(10·浙江D篇)

My family and I lived across the street from Southway Park since I was four years old. Then just last year they city put a chain link fence around the park and started bulldozing (用推土机推平) the trees and grass to make way for a new apartment complex. When I saw the fence and bulldozers, I asked myself, “Why don’t they just leave it alone?”

Looking back, I think what sentenced the part to oblivion (别遗忘) was the drought (旱灾) we had about four years ago. Up until then, Southway Park was a nice green park with plenty of trees and a public swimming pool. My friends and I rollerskated on the sidewalks, climbed the tress, and swam in the pool all the years I was growing up. The park was almost like my own yard. Then the summer I was fifteen the drought came and things changed.

There had been almost no rain at all that year. The city stopped watering the park grass. Within a few weeks I found myself living across the street from a huge brown desert. Leaves fell off the park tress, and pretty soon the trees started dying, too. Next, the park swimming pool was closed. The city cut down on the work force that kept the park, and pretty soon it just got too ugly and dirty to enjoy anymore.

As the drought lasted into the fall, the park got worse every month. The rubbish piled up or blew across the brown grass. Soon the only people in the park were beggars and other people down on their luck. People said drugs were being sold or traded there now. The park had gotten scary, and my mother told us kids not to go there anymore.

The drought finally ended and things seemed to get back to normal, that is, everything but the park. It had gotten into such bad shape that the city just let it stay that way. Then about six months ago I heard that the city was going to “redevelop” certain worn-out areas of the city. It turned out that the city had planned to get rid of the park, sell the land and let someone build rows of apartment buildings on it.

The chain-link fencing and the bulldozers did their work. Now we live across the street from six rows of apartment buildings. Each of them is three units high and stretches a block in each direction. The neighborhood has changed without the park. The streets I used to play in are jammed with cars now. Things will never be the same again. Sometimes I wonder, though, what changes another drought would make in the way things are today.

53. How did the writer feel when he saw the fence and bulldozers?

      A. Scared.        B. Confused.      C. Upset.           D. Curious.

54. Why was the writer told not to go to the park by his mother?

      A. It was being rebuilt.                 B. It was dangerous.

      C. It because crowded.                 D. It had turned into a desert.

55. According to the writer, what eventually brought about the disappearance of the park?

      A. The drought.                    B. The crime.

      C. The beggars and the rubbish.       D. The decisions of the city.

56. The last sentence of the passage implies that if another drought came, ______.

      A. the situation would be much worse

      B. people would have to desert their homes

      C. the city would be fully prepared in advance

      D. the city would have to redevelop the neighborhood

In general, it seems reasonable to suppose that we should prefer peace and quiet to noise. And yet most of us have had the experience of having to adjust to sleeping in the mountains or the countryside because it was initially “too quiet”, an experience that suggests that humans are capable of adapting to a wide range of noise levels. Research supports this view. For example, Glass and Singer (1972) exposed people to short bursts of very loud noise and then measured their ability to work out problems and their physiological reactions to the noise. The noise was quite disruptive at first, but after about four minutes the subjects were doing just as well on their tasks as control subjects who were not exposed to noise. Their physiological reactions also declined quickly to the same levels as those of the control subjects.
But there are limits to adaptation and loud noise becomes more troublesome if the person is required to concentrate on more than one task. For example, high noise levels affect the performance of subjects who were required to monitor three dials at a time, a task not unlike that of a plane pilot or an air-traffic controller. Similarly, noise did not affect a subject’s ability to track a moving line with a steering wheel, but it did affect the subject’s ability to repeat numbers while tracking (Finkelm and Glass 1970).
Probably the most significant finding from the research on noise is that its predictability is more important than how loud it is. We are much more able to “tune out” long-lasing background noise, even if it is quite loud, than to work under circumstances with unexpected disturbance of noise. In Glass and Singer’s study, in which subjects were exposed to bursts of noise as they worked on a task, some subjects heard loud bursts and others heard soft bursts. For some subjects, the bursts were spaced exactly one minute apart (predictable noise); others heard the some amount of noise overall, but the bursts occurred at random intervals (unpredictable noise). Subjects reported finding the predictable and unpredictable noise equally annoying, and all subjects performed at about the same level during the noise portion of the experiment. But the different noise conditions had quite different after-effects when the subjects were required to proofread written material under conditions of no noise. The study shows that the unpredictable noise produced more errors in the later proofreading task than predictable noise; and soft unpredictable noise actually produced slightly more errors on this task than the loud predictable noise.
Apparently, unpredictable noise produces more fatigue than predictable noise, but it takes a while for this fatigue to take its toll on performance.
【小题1】When talking about people’s difficulty in sleeping in the mountains, what can be inferred in the passage?

