[A] managed[B] achieved[C] succeeded[D] fulfilled
[A] managed
[B] achieved
[C] succeeded
[D] fulfilled
[A] managed
[B] achieved
[C] succeeded
[D] fulfilled
[A] have no reliable methods to pick students for a class.
[B] want a good mixture of boys and girls for classes.
[C] encounter more demand than they can cope with.
[D] prefer to enroll children of their relatives.
[ A] we have people calling us for parking space two years ahead of time.
[ B] people called us for permission to use the places two years ago.
[ C] we received calls from people down the road two years ago.
[D] people called us for school vacancies two years in advance.
(60 minutes)
Part A
Directions :
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.Mark your answers on, ANSWER SHEET1.
Text 1
Competition for admission to the country's top private schools has always been tough, but this year Elisabeth realized it had reached a new level. Her wake-up call came when a man called the Dalton School in Manhattan, where Elisabeth is admissions director, and inquired about the age cutoff for their kindergarten program. After providing the information, she asked about the age of his child. The man paused for an uncomfortably long time before answering. "Well, we don't have a child yet. We're trying to figure out when to conceive a child so the birthday is not a problem. "
Worries are spreading from Manhattan to the rest of the country. Precise current data on private schools are unavailable, but interviews with representatives of independent schools all told the same story: an oversupply of applicants, higher rejection rates. "We have people calling us for spots two years down the road," said Marilyn of the Seven Hills School in Cincinnati. " We have grandparents calling for pregnant daughters. " Public opinion polls indicate that Americans' No. 1 concern is edu-cation .Now that the long economic boom has given parents more disposable income, many are tuming to private schools, even at price tags of well over $ 10,000 a year. "We're getting appli-cants from a broader area geographically than we ever have in the past," said Betsy of the Latin School of Chicago, which experienced a 20 percent increase in applications this year.
The problem for the applicants is that while demand has increased, supply has not. "Every Year ,there are a few children who do not find places, but this year, for the first time that I know of , there are a significant number without places ,"said Elisabeth.
So what can parents do to give their 4-year-old an edge? Schools know there is no easy way to pick a class when children are so young. Many schools give preference to children of their gradu- ates. Some make the choice by drawing lots. But most rely on a mix of subjective and objective measures: tests that at best identify developmental maturity and cognitive potential, interviews with parents and observation of applicants in classroom settings. They also want a diverse mix. Children may end up on a waiting list simply because their birthdays fall at the wrong time of year, or be- cause too many applicants were boys.
The worst thing a patent can do is to pressure preschoolers to perform-for example, by push-ing them to read or do math exercises before they're ready. Instead, the experts say, parents should take a breath and look for alternatives. Another year in preschool may be all that's needed.
41. From this text we learn that it is
[A] harder to make a choice between public and private schools.
[B] harder to go to private schools this year than before.
[C] more difficult to go to public schools than to private schools.
[D] as difficult to go to private schools this year as before.
[A] Hard Time for the Preschoolers
[B] Prosperity of Private Schools
[C] The Problem for Public Schools
[D] Americans 's N0 1 Concern
[ A] became more dependent on'his family.
[ B] grew fond of classical music.
[ C] recovered from language incompetence.
[ D] enjoyed loud Italian popular music.
[ A] favors the idea of putting children on a waiting list.
[ B] agrees to test preschooler's cognitive potentials.
[ C] thinks children should be better prepared academically
[ D] disapproves of the undue pressure on preschoolers.
[ A] backward movement.
[ B] uncontrolled inclination.
[ C] rapid advancement.
[ D] unexpected restoration.
William Shakespeare described old age as" second childishness"-no teeth, no eyes, no taste. In the case of taste he may, musically speaking, have been more perceptive than he realised. A paper in Neurology by Giovanni Frisoni and his colleagues at the National Centre for Research and Care of Alzheimers's Disease in Italy, shows that frontotemporal dementia can affect musical desires in ways that suggest a regression ,if not to infancy,then at least to a patient's teens.
Frontotemporal dementia, a disease usually found with old people, is caused, as its name suggests,by damage to the front and sides of the brain. These regions are concerned with speech, and with such"higher"functions as abstract thinking and judgment.
Two of such patients intrigued Dr Frisoni. One was a 68-year-old lawyer, the other a 73-year- old housewife. Both had undamaged memories, but displayed the sorts of defect associated with frontotemporal dementia-a diagnosis that was confrrmed by brain scanning.
About two years after he was first diagnosed, the lawyer, once a classical music lover who re-ferred to pop music as"mere noise" , started listening to the Italian pop band "883". As his command of language and his emotional attachments to friends and family deteriorated, he continued to listen to the band at full volume for many hours a day. The housewife had not even had the lawyer's love of classical music, having never enjoyed music of any sort in the past. But about a year after her diagnosis she became very interested in the songs that her ll-year-old granddaughter was listen ing to.
This kind of change in musical taste was not seen in any of the Alzheimer's patients, and thus appears to be specific to those with frontotemporal dementia. And other studies have remarked on how frontotemporal-dementia patients sometimes gain new talents. Five sufferers who developed artistic abilities are known. And in another case, one woman with the disease suddenly started composing and singing country and western songs.
Dr Frisoni speculates that the illness is causing people to develop a new attitude towards novel experiences, Previous studies of novelty-seeking behaviour suggest that it is managed by the brain'sright frontal lobe. A predominance of the right over the left frontal lobe, caused by damage to the
latter,might thus lead to a quest for new experience. Alternatively, the damage may have affected
some specific nervous system that is needed to appreciate certain kinds of music. Whether that is a
gain or a loss is a different matter. As Dr Frisoni puts it in his article, there is no accounting for
taste.
46. The writer quotes Shakespeare mainly to
[A] praise the keen perception of the great English writer.
[B] support Dr. Frisoni 's theory about a disease.
[C] start the discussion on a brain disease.
[D] show the long history of the disease.
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