託業考試閱讀材料及寫作範文
託業備考一定不能落下閱讀和寫作，下面我給大家帶來一些實用的閱讀素材和寫作範文。
託業考試閱讀材料：手機對睡眠的影響
Can't Sleep? Turn Off the Cellphone!
A good night's sleep is becoming ever more elusive for the average American — and it's a problem that plagues us at all ages, from infancy to Adulthood. Now three new papers in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep tackle the question of sleeplessness: two studies illuminate the reasons why teens and adults don't sleep enough. With teens, a major culprit is cellphone use; with adults, it's work. Meanwhile, a third study of young children reveals that sleep deprivation in early life may lead to future behavioral and cognitive problems.
The study in children was conducted at the Sleep Disorders Center at Sacre-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, where researchers analyzed the sleep patterns of close to 1,500 children aged 2.5 to 6 years — the first detailed study on the effects of sleep in developing children. The youngsters? mothers were asked to record the amount of time the children slept each night and fill out questionnaires about their child's hyperactivity and impulsivity, inattention and daytime sleepiness. Half of the kids slept 10 hours a night on average — the recommended amount for preschool-aged children — while 6% slumbered for less than 10 hours each night. Those short-sleeping children, says lead author Dr. Jacques Montplaisir, performed poorly on vocabulary and cognitive development tests at age 5, compared with the more rested group. In fact, the study found that getting one fewer hour of sleep a night during early development can triple a child's chance of scoring low on such tests, underlining sleep's long-lasting effects on proper language and cognitive development.
Not surprisingly, the short-sleepers were also more likely to score higher on tests of hyperactivity and impulsivity at age six, highlighting the importance of consistent and sufficient sleep in promoting concentration and attention skills. Montplaisir's group found more hyperactivity even among youngsters who started out as short-sleepers but had normalized their sleeping patterns by preschool age, to 10 hours a night. That suggests that early childhood — before about 3.5 years of age — is a critical period during which parents should establish proper sleeping patterns, says Montplaisir, since lack of sleep during that stage can lead to detrimental effects on behavior and development later in life.
These results are the only the latest in a growing body of evidence that links good sleep habits to better cognitive development in children. But they don't necessarily mean that light-sleeping children are doomed to wearing the dunce cap. Jodi Mindell, professor of psychology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and an expert with the National Sleep Foundation, notes that Montplaisir's study doesn't establish a firm cause and effect between sleep and test performance. She notes that other factors can affect both how long children sleep and how they score on tests; youngsters with ADHD, for example, typically sleep less than other children and tend to score poorly on neuropsychological tests. "It could be that there are other variables here that could be impacting on both sleep and test performance," she says.
Unfortunately, sleep remains elusive for many adolescents and adults as well, and two other studies in Sleep reveal that cell phones and our jobs may be to blame. In one study of more than 1,600 13-to-15-year-olds in Belgium, scientists at Katholieke University Leuven found that almost 60% of students used their cell phones either to talk or text message after turning their lights out at bedtime. After following the kids for one year, the researchers report that teens who used their cell phone more than once a week after lights-out were five times more likely than kids who never used cell phones at bedtime to say they felt tired one year later. The later the teens stayed awake with their phones, the more tired they were. Most teens concentrated their phone use around midnight, but some continued communicating well past 3 a.m.
Among adults, sleep patterns aren't any better. Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania plumbed a publicly available database of nearly 50,000 people questioned by the U.S. Census to find out exactly what short-sleepers — those who get four to five hours of sleep a night — did during waking hours. Since earlier surveys had linked less sleep with greater risk of disease and death, Basner was eager to tease apart whether it was the lack of sleep itself, or something else that the short-sleepers were doing while they were awake that was making them so unhealthy. He and his team were surprised to find that the main reason a person lost sleep at night was work. The more a person worked, the less he or she slept: compared with normal sleepers, people who slept 4.5 hours or less per night worked about 1.5 hours more per weekday and nearly two hours more on weekends. "The fact that work influences sleep time was not surprising, but we were amazed by the dominance of the work time effect," says Basner. "For every hour of sleep you lose, you work 30 minutes more." Previous surveys conducted over the past decade had found that for every hour of sleep lost, the average person worked seven to eight additional minutes, so these new results suggest a disturbing trend toward increased work-related sleeplessness.
Basner notes that his findings in no way suggest a causal relationship between work and the amount of sleep a person gets (or, for that matter, between work and the higher risk of health problems associated with less sleep), but they do suggest that in future sleep studies, researchers should ask about how much time their subjects spend at work, and control for the influence that work may have on sleep. Understanding why we don't sleep could lead to better ways of helping us get more z's — anything but counting sheep.
【Section Two】Vocabulary
1. plaguen. 瘟疫, 苦惱, 災禍;vt. 折磨, 使苦惱