A.They usually do not prefer peace and quiet to noise.
B.They may be exposed to short bursts of very strange sounds.
C.They prefer to hear a certain amount of noise while they sleep.
D.They may not have adapted to a higher noise level in the city.
【小题2】What did Glass and Singer find in their noise experiment?
A.Problem-solving is much easier under quiet conditions.
B.Physiological reactions prevent the ability to work.
C.Bursts of noise hardly disturb problem-solving in the long term.
D.The physiological reactions of the control subjects declined quickly.
【小题3】Researchers discovered that high noise levels are not likely to affect the __________.
A.successful performance of a single task
B.tasks of pilots or air traffic controllers
C.ability to repeat numbers while tracking moving lines
D.ability to monitor three dials at once
【小题4】 What does “take its toll on performance” in the passage probably mean?
A.Destroy the performance completely.
B.Have a negative effect on the performance.
C.Improve the performance greatly.
D.Have a positive influence on the performance.

.

When Joe Bates was twelve years old, he lost interest in school. He stopped listening in his classes. Some of his teachers began to consider him a problem.

But a few of Joe’s teachers thought that Joe might have lost interest in schoolwork because he already understood it. They proposed that Joe try taking a university class in computer science. Joe did. He was the best student in the class. Later tests showed that his intelligence and knowledge were far greater than most children of his age. He entered university when he was thirteen, about four years earlier than most children. And by the time he was in his early twenties, Joe was teaching computer science at a university.

Joe’s story shows what can happen when a child’s unusual ability is recognized. Sadly, however, not all gifted children get this recognition. And educational experts say unusually gifted children may waste their abilities if they do not get help to develop them.

Studies show that almost twenty percent of students who fail to complete high school in the United States are gifted children.This is because gifted children can have special problems as well as special abilities. Teachers may not recognize their abilities or may not know how to keep them interested. Or they may consider such students to be troublemakers or rebels.

Gifted children may feel lonely or different because they do not know other children who share their interests.

Educators say there are more than two million gifted children in the United States today.  But they say fewer than half are taking part in special education programs designed for them.

One of the most successful programs is held every summer at John Hopkins University in the state of Maryland, where Joe Bates went to school. It started in 1980 when educators saw that there must be many children like Joe.

At first, only 100 children took part in it, and now more than 1,000 children between the ages of nine and sixteen are students in the summer program.

The John Hopkins program provides studies in math and science. It also has classes for children with unusual ability in language and writing. The children study the same subject every day for several weeks. It could be biology, or history, or literature. In those few weeks, they learn as much as in a normal nine-month school year.

William Durden, the director says the program succeeds because it permits children to make progress more quickly than in a traditional program. And the children get to meet others like themselves.

49. Joe Bates stopped listening in his classes because __________.

A. he lost interest in school

B. he hated those teachers who considered him a problem

C. he had already understood what he was taught

D. he wanted to take a university class

50. When a child’s unusual ability is recognized, __________.

A. he can do whatever he likes

B. he will no longer be considered to be a troublemaker or rebel

C. he may have more success than most children of his age

D. he will certainly take part in a special education program

51. According to the passage, the most important thing is to __________.

A. recognize and develop gifted children’s unusual abilities

B. design and support special education programs for gifted children

C. help gifted children get to meet others who share their interests

D. encourage gifted children instead of treating them as a problem

52. Many gifted students fail to complete high school in the United States because _________.

A. they take part in traditional education programs

B. their unusual abilities are not recognized 

C. their teachers don’t know how to keep them interested in schoolwork

D. they have special problems as well as special abilities.

 

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