Can you believe your eyes? A recent experiment suggests that the answer to that question may depend on your age.
Martin Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, led the team of scientists. In this experiment, Doherty and his team tested the perception(观察力) of some people, using pictures of some orange circles. The researchers showed the same pictures to two groups of people. The first group included 151 children aged 4 to 10, and the second group included 24 adults aged 18 to 25.
The first group of pictures showed two circles alone on a white background. One of the circles was larger than the other, and these people were asked to identify the larger one. Four-year-olds identified the correct circle 79 percent of the time. Adults identified the correct circle 95 percent of the time.
Next, both groups were shown a picture where the orange circles, again of different sizes, were surrounded by gray circles. Here’s where the trick lies in. In some of the pictures, the smaller orange circle was surrounded by even smaller gray circles — making the orange circle appear larger than the other orange circle, which was the real larger one. And the larger orange circle was surrounded by even bigger gray circles — so it appeared to be smaller than the real smaller orange circle.
When young children aged 4 to 6 looked at these tricky pictures, they weren’t fooled—they were still able to find the bigger circle with roughly the same accuracy as before. Older children and adults, on the other hand, did not do as well. Older children often identified the smaller circle as the larger one, and adults got it wrong most of the time.
As children get older, Doherty said, their brains may develop the ability to identify visual context. In other words, they will begin to process the whole picture at once: the tricky gray circles, as well as the orange circle in the middle. As a result, they’re more likely to fall for this kind of visual trick.
【小题1】Doherty and his team of scientists did an experiment to evaluate       .

A．children’s and adults’ eye-sight

B．people’s ability to see accurately

C．children’s and adults’ brains

D．the influence of people’s age

【小题2】When asked to find the larger circle，________.

A．children at 6 got it wrong 79 % of the time with no gray ones around

B．only adults over 18 got it right 95% of the time with gray ones around

C．children at 4 got it right about 79 % of the time with gray ones around

D．adults got it right most of the time with gray ones around

【小题3】 According to the passage, we can know that________.

A．a smaller orange circle appears bigger on a white background

B．an orange circle appears bigger than a gray one of the same size

C．a circle surrounded by other circles looks bigger than its real size

D．a circle surrounded by bigger ones looks smaller than its real size

【小题4】Visual context may work when children get older than________.

A．4

B．6

C．10

D．18

【小题5】Why are younger children not fooled?

A．Because they are smarter than older children and adults.

B．Because older people are influenced by their experience.

C．Because people’s eyes become weaker as they grow older.

D．Because their brain can hardly notice related things together.

Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claws (爪) on its wings when young. They build their homes about 4.6m above the river, an important feature (特征) for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin.

In appearance, the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside. The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature, though, is only found in the young.

Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip. Using these four claws, together with the beak (喙), they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive（远古的） birds must have done. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly, they lose their claws.

During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes.

What is the text mainly about?

A．Hoatzins in dry and rainy seasons.

B．The relatives and enemies of hoatzins.

C．Primitive birds and hoatzins of the Amazon.

D．The appearance and living habits of hoatzins.

Young hoatzins are different from their parents in that____ ．

A．they look like young cuckoos

B．they have claws on the wings

C．they eat a lot like a cow

D．they live on river banks

What can we infer about primitive birds from the text?

A．They had claws to help them climb.

B．They could fly long distances.

C．They had four wings like hoatzins.

D．They had a head with long feathers on the top.

Why do hoatzins collect together in smaller groups when the rainy season comes?

A．To find more food.

B．To protect themselves better.

C．To keep themselves warm.

D．To produce their young.

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。
___【小题1】___ This was not because the woods and fields were always far away, but because they were too far from the city to permit people to make a day trip between morning and nightfall.
___【小题2】___ He decided to turn his little school house into a dormitory for the summer holidays. Anyone who brought his sleeping bag and cooking equipment along could stay there for a very small quantity of money. The idea was a success. A few years later, the school house was much too small to hold the many young people who wanted to stay there. ___【小题3】___ This was the first hostel (青年招待所).
Today, young students and workers of every country can meet in the hostel and get to know each other. When young people arrive at the hostel, they have only to show their cards of membership in a hostel organization in their own country. ___【小题4】___
Often, at the evening meal, a group of boys and girls from various parts of the country or world will happen to meet at the same hostel. They may put their food together and prepare a dinner with many kinds of dishes. Sometimes a program will be organized after the meal with dances, songs, or short talks followed by a question period．___【小题5】___ For this reason, a few weeks spent ‘hostelling’ can be just as useful a part of one’s education as classes in school.

A．In 1970, a young German school master had an idea which changed this situation.

B．People can stay in the hostel if they brought enough equipment with them.

C．One can learn a lot about other places, just by meeting people from those places.

D．As a result, a dormitory was set up in an old castle nearby.

E. For years, children in the industrial areas of Europe seldom left their cities to see the beauties of the countryside.
F. More and more young people went to the hostel for summer holidays.
G. This card will permit them to stay in a hostel all over the world for very low prices.

