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  3. When it comes to schooling, Herrera boys are no match for Herrera girls. Last week, four years after she arrived from Honduras,

When it comes to schooling, Herrera boys are no match for Herrera girls. Last week, four years after she arrived from Honduras,

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问题     When it comes to schooling, Herrera boys are no match for 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 go astray more, " says the kids’ mother, "The girls are more confident. "

    This is normal. 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 Caro-la 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, "while they maximize their acquisition of skills in the new culture" by helping their parents navigate(操纵).
    Consider the kids’ experiences in school. The study found that boys face more peer pressure to adopt American youth culture. 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(使人气馁的)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(大男子气概的)" 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 mem and the outside world, says Carola Orozco. An unintended consequence: "The girls get foisted into a responsible role more than the boys do. "
    The Harvard study bears a warning note: If large numbers of immigrant boys continue to be alienated academically, 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.
The phrase "cultural ambassador"(Line 3, Para. 4)probably means that the girls______
选项 A、are more outgoing and eloquent than boys
B、work as a translator for their parents
C、dream of becoming an ambassador one day
D、play an important role in helping their parents adapt to other cultures
答案D
解析 语义理解题。第四段中紧接着“cultural ambassador”后面有一句话解释了这个词的含义：为父母做翻译并帮助父母与外界沟通，[D]项正确。[B]选项不全面，因为做翻译只是其中之一；[A]、[C]偏离了文章的本意。
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