Many parents who welcome the idea of turning off the TV and spending more

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Many parents who welcome the idea of turning off the TV and spending more time with the family are still worried that without TV they would be too often on call as entertainers（娱乐者） for their children．They remember thinking up all sorts of things to do when they were children．But their own children seem different, less good at finding things to pass the time, somehow．When there’s nothing to do, these parents notice regretfully that their children seem unable to come up with anything to do besides turning on the TV．
One father, for example, says, “When I was young, we were always thinking up things to do, projects and games．We certainly never complained in an angry way to our parents, ‘I have nothing to do”．He compares this with his own children today: “They are simply lazy．If someone doesn’t play with them, they’ll happily sit there watching TV all day．”
There is one word for this father’s disappointment: unfair．It is as if he were disappointed in them for not reading Greek though they have never studied the language．He feels his children’s lack of inventiveness a great pity, as if the ability to play were something born that his children are missing．In fact, the tendency（倾向） to play is built into the human species, but the actual ability to play—to imagine, to invent in a playful way, and the ability to gain satisfaction after successful effort from it—these are skills that have to be learned and developed．
Such disappointment, however, is not only unjust, it is also destructive（毁灭性的）．Sensing their parents’ disappointment, children come to believe that they are, indeed, lacking something, and that this makes them less worthy of admiration and respect．Giving children the chance to develop new things to enjoy themselves, to enrich their knowledge and experience and discover the pleasure of doing things on their own is, on the other hand, a way to help children develop a confident（自信）feeling about themselves as able and interesting people．
小题1:Many people think that, instead of watching a lot of TV, their children should_______．

A．think up things to enjoy themselves	B．find chances to talk with parents
C．enjoy themselves outdoors	D．sit silently studying Greek

小题2:Fathers often blame their children for not being able to play by themselves．This is unfair because________．

A．they do not lack the ability to play

B．they have not been given the opportunities to learn and develop their ability

C．the children are too young to do that

D．the children are not really lazy, but there’s nothing for them to do

小题3:When

paren

ts show continuous disappointment in their children, the children will________．

A．be more disappointed

B．refuse to learn new things

C．discover the pleasures of doing things on their own

D．lose their conf

idence and respectability

小题4:What is the author’s main idea?

A．Parents should give children more help on how to be inventive．

B．Turning off the TV will help us solve a lot of family problems．

C．It’s not right for parents and children to blame（抱怨） each other．

D．Today’s children are becoming less able and independent than before．

答案

小题1:A
小题2:B
小题3:D
小题4:A

解析

略

举一反三

We hear with our ears, right? Yes, but scientists have known for years that we also hear with our eyes. In a study published in 1976, researchers found that people combined both auditory cues(听力提示) and visual ones，like mouth and face movements, when they heard speech.
A new study that looks at a different set of sensory cues adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests such combination is natural. In a paper, Bryan Gick and Donald Derrick report that people can hear with their skin.
The researchers had volunteers listen to spoken syllables. Meanwhile, they connected the volunteers to a device that would blow a tiny puff (气流) of air onto the skin of their hands or necks. The syllables included “ba” and “pa”, which produce brief puffs from the mouth when spoken, and “da” and “ta,” which do not produce puffs. They found that when listeners heard “da” or “ta” while a puff of air was blown onto their skin, they considered the sounds as “ba” or “pa”.
Dr. Gick said the findings were similar to those from the 1976 study, in which visual cues defeated auditory ones — volunteers listened to one syllable but thought it another because they were watching a video of mouth movements corresponding to the second syllable. In his study，he said，cues from sens

ory receivers on the skin defeate

d the ears as well. “Our skin is doing the hearing for us,” he said.
Dr. Gick noted that it would normally be rare that someone actually sensed a puff of air produced by another, although people might occasionally sense their own puffs. “What’s so persuasive about this particular effect,” he added. “is that people are picking up on this information that they don’t know they are using.” That supports the idea that combining different sensory cues is natural.
Dr. Gick said the finding also suggested that other sensory cues might be at work in speech perception(知觉) — that, as he put it, “we are these fantastic perception machines that take in all the information available to us and combine it faultlessly.”
小题1:“Da” or “ta” were considered as “ba” or “pa” when __________.

