请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。
The back-to-school season is upon us, and once again, parents across the country have loaded their kids’ backpacks up with snack packs and school supplies. It’s a good moment to reflect on what else we should be giving our kids as they head off to school.
American parents are feeling particularly anxious about that question this year. The educational process feels more than ever like a race, one that starts in pre-school and doesn’t end until your child is admitted to the perfect college. Most parents are more worried than they need to be about their children’s grades, test scores and IQ. And what we don’t think about enough is how to help our children build their character—how to help them develop skills like perseverance, optimism, responsibility, and self-control, which together do more to determine success than S.A.T. scores or I.Q.
There is growing evidence that our anxiety about our children’s school performance may actually be holding them back from learning some of these valuable skills. If you’re concerned only with a child’s G.P.A., then you will likely choose to minimize the challenges the child faces in school. With real challenge comes the risk of real failure. And in a competitive academic environment, the idea of failure can be very scary, to students and parents alike.
But experiencing failure is a critical part of building character. Recent research by a team of psychologists found that adults who had experienced little or no failure growing up were actually less happy and confident than those who had experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood. “Overcoming those obstacles,” the researchers assumed, “could teach effective coping skills, help engage social support networks, create a sense of mastery over past adversity, and foster beliefs in the ability to cope successfully in the future.”
By contrast, when we protect our children from every possible failure—when we call their teachers to get an extension on a paper; when we urge them to choose only those subjects they’re good at—we are denying them those same character-building experiences. As the psychologists Madeline Levine and Dan Kindlon have written, that can lead to difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood, when overprotected young people finally confront real problems on their own and don’t know how to overcome them.
In the classroom and outside of it, American parents need to encourage children to take chances, to challenge themselves, to risk failure. In the meantime, giving our kids room to fail may be one of the best ways we can help them succeed.
Back to School: Why Perseverance Is More Important than Good Grades? | |
Common phenomena | Parents throughout America 1.______ their kids’ backpacks up with snacks and school supplies. |
Many American parents don’t 2._______ enough importance to their kids’ character building. | |
The writer’s 3._________ | Parents should pay more attention to their kids’ character building. |
Evidence and 4._____ findings | Parents’ anxiety about their kids’ performance may 5. them from learning some valuable skills. |
Parents concerned only with a kid’s G.P.A. have a 6. to minimize the challenges the child faces. | |
Adults who have experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood are 7. and more confident than those who haven’t. | |
Denying kids character-building experiences can 8. in difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood. | |
The writer’s suggestions | 9.________ kids to be risk-takers. |
Give kids room to experience 10.____________. | |
动词填空
1.If only he ______________ (tell) me the news! I needn’t have been so busy then.
2.It’s natural that the kid ______________ (do) something wrong; you cannot blame him excessively.
3.Jim must have read the novel; otherwise he ______________ (not know) all the answers to these questions.
4.With the incomes ______________ (rise) continuously, some people now can afford expensive clothing of the fastest fashion.
5.If I’ve got nothing to share, I may leave my micro-blog ______________ (untouch) for weeks.
6.His brother, who ______________ (serve) in the army for five years, is now running a farm in our village.
7.Sam is going to talk about the history of his country, but I’d rather he ______________ (focus) more on its culture.
8.The boy is always studying very hard, ______________ (aim) to be admitted to Fudan University.
9.Tom was familiar with every street in the town as if he ______________ (live) there.
10.In my opinion, earning a large sum of money isn’t equal to ______________ (live) a happy life.
请根据所给汉语或首字母写出空缺处单词的适当形式，使句子完整，语法正确，每空只填一个单词。
1.It’s the company’s policy to s_________ short-term profits for the sake of long-term growth.
2.The Red Cross is trying to get more young people involved in doing v________ work.
3.Without food, many of the victims in the disaster died of s________.
4.They have v__________ reasons for refusing to do it.
5.It is the building t_________ of a Gothic church.
6.The public remain _____________(持怀疑态度) of the claim that the local government has made great efforts to prevent water pollution.
7.Because of damage to their homes, many people had to stay in ___________(临时的) shelters for a few months.
8.The electronic dictionary is ____________ (优雅地) shaped like a pen.
9.He is one of those who are not satisfied with the _________________(招待，接待).
10.The exhibition was held to break down the cultural ___________(障碍) between the two countries.
When I was eight or nine years old, I wrote my first poem.
My mother read the little poem and began to cry. “Buddy, you didn’t really write this beautiful, beautiful poem!” Shyly, I said that I had. My mother poured out her welcome praise. Why, this poem was nothing short of genius!
