题目内容

In this age of Internet chat, videogames and reality television, there is no shortage of mindless activities to keep a child occupied. Yet despite the competition, my 8-year-old daughter Rebecca wants to spend her leisure time writing short stories. She wants to enter one of her stories into a writing contest, a competition which she won last year.

As a writer, I know about winning contests – and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard on a story only to receive a rejection letter from the publisher. I also know the pressure of trying to live up to a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn’t win the contest again? That’s the strange thing about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and destroyed hopes can resurface in our children.

A revelation (启示) came last week when I asked her, “Don’t you want to win again?” “No,” she replied, “I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade.”

I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously (自发地) told them. Telling myself that I was merely an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first grade was quickly “guided” by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her first music lesson. I had turned her contest into my contest without even realizing it.

Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting(借鉴) my daughter’s experience.

While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with more steps, putting myself far enough away to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while I will be reminding myself that children need room to experience, grow and find their own voices.

1.What do we learn from the first paragraph?

A. A lot of amusements compete for children’s time nowadays.

B. Children have lots of fun doing mindless activities.

C. Rebecca is much too busy to enjoy her leisure time.

D. Rebecca draws on a lot of online materials for her writing.

2.What did the author say about her own writing experience?

A. She was constantly under pressure to write more.

B. Most of her stories had been rejected by publishers.

C. She did not quite live up to her reputation as a writer.

D. Her road to success was full of pain and frustrations.

3.Why did Rebecca want to enter this year’s writing contest?

A. She believed she possessed real talent for writing.

B. She was sure of winning with her mother’s help.

C. She wanted to share her stories with readers.

D. She had won a prize in the previous contest.

4.The underlined sentence probably means that the author was _______.

A. trying not to let her daughter enjoy her own life.

B. trying to get her daughter to do the thing as the author wished.

C. making sure that her daughter would win the contest.

D. helping her daughter develop real skills for writing.

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A four-year-old girl sees three biscuits divided between a stuffed crocodile and a teddy bear.The crocodile gets two; the bear one.“Is that fair?” asks the experimenter.The girl judges that it is not.“How about now?” asks the experimenter, breaking the bear’s single biscuit in half.The girl cheers up: “Oh yes, now it’s fair.They both have two.” Strangely, children feel very strongly about fairness, even when they hardly understand it.

Adults care about fairness too --- but how much? One way to find out is by using the ultimatum (最后通牒) game, created by economist Werner Guth.Jack is given a pile of money and proposes how it should be divided with Jill.Jill can accept Jack’s “ultimatum”, otherwise the deal is off, and neither gets anything.

Suppose Jack and Jill don’t care about fairness, just about accumulating cash.Then Jack can offer Jill as little as he likes and Jill will still accept.After all, a little money is more than no money.But imagine, instead, that Jack and Jill both care only about fairness and that the fairest outcome is equality.Then Jack would offer Jill half the money; and Jill wouldn’t accept otherwise.

What happens when we ask people to play this game for real? It turns out that people value fairness a lot.Anyone offered less than 20-30% of the money is likely to reject it.Receiving an unfair offers makes us feel sick.Happily, most offers are pretty equitable; indeed, by far the most common is a 50-50 split.

But children, and adults, also care about a very different sort of (un)fairness, namely cheating.Think how many games of snakes and ladders have ended in arguments when one child “accidentally” miscounts her moves and another child objects.But this sense of fairness isn’t about equality of outcome: games inevitably have winners and losers.Here, fairness is about playing by the rules.

Both fairness-as-equality and fairness-as-no-cheating matter.Which is more important: equality or no-cheating? I think the answer is neither.The national lottery(彩票), like other lotteries, certainly doesn’t make the world more equal: a few people get rich and most people get nothing.Nevertheless, we hope, it is fair --- but what does this mean? The fairness-as-no-cheating viewpoint has a ready answer: a lottery is fair if it is conducted according to the “rules”.But which rules? None of us has the slightest idea, I suspect.Suppose that buried in the small print at lottery HQ is a rule that forbids people with a particular surname (let’s say, Moriarty).So a Ms Moriarty could buy a ticket each week for years without any chance of success.

How would she react if she found out? Surely with anger: how dare the organisers let her play, week after week, without mentioning that she couldn’t possibly win! She’d reasonably feel unfairly treated because ___________________.

To protest(抗议) against unfairness, then, is to make an accusation of bad faith.From this viewpoint, an equal split between the crocodile and the bear seems fair because (normally, at least), it is the only split they would both agree to.But were the girl to learn that the crocodile doesn’t like biscuits or that the bear isn’t hungry, I suspect she’d think it perfectly fair for one toy to take the whole.Inequality of biscuits (or anything else) isn’t necessarily unfair, if both parties are happy.And the unfairness of cheating comes from the same source: we’d never accept that someone else can unilaterally(单方面地) violate agreements that we have all signed up to.

