英語四級閱讀練習(xí)附答案-15 數(shù)學(xué)能力

　　people appear to born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably(堅(jiān)定地) that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impress accuracy---one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of nothing that they have placed five knives, spoons and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thusmastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second entera second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.

 

　　Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped----or, as the case might be, bumped into---- concepts that adults take for quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed(說服) into finding the total. Such studies have suggested that the rudiments(基本原理) of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers-----the idea of a oneness, a twoness, a twoness that applies to any class of objects and is aprerequisite(先決條件) for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table----is itself far from innate.

　　練習(xí)題：

　　Choose correct answers to the question:

　　1.After children have helped to set the table with impressive accuracy, they ______.

　　A.are able to help parents serve dishes

　　B.tend to do more complicated housework

　　C.are able to figure out the total pieces

　　D.can enter a second-grade mathematics class

　　2.It is _____to believe that the quality of water keeps unchanged when it is contained in two different glasses.

　　A.easy to persuade children

　　B.hard for most children

　　C.the innate of most children

　　D.difficult for both adults and children

　　3.It can be inferred from the passage that children are likely to _____when they are asked to count all the balls of different colors

　　A.give the accurate answer

　　B.count the balls of each color

　　C.be too confused to do anything

　　D.make minor mistakes

　　4.According to this passage,_____is mastered by birth.

　　A.the ability to survive in a desert island

　　B.the way of setting tables

　　C.the basic principles of mathematics

　　D.the concept of oneness

　　5.What’s the author‘s attitude towards “children’s numerical skills”?

　　A.Critical.

　　B.Approving.

　　C.Questioning.

　　D.Objective.

　　1.[C] 第1段第3句說的是題干內(nèi)容，由第4句Soon…句中的five knives...等數(shù)字可知孩子會數(shù)數(shù)了,故可直接選出C。

　　2.[B] 第2段第3句中they refused... to concede...中的they指children,對比題干與原文意思可知孩子們是“難以相信(理解)，故選B。

　　3.[B] 第2段倒數(shù)第3句。文章是以pencils為例進(jìn)行說明的，題目中換成了balls,但是目的是相同的，都是為了表述兒童更愿意根據(jù)顏色的不同來數(shù)數(shù)，而不愿數(shù)總數(shù)，故B正確。A、D都沒有提到;C的說法過于絕對，與文章表述也不相符。

　　4.[B] 這道題目需要認(rèn)真理解了文章的意思才能正確作答。第1段的主題是:有些數(shù)字概念是人天生就有的;第2段的主題是:有一些是后天學(xué)習(xí)獲得的。B是第1段中明確給出的例子，因此這個例子應(yīng)該支持該段的主題。A 錯誤地理解了第1段最后舉的例子。C和D在第2段最后提到,都不是先天獲取的數(shù)學(xué)知識。

　　5.[D] 考査全文的觀點(diǎn)態(tài)度?？v觀全文可知，作者很客觀、如實(shí)地說明事實(shí)，分兩段報(bào)告了心理學(xué)家的研究結(jié)果，并未做出任何評價，故D正確。題目中的children’s numerical skills即全文的主題。