A．they were spoken quickly

B．puffs of air were blown onto the listener’s skin

C．they were pronounced using a special device

D．they were made with face movements

小题2:Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．Humans combine different sensory cues through experience.

B．Dr. Gick’s new study is more important than the one in 1976.

C．People sometimes can sense their own puffs when speaking

D．Only auditory and visual cues are at work in speech perception.

小题3:What is the best title of the text?

A．We Can Hear with Our Skin

B．Our Visual Cues Is Doing the Hearing for Us

C．Facial Expressions Are Important

D．We Are Fantastic Machines

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Imagine a boy from a small village in East Africa. He, since a very early age, has been looking after cattle. At twelve years old he knows more about cattle than most of you. However, he has never been to school. Has this boy had any education?
Education is discovering about ourselves and about the people and things around us. All the people who care about us — our parents, brothers, sisters, friends — are our

teachers. In fact, we learn something from everyone we meet. We start learning on the day we were born, not on the first day we go to school. Every day we have new

experiences, like finding a bird’s nest, discovering a new street in our neighborhood, making friends with someone we didn’t like before. New experiences are even more fun when we share them with other people.
Encouragement from the people around us enables us to exp

lore things as many as possible. As we grow up, we begin to find out what we are capable of doing. You may be good at cooking, or singing or playing football. You find this out by doing these things. Just thinking about cooking doesn’t tell you whether you are good at it.
We learn so much just living from day to day. So why is school important? Of course you can learn some things better at home than at school, like how to do the shopping, and how to help old or disabled people who can’t do everything for themselves. At school, teachers help us to read and write. With their guidance, we begin to see things in different ways.
小题1: The writer takes the African boy as an example to show that _______.

A．African children are very poor.	B．some children are unlucky.
C．there are many kinds of education.	D．schools are of great importance.

小题2:In the opinion of the writer, .

A．we have to learn from the people around us.	B．the school is not important at all.
C．only people who care for us can teach us.	D．education takes place everywhere.

小题3: One can find out what he / she is good at by _.

A．what people encourage him/ her to do.	B．the teachings of those he / she meets.
C．thinking about it when growing up.	D．trying and practising things.

小题4: The passage tells us that _ .

A．everyone gets education from the day he or she was born.

B．different classes of people receive different kinds of education.

C．the school is absolutely necessary if one wants to understand the world.

D．everyone will find out what he or she is good at.

小题5:According to the last paragraph, we know that .

A．the school is not so important as our living places.

B．the school

enables us to understand the world in other ways.

C．the school teaches us things which are useless at home.

D．the school cannot prepare us for our daily lives.

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What does fizz (气泡) taste like? In Bubbly (多泡的)drinks such

as sodas, tiny bubbles give the drink a lift--- and have a distinct taste, In a new study on mice, scientists have connected that fizzy-taste feeling to the ability to taste sourness, such as that of oranges or vinegar.
Scientists first thought the taste of bubbles came from the bubbles bursting on the tongue, but now ate starting to think differently. Charles Zuker, of Columbia University, and his team studied the nervous system of mice to understand how the tongue tastes carbon dioxide, which is the gas that makes up the bubbles.
Animals, including human beings, are able to detect different tastes by using taste buds(味蕾) which pick up tastes in the mouth, and then send them to the brain. In the experiment, different groups of mice were genetically engineered to be missing one of the senses involved in taste. “Genetically engineered” means the researchers were able to turn off the switches for certain senses by changing the genes responsible for taste. The mice in one group could not taste sweet; another, sour; the third, bitter, and the fourth, salt. When the scientists gave carbon dioxide to the mice, the nervous systems of all the mice responded to the gas, except those of the mice that could not taste sour.
This shows that the taste of the bubbles must be sour, and that by turning off the ability of the mice to taste sour, the scientists also turned off their ability to taste carbon dioxide. When they studied the cells that detect sourness, the researchers found a protein attached to the cells that is important to the process of tasting carbon dioxide. When carbon dioxide comes into contact with this protein, the protein knocks off particles called protons. These protons(质子), in turn, travel to the brain, which says ,” Hey! That’s a taste!”
It may seem like a lot of work to get from a can of soda to a taste, but the science of the senses is anything but simple, “ Taste is a challenging system to study,” one researcher says.
小题1: What is the most important function of the bubbles?

