文章大意:本文是一篇说明文。文章主要介绍了青少年睡眠时间偏少,从而产生了一系列问题。有研究表明,让学生睡个好觉有助于提高他们的学习成绩、降低逃学率、改善他们的心理健康,但家长和学校一直反对推迟上学时间。
When Amelia thinks about her freshman year two years ago, she remembers being tardy to her 8 a.m. first period class from time to time. “It was so hard to wake up in the morning,” she said. “I had to bike to school and I lived on the other side of the island.”
Like other teens, mornings area struggle because she had several hours of homework and extracurricular activities the night before, but research shows that’s not the entire story. According to psychotherapists, Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright in their book Generation Sleepless, today's teens are sleepier than ever and earlier school start time is disturbing their body's circadian (昼夜节律的) rhythm.
“One of the things that happens somewhere around age 12 is that their brain clock becomes set to a later pace,” said Turgeon, which put sateen about two hours behind the sleep schedule of a young child or an adult. “That means they want to go to sleep later and they want to wake up later,” she said.
“We consider adequate sleep —the very lowest amount—to be about eight hours,” said Wright. However, the average sleep time for high school students is usually about 6.5 hours. And missing out on just a couple hours of rest each night has negative consequences for developing teenage brains.
When a teen is tired, the amygdala—which is the part of the brain that responds to danger—will become more active. And the parts of the brain that are in charge of judgment become less active. Sleep issues are commonly associated with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder (双相情感障碍) and ADHD (多动症). “We see teens with very serious mental health issues and accidents and soon things that parents really worry about—and getting enough sleep addresses those issues.”
Even with research showing that letting students sleep well contributes to better academic performance, lower truancy (旷课) rates and improved mental health, there has been pushback from parents and school districts about delaying the start of the school day.
4. What does the underlined word “tardy” probably m can in paragraph 1?
A.Late. | B.Busy. | C.Tired. | D.Excited. |
5. What do we know about the kids aged about 12 according to Turgeon?
A.They feel more tired than ever | B.They sleep later and wakeup later. |
C.They have about 6.5 hours of sleep | D.They sleep about two hours later than adults. |
6. What docs the fifth paragraph mainly tell us?
A.The teens are always feeling tired |
B.The amygdala becomes more active. |
C.The lack of sleep causes many problems. |
D.The teenagers have trouble sleeping |
7. What maybe the author's attitude to later school start time?
A.Favorable | B.Doubtful | C.Ambiguous. | D.Disapproving |