Adult Basic Education (ABE) Preparation

Task

    The ABE Department serves a huge population of learners. Our task is to teach basic skills and help learners to get more knowledge to function effectively as a family member, citizen, worker, and lifelong learner in a changing world.

Description

    ABE Is a non-credit program of self-improvement designed to improve basic skills for students who are of different educational levels. Development of reading, writing, and math skills are paid special attention to, as well as life skills, employability, and technology. Students without a high school diploma also have the opportunity to prepare for the GED (General Equivalency Diploma) exams in the five subject areas: writing, social studies, science, literature, and math.

Prerequisites (条件)

    ABE classes are open to anyone 18 or over who desires to improve basic reading, writing, and math skills at the pre-college level. Students who are 16 or 17 must obtain an official permission from high school before attending class.

    To be accepted, students must attend an Educational Planning Session. During the Educational Planning Session students will be given an overview of the ABE programs as well as PCC policies, fees, etc.

    Students will also have their reading, writing, and math abilities assessed (评估> during the Educational Planning Session. The results of their assessments will help the teachers develop individual programs of study for students to guide them toward their personal goals. Students needing special help must get in touch with the Office for Students with Disabilities (503-977-4341) at least two weeks before the session is held.

Courses

ABE 0741: Beginning Literacy

ABE 0742: Beginning

ABE 0743: Intermediate I

ABE 0744: Intermediate II

ABE 0745: Secondary I

ABE 0746: Secondary II (Includes preparation for the GED Test)

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    Have you ever picked a job based on the fact that you were good at it but later found it made you feel very uncomfortable over time? When you select your career, there's whole lot more to it than assessing your skills and matching them with a particular position. If you ignore your personality, it will hurt you long-term regardless of your skills or the job's pay. There are several areas of your personality that you need to consider to help you find a good job. Here are a few of those main areas:

1) Do you prefer working alone or with other people?

    There are isolating(使孤立) jobs that will drive an outgoing person crazy and also interactive jobs that will make a shy person uneasy. Most people are not extremes in either direction but do have a tendency that they prefer. There are also positions that are sometimes a combination of the two, which may be best for someone in the middle who adapts easily to either situation.

2) How do you handle change?

    Most jobs these days have some elements of change to them, but some are more than others. If you need stability in your life, you may need a job where the changes don't happen so often. Other people would be bored of the same daily routine.

3) Do you enjoy working with computers?

    I do see this as a kind of personality characteristic. There are people who are happy to spend more than 40 hours a week on a computer, while there are others who need a lot of human interaction throughout the day. Again, these are extremes and you'll likely find a lot of positions somewhere in the middle as well.

4) What type of work environment do you enjoy?

    This can range from being in a large building with a lot of people you won't know immediately to a smaller setting where you'll get to know almost all the people there fairly quickly.

5) How do you like to get paid?

    Some people are motivated by the pay they get, while others feel too stressed to be like that. The variety of payment designs in the sales industry is a typical example for this.

    Anyway, these are a great starting point for you. I've seen it over and over again with people that they make more money over time when they do something they love. It may take you a little longer, but making a move to do what you have a passion for can change the course of your life for the better.

    “Who needs a shopping mall (购物中心)if you have Taobao?” says Wang Lin,28,a writer in Beijing.

    Taobao,China's largest online shopping site （网上购物网站）,has become an important part of Wang Lin's life. She spends lots of money on Taobao. A growing number of Chinese Internet users like Wang have found the joys of online shopping .Most online shoppers are students or young workers .More women shop on line than men. Clothing and home-use products（产品）are the most popular on line.

    It was reported that more than 250 billion（十亿）yuan was spent on online shopping last year, 80% through Taobao.

    Taobao means “looking for treasure” in Chinese. People can find almost everything they need on Taobao, from clothes to books , from candies to DVD players .

    You may question the security of online shopping ,Wang Lin said, “It's very safe and convenient ( 便利的).Unless you receive the products from the sellers and are satisfied with them, the shop owner will not get the money .You can also get your money back if you want to return the products.”

    A new study warns that about thirty percent of the world's people may not have enough water by the year 2025.

    A private American organization called Population Action International did the new study. It says more than 335 million people lack enough water now. The people live in 28 countries. Most of the countries are in Africa or the Middle East.

    P-A-I researcher Robert Engelman says by the year 2025, about 3,000 million people may lack water. At least 18 more countries are expected to have severe water problems. The demand for water keeps increasing. Yet the amount of water on the earth stays the same.

    Mr. Engelman says the population in countries that lack water is growing faster than in other parts of the world. He says population growth in these countries will continue to increase.

    The report says lack of water in the future may result in several problems. It may increase health problems. Lack of water often means drinking water is not safe. Mr Engelman says there are problems all over the world because of diseases, such as cholera, which are carried in water. Lack of water may also result in more international conflict. Countries may have to compete for water in the future. Some countries now get sixty percent of their fresh water from other countries. This is true of Egypt, the Netherlands, Cambodia, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq. And the report says lack of water would affect the ability of developing to improve their economies. This is because new industries often need a large amount of water when they are beginning.

    The Population Action International study gives several solutions to the water problem. One way, it says, is to find ways to use water for more than one purpose. Another way is to teach people to be careful not to waste water. A third way is to use less water of agriculture.

    The report also says long-term solutions to the water problem must include controls on population growth. It says countries cannot provide clean water unless they slow population growth by limiting the number of children people have.

    If a person who lived 200 years ago was treated for a seizure(癫痫)today, they would be surprised by the treatment's freshness. That's because doctors in the 1800s were influenced more by original medical beliefs than science.

    Rather than thinking the brain caused seizures, people in the 1800s still thought they were the result of strange forces. They associated seizures with the work of evil spirits. Others felt that the seizures had a cosmic or lunar cause. They believed that the cycles of the moon and stars could make someone have a seizure.

    During a process to treat a patient who has seizures, doctors would force the patient to pray for the grace of the God. They thought if the patient did this, then the patient would rid themselves of the evil spirits causing the seizures.

    The arrival of modern psychiatry(精神病学) occurred during the 1800s. At that time people who suffered from seizures were placed in psychiatric hospitals. They were treated like they were mad. However, none of the out-of-date treatments worked.

    It wasn't until the late 1850s that the causes of seizures were understood. We know today that these causes are related to the brain. Misfired signals from the brain cause a jerking reflex(反射) in the body. These usually occur when someone is very tired.

    Once the causes of seizures were known, definitive treatments were developed. Today, treatments range from taking pills to having surgery. Treatment is personalized according to the type of seizure the patient has.

    Even today, some people are unsure about seizures. Their most common mistake is thinking that a person having a seizure will swallow their tongue. They often push some implement roughly in the person's mouth. However, this doesn't help. The implement often blocks the airway and prevents the person from breathing. Yet most of the public no longer fear people who have seizures. Instead, they can now help and comfort a person if they have a seizure.

    Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people's e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.

    "The 'if it bleeds' rule works for mass media," says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. They want your eyeballs and don't care how you're feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don't want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer."

    Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that it tended to be more positive than negative, but that didn't necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times' website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the "most e-mailed" list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed tines' readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.

    Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch on."