2013年职称英语考试综合类阅读判断题3

　　Students should be jealous. Not only do babies get to doze their days away, but they've also mastered the fine art of learning in their sleep.

　　By the time babies are a year old they can recognize a lot of sounds and even simple words. Marie Cheour at the university of Turku in Finland suspected that they might progress this fast because they learn language while they sleep as well as when they are awake.

　　To test the theory, Cheour and their colleagues studied 45 newborn babies in the first days of their lives. They exposed all the infants to an hour of Finnish vowel sounds — one that sounds like "oo", another like "ee" and a third boundary vowel peculiar to Finnish and similar languages that sounds like something in between. EEG recording of the infants brains before and after the session showed that the newborns could not distinguish the sounds.

　　Fifteen of the babies then went back with their mothers, while the rest were split into two sleep-study groups. One group was exposed throughout their night-time sleeping hours to the same three vowels, while the others listened to the other, easier-to-distinguish vowel sounds.

　　When tested in the morning, and again in the evening, the babies who'd heard the tricky boundary vowels all night showed brainwave activity indicating that they could now recognize this sound. They could identify the sound even when its pitch was changed, while none of the other babies could pick up the boundary vowel at all.

　　Cheour doesn't know how babies accomplish this nighttime learning, but she suspects that the special ability might indicate that unlike adults, babies don't "turn off" their cerebral cortex while they sleep. The skill probably fades in the course of the first years of life, she adds — so forget the idea that you can pick up the tricky French vowels as an adult just by slipping a language tape under your pillow. But while it may not help grown-ups, Cheour is hoping to use the sleeping hours to give remedial help to babies who are genetically at risk of language disorders.

　　学生们应该感到嫉妒。婴儿们不仅整天睡觉，而且他们还能在睡眠中掌握学习的艺术。

　　当婴儿一周岁时他们可以识别出很多声音，甚至简单的单词。芬兰Turku大学的Marie Cheour怀疑他们进步这么快的原因可能是不仅在醒着时而且在睡觉时也在学语言。

　　为了检验这个理论，Cheour和她的同事们在45个新生儿生命最初的几天里对他们进行了研究。他们让所有的婴儿听一个小时的芬兰元音——其中一个类似“oo”，另一个类似“ee”，还有一个芬兰语和类似语言特有的边界音，听起来像两者之间的声音。在此之前和之后的婴儿大脑的电脑图记录显示新生儿不能辨别这几个声音。

　　然后，其中15个婴儿随他们的母亲回去了，而另外的婴儿被分成两个睡觉时学习小组。一个组的婴儿夜间睡觉的时候还放着同三个元音的录音，而其他的婴儿只听其他的较容易区分的元音。

　　在早晚各进行了测试之后，那些整晚都在听难识别的边界音的婴儿显示出的脑波活动说明他们现在能够识别这个新声音了。甚至当这个音的音调变化时他们仍能够识别出来，而其他的婴儿没有一个能识别这个边界音。

　　Cheour不知道婴儿是如何完成这个夜间学习的，但是她怀疑这种特殊能力说明跟大人不一样，婴儿睡觉时没有把大脑皮层“关掉”。她接着说，这种技能可能在生命的最初过程中渐渐消失，因此应忘掉这样一个想法，即：你作为一个成年人只需要把一盘语言录音带塞在枕头下面就可以学会法语中一些麻烦的音。但是，虽然这并不能帮助成年人，Cheour希望这些睡眠时间可用来帮助那些从基因上来说会发生语言障碍的婴儿。

　　★1).Babies can learn language even in their sleep.-R

　　★2).An infant can recognize a lot of vowels by the time he or she is a year old.-N

　　★3).Finish vowels are easy to distinguish.-N

　　★4).The three vowels mentioned in this article are all Finnish sounds.- R

　　★5).The study shows that the infant’s cerebral cortex is working while he is asleep.-R

　　★6).If an adult wants to learn a language faster, he can put a language tape under his pillow.-W

　　★7).Cheour’s finding is worthless.-W

　　Women who live in the world's highest communities tend to give birth to under-weight babies, a new study suggests. These babies may grow into adults with a high risk of heart disease and strokes.

　　Research has hinted that newborns in mountain communities are lighter than average. But it wasn't clear whether this is due to reduced oxygen levels at high altitude or because their mothers are under-nourished — many people who live at high altitudes are relatively poor compared with those living lower down.

　　To find out more, Dino Giussani and his team at Cambridge University studied the records of 400 births in Bolivia during 1976 and 1998. The babies were born in both rich and poor areas of two cities: La Paz and Santa Cruz. L Paz is the highest city in the world, at 3.65 kilometers above sea level, while Santa Cruz is much lower, at 0.44 kilometers.

