Passage One

　　Reading is the key to school success and, like any skill, it takes practice. A child learns to walk by practicing until he no longer has to think about how to put one foot in front of the other. A great athlete practices until he can play quickly, accurately, without thinking. Tennis players call that "being in the zone". Educators call it "automatically". A child learns to read by sounding out the letters and decoding the words. With practice, he stumbles less and less, reading by the phrase. With automaticity, he doesn't have to think about decoding the words, so he can concentrate on the meaning of the text.

　　It can begin as early as first grade. In a recent study of children in Illinois school, Alan Rossman of Northwestern University found automatic readers in the first grade who were reading almost three times as fast as the other children and scoring twice as high on comprehension tests. At fifth grade, the automatic readers were reading twice as fast as the others, and still outscoring them in accuracy, comprehension and vocabulary.

　　"It's not I. Q. but the amount of time a child spends reading that is the key to automaticity," according to Rossman. Any child who spends at least 3.5 to 4 hours a week reading books or magazines will in all likelihood reach automaticity. At home, where the average child spends 25 hours a week watching television, it can happen by turning off the set just one night in favor of reading.

　　You can test your child by giving him a paragraph or two to read aloud -something unfamiliar but appropriate to his age. If he reads aloud with expression, with a sense of the meaning of the sentences, he probably is an automatic reader.

　　If he reads haltingly, one word at a time, without expression or meaning, he needs more practice.

　　Questions:

　　1. What is the one word that Para. 1 defines?

　　2. What does the Illinois study show?

　　3. Even a bright child still needs ________________ .

　　4. What does "outscore" mean in Para. 2?

　　5. The main idea of the passage is that ______________ .

　　Passage Two

　　Psychologists have found that only about two percent of adults use their creativity, compared with ten percent of seven-year-old children. When five-year-olds were tested, the results soared to ninety percent! Curiosity and originality are daily occurrences for the small child, but somehow most of us lose the freedom and flexibility of the child as we grow older. The need "to follow directions" and "do-it-right", plus the many societal constraints we put on ourselves, prevent us from using our creative potential.

　　It is never too late to develop our creative potential. Some of us, however, find it difficult to think in imaginative and flexible ways because of our set pattern of approaching problems. When we are inflexible in our approach to situations, we close our minds to creative possibilities.

　　Being creative doesn't necessarily mean being a genius. It means looking at situations in a new way or putting something together in a new form that makes sense... Spontaneity is one of the key elements of creativity.

　　If you were to ask someone, "What's half of eight?" and received the answer, "Zero," you might laugh and say, "That's wrong!" But the figure 8 can be visualized as two zeros, one on top of the other; it can also be seen as two "3"s standing face to face.

　　The ability to visualize our environment in new ways opens our perspective and allows us to make all kinds of discoveries. If each of us asked the question "Why?" more often and investigated other alternatives to problem solving, our lives would be more interesting and exciting.

　　Questions:

　　6. Compared with children, in terms of using their creativity adults _________ .

　　7. What disappears when one becomes older?

　　8. Adults' set pattern of approaching problems results in ____________ .

　　9. "Half of 8 is zero" is used as an example to show _______________ .

　　10. "Being creative" means being able to _________________ .

　　Passage Three

　　Water problems in the future will become intense and more complex. Our increasing population will tremendously increase urban waste, primarily sewage. On the other hand, increasing demands for water will decrease substantially the amount of water available for diluting wastes. Rapidly expanding industries which involve more and more complex chemical processes will produce larger volumes of liquid wastes, and many of these will contain chemicals which are noxious. To feed our rapidly expanding population, agriculture will have to be intensified. This will involve ever-increasing quantities of agricultural chemicals. From this, it is apparent that drastic steps must be taken immediately to develop corrective measures for the pollution problem.

　　There are two ways in which this pollution problem can be dwindled. The first relates to the treatment of wastes to decrease their pollution hazard. This involves the processing of solid wastes "prior to" disposal and the treatment of liquid wastes, or effluents (流出物), to permit the reuse of the water or minimize pollution upon final disposal.

　　A second approach is to develop an economic use for all or a part of the wastes.

　　Farm manure is spread in fields as a nutrient or organic supplement. Effluents from sewage disposal plants are used in some areas both for irrigation and for the nutrients contained. Effluents from other processing plants may also be used as a supplemental source of water. Many industries, such as meat and poultry processing plants, are currently converting former waste products into marketable byproducts. Other industries are exploring potential economic uses for their waste products.

　　Questions:

　　11. The purpose of this passage is _________ .

　　12. Demands for water will go up along with ____________ .

　　13. The readers can conclude that some industries are now _____________ .

　　14. What　should　effluents　from　sewage　disposal plants be used as?

　　15. The author develops the passage through the use of _______________ .

　　Answers:

　　1. Automaticity.

　　2. The automatic reader's high speed doesn't affect his comprehension.

　　3. practice to be an automatic reader

　　4. To score higher than.

　　5. automaticity is important for efficient reading

　　6. use less creativity than children

　　7. The freedom and flexibility.

　　8. being difficult to think imaginatively and flexibly

　　9. different ways of solving a problem

　　10. look at situations in a new way

　　11. to acquaint the reader with water pollution problems

　　12. the expanding population

　　13. making economic use of wastes

　　14. A supplemental source of water.

　　15. opinions and personal observations

　　(文/杨自德；英语辅导报大学二年级版03～04学年第22期；版权归英语辅导报社所有，独家网络合作伙伴新浪教育，未经许可，不得以任何形式进行转载。)