单选题
About six years ago I was eating lunch in a restaurant in New York City when a woman and a young boy sat down at the next table. I couldn"t help overhearing parts of their conversation. At one point the woman asked: "So, how have you been?" And the boy—who could not have been more than seven or eight years old—replied. "Frankly, I"ve been feeling a little depressed lately. " This incident stuck in my mind because it confirmed my growing belief that children are changing. As far as I can remember, my friends and I didn"t find out we were "depressed" until we were in high school. The evidence of a change in children has increased steadily in recent years. Children don"t seem childlike anymore. Children speak more like adults, dress more like adults and behave more like adults than they used to. Whether this is good or bad is difficult to say, but it certainly is different. Childhood as it once was no longer exists, why? Human development is based not only on innate (天生的) biological states, but also on patterns of access to social knowledge. Movement from one social route to another usually involves learning the secrets of the new status. Children have always been taught adult secrets, but slowly and in stages: traditionally, we tell sixth graders things we keep hidden from fifth graders. In the last 30 years, however, a secret-revelation (揭示) machine has been installed in 98 percent of American homes. It is called television. Television passes information, and indiscriminately (不加区分地), to all viewers alike, be they children or adults. Unable to resist the temptation, many children turn their attention from printed texts to the less challenging, more vivid moving pictures. Communication through print, as a matter of fact, allows for a great deal of control over the social information to which children have access. Reading and writing involve a complex code of symbols that must be memorized and practices. Children must read simple books before they can read complex materials. (351 words)
单选题
According to the author, feeling depressed is
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：本题属于观点判断题。这道题需要注意的地方是“According to the author”，这是一个限定条件，意思是说判断选项的对错不是依据其说法本身是否错误，而是与作者的说法是否一致。文中作者对“feeling depressed”的评论应该是在第二段，也就是刚刚讲完作者亲历的故事之后。作者说到“my friends and I didn’t find out we were‘depressed，until we were in high school”，意思是“我和我的朋友们直到高中才开始感觉沮丧”，言下之意就是小孩子是不会出现沮丧心理的。符合这个意思的是选项B，其余几项都不能从作者的叙述中推测出来。
单选题
Traditionally, a child is supposed to learn about the adult world______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：本题属于细节推断题。本题讨论孩子学习社会知识的途径，这应该是第五段的内容。在第五段中有这样一句话：“Children have always been taught adult secrets，but slowly and in stages”，后面一句以“traditionally”开头，说明这一句讨论的是传统方式的学习途径。“been taught”，受教，应该说相当于选项B中的“under guidance”；“in stages”，stage是阶段的意思，in stages就是按阶段、循序渐进，这个意思与B中的“gradually”一样。按照文意，本题选择B最为合适。
单选题
The phenomenon that today"s children seem adultlike is attributed by the author to
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析：本题属于细节题。在第六段作者首先讲述了一种现象，也就是电视在美国社会的普及(第一句)，以及电视不分地域、不分老幼地传播信息的特点(第二句)。最后一句指出这种现象对孩子们的学习途径的影响：“many children turn their attention from printed texts to moving pictures”，孩子们把注意力从书本转向了电视。上一段讲过，按照传统学习方式，孩子们就是传统的孩子，而以电视为主体的方式，必然造成儿童发生某种变化，在文章中这种变化就是成人化。这道题应该选A。
单选题
Why is the author in favor of communication through print for children?