　　Sure enough, Giussani found that the average birthweight of babies in La Paz was significantly lower than in Santa Cruz. This was true in both high and low-income families. Even babies born to poor families in Santa Cruz were heavier on average than babies born to wealthy families in lofty La Paz. "We were very surprised by this result," says Giussani.

　　The results suggest that babies born at high altitude are deprived of oxygen before birth. "This may trigger the release or suppression of hormones that regulate growth of the unborn child," says Giussani.

　　His team also found that high-altitude babies tended to have relatively larger heads compared with their bodies. This is probably because a fetus starved of oxygen will send oxygenated blood to the brain in preference to rest of the body.

　　Giussani wants to find out if such babies have a higher risk of disease in later life. People born in La Paz might be prone to heart trouble in adulthood, for example. Low birthweight is a risk factor for coronary heart disease. And newborns with a high ratio of head size to body weight are often predisposed to high blood pressure and strokes in later life.

　　一个新的研究表明住在世界高海拔地区的女人通常生下体重不足的婴儿。这些婴儿在长大成人后得心脏病和中风的风险很大。

　　研究暗示在山区出生的新生儿低于平均体重。但是还不清楚这是由于在高海拔的地方氧气不足，还是由于他们的母亲没有获得足够的营养——许多住在高海拔地方的人相对都比住在低处的人穷。

　　为了了解更多的情况，剑桥大学的迪诺·吉萨尼和他的团队研究了1997年到1998年玻利维亚的400个新生儿的记录。这些婴儿出生于两个城市的富有和贫困地区：拉帕兹和散塔克鲁兹。拉帕兹是世界上最高的城市，海拔3.65千米，而散塔克鲁兹低很多，海拔440米。

　　当然，吉萨尼发现拉帕兹的新生儿的平均出生体重明显低于散塔克鲁兹的新生儿。无论高收入家庭还是低收人家庭都是如此。甚至散塔克鲁兹的贫穷家庭的婴儿比拉帕兹的富有家庭的婴儿平均体重还要重。吉萨尼说：“我们对这个结果感到吃惊。”

　　这个结果表明在高海拔出生的婴儿出生前就缺氧了。吉萨尼说：“这可能会触发调节未出生儿成长的荷尔蒙的释放或抑制。”

　　他的团队还发现高海拔的婴儿通常有相对身体来说较大的头部。这可能是因为一个缺乏氧的胚胎会首先把充氧的血液输送到脑部，然后才送到身体的其他部位。

　　吉萨尼想要查出这样的婴儿在今后的生活中是不是更容易得病。例如在拉帕兹出生的人在成年之后更可能得心脏病。低出生体重是得冠心病的一个危险因素。头部相对身体较大的新生儿在今后的生活中通常更容易得高血压和中风。

　　★1).According to the passage, one of the reasons why newborns in mountain communities are underweight is that their mothers are underweight.-W

　　★2).Giussani’s team members are all British researchers and professors from Cambridge University.-N

　　★3).Giussani did not expect to find that the weight of a baby had little to do with the financial conditions of the family he was born into.-R

　　★4).The weight of a newborn has to do with the supply of oxygen even when he was still in his mother’s womb.-R

　　★5).High-altitude bodies have heads that are larger than their bodies.-W

　　★6).High altitude babies have longer but thinner limbs than average-N

　　★7).Giussani has arrived at the conclusion that babies in high-altitude regions are more likely to have heart trouble when they grow up.-W

 

2013年职称英语考试综合类阅读判断题的延伸阅读——2013职称英语综合类一次通关备考经验

 

　　1、先作阅读理解，然后再从前往后按顺序答题。

　　这个分数很高，15道题，每题3分，一旦错一道可是很亏本的，所以，我们要尽全力保证这些题目的正确性。先做这个，多查字典，多预备一些时间在它上面，这样当你完成这些题目，自认为有40分左右在手的时候，作别的题会非常游刃有余。

　　2、如果你英语不好，就练习查字典的速度吧。

　　我英语不好，现在自认为勉强能够达到初三的水平，工作忙，也懒，学英语也不是一朝一夕之功，所以干脆放弃了，没有学习。我的主攻方向是“选择一本字典，练习查阅的速度”。

　　我找了一本非常小的字典，在西单书店买的，4元。

　　你能想象它的大小了，呵呵，非常小，但是查阅速度非常快，比我的牛津英汉速度快一倍多。对于我这样拥有初三水平的考生来说，查一下简单的意思后进行联想，不是难事。

　　3、第1题是送分的题。

　　15分，只要你的词汇量足够，这道题简直是送分。

　　我词汇量不够，但是我翻字典的速度够：）所以，这个15分我全能保证。

　　这下子就基本上够60分了，剩下的40分的分值，按照概率我也能得10份吧？

以上是我的经验，嘿嘿，投机取巧，难登大雅。