What time will Father be home?” I asked. I could hardly wait to show him what I had accomplished. My mother said she hoped he would be home around 7. I spent the best part of that afternoon preparing for his arrival. First, I wrote the poem out in my finest handwriting. Then I used colored pens to draw a border around it. Then I confidently placed it right on my father’s plate on the dining table. But my father did not return at 7, Seven-fifteen, Seven-thirty. My father had begun his motion-picture career as a writer. He would be able to appreciate my poem even more than my mother.
It was almost 8 o’clock when my father burst in. He was an hour late, but he could not sit down. I can see him now, a big Havana cigar in one hand, the rapidly disappearing drink in the other, calling down bitter words on his employees.
Suddenly, he paused and glared at his plate. There was a silence. He was reaching for my poem. I lowered my head and stared down into my plate.
“What is this?” I heard him say.
“Ben, a wonderful thing has happened,” my mother said. “Buddy has written his first poem. And it’s beautiful, absolutely amazing”.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to decide that for myself,” Father said.
I kept my face lowered to my plate. It was only 10 lines long. But it seemed to take hours. I remember wondering why it was taking so long. I could hear him dropping the poem back on the table again. Now was the moment of decision.
“I think it’s bad,” my father said.
I couldn’t look up. My eyes were getting wet.
“Ben, sometimes I don’t understand you,” my mother was saying. “This is just a little boy. You’re not in your studio now. These are the first lines of poetry he’s ever written. He need encouragement.”
“I don’t know why,” my father held his ground. “Isn’t there enough bad poetry in the world already? No law says Buddy has to become a poet.”
I couldn’t stand it another second. I ran from the dining room, threw myself on the bed and cried.
That may have been the end of the anecdote(轶事) — but not of its significance for me.
A few years later I took a second look at that first poem, and unwillingly I had to agree with my father’s tough judgment. It was a pretty bad poem. After a while, I worked up the courage to show him something new, a short story. My father thought it was overwritten but not hopeless. I was learning to rewrite. And my mother was learning that she could disapprove of me without ruining me. You might say we were all learning. I was going on 12.
As I worked my way into other books and plays and films, it became clearer and clearer to me how fortunate I had been to have had a mother who said, “Buddy, it’s wonderful!” and a father who shook his head no and drove me to tears with his, “I think it’s bad.” In fact all of us in life need that mother force, the loving force from which all creation flows; and yet the mother force alone is incomplete, even misleading, finally damaging, without the father force to caution, “Watch. Listen. Review. Improve.” Between the two poles of affirmation (肯定) and doubt, both in the name of love, I try to follow my true course.
1.What did the mother think of the Buddy’s poem?
A. She was so moved that she cried.
B. She believed Buddy needed advice from his father.
C. She considered Buddy had no talent for poetry.
D. She thought the poem was well written.
2.Which underlined word in the following sentences best reflects Buddy’s eagerness to show his father the poem?
A. Then I confidently placed it right on my father’s place on the dining table.
B. He would be able to appreciate my poem even more than my mother.
C. I wrote the poem out in my finest handwriting.
D. I could hardly wait to show him what I had accomplished.
3.The underlined sentence “My father held his ground” could best be replaced by ________.
A. My father began to explain his reasons
B. My father thought his comment is unreasonable
C. My father refused to change his opinion
D. My father got so angry that he rose to his feet
4.From the passage, we can infer that the father can be best described as ________.
A. cruel and stubbornB. loving and matter-of-fact
C. bad-tempered and rudeD. cautious and strict
5.Which of the following statements do you think the author might agree with?
A. The incident helped the writer work his work further as a writer.
B. The author only realized the significance of the incident after becoming a writer.
C. After the incident, the author stopped writing but tried his luck in plays and films.
D. The incident completely changed the author’s course of life.
Exercise may help to safeguard the mind against depression(沮丧) through previously unknown effects on working muscles, according to a new study involving mice.
Mental health experts have long been aware that even mild, repeated stress can contribute to the development of depression and other mood disorders in animals and people. Scientists have also known that exercise seems to cushion against depression. But precisely how exercise, a physical activity can reduce someone’s risk for depression, a mood state, has been mysterious. So for the new study, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied the brains and behavior of mice in a complicated and novel fashion.
We can’t ask mice if they are feeling cheerful or in low spirits. Instead, researchers have pictured certain behaviors that indicate depression in mice. If animals lose weight, stop seeking out a sugar solution when it’s available — because, probably, they no longer experience normal pleasures — or give up trying to escape from the cold-water zone just freeze in place, they are categorized as depressed. And in the new experiment, after five weeks of frequent but low-level stress, such as being lightly shocked, mice displayed exactly those behaviors. They became depressed.
