Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions: In this section, there is a passage withten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in aword bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making yourchoices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letteron Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words inthe bank more than once.

　　Questions 36 to 45 are based on the following passage.

　　Many Brazilians cannot read. In 2000, a quarter of those aged 15 and older were functionallyilliterate (文盲). Many 36 do not want to. Only one literate adult in three reads books. The 37Brazilian reads 1.8 non-academic books a year, less than half the figure in Europe and theUnited States. In a recent survey .of reading habits, Brazilians came 27th out of 30 countries.Argentines, their neighbors, 38 18th.

　　The government and businesses are all struggling in different ways to change this. On March 13the government 39 a National Plan for Books and Reading. This seeks to boost reading, byfounding libraries and financing publishers among other things.

　　One discouragement to reading is that books are 40 . Most books have small print-runs,pushing up their price.

　　But Brazilians' indifference to books has deeper roots. Centuries of slavery meant thecounties leaders long 41 education. Primary schooling became universal only in the 1990s.

　　All this me Brazil’s book market has the biggest growth 42 in the western world.

　　But reading is a difficult habit to form. Brazilians bought fewer books in 2004, 89 million,including textbooks 43 by the government, than they did in 1991. Last year the director ofBrazil's national library 44 . He complained that he had half the librarians he needed andtermites (白蟻) had eaten much of the 45 . That ought to be a cause for national shame.

　　注意：此部分試題請在答題卡2上作答。

　　A)average

　　B)collection

　　C)distributed

　　D)exhibition

　　E)expensive

　　F)launched

　　G)named

　　H)neglected

　　I) normal

　　J) particularly

　　K) potential

　　L) quit

　　M) ranked

　　N) simply

　　O) treasured

　　Section B

　　Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs Identify the paragraphfrom which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Eachparagraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter onAnswer Sheet 2.

　　The Touch-Screen Generation

　　A) On a chilly day last spring, a few dozen developers of children’s apps(應用程序)for phonesand tablets(平板電腦)gathered at an old beach resort in Monterey, California, to show off theirgames. The gathering was organized by Warren Buckleitner, a longtime reviewer of interactivechildren’s media. Buckleitner spent the breaks testing whether his own remote-controlhelicopter could reach the hall's second story, while various children who had come with theirparents looked up in awe(敬畏)and delight. But mostly they looked down, at the iPads andother tablets displayed around the hall like so many open boxes of candy. I walked around andtalked with developers, and several quoted a famous saying of Maria Montessori’s, “The handsare the instruments of man’s intelligence.”

　　B) What, really, would Maria Montessori have made of this scene? The 30 or so children herewere not down at the shore poking(戳)their fingers in the sand or running them along stonesor picking seashells. Instead they were all inside, alone or in groups of two or three, their facesa few inches from a screen, their hands doing things Montessori surely did not imagine.

　　C) In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy on very young children andmedia. In 1999, the group had discouraged television viewing for children younger than 2, citingresearch on brain development that showed this age group’s critical need for “directinteractions with parents and other significant care givers.” The updated report began byacknowledging that things had changed significantly since then. In 2006, 90% of parents saidthat their children younger than 2 consumed some form of electronic media. Nevertheless, thegroup took largely the same approach it did in 1999, uniformly discouraging passive mediause, on any type of screen, for these kids. (For older children, the academy noted, “high-quality programs” could have “educational benefits.”) The 2011 report mentioned “smart cellphone” and “new screen” technologies, but did not address interactive apps. Nor did it bringup the possibility that has likely occurred to those 90% of American parents that some goodmightcome from those little swiping(在電子產品上刷)fingers.

　　D) I had come to the developers’ conference partly because I hoped that this particular set ofparents, enthusiastic as they were about interactive media, might help me out of this problem,that they might offer some guiding principle for American parents who are clearly never goingto meet the academy’s ideals, and at some level do not want to. Perhaps this group would beable to express clearly some benefits of the new technology that the more cautious doctorsweren’t ready to address.

　　E) I fell into conversation with a woman who had helped develop Montessori Letter Sounds,an app that teaches preschoolers the Montessori methods of spelling. She was a formerMontessori teacher and a mother of four. I myself have three children who are all fans of thetouch screen. What games did her kids like to play, I asked, hoping for suggestions I couldtake home.

　　“They don’t play all that much.”

　　Really? Why not?

　　“Because I don’t allow it. We have a rule of no screen time during the week, unless it’s clearly

　　educational. ”

　　No screen time? None at all? That seems at the outer edge of restrictive, even by thestandards of

　　overcontrolling parents.

　　“On the weekends, they can play. I give them a limit of half an hour and then stop. Enough.”

　　F) Her answer so surprised me that I decided to ask some of the other developers who werealso parents what their domestic ground rules for screen time were. One said only on airplanesand long car rides. Another said Wednesdays and weekends, for half an hour. The mostpermissive said half an hour a day, which was about my rule at home. At one point I sat withone of the biggest developers of e-book apps for kids, and his family. The small kid was startingto fuss in her high chair, so the mom stuck an iPad in front of her and played a short movie soeveryone else could enjoy their lunch. When she saw me watching, she gave me the universaltense look of mothers who feel they are being judged. “At home,” she assured me, “I only lether watch movies in Spanish. ’’

　　G) By their reactions, these parents made me understand the problem of our age: astechnology becomes almost everywhere in our lives. American parents are becoming more, notless, distrustful of what it might be doing to their children. Technological ability has not, forparents, translated into comfort and ease. On the one hand, parents want their children toswim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate(航行)all their lives; on theother hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them. Parents end uptreating tablets as precision surgical(外科的)instruments, devices that might performmiracles for their child's IQ and help him win some great robotics competition—but only if theyare used just so. Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can’tmake eye contact and has a girlfriend who lives only in the virtual world.

　　H) Norman Rockwell, a 20th-century artist, never painted Boy Swiping Finger on Screen, andour own vision of a perfect childhood has never been adjusted to accommodate that now-common scene. Add to that our modern fear that every parenting decision may have lastingconsequences - that every minute of enrichment lost or mindless entertainment indulged(放縱的)will add up to some permanent handicap(障礙)in the future—and you have deep guiltand confusion. To date, no body of research has proved that the iPad will make yourpreschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her nervoussystem the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takessome academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what is a parent to do?

　　46. The author attended the conference, hoping to find some guiding principles for parentingin the electronic age.

　　47. American parents are becoming more doubtful about the benefits technology is said tobring to their children.

　　48. Some experts believe that human intelligence develops by the use of hands.

　　49. The author found a former Montessori teacher exercising strict control over her kids,screen time.

　　50. Research shows interaction with people is key to babies’ brain development.

　　51. So far there has been no scientific proof of the educational benefits of iPads.

　　52. American parents worry that overuse of tablets will create problems with their kids’interpersonal relationships.

　　53. The author expected developers of children's apps to specify the benefits of the newtechnology.

　　54. The kids at the gathering were more fascinated by the iPads than by the helicopter.

　　55. The author permits her children to use the screen for at most half an hour a day.