to go into the outside world
[B]the immigrant boys have no judgment about the youth culture
[C]the immigrant girls do a better job than the immigrant boys
[D]the immigrant boys should be severely disciplined
5. What can we infer from the last paragraph?
[A]All the dropouts should receive good education.
[B]Many immigrant boys are likely to fall into trouble in the future.
[C]Schooling education has been neglected.
[D]More attention should be paid to the immigrant children.
词汇注释
sidetracked 使受牵制的，误入歧途的
aberration 失常;偏差
outperform 胜过
preliminary 预备的，初步的
discrepancy 相差，差异，矛盾
adept at 熟练于…;擅长于…
straddle 跨坐
navigate 航行于，驾驶，操纵
adversarial 敌手的，对手的
debilitate 使衰弱，使虚弱
macho 男子的，男子气的
hailing from 来自，在某地生长
mediate 仲裁，调停
foist 偷偷插入，使混入
phenomenally 现象上的，明白地;惊人地
irretrievably 不能挽回地，不能补救地
look to sb. for sth.以来或指望某人提供或作某事物
fare 进展;成功
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