| A．comes two kids | B．two kids are coming |
| C．come two kids | D．do two kids come |
2 . Kindergarten represents a crucial environment in which children develop school-related skills and patterns of engagement. They form the basis for the development of later competence which is important for academic success. As for later academic skills, kindergarten achievements have been found to have great predictive value.
Given the long-lasting effects that kindergarten experiences have on later schooling, it is important to understand the factors associated with children's learning and motivation during this time. The quality of teacher-student interaction has been found to be important in terms of many different academic and socio-emotional outcomes. However, much of the previous work in the field has focused on children in later grades in elementary school and has been conducted in the United States. Fewer studies have been conducted in other educational environments and in kindergarten specifically.
Some researchers investigated bidirectional links between the quality of teacher-child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math in Finland. Participants were 461 Finnish kindergarteners (6-year-olds) and 48 teachers.
The results indicated that teacher-perceived(教师感知的)conflicts predicted children’s lower pre-academic skills in both literacy and math. It is possible that when children experience conflicts with teachers, the negative emotions attached to these conflicts are harmful to children’s engagement in learning and curtail their interest in academic tasks. It’s also possible that children experiencing conflicts are missing out on time for learning literacy and math, either because they become separated from instructional activities or because teachers have to spend more instructional time on behavioral management.
The findings highlight the importance of kindergarten teachers being aware of how their relationships with children can influence children’s later schooling. Therefore, it would be important to develop pre-service and in-service programs and interventions to help teachers. Teacher education programs may also benefit teachers not only in academic content and peda-gogical (教育学的)practices but also in strategies used to build supportive relationships with children.
1. What do we learn about kindergarten achievements?| A．They’re closely related to kids’ personalities. | B．They greatly affect kids’ later academic skills. |
| C．They largely depend on the teachers' competence. | D．They’re mainly about kids’ problem-solving abilities. |
| A．has drawn little attention from researchers |
| B．has been considered very important by teachers |
| C．has resulted from specific educational environments |
| D．has formed the basis of many good socio-emotional outcomes |
| A．Develop. | B．Maintain. | C．Reduce. | D．Assess. |
| A．To promote the educational programs among kindergarten teachers. |
| B．To explain the benefits of carrying out pedagogical practices. |
| C．To call on kids to build up good relationships with teachers. |
| D．To highlight the importance of kindergarten teachers. |
| A．The significance of developing kids' school-related skills. |
| B．The necessity of improving teachers' academic competence. |
| C．The ways of reducing teacher-student conflicts in kindergarten. |
| D．The influence of teacher-student interaction in kindergarten on kids. |
| A．let off steam | B．rise to their feet |
| C．follow a route | D．pull their weight |
4 . Researchers at Georgia Tech have been working to improve a musical robot called Shimon. Shimon is a four-armed robot with a ball-like head. He holds small mallets (tools like hammers) in his “hands” to play a kind of xylophone (木琴). As Shimon plays, his head moves around in time to the music.
Shimon has been around for quite a while as a musical robot. Even back in 2015, he played with other musicians at the Kennedy Center in New York. What Shimon could do back then was already pretty cool.
Shimon was taught to write his own music by using “deep learning”. Deep learning, also known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), means that computer programs sort deeply through huge amounts of information. This allows them to find patterns humans may not have noticed. The programs can then use those patterns in new and surprising ways. For Shimon, that meant he could not only make up his own music, but also do it in real time while playing with other musicians. This is called “improvising”.
Now Shimon is back with a whole bunch of new tricks. He can write the words to his own songs, and sing them. Shimon learned to write the words for the songs in the same way he learned to write music.
Professor Gil Weinberg in Georgia Tech, who leads the Shimon project, gets Shimon going with a starting idea. Shimon then writes the lyrics based around that idea.
To give Shimon a voice, the Georgia Tech team worked with experts at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. The voice was created by AI and sounds like a man very much. Shimon's face has also gotten new features. Shimon's mouth now moves smoothly in time as he sings. He also has eyebrows, which allow his face to show more emotions. For Mr. Weinberg, that's the main goal behind the Shimon project — not to have robots take over, but to have robots and humans make something beautiful together.
1. What do we know about Shimon?| A．He is no stranger to the music field. |
| B．He has trouble recognizing different tunes. |
| C．He can play different kinds of musical instruments. |
| D．He often gives performances on international stages. |
| A．make up his own music | B．improve the music he created |
| C．sort out different music patterns | D．create music without any preparation |
| A．Listening to much live music. | B．Being fed with a lot of examples. |
| C．Being instructed by a musician face to face. | D．Cooperating with other musicians many times. |
| A．To enable Shimon to sing songs. | B．To give Shimon rich facial expressions. |
| C．To allow Shimon to show his opinions. | D．To let Shimon learn to express emotions. |
| A．Musical Robots in the Music Field | B．The Making of a Great Musician |
| C．Shimon: An All-round Musical Robot | D．The Role of AI in the Music Development |
| A．coming out | B．going out | C．leaving out | D．running out |
6 . Most children look forward to learning to read, a process whereby they learn to transform what are essentially abstract handwriting on a page into meaningful letters, then sounds, then words, and then entire sentences and paragraphs. Reading represents a code (密码): specifically, an alphabetic code. A great number of children are able to break the code after a year of instruction. For at least one in five children, however, the experience is very different.
