Part II Reading Comprehension (35 minutes)
Direction: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B) C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.
Passage One
Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage:
In bringing up children, every parent watches eagerly the child’s acquisition（学会）of each new skill -- the first
spoken words, the first independent steps, or the beginning of reading and writing. It is often tempting to hurry the child beyond his natural learning rate, but this can set up dangerous feelings of failure and states of worry in the child. This might happen at any stage. A baby might be forced to use a toilet too early, a young child might be encouraged to learn to read before he knows the meaning of the words he reads. On the other hand, though, if a child is left alone too much, or without any learning opportunities, he loses his natural enthusiasm for life and his desire to find out new things for himself.
Patents vary greatly in their degree of strictness towards their children. Some may be especially strict in money matters. Others are sever over times of coming home at night or punctuality for meals. In general, the controls imposed represent the needs of the parents and the values of the community as much as the child’s own happiness.
As regards the development of moral standards in the growing child, consistency is very important in parental teaching.
To forbid a thing one day and excuse it the next is no foundation for morality（道德）. Also, parents should realize that “example is better than precept”. If they are not sincere and do not practise what they preach（说教）, their children may grow confused, and emotionally insecure when they grow old enough to think for themselves, and realize they have been to some extent fooled.
A sudden awareness of a marked difference between their parents’ principles and their morals can be a dangerous
disappointment.
11. Eagerly watching the child’s acquisition of new skills _________.
A) should be avoided
B) is universal among parents
C) sets up dangerous states of worry in the child
D) will make him lose interest in learning new things
12. In the process of children’s learning new skills parents ______.
A) should encourage them to read before they know the meaning of the words they read
B) should not expect too much of them
C) should achieve a balance between pushing them too hard and leaving them on their own
D) should create as many learning opportunities as possible
13. The second paragraph mainly tells us that __________.
A) parents should be strict with their children
B) parental controls reflect only the needs of the parents and the values of the community
C) parental restrictions vary, and are not always enforced for the benefit of the children alone
D) parents vary in their strictness towards their children according to the situation
14. The word “precept” (Line 3, Para.3) probably means “_________”.
A) idea
B) punishment
C) behavior
D) instruction
15. In moral matters, parents should __________.
A) observe the rules themselves
B) be aware of the marked difference between adults and children
C) forbid things which have no foundation in morality
D) consistently ensure the security of their children
Passage Two
Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage:
A good modern newspaper is an extraordinary piece of reading. It is remarkable first for what it contains: the range of news from local crime to international politics, from sport to business to fashion to science, and the range of comment and special features（特写）as well, from editorial page to feature articles and interviews to criticism of books, art, theatre and music. A newspaper is even more remarkable for the way one reads it: never completely, never straight through, but always
by jumping from here to there, in and not glancing at one piece, reading another article all the way through, reading just a few paragraphs of the next. A good modern newspaper offers a variety to attract many different readers, but far more than nay one reader is interested in. What brings this variety together in one place is its topicality（时事性）, its immediate relation to what is happening in your world and your locality now. But immediacy and the speed of production that goes with it mean also that much of what appears in a newspaper has no more than transient（短暂的）value. For all these reasons, no two people really read the same paper: what each person does is to put together out of the pages of that day’s paper, his own selection and sequence, his own newspaper. For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently, which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and self-awareness as you modify and apply the techniques of reading.
16. A modern newspaper is remarkable for all the following except its _________.
A) wide coverage
B) uniform style
C) speed in reporting news
D) popularity
