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Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 7, 9, 6. Read them loud. Now look away and spend 20 seconds memorizing them in order before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50% chance of remembering those perfectly. If you are Chinese, though, you¡¯re almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because we most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within a two-second period. And unlike English, the Chinese language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.
That example comes from Stanislas Dahaene¡¯s book The Number Sense. As Dahaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be spoken out in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is ¡°si¡± and 7 ¡°qi¡±). Their English pronunciations are longer. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length.
It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and fiveteen. But we don¡¯t. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen and fifteen. For numbers above 20, we put the ¡°decade¡± first and the unit number second (twenty-one, twenty-two), while for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on.
That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to 40. American children at that age can count only to 15. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian friends in the most fundamental of math skills.
The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to change the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation(µÈʽ) is right there, in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: it¡¯s five-tens-nine.
When it comes to math, in other words, Asians have a built-in advantage. For years, students from China, South Korea, and Japan --- outperformed their Western classmates at mathematics, and the typical assumption is that it has something to do with a kind of Asian talent for math. The differences between the number systems in the East and the West suggest something very different --- that being good at math may also be rooted in a group¡¯s culture.
¡¾Ð¡Ìâ1¡¿What does the passage mainly talk about?
| A£®The Asian number-naming system helps grasp advanced math skills better. |
| B£®Western culture fail to provide their children with adequate number knowledge. |
| C£®Children in Western countries have to learn by heart the learning things. |
| D£®Asian children¡¯s advantage in math may be sourced from their culture. |
| A£®Their understanding of numbers. |
| B£®Their mother tongue. |
| C£®Their math education. |
| D£®Their different IQ. |
| A£®they pronounce the numbers in a shorter period |
| B£®they practice math from an early age |
| C£®English speaking children translate language into numbers first |
| D£®American children can only count to 15 at the age of four |
Increasingly, Americans are becoming their own doctors, by going online to diagnose their symptoms, order home health tests or medical devices, or even self-treat their illnesses with drugs from Internet pharmacies(񩵐). Some avoid doctors because of the high cost of medical care, especially if they lack health insurance. Or they may stay because they find it embarrassing to discuss their weight, alcohol consumption or couch potato habits. Patients may also fear what they might learn about their health, or they distrust physicians because of negative experiences in the past. But playing doctor can also be a deadly game.
Every day, more than six million Americans turn to the Internet for medical answers ¨C most of them aren¡¯t nearly skeptical enough of what they find. A 2002 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 72 percent of those surveyed believe all or most of what they read on health websites. They shouldn¡¯t. Look up ¡°headache¡±, and the chances of finding reliable and complete information, free from a motivation for commercial gain, are only one in ten, reports an April 2005 Brown Medical School study. Of the 169 websites the researchers rated, only 16 scored as ¡°high quality¡±. Recent studies found faulty facts about all sorts of other disorders, causing one research team to warn that a large amount of incomplete, inaccurate and even dangerous information exists on the Internet.
The problem is most people don¡¯t know the safe way to surf the Web. ¡°They use a search engine like Google, get 18 trillion choices and start clicking. But that¡¯s risky, because almost anybody can put up a site that looks authoritative(ȨÍþµÄ), so it¡¯d hard to know if what you¡¯re reading is reasonable or not,¡± says Dr. Sarah Bass from the National Cancer Institute.
1. According to the text, an increasing number of American _____.
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A£®are suffering from mental disorders |
|
B£®turn to Internet pharmacies for help |
|
C£®like to play deadly games with doctors |
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D£®are skeptical about surfing medical websites |
2. Some Americans stay away from doctors because they _____.
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A£®find medical devices easy to operate |
|
B£®prefer to be diagnosed online by doctors |
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C£®are afraid to face the truth of their health |
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D£®are afraid to misuse their health insurance |
3.According to the study of Brown Medical School, ______.
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A£®more than 6 million Americans distrust doctors |
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B£®only 1/10 of medical websites aim to make a profit |
|
C£®about 1/10 of the websites surveyed are of high quality |
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D£®72% of health websites offer incomplete and faulty facts |
4. Which of the following is the author¡¯s main argument?
|
A£®It¡¯s cheap to self-treat your own illness. |
|
B£®It¡¯s embarrassing to discuss your bad habits. |
|
C£®It¡¯s reasonable to put up a medical website. |
|
D£®It¡¯s dangerous to be your own doctor. |
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The weekly magazine tells what you need to know if you¡¯re thinking of traveling. Helpful advice on what to pack and what to buy once you¡¯re there. Lots of colour photos to help you choose the best hotel, the cheapest flights and a special guide to different climates each week. |
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E. Wired This magazine is designed for leaders in the field of information engineering including top managers and professionals in the computer, business, design and education industries. Published by Conde Nast Publications Inc, Wired often carries articles on how technology changes people¡¯s lives. |
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F. EUROPE NEWS The weekly magazine keeps you in touch with what¡¯s happening. Filled with facts and figures about almost everything you can think of, plus articles by our regular writers on the week¡¯s most interesting new stories. Special back page sums up the news for the busy readers. |
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61. Bill travels a lot when he was younger. Now that he has stopped his work, he enjoys reading about foreign people, places and customs even if he has already visited that part of the world.
62. Emi is a university student studying Italian and Politics. She doesn¡¯t have much time to read anything very detailed but she is looking for something with plenty of news and information.
63. Ben serves as an assistant to the general manager of an American company in Los Angeles. He is very interested in management and the use of high technology.
64. Up till now Brigitte has never traveled far so this year she has decided to go abroad for the first time. The travel agent suggests that she should read about various countries first before choosing her holiday.
65. Susan likes shopping. She is interested in buying clothes and she needs to be offered advice on clothes.