For them, reading, which seems to come effortlessly for others, appears to be beyond their grasp. These children, who understand the spoken word and love to listen to stories, struggle to understand the same words when they are written on a page. They read slowly and uncertainly, and words that they read correctly in one sentence may be misread in a following sentence. Reading aloud may be particularly painful. Eventually they grow frustrated and disappointed.
In the classroom, reading is king; it is essential for academic success. Teachers, witnessing the gap between good and poor readers widening, may wonder what they or these children might be doing wrong. Parents, knowing that reading problems have consequences all across development including into adult life, question themselves, feeling alternately guilty and angry.
The worst thing parents can do if they suspect that their child has a reading problem is to do nothing, says neuroscientist (神经科学家) Dr. Sally Shaywitz. Thus, if you observe the signs, start by speaking to your child’s teacher. Shaywitz offers some tips that will help parents make the most of their meeting with the teacher:
▶ Before setting up a meeting, it often helps to list your observations and your concerns. Parents are often so nervous when speaking to their child’s teacher that they forget why they were worried. The teacher will appreciate having such a list as well.
▶ Set up a specific time to speak to your child’s teacher; don’t catch her on the run.
▶ Find out how your child is progressing in reading, ask for specifics. Confirm exactly how their reading progress is being measured.
▶ Ask what reading group your child is in and what level that reader group represents, and how they compare to others in their class and in their grade.
▶ Ask what the teacher predicts for your child’s progress by the end of the school year.
1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?| A．Reading an alphabetic code is hard. |
| B．Most children like to read abstract letters. |
| C．Some children have difficulties in reading. |
| D．Few children can understand the code after a year of instruction. |
| A．Reading is not as easy for some children as it is for others. |
| B．All the children can understand spoken and written language. |
| C．Although children with reading difficulty read slowly, they read correctly. |
| D．The children become frustrated and unhappy because they will have to read aloud. |
| A．The correct way to deal with children’s reading difficulties. |
| B．The importance of observing child’s behavior. |
| C．Dr. Sally Shaywitz — a famous neuroscientist. |
| D．The worst thing parents can do when it comes to their child’s reading problems. |
| A．don’t run after her | B．don’t talk to her while running |
| C．don’t speak to her while she is busy | D．don’t catch her as she runs away |
| A．arrange the meeting at the end of the school year |
| B．ask about their child’s reading status at school |
| C．ask the teacher to take measures to improve their child’s reading ability |
| D．make a list of questions after the meeting |
| A．was | B．are | C．is | D．were |
8 . Researchers studying animal behaviour have recently started noticing something unusual. Some animals were observed to be eating plants that are not part of their normal diet and have no nutritional value. They ate these plants at only some times of the year while other animals in the group did not eat the same plants. What can account for this odd behaviour?
The researchers believe that these animals are giving themselves medicine. These plants can make the animals feel better, kill parasites(寄生虫)or aid in digestion. Many different animals have been observed acting in this way. Some chimps in a nature reserve in Tanzania had parasites which caused them stomach upsets. They were seen chewing and swallowing the leaves containing special medicines. These leaves were rough with sharp spikes sticking out. Scientists think that these rough leaves were eaten to clean out the insides of the chimps’ stomachs so that the parasites would be killed.
Other examples of animals self-medicating include lizards which respond to the bite of a venomous(有毒的)snake by eating a special root that can counter(对抗)the poison, and macaw birds(金刚鹦鹉)that eat clay to aid in digestion and kill bacteria.. Pregnant elephants have been known to eat the leaves of some trees as a way of speeding up the delivery of their babies.
How did animals learn this behaviour? The most obvious answer is that animals learnt by experience. For example, a gorilla once felt ill, ate some leaves and then felt better the next day. It remembered this and passed on this information to the rest of the group and its children. But what about creatures that are less intelligent? Scientists studying the monarch butterfly(黑脉金斑蝶)noticed that some healthy butterflies laid eggs on the milkweed plant which has anti-parasite properties. These eggs produced strong healthy butterflies compared to the ones hatched on plants that do not have such medicinal benefits. Over time the weaker butterflies produced fewer eggs and the healthy butterflies thrived(茁壮成长). This is an example of natural selection.
If we can learn from animals using plants to heal and protect themselves naturally, we too might gain medicinal benefits.
1. In writing Paragraph 1, the author aims to ______.| A．bring up a topic | B．reach a conclusion |
| C．make a comparison | D．propose a definition |
| A．Chimps sometimes eat special leaves to ease stomach problems. |
| B．Macaw birds are the only birds that use plants to kill bacteria. |
| C．Lizards eat special roots to speed up the laying eggs. |
| D．Pregnant elephants use leaves to aid in digestion. |
| A．by avoiding hunters |
| B．by making imitations |
| C．by gaining experience |
| D．by countering the poison |
| A．use an anti-parasite liquid to protect the eggs |
| B．lay eggs on the milkweed plants to avoid the snake |
| C．produce strong healthy eggs on the clay in Tanzania |
| D．have healthy kids by laying eggs on the milkweed plants |
| A．We may get benefits from the study of animals’ self-medication. |
| B．We should make use of the study to protect the environment. |
| C．The study of animals’ self-medication is not important. |
| D．Animals’ self-medication has set an example for us. |
| A．A medical journal. |
| B．A art magazine |
| C．A children’s storybook. |
| D．A popular science magazine. |
| A．in the mood for | B．at the point of | C．on the edge of | D．with the help of |
| A．could | B．would | C．may | D．must |
