Question

People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably 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 impressive accuracy—one plate, one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs.  Soon they are capable of noting that they have placed five knives, spoons and forks on the table and, a bit later, which this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered 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 received seven years later, he or she could enter a 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 granted, as they refused, for instance, to concede that quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short stout 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 into finding the total. Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers--the idea of aloneness, a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table—is itself far from innate.

　　 1. What's the main idea about this passage?

　　　　 A. The use of mathematics in child psychology.

　　　　 B. Trends in teaching mathematics to children.

　　　　 C. The development of mathematical ability in children.

　　　　 D. The fundamental concepts of mathematics that children must learn.

　　 2. It can be inferred from the passage that children normally learn simple counting——.

　　　　 A. soon after they learn to talk 

B. after they reach second grade in school

　　　　 C. by looking at the clock

　　　　 D. when they begin to be mathematically mature

　　 3. According to the passage, when small children were asked to count a pile of red and blue pencils they——.

　　　　 A. counted the number of pencils of each color

　　　　 B. counted only the pencils of their favorite color

　　　　 C. guessed at the total number of pencils

　　　　 D. subtracted the number of red pencils from the number of blue pencils

　　 4. What does the word “They” (Para. 3, Line 5) refer?

　　　　 A. Children　　    B. Pencils　　    C. Mathematicians  　　 D. Studies

 

Answer 1

答案：C;A;A;D
解析：

1．C。主旨题。第一段指出小孩似乎生来就具有计算能力，但接下来的叙述说明孩子的数学能力是需要 努力学习才能逐步发展的，所以答案为C。     2．A。细节题。见文章第一段第三句。     3．A。文章第三段第一句，当孩子们数一堆铅笔时，他们会很自然地推算出蓝笔有几支，红笔有几支，但你必须引导他们，才能使他们数出总数。     4．D。词汇理解题。从文章第三段第二、三句，可得知“they”指第二句中的“Such studies”。

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