A．To look interesting .	B．To make drinks taste good.
C．To make drinks funny.	D．To produce a lot of fizz.

小题2:From the experiment the researchers learned that______.

A．sourness has nothing to do with the taste of bubbles.

B．there is a connection between sourness and bubbles.

C．the taste of bubbles is better if it’s less sour.

D．most mice cannot taste carbon dioxide.

小题3: It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A．the taste of bubbles is produced by the bubbles bursting on the tongue.

B．the nervous systems of mice show how the tongue tastes carbon dioxide.

C．taste seems simple but is very complex to research.

D．nerve cells sending signals to the brain is the first step in tasting something.

小题4: Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．Nervous Systems Understand How the Tongue Tastes.

B．The Process of Taste

C．The taste

of Bubbles.

D．Different Animals Detect Different Tastes.

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Who"s in control of your life? Who is pulling your string? For the majority of us, it"s other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we

learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else"s opinions, their lives a mimicry(模仿)，their passions a quotation.”
So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug－we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives failing to do the things we really want to. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix(一剂毒品)，we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom－the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot-control what other people think. People have their own agenda(日程安排), and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they"re more interested in themselves than in you. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probable pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? I think there"s only one way－make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values－not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic(真实的), effective, purposeful and happy life.
小题1:What Oscar Wilde says implies that .

A．most people"s thoughts are controlled by others.

B．we have thoughts similar to those of others.

C．most people have a variety of thoughts.

D．other people"s thoughts are more important.

小题2: What does the author try to argue in the third paragraph?

A．The price of taking the drug is freedom.

B．Changing opinions may cost us our freedom.

C．We may lose ourselves to please others.

D．We need to pay for what we want to get.

小题3: It can be concluded from the passage that .

A．it"s important to accept others" opinions.

B．it"s better to do what we like.

C．we shouldn"t care what others think.

D．we shouldn"t change our

won opinions.

小题4: The author tries to persuade the readers to accept his arguments mainly by .

A．making suggestions.	B．analyzing causes and effects.
C．providing examples and facts.	D．discussing questions

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How much can environment affect intelligence? In one study, striking increases in IQ occurred in 25 children who were moved from an orphanage(孤儿院) to more stimulating（使人兴奋的，使人振奋的） environments．The children, who were all considered mentally retarded and unadoptable, were moved to an institution where they received personal attention from adults．Later, these supposedly retarded children were adopted by parents who gave them love, a family ,and a stimulating home environment．The children gained an average of 29 IQ points．For one child, the increase was an amazing 58 points．A second group of initially less "retarded" children, who stayed in the orphanage, lost an average of 26 IQ points.
Other encouraging results can be found in early childhood education programs, which provide stimulating intellectual experiences for disadvantaged children．In one study, children from low-income families were given enriched environments from early infancy(婴儿期) through preschool．By age 2 their IQ scores were already higher than those in a control group．More important, they were still 5 points higher seven years later．High-quality enrichment programs such as Head Start can prevent children from falling behind in school.
A particularly striking environmental effect is the fact that 14 nations have shown average IQ gains of from 5 to 25 points during the last 30 years．These IQ boosts, averaging 15 points, occurred in far too short a time for genetics to explain them．It is more likely that the gains reflect environmental forces, such as improved education, nutrition, and living in a technologically complex society.
小题1:What"s the main idea of this passage

A．Retarded children cannot improve their IQ"s.

B．Orphanages are full of mentally retarded children.

C．Environmental factors influence a child"s IQ.

D．Early childhood education programs are important.

小题2:The author is in favor of _____________ according to the passage.

A．putting retarded children into institutions

B．providing early childhood education programs

C．keeping children in orphanages

D．keeping retarded children with others like themselves

小题3:Which of the following is NOT mentioned as an environmental factor that affects IQ .

A．Good nutrition．	B．Improved technology.
C．Better education．	D．Food pollution.

小题4:What can we conclude from the passage ?

A．Attention from parents has little effect on a child"s IQ.

B．Head Start programs are a waste of money.

C．Increases in IQ have happened in the US more rapidly than elsewhere.

D．Genetics are less important than environment in gaining one"s IQ.

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