小初高教育
阅读练习十五
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A
Finding a new voice
IT was time for more difficult speech therapy (治疗). Delvin Washington said his name again and again, making sure to bite his lower lip to pronounce the V in his first name. The 18-year-old from Texas, US, has had to practice this every day since he woke up from a coma (昏迷) in late September.
Over half a year ago, Washington was preparing for the biggest day of his young life – graduating from high school. But on a cloudy day in May, he had a serious car accident.
He survived, but his life changed forever. His friends have left for college, his mom has returned to work and he recently began all-day physical rehabilitation (康复治疗). He is relearning almost everything, from the names of his best friends to simple physical tasks, like swallowing his saliva (唾液).
His friends and family have given him a lot of support. While Washington lay in a coma in hospital, friends and family filled his room during visits. They celebrated his 18th birthday in July while he was still unconscious.
Two days after Thanksgiving, eight friends from high school visited Washington at his home. The friends looked through photos on Facebook, showing them all to Washington. As he sat in his wheelchair, friends asked him to recognize the people in the photos, helping him recover his brain.
Washington’s popularity doesn’t come from nowhere. He was determined to become a police officer after college and behaved like a respectable police officer at school.
His high school principal (校长), Eric Markinson, said Washington was always a gentleman. “He was incredibly gracious (和善的) and incredibly helpful,” he said.
His accident has damaged Washington’s brain. It has caused his left side, from his face to his feet, to all but shut down. His personality has also changed. The serious police-officer behavior is gone. He laughs a lot and smiles when he sees children, his mom said.
Now Washington is working hard on all-day rehabilitation. So far, he has made tremendous (巨大的) improvement, said his therapist Lindsay Sims.
“I try to live as independently as possible,” Washington said slowly but firmly. 1. What happened to Delvin Washington last May?
A. He started to make improvements in his speech therapy. B. He was seriously injured in a car accident. C. He graduated from high school with good grades. D. He suffered a heart attack and went into a coma.
2. How did Washington’s friends support him when he was in need of help?
A. They helped Washington make up for the lessons he had missed. B. They worked together to collect money for Washington on campus. C. They helped Washington realize his dream of becoming a police officer. D. They regularly visited Washington and helped him with his rehabilitation. K12资源
小初高教育
3. What is the article mainly about?
A. Washington’s friendship with his friends.
B. Washington making great efforts to achieve his dream. C. What makes Washington so popular at school. D. How Washington is recovering his brain.
B
Crows show cleverness
People may use the expression “birdbrain” in English to talk about someone who is stupid, but crows (灰鸦) prove that this is unfair. Now it has been discovered that crows may understand analogies (类推法).
It was once thought that only humans could understand analogies, which help us to solve problems creatively, put things into categories, and make scientific discoveries.
To test this ability in animals, scientists do “relational matching-to-sample (RMTS, 依照示例中物品的关联进行匹配)” tests, according to the IFL Science website. If a pair was AA, for example, then picking BB to match it would be correct. If the pair was CD, however, then EF would be correct.
Apes (猿) and monkeys have learned RMTS, but scientists wanted to know if crows could do it, too. An international team led by Edward Wasserman from the University of Iowa in the US first trained two hooded crows to match things by color, shape, and number in what is called “identity matching-to-sample (IMTS, 依照示例进行匹配)”, then moved onto RMTS.
For the IMTS test, the birds were put in a cage with a plastic tray (塑料盘) that had three cards and two cups in it. The card in the middle was the sample card. The cups on either side were covered with the other two cards: One was the same as the sample (in the color, shape, or number of shapes pictured), while the other wasn’t. The cup with the card that matched the sample card contained two worms (虫子) to eat.
In the second part of the experiment, the birds were tested with relational matching pairs. A card with two same-sized circles, for example, meant they should pick the test card with two same-sized squares and not two different-sized circles. The birds did well in the more difficult test and picked the correct card more than three quarters of the time, Science News reports.
Wasserman was surprised that crows were able to solve the problem without any training in RMTS. “What the crows have done is extraordinary,” he said in a news release. “Honestly, if it was only by force that the crows showed this learning, then it would have been an impressive result. But this was spontaneous (本能的).”
So perhaps it’s time to stop saying “birdbrain” for good!
4. Why does the author mention the expression “bird brain” in the opening paragraph?
A. To get the reader interested in the origins of the expression. B. To urge people to stop saying that birds are stupid.
C. To introduce the topic of Edward Wasserman and his experiments. D. To introduce recent findings about crows’ intelligence. 5. Which of the following is TRUE about the tests on the hooded crows?
A. The birds did better in RMTS than in IMTS. B. The birds were first made to do RMTS, then IMTS. K12资源
小初高教育
C. The birds picked almost all the correct cards in RMTS.
D. In the IMTS test, the birds needed to identify the sample card to get rewards. 6. In the RMTS test, if the birds were given the sample card with two same-sized triangles, they had to pick the test card with _____.
A. two same-sized circles
B. one circle and one triangle
D. two different-sized triangles
C. two different-sized circles to _____.
A. natural
B. creative
C. trustworthy C
Family welcome
Joining us for the beach trip of this year is the younger daughter’s boyfriend, a friendly young man.
“The boyfriend must remind her of me,” I tell my wife. “Yeah, maybe,” she lies. This boyfriend still has a certain amount of easy college charm (魅力). Having dated our daughter a couple of years now, he is like family – but nicer. As you know, many families are more polite to perfect strangers than they are to one another.
While not unkind, our family can be blunt (不客气的), and very few thoughts go unspoken. Behavior, body parts, taste in TV, even the way you hold a fork, it’s all fair game.
I feel for him because that was once me, only the family was Italian and didn’t really welcome Irish outsiders.
At the time, the men barely paid me any attention at all, and the women wouldn’t stop looking at me – head to toe – as if they were sewing me a new suit with their eyes.① Tough, outspoken women you’d never want to cross.
That’s why I can relate to this boyfriend. Chicago roots. Appreciates a cold Pabst (一个啤酒品牌). Throws a decent spiral (棒球里的旋球). And he has that most important quality in serious boyfriends these days: great math skills.
So we proudly welcome this capable kid to our beach party, introduce him around to our best friends.
It’s a complicated issue, welcoming suitors (追求者). I think most dads want to still be the lead lion, the one everyone looks to when the keys are locked in the car.
Even brothers have issues with this. It’s such a stupid male thing. But it’s a thing. It’s out there.
Yep, to most dads, even God wouldn’t be good enough for their daughters. In my mind, I still build boyfriend catapults (弹射器).② At first sight, I want to fire suitors into the sea. And I’m not alone in that.
8. From the author’s description of his daughter’s boyfriend, we learn that _____.
A. he doesn’t like him because he’s an out-of-towner B. this is the first time the author has met him C. he thinks he has a charm of his own D. he still treats him like a perfect stranger 9. Where does the author have roots? K12资源
D. predictable
7. The underlined word “spontaneous” in the second-to-last paragraph is closest in meaning