本题就心理学家和教育家研究学习风格的原因进行提问。录音前半部分中，讲话者提到：“当心 理学家和教育家测试学习风格时，他们试图弄清楚这些学习风格是否是影响学生学习效果的天生的特质， 而不只是一种学习偏好。”因此，选项D 的说法与此相符，为正确答案，其中该项的inherent traits是原文再现，if对应原文中的whether。其余三项都不是心理学家和教育家研究学习风格的原因，故均可排除。

【听力原文】
Recording One

Have you ever had someone try to explain something to you a dozen times with no luck? But then when you see a picture, the idea finally clicks. If that sounds familiar, maybe you might consider yourself a visual learner. Or if reading or listening does the trick, maybe you feel like you're a verbal learner. We call these labels learning styles. But is there really a way to categorize different types of students? Well, it actually seems that multiple presentation formats,especially if one of them is visual, help most people learn.

(16) When psychologists and educators test for learning styles. they're trying to figure out whether these are inherent traits that affect how well students learn instead of just a preference. Usually they start by giving a survey to figure out what style a student favors, like visual or verbal leaning.Then they try to teach the students something with a specific presentation style, like using visual aids, and do a follow-up test to see how much they learned. That way, the researchers can see if the self-identified verbal learners really learned better when the information was just spoken aloud, for example.

(17) But, according to a 2008 review, only one study that followed this design found that students actually learned best with their preferred style. But the study had some big flaws. The researchers excluded two thirds of the original participants because they didn't seem to have any clear learning style from the survey at the beginning, and they didn't even report the actual test scores in the final paper. So it doesn't really seem like learning styles are an inherent trait that we all have. But that doesn't mean that all students will do amazingly if they just spend all their time reading from a textbook.

Instead, most people seem to learn better if they're taught in several ways, especially if one is visual. In one study, researchers tested whether students remembered lists of words better if they heard them, saw them, or both. And everyone seemed to do better if they got to see the words in print—even the self-identified auditory learners. Their preference didn't seem to matter. (18) Similar studies tested whether students learned basic physics and chemistry concepts better by reading plain text or viewing pictures too and everyone did better with the help of pictures.

Questions 16 to 18 are based on recording you have just heard.
Question 16: Why do psychologists and educators study learning styles?
Question 17: What does the speakers say about one study mentioned in the 2008 review?
Question 18.What message does the speaker want to convey about learning at the end of the talk?

本题就2008年报告中提到的一项研究进行提问。在录音的中间部分，讲话者提到了一份2008年的报告，该报告中提到了一项研究。这项研究发现，学生们用他们更喜欢的学习风格学习时实际上会学得最好。但讲话者接着又说：“但这项研究有一些大的缺陷。”接下来讲话者具体介绍了这些缺陷。很明显，答案选A ，defective对应原文中的had some big flaws。选项B和D讲话中没有提及，均可排除；报告中并没有说这项研究的设计方案是原创的，故排除选项C。

本题就讲话者在最后提到的有关学习的内容进行提问。在讲话最后，讲话者明显肯定了视觉展示方法的作用，并提到了一项研究：“在一项研究中，研究人员测试了如果让学生听单词表、看单词表或者既听又看单词表，他们是否能更好地记住单词。如果学生看了打印出来的单词，每个人似乎都能更好 地记住单词——即使是那些自我认定为‘听觉型学习者’的学生。”由此可知，选项B 的说法是对原文的概括总结。原文中的everyone seemed to do better对应选项中的are helpful to all types of learners。选项A 是强干扰项，在讲话的最后，讲话者重点提及了视觉教具的重要性，并没有把听觉教具与视觉教具的重要性进行对比，故排除选项A 。讲话者最后提到，类似的研究也测试了通过阅读纯文本或观看图片，学生能否把基础物理和化学概念学得更好借助图片，每个学生都能学得更好。选项C的说法与此相反，故排除；而且，研究只是表明，借助视觉教具学生能把科学概念学得更好，而不是说没有视觉教具，科学概念很难理解，故也排除选项D。