So perhaps the four-year-old’s intuitions(直觉) about fairness is the beginnings of an understanding of negotiation.With a sense of fairness, people will have to make us acceptable offers (or we’ll reject their ultimatums) and stick by the (reasonable) rules, or we’ll be on the warpath.So a sense of fairness is crucial to effective negotiation; and negotiation, over toys, treats etc, is part of life.

1.It can be inferred that in the ultimatum game, _____.

A.Jack keeps back all the money

B.Jill can negotiate fair division with Jack

C.Jack has the final say in the division of money

D.Jill has no choice but to accept any amount of money

2.From Paragraph 2 to 4, we can conclude _____.

A.people will sacrifice money to avoid unfairness

B.fairness means as much to adults as to children

C.something is better than nothing after all

D.a 30-70 split is acceptable to the majority

3.Which of the following does fairness-as-no-cheating apply to?

A.divisions of housework

B.favoritism between children

C.banned drugs in sport

D.schooling opportunities

4.Which of the following best fits in the blank in Paragraph 7?

A.the lottery didn’t follow the rules

B.she was cheated out of the money

C.the lottery wasn’t equal at all

D.she would never have agreed to those rules

5.The chief factor in preventing unfairness is to _____.

A.observe agreements

B.establish rules

C.strengthen morality

D.understand negotiation

6. The main purpose of the passage is to ______

A.declare the importance of fairness

B.suggest how to achieve fairness

C.present different attitudes to fairness

D.explain why we love fairness

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are free, but without tutoring, and are open to anyone, anywhere in the world. The courses are flexible – normally three to five hours of study a week – done at any time, short (5 to 10 weeks) and video-rich. They are also heavily dependent on crowd sourcing: you can discuss a course with fellow students through online forums, discussion boards and peer review. Students don't have to finish the courses, pass assessments or do assignments, but, if they do, they get a certification of participation.

The Open University launched FutureLearn, the UK's answer to US platforms such as Coursera, EdX and Udacity, which have been offering MOOCs from top US universities for the past two years. The response has been incredible, with more than three million people registering worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2012, Edinburgh University became the first non-US institution to join Coursera's partnership, comprising 13 universities. “We already run 50 online master's degrees, so this was a logical expansion,” says Professor Jeff Haywood, Edinburgh's vice-principal. “It's an investment in teaching methods research. How am I going to teach introductory philosophy to 100,000 people? That's what I call educational R&D.” He adds “If you look ahead 10 years, you'd expect all students graduating to have taken some online courses, so you've got to research that. Our MOOCs are no more in competition with our degrees than a lifelong learning course because they don't carry credits.”

Cooperation is key, Haywood stresses. It is far better to offer 20-30 courses in your own areas of expertise (专门技能) and let other institutions do likewise. Professor Mike Sharples, FutureLearn's academic lead, goes further: “We've tied the elements available before into a package of courses offered by leading universities worldwide on a new software platform, with a new way of promoting it and also a new social-learning teaching method. You won't just receive an exam, but be able to discuss and mark each other's assignments.”

Bath University, one of more than 20 universities working with FutureLearn, launches its first course, Inside Cancer, next January, and regards MOOCs as a way of breaking down age barriers. "There's no reason why someone doing GCSEs should not look at our MOOCs and get quite a way through them, or someone at PhD level and beyond," says Professor Bernie Morley, expert for learning and teaching.

1.MOOCs have these features EXCEPT that ___________.

A. MOOCs have a platform for learners to share their learning experience

B. MOOCs provide teachers’ instructions if you have some difficulty

C. MOOCs can be adjusted according to people’s learning pace

D. MOOCs are free of charge for anyone

2.The response to Future Learn has been thought to be unbelievable mainly because ___________.

A. all the courses on the platform are available to anyone in the world

B. the number of people registering in the platform is beyond expectation

C. Edinburgh University became the first non-US institution to join it

D. students can get a certification of participation without passing assessments

3.What can be inferred from Professor Bernie Morley in the last paragraph?

A. MOOCs are not so competitive as lifelong learning courses due to the problems of credits.

B. Inside Cancer will be the most popular course for someone doing GCSEs.

C. People at PhD level have already known everything about MOOCs.

D. People with various learning levels will probably show interest in MOOCs.

4.The passage mainly deals with ___________.

A. the advantages of online teaching methods

B. the various opinions on FutureLearn

C. the appearance of a new learning platform

D. the popularity of no-credit courses

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The EP will not reduce oxygen in the room. With other heaters, you’ll notice that you get sleepy when the heat comes on because they are burning up oxygen.

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1. What is mainly discussed in Paragraph 2?

A. the safety of the EP

B. the heat of the EP

C. the appearance of the EP

D. the material of the EP

2.From the passage, we can learn that the EP _______.

A. runs without any noise

B. doesn’t burn up oxygen

C. makes people get sleepy

D. is unsuitable for children and pets

3.The underlined word “evenly” in Paragraph 4 probably means ________.

A. separately B. equally

C. quickly D. continuously

4.The main purpose of the passage is to ________.

A. compare the difference of different heart brands

B. advise people to save on heating bills

C. report the new development of portable heaters

D. persuade people to buy the product

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