The scientists could then have tested whether exercise blunts (延缓) the risk of developing depression after stress by having mice run first. But, frankly, from earlier research, they wanted to know how, so they bred pre-exercised mice. A wealth of earlier research by these scientists and others had shown that aerobic exercise, in both mice and people, increases the production within muscles of an enzyme (酶) called PGC-1alpha. The Karolinska scientists suspected（怀疑） that this enzyme somehow creates conditions within the body that protect the brain against depression. Then, the scientists exposed the animals, which without exercising, were in high levels of PGC-1alpha to five weeks of mild stress. The mice responded with slight symptoms of worry. But they did not develop depression. They continued to seek out sugar and fought to get out of the cold-water zone. Their high levels of PGC-1alpha appeared to make them depression-resistant（抵抗的）. Finally, to ensure that these findings are relevant to people, the researchers had a group of adult volunteers complete three weeks of frequent endurance training, consisting of 40 to 50 minutes of moderate cycling or jogging. The scientists conducted muscle biopsies (活体检查) before and after the program and found that by the end of the three weeks, the volunteers’ muscle cells contained substantially more PGC-1alpha than at the study’s start.
The finding of these results, in the simplest terms, is that “you reduce the risk of getting depression when you exercise,” said Maria Lindskog, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute.
1.The researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm conducted the new study hoping to know ________.
A. if exercise cushions against depression
B. what can lead to depression in animals and people
C. if stress can contribute to the development of depression
D. how exercise contributes to reducing someone’s risk for depression
2.We can infer from the new experiment conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institute that mice are depressed except when ________.
A. they attempt to escape from the cold-water zone
B. they stop searching for the sugar water
C. they stand still in place
D. they can’t experience normal pleasures any longer
3.Researchers asked a group of adult volunteers to complete three weeks of frequent endurance training in order to ________.
A. know if exercise can help to safeguard the mind against depression
B. know if they can endure 40 to 50 minutes of moderate cycling or jogging
C. ensure they can lose weight after moderate cycling or jogging
D. confirm the findings above are also relevant to people
4.It can be concluded from the passage that ________.
A. the mice with high levels of PGC-1alpha are easier to develop depression
B. athletes are more likely to develop depression than ordinary people
C. the enzyme called PGC-1alpha helps to reduce depression
D. in the past mental health specialists didn’t know exercise could help reduce depression
Today is National Bike-to-Work Day. And on New York City’s jammed streets, people are cycling on hundreds of miles of new bike lanes. But New York’s widespread efforts to make streets safer for bikes have also left some locals complaining about the loss of parking spots and lanes for cars.
When the weather is good, Aaron Naparstek likes to pedal（用踏板踩） his two young kids to school on a special Dutch-made bicycle. Naparstek supports the new lane.
Aaron: The bike lane on Prospect Park West is really introducing a lot of new people to the idea that it’s possible to use a bike in New York City for transportation or to travel around. This is what 21st century New York City looks like.
Prospect Park West is still a one-way road, but where it used to have three lanes of car traffic, now it has two, plus a protected bike lane. Supporters say that makes the road safer for everyone, including pedestrians, by slowing down cars and taking bikes off the sidewalk. But some longtime residents disagree. Lois Carswell is president of a group called Seniors for Safety. She says the two-way bike lane is dangerous to older residents who are used to one-way traffic.
Lois: We wanted a lane — the right kind of lane that would keep everybody safe, that would keep the bikers safe. But we want it to be done the right way. And it has not been done the right way.
Craig Palmer builds bars and restaurants in Manhattan. I was interviewing him for a different story when he brought up the bike lanes all on his own.
Craig: I think the biggest problem is that Bloomberg put all these bike lanes in. You took what used to be a full street and you’re shrinking it.
Then there are the Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who forced the city to remove a bike lane through their neighborhood. But polls show that the majority of New Yorkers support bike lanes by a margin of 56% to 39%. Bicycle advocate Caroline Samponaro of Transportation Alternatives calls that a mandate.
Caroline: If this was an election, we would have already had our victory. The public has spoken and they keep speaking. And I think, more importantly, the public is starting to vote with their pedals.
1.What does Aaron mean by saying “This is what 21st century New York City looks like.”?
A. There are hundreds of miles of new bike lanes in 21 st century New York City.
B. Drivers slow down their cars and bikes are taken off the sidewalk in New York.
C. It’s possible to make the streets safe for pedestrians in New York.
D. Bikes are used as a means of transport in 21 st century New York City.
2.According to the passage, which of the following CANNOT support the opponents of these new bike lanes?
A. Drivers lose parking spots and lanes for cars.
B. We took what used to be a full street so the road is broader than before.
C. The two-way bike lane is dangerous to older residents.
D. The removal of one bike lane through a neighbourhood in Brooklyn was not supported by the majority of New Yorkers.
3.“A mandate” in Paragraph 8 was referred to a demand or command from ________.
A. the authorityB. the government
C. the supportersD. the public
4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A. Ride on National Bike-to-Work Day
B. A Bike Lane Divides New Yorkers
C. A New Bike Lane Appears in New York
D. Who Wins an Election