Poet Dean Young has dealt with impermanence（ 无常）a lot in his career, but it's a particularly strong theme in Young's latest collection, Fall Higher．The new collection was published in April, just days after the poet received a life-saving heart transplant （移植） after about a decade of living with a weakening heart condition．
Young, whose work is often frank and rich with twisted humor, tells NPR's Renee Montaigne that as he recovers from operation, he's also slowly returning to his everyday writing habits．
"I'm getting back to it," Young says．"Not with the sort of concentration and sort of flame that I look forward to in the future, but I am blackening some pages．"
And on those blackened pages you'll find poems like " How Grasp Green," which carries themes of springtime and rebirth．It's one of the first poems Young has written since his transplant．
It's easy to spot clues （线索） to Young's awful health situation in the lines of his poetry. Fall Higher's "Vintage" opens with, "Because I will die soon, I fall asleep, during the lecture on the ongoing emergency．" And the poem "-The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish—published in The /Vew Barker in February —opens with the CT scan that revealed Young's heart condition．
Young says "Rhythms" was written about the beginning of his illness．
"I had been having a lot of physical pain so that I could hardly walk a block．I got sent to a gastroenterologist and he did a series of tests, and then the tests came back to me and it was all heart related," he says．" And the outlook wasn't good．
Hearts tend to come up a lot in poetry, and that's especially true of Young's work, which has clearly been influenced by the troubles of his own heart,
"A lot of times, it's not just a metaphor （比喻） ," Young says．"For me, it's an actual concern because I've been living with this disease for over 10 years．My father died of heart problems when he was 49, so it's been a sort of shadowy concern for me my whole life．
But Young's poems also deal with more abstract matters of the heart．He wrote Fall Higher's, "Late Valentine" for his wife．"We've been married since late November and most of it has been spent in the hospital," Young says of his marriage to poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who says " 'Late Valentine' is very sweet．
Today, Young says, his friends can't help but comment on how pink his cheeks have become—the result of a new heart and better circulation （循环）．But Young wrote the poems of Fall Higher before the transplant, at a time when, at its weakest point, his old heart was pumping at 8 percent of what it should have been．
He was staring death in the face—but he was still able to look at his life and see art
in it.
Young's work also touches on themes of randomness and fate —two factors that contributed to him getting a second chance in the form of a new heart from a 22-year-old student．
"Everything in life is molecules （分子） bouncing against molecules," Young says, and having a successful transplant is no different．" Somebody had to die; it had to be a fit; my blood and his blood had to not have an argument; the heart had to be transported; I had to get it．"
There were, in short, an amazing number of variables （变量） that led to Young
being here today.
"I just feel enormous gratitude," he says of his donor （捐献者）．"He gave me a heart so I'm still alive-"I'm sure I'm going to think about this person for the rest of my life．"
【小题1】The poetry collection Fall Higher _______．

A．was published in February

B．refers darkness as its main theme

C．is Young's latest collection of poetry

D．was written after Young's heart transplant

【小题2】We can learn from the text that Young _______．

A．was born with heart disease

B．received a heart transplant in February

C．married a female poet after he wrote "Late Valentine"

D．wrote a poem for his wife in his collection

【小题3】What does the writer try to say in Paragraph 3?

A．The writer expected some bright future, but he was disappointed．

B．The writer had less enthusiasm than before, but he still kept on writing．

C．The writer devoted more time to poems, so he grasped a good chance．

D．The writer wrote poems with less enthusiasm, so he quitted for a while．

【小题4】Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．"How Grasp Green" is the first poem in Fall Higher．

B．Young began all his poems with his illness．

C．Young's father died when Young was 49 years old．

D．Young's health situation is mentioned in his poetry．

【小题5】What is the text mainly about?

A．Dean Young and his latest collection．

B．Dean Young and his heart problems．

C．The meaning of Fall Higher．

D．An analysis of Dean Young's poems．

 

Now let’s compare the Chinese diet with the Western diet. Some say that the Western food is better than the Chinese food. Do you think so?

    First, let’s make a standard(标准) of the better diet. We don’t have to care much about the shape, the colour and the taste of the food. We say the one that has more nutrition, is easier to be digested and absorbed(吸收) by the body and then makes us more energetic should be the better. In this way, I believe, our Chinese food should be better than the Western food. Why?

    I think the Western food contains too much fat and sugar. I know both fat and sugar are a kind of nutrition we need in our body, but too much of them will make your body harmed. That’s why so many westerners get ill when young. Besides, westerners have to use knives, forks and spoons to help them have their meals. It seems that they couldn’t have their meals without force.

    But in Chinese food we have those mainly from plants including their seeds, leaves and roots together with a little meat such as chicken, fish, pork, mutton and so on. With so much plant food we can get enough calories as it is rich in fiber, protein, calcium and fat. With a little meat we can make our body even stronger. Besides, we use chopsticks, bowls and plates to help us have our meals. All of these make us harmonious to nature and everybody around us. So I say our Chinese food makes us wise, happy, healthy and wealthy.

1. What is the passage mainly about?

      A. The taste of the Chinese food.

      B. The taste of the Western food.  

      C. The comparison between the two kinds of food.     

D. The tastes of both of the two kinds of foods.

2. Which is the standard of measuring a diet?

      A. Quantity of nutrition in the food.

      B. Whether it is easy to be digested and absorbed.

      C. Whether it can offer us enough energy.      

      D. All of the above.

3. Which is the writer’s attitude towards diet according to the passage?

A. Western food should be better because it contains much fat and sugar.

B. Western food should be better because contains much calories.

C. Chinese food should be better because it doesn’t contain too much fat or sugar

D. Chinese food should be better because it doesn’t have much nutrition.

4. According to the passage, which statement is true?

A. The standard (标准) of a better diet depends on the shape, color and the taste of the food.

B. Fat and sugar in the food do harm to our body.

C. Westerners use knives, chopsticks and spoons to help them have meals while Chinese use bowls, forks and plates.

D. Chinese food and the way Chinese have meals show Chinese are more harmonious with nature.