Section II Resdiong Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions:

　　Read the following four texts. answer the question after each text by choosing A,B,C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.(40 points)

　　Text 1

　　Homework has never been terribly popular with students and even many parents, but in recent years it has been particularly scorned. School districts across the country, most recently Los Angeles Unified, are revising their thinking on his educational ritual. Unfortunately, L.A. Unified has produced an inflexible policy which mandates that with the exception of some advanced courses, homework may no longer count for more than 10% of a student’s academic grade.

　　This rule is meant to address the difficulty that students from impoverished or chaotic homes might have in completing their homework. But the policy is unclear and contradictory. Certainly, no homework should be assigned that students cannot do without expensive equipment. But if the district is essentially giving a pass to students who do not do their homework because of complicated family lives, it is going riskily close to the implication that standards need to be lowered for poor children.

　　District administrators say that homework will still be a pat of schooling: teachers are allowed to assign as much of it as they want. But with homework counting for no more than 10% of their grades, students can easily skip half their homework and see vey little difference on their report cards. Some students might do well on state tests without completing their homework, but what about the students who performed well on the tests and did their homework? It is quite possible that the homework helped. Yet rather than empowering teachers to find what works best for their students, the policy imposes a flat, across-the-board rule.

　　At the same time, the policy addresses none of the truly thorny questions about homework. If the district finds homework to be unimportant to its students’ academic achievement, it should move to reduce or eliminate the assignments, not make them count for almost nothing. Conversely, if homework does nothing to ensure that the homework students are not assigning more than they are willing to review and correct.

　　The homework rules should be put on hold while the school board, which is responsible for setting educational policy, looks into the matter and conducts public hearings. It is not too late for L.A. Unified to do homework right.

　　21.It is implied in paragraph 1 that nowadays homework_____.

　　[A] is receiving more criticism

　　[B]is no longer an educational ritual

　　[C]is not required for advanced courses

　　[D]is gaining more preferences

　　22.L.A.Unified has made the rule about homework mainly because poor students_____.

　　[A]tend to have moderate expectations for their education

　　[B]have asked for a different educational standard

　　[C]may have problems finishing their homework

　　[D]have voiced their complaints about homework

　　23.According to Paragraph 3,one problem with the policy is that it may____.

　　[A]discourage students from doing homework

　　[B]result in students' indifference to their report cards

　　[C]undermine the authority of state tests

　　[D]restrict teachers' power in education

　　24. As mentioned in Paragraph 4, a key question unanswered about homework is whether______. [A] it should be eliminated

　　[B]it counts much in schooling

　　[C]it places extra burdens on teachers

　　[D]it is important for grades

　　25.A suitable title for this text could be______.

　　[A]Wrong Interpretation of an Educational Policy

　　[B]A Welcomed Policy for Poor Students

　　[C]Thorny Questions about Homework

　　[D]A Faulty Approach to Homework

　　Text2

　　Pretty in pink: adult women do not rememer being so obsessed with the colour, yet it is pervasive in our young girls’ lives. Tt is not that pink is intrinsically bad, but it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow and, though it may celebrate girlhood in one way, it also repeatedly and firmly fuses girls’ identity to appearance. Then it presents that connection, even among two-year-olds, between girls as not only innocent but as evidence of innocence. Looking around, I despaired at the singular lack of imagination about girls’ lives and interests.

　　Girls’ attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American Studies, it is not. Children were not colour-coded at all until the early 20th century: in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What’s more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses.When nursery colours were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolised femininity. It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children’s marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem inherently attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.

　　I had not realised how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kins, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children’s behaviour: wrong. Turns out, acdording to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularised as a marketing trick by clothing manufacrurers in the 1930s.

　　Trade publications counselled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a “third stepping stone” between infant wear and older kids’ clothes. Tt was only after “toddler”became a common shoppers’ term that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. Splitting kids, or adults,into ever-tinier categories has proved a sure-fire way to boost profits. And one of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences – or invent them where they did not previously exist.

　　26.By saying "it is...the rainbow"(Line 3, Para.1),the author means pink______.

　　[A]should not be the sole representation of girlhood

　　[B]should not be associated with girls' innocence

　　[C]cannot explain girls' lack of imagination

　　[D]cannot influence girls' lives and interests

　　27.According to Paragraph 2, which of the following is true of colours?

　　[A]Colours are encoded in girls' DNA.

　　[B]Blue used to be regarded as the colour for girls.

　　[C]Pink used to be a neutral colour in symbolising genders.

　　[D]White is prefered by babies.

　　28.The author suggests that our perception of children's psychological development was much influenced by_____.

　　[A]the marketing of products for children

　　[B]the observation of children's nature

　　[C]researches into children's behavior

　　[D]studies of childhood consumption

　　29.We may learn from Paragraph 4 that department stores were advised to_____.

　　[A]focus on infant wear and older kids' clothes

　　[B]attach equal importance to different genders

　　[C]classify consumers into smaller groups

　　[D]create some common shoppers' terms

　　30.It can be concluded that girls' attraction to pink seems to be____.

　　[A] clearly explained by their inborn tendency

　　[B]fully understood by clothing manufacturers

　　[C] mainly imposed by profit-driven businessmen

　　[D]well interpreted by psychological experts

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