Daniel Anderson, a famous psychologist, believes it’s important to distinguish television’s influences on children from those of the family. We tend to blame TV, he says, for problems it doesn’t really cause, overlooking our own roles in shaping children’s minds.
One traditional belief about television is that it reduces a child’s ability to think and to understand the world. While watching TV, children do not merely absorb words and images (影像). Instead, they learn both explicit and hidden meanings from what they see. Actually, children learn early the psychology of characters in TV shows. Furthermore, as many teachers agree, children understand far more when parents watch TV with them, explaining new words and ideas. Yet, most parents use an educational program as a chance to park their kids in front of the set and do something in another room.
Another argument against television is that it replaces reading as a form of entertainment. But according to Anderson, the amount of time spent watching television is not related to reading ability. TV doesn’t take the place of reading for most children; it takes the place of similar sorts of recreation, such as listening to the radio and playing sports. Things like parents’ educational background have a stronger influence on a child’s reading. “A child’s reading ability is best predicted by how much a parent reads.” Anderson says.
Traditional wisdom also has it that heavy television-watching lowers IQ (智商) scores and affects school performance. But here, too, Anderson notes that no studies have proved it. In fact, research suggests that it’s the other way around. “If you’re smart young, you’ll watch less TV when you’re older,” Anderson says. Yet, people of lower IQ tend to be lifelong television viewers.
For years researchers have attempted to show that television is dangerous to children. However, by showing that television promotes none of the dangerous effects as conventionally believed, Anderson suggests that television cannot be condemned without considering other influences.
1.By watching TV, children learn _________.
A.images through words
B.more than explicit meanings
C.more about images than words
D.little about people’s psychology
2.An educational program is best watched by a child _________.
A.on his own
B.with other kids
C.with his parents
D.with his teachers
3.Which of the following is most related to children’s reading ability?
A.Radio-listening
B.Television-watching
C.Parents’ reading list
D.Parents’ educational background
4.Anderson believed that _________.
A.the more a child watches TV, the smarter he is
B.the younger a child is, the more he watches TV
C.the smarter a child is, the less likely he gets addicted to TV
D.the less a child watches TV, the better he performs at school
5.What is the main purpose of the passage?
A.To advise on the educational use of TV.
B.To describe TV’s harmful effects on children.
C.To explain traditional views on TV influences.
D.To present Anderson’s unconventional ideas.
Suppose you become a leader in an organization. It’s very likely that you’ll want to have volunteers to help with the organization’s activities. To do so, it should help to understand why people undertake volunteer work and what keeps their interest in the work.
Let’s begin with the question of why people volunteer. Researchers have identified several factors that motivate people to get involved. For example, people volunteer to express personal values related to unselfishness, to expand their range of experiences, and to strengthen social relationships. If volunteer positions do not meet these needs, people may not wish to participate. To select volunteers, you may need to understand the motivations of the people you wish to attract.
People also volunteer because they are required to do so. To increase levels of community service, some schools have launched compulsory volunteer programs. Unfortunately, these programs can shift people’s wish of participation from an internal factor (e.g. “I volunteer because it’s important to me”) to an external factor (e.g. “I volunteer because I’m required to do so”). When that happens, people become less likely to volunteer in the future. People must be sensitive to this possibility when they make volunteer activities a must.
Once people begin to volunteer, what leads them to remain in their positions over time? To answer this question, researchers have conducted follow-up studies in which they track volunteers over time. For instance, one study followed 238 volunteers in Florida over a year. One of the most important factors that influenced their satisfaction as volunteers was the amount of suffering they experienced in their volunteer positions. Although this result may not surprise you, it leads to important practical advice. The researchers note that attention should be given to “training methods that would prepare volunteers for troublesome situations or provide them with strategies for coping with the problem they do experience”.
Another study of 302 volunteers at hospitals in Chicago focused on individual differences in the degree to which people view “volunteer” as an important social role. It was assumed that those people for whom the role of volunteer was most part of their personal identity would also be most likely to continue volunteer work. Participants indicated the degree to which the social role mattered by responding to statements such as “Volunteering in Hospital is an important part of who I am.” Consistent with the researchers’ expectations, they found a positive correlation(正相关) between the strength of role identity and the length of time people continued to volunteer. These results, once again, lead to concrete advice: “Once an individual begins volunteering, continued efforts might focus on developing a volunteer role identity....Items like T-shirts that allow volunteers to be recognized publicly for their contributions can help strengthen role identity”.
1.People volunteer mainly out of __________.
A.academic requirements B.social expectations
C.financial rewards D.internal needs
2.What can we learn from the Florida study?
A.Follow-up studies should last for one year. B.Volunteers should get mentally prepared.
C.Strategy training is a must in research. D.Volunteers are provided with concrete advice.
3.What is most likely to motivate volunteers to continue their work?
A.Individual differences in role identity. B.Publicly identifiable volunteer T-shirts.
C.Role identity as a volunteer. D.Practical advice from researchers.
4.What is the best title of the passage?
A.How to Get People to Volunteer B.How to Study Volunteer Behaviors
C.How to Keep Volunteers’ Interest D.How to Organize Volunteer Activities
Life in the Clear
Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet---as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they’re eating it, or unless something is eating them.”
And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? It s trickier than you might think.
The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter (散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.
But a transparent object doesn’t absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn’t look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don’t see it you see the things behind it.
To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments (色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn’t have pigments, so its tissues won’t absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.
Animals are built of many different materials---skin, fat, and more---and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see-through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-like (果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.
Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they’re doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear: for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process. When they die, they turn a non-transparent milky white.
1.According to Paragraph 1,transparent animals .
A. stay in groups B. can be easily damaged
C. appear only in deep ocean D. are beautiful creatures
2.The underlined word “dead” in Paragraph 3 means .
A. silently B. gradually
C. regularly D. completely
3.One way for an animal to become transparent is to .
A. change the direction of light travel B. gather materials to scatter light
C. avoid the absorption of light D. grow bigger to stop light
4.The last paragraph tells us that larger transparent animals .
A. move more slowly in deep water
B. stay see-through even after death
C. produce more tissues for their survival
D. take effective action to reduce light spreading
The oddness of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.
First consider something as simple as sleep. Its position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny ballet（芭蕾）dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. “I like to be wrapped up.”
On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it’s just as easy to pedal violently. You can watch a movie while you pedal by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale（呼气）has a tendency to form an invisible（隐形的）cloud around your head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache.
Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat. “Your inner ear thinks you’re falling. Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you’re standing straight. That can be annoying－that’s why some people feel sick. “Within a couple of days truly terrible days for some－astronauts’ brains learn to ignore the panicky signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.
Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time invisibly dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass’ That’s why exercise is considered so vital that National Aeronautics and Space Administration（NASA）puts it right on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is as much about science and the future as it is about keeping any individual astronaut healthy. NASA is worried about two things: recovery time once astronauts return home, and, more importantly, how to maintain strength and fitness for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars’
1.What is the major challenge to astronauts when they sleep in space?
A. Deciding on a proper sleep position.
B. Choosing a comfortable sleeping bag.
C. Seeking a way to fall asleep quickly.
D. Finding a right time to go to sleep.
2.The astronauts will suffer from a carbon-dioxide headache when .
A. they circle around on their bikes
B. they use microcomputers without a stop
C. they exercise in one place for a long time
D. they watch a movie while pedaling
3.Some astronauts feel sick on the station during the first few days because .
A. their senses stop working
B. they have to stand up straight
C. they float out of their seats unexpectedly
D. their brains receive contradictory messages
4.One of NASA’s major concerns about astronauts is .
A. how much exercise they do on the station
B. how they can remain healthy for long in space
C. whether they can recover after returning home
D. whether they are able to go back to the station
El Nifio, a Spanish term for “the Christ child”, was named by South American fisherman who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nifio sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.
The weather effects both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nifio, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nifio in 1997 helped American’s economy grow by 15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest, farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural in rich countries in growth than the fall in poor ones.
But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought (干旱）in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.
The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards. This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.
Simple improvements to infrastructure (基础设施）can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers (下水道）make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino’s harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.
1.What can we learn about El Nino in Paragraph 1?
A.It is named after a South American fisherman.
B.It takes place almost every year all over the world.
C.It forces fishermen to stop catching fish around Christmas.
D.It sees the changes of water flow direction in the ocean.
2.What may El Ninos bring about to the countries affected?
A.Agricultural harvests in rich countries fall.
B.Droughts become more harmful than floods.
C.Rich countries’ gains are greater than their losses.
D.Poor countries suffer less from droughts economically.
3.The data provided by ODI in Paragraph 4 suggest that_________.
A.more investment should go to risk reduction
B.governments of poor countries need more aid
C.victims of El Nino deserve more compensation
D.recovery and reconstruction should come first
4.What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage?
A.To introduce El Nino and its origin.
B.To explain the consequences of El Nino.
C.To show ways of fighting against El Nino.
D.To urge people to prepare for El Nino.
Chimps(黑猩猩) will cooperate in certain ways, like gathering in war parties to protect their territory. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to help one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly decline to share food with their children. Who are able from a young age to gather their own food.
In the laboratory, chimps don’t naturally share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no great effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull at random ---he just doesn’t care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.
Human children, on the other hand are extremely corporative. From the earliest ages, they decide to help others, to share information and to participate a achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this cooperativeness in a series of experiments with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see an worried adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.
There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught .but naturally possessed in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train children to behave socially. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence. Develops in children before their general cognitive（认知的）skills,at least when compared with chimps..In tests conducted by Tomtasell, the children did no better than the chimps on the physical world tests, but were considerably better at understanding the social world
The cure of what children’s minds have and chimps’ don’t in what Tomasello calls what. Part of this ability is that they can infer what others know or are thinking. But that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a “we”, a group that intends to work toward a shared goal.
1.What can we learn from the experiment with chimps?
A. Chimps seldom care about others’ interests.
B. Chimps tend to provide food for their children.
C. Chimps like to take in their neighbors’ food.
D. Chimps naturally share food with each other.
2.Michael Tomasello’s tests on young children indicate that they____.
A. have the instinct to help others
B. know how to offer help to adults
C. know the world better than chimps
D. trust adults with their hands full
3.The passage is mainly about ____.
A. the helping behaviors of young children
B. ways to train children’s shared intentionality
C. cooperation as a distinctive human nature
D. the development of intelligence in children
