|
Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the
following passage:
Bringing up children is a hard work, and
you are often to blame for any bad behavior of your children. If so, Judith
Rich Harris has good news for you. Parents, she argues, have no important
long-term effects on the development of the personality of their children. Far
more important are their playground friends and neighborhood. Ms. Harris takes
to hitting the assumption, which has dominated developmental psychology for
almost half a century.
Ms. Harris's attack on the
developmentalists' "nature" argument looks likely to reinforce doubts
that the profession was already having. If parents matter, why is it that two
adopted children, reared in the same home, are no more similar in personality than
two adopted children reared in separate homes? Or that a pair of identical
twins, reared in the same home, are no more alike than a pair of identical
twins reared in different homes?
Difficult as it is to track the precise
effects of parental upbringing, it may be harder to measure the exact influence
of the peer（同龄人）group in childhood and adolescence. Ms. Harris points
to how children from immigrant homes soon learn not to speak at school in the
way their parents speak. But acquiring a language is surely a skill, rather
than a characteristic of the sort developmental psychologists hunt for.
Certainly it is different from growing up tensely or relaxed, or from learning
to be honest or hard-working or generous. Easy though it may be to prove that
parents have little impact on those qualities, it will be hard to prove that
peers have vastly more.
Moreover, mum and dad surely cannot be
ditched completely. Young adults may, as Ms. Harris argues, be keen to appear
like their peers. But even in those early years, parents have the power to open
doors: they may initially choose the peers with whom their young associate, and
pick that influential neighborhood. Moreover, most people suspect that they
come to resemble their parents more in middle age, and that people's child
bearing habits may be formed partly by what their parents did. So the balance
of influences is probably complicated, as most parents already suspected
without being able to demonstrate it scientifically. Even if it turns out that
the genes they pass on and the friends their children play with matter as much
as affection, discipline and good example, parents are not completely off the
hook.
26. According to Ms. Harris, ____.
A) parents are to blame for any bad
behavior of their children
B) parents will affect greatly the
children's life in the long run
C) nature rather than nurture has a
significant effect on children's personality development
D) children's personality is shaped by
their friends and neighbors
27.Which of the following views is
consistent with what the developmentalists hold?A) Children are more influenced by their peers than by
their parents.
B) Twins are quite different if they are
reared in two separate families.
C) Identical twins reared in the same home
are different in personality.
D) Nurture has a less significant effect on
children's personality development.
28.According to Para. 3, which of the
following statements is TRUE?
A) It is harder to track the precise
effects of parental upbringing than the exact influence of the peer group in
children.
B) Immigrant children tend to discard the
way their parents speak quickly when they go to school.
C) It has been proved that peers have more
impact on children's qualities such as to be honest or hard-working or
generous.
D) It is easier for children to acquire a
language at school than at home.
29.The word "ditched" ( Line
1,Para. 4) could best be replaced by ____.
A) proved B) emphasized
C) compared D) ignored
30. What is the author's main purpose?
A) To highly praise Ms. Harris's work.
B) To counter Ms. Harris's work.
C) To objectively report on Ms. Harris's
work.
D) To critically comment on Ms. Harris's
work.
|