Section B
Passage One
Imagine this: you wake up each morning to find your sister lying beside you. To get dressed and tie your shoes, you use one hand and she uses another. You do everything out together, even sitting on the same chair at lunch and riding on the same bicycle. That’s what life is like for six-year-old Betty and Abby. Like most twins, the two girls look very much alike. But unlike most twins, Betty and Abby share parts of the same body. Twins like Betty and Abby are rare. Only about 40 sets are born in the United States each year. Few survive as long as Betty and Abby. That’s because twins often share vital organs, like a heart or brain. The shared organs are often badly shaped and may not be strong enough to support both twins. But Betty and Abby each has her own head, heart and stomach which function normally. They have three or four lungs which provide plenty of oxygen for both twins. Most of their completely shared organs lie below the waist. Betty and Abby live relatively normal lives. They attend a regular school, and each does her own school work. They prefer to do some projects together, though. For example, to cut out paper dolls, one twin holds the paper, while the other uses the scissors. But sometimes the girls don’t want to do the same thing. For example, sometimes they want to play with different toys. What do they do then? “We toss a coin,” says Abby. Questions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard. 26. In what aspect do Betty and Abby differ from most twins?
27. What does the passage tell us about twins who share parts of the same body? 28. What does the passage say about the education of the twin girls?
Passage Two
I’d like to share with you today my experience with a new approach to building a house. It’s called Envelop Building. Essentially, what it means is that as you are building a house, you try to leave the landscape feature on the land, especially the vegetation, in the original condition. So what you are not doing is the usual practice of land-scraping, by which I mean literally scraping or cleaning the land of any and all the original plants. Why is the approach called Envelop Building? Because instead of clearing everything away, you let your original landscape elements envelop or surround your house. Let the vegetation physical features such as hills and slopes or interesting rock formations, constituted a significant part of the character of the building sight. The design of the house should take these features of the property into account. Actually integrating your original wild landscape with a house is not that new. The famous American architect Wright was doing it about 65 years ago. So we are in good company. Envelop Building is not as easy as it sounds though. It’s not just that you build your house and leave the land alone. By building, you are already damaging the original landscape. But as architects, we should try to work with environment, not against it. A creative architect can find ways to incorporate natural landscape into the overall design. For example, Wright used the massive boulders on the side of one of the most famous houses as part of the house foundation. Questions 29 to 31 are based on the passage you have just heard.
29. According to the speaker, what does the term “land-scraping” refer to?
30. In Envelop Building, what is done with the landscape features of a building site? 31. Why does the speaker mention the architect Wright?
Passage Three
“Music lessons may improve memory and learning ability in young children by promoting
different patterns of brain development,” a study shows.
After a year of musical training, children aged between 4 and 6 performed better at a standard memory test than did children who were not taught music. The findings suggest that music could be useful for building the learning capacity of young minds.
Earlier studies have shown that older children given music lessons become better at IQ tests than those who are musically untrained, but this is the first to show such a benefit in children so young.
Professor Laurel Trainor, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, also found clear differences in the ways in which children’s brains responded to sound after a year of musical training. “This is the first study to show that brain responses in young musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year,” she said. “These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training.”
Professor Trainor’s team looked at 12 children, 6 of whom had just started extra-curricular music lessons and 6 of whom were not being taught any music except that included as a standard part of their school curriculum. During the year all 12 children had their brains examined four times using MEG, and each child was played two types of sound — white noise and a violin tone. The MEG measurements showed that all children responded more to violin sounds than to white noise, reflecting a preference for meaningful tones, and their response times fell over the course of the year as their brains matured.
Questions 32 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard. 32. What is this passage mainly about?
33. What can be concluded from the passage?
34. What do we know about the twelve children tested in the study? 35. What do we know from the MEG measurements?
Section C
The place of the child in society has varied for thousands of years and has been affected by different cultures and religions. In ancient times unwanted children were occasionally (36) abandoned, put to death, exploited, or offered for religious sacrifices, and in any event a large percentage of them didn’t (37) survive their physically hazardous existence to achieve maturity. In Western civilization within the last few hundred years, there have been many changes in attitude toward the young. In agricultural Europe the children of the poor worked long hours for little or no pay, and there was no public concern for their safety or welfare. Punishment could be brutal and severe, and sometimes religious (38) passions were expressed violently with a view toward saving the child’s soul.
By the eighteenth century the harsh and (39) severe methods began to show some changes. Society slowly (40) accorded children a role of more importance. Books were written expressly for them and (41) gradually laws were passed for their protection. In the past few (42) decades, parents have become more attentive to the needs of their children. Better health care is available and education is no longer (43) reserved for a limited few. (44) With so many now able to go to college, many educators feel that we have too many students and too few qualified teachers. Some say the pendulum in child rearing has swung so far toward permissiveness that (45) many children are growing up alienated from society and with no respect for law or parental authority. The tendency today is for teachers and parents to emphasize individual responsibility and to stress
that (46) educational goals for students should be aimed towards their future jobs rather than provide a generalized higher education.
相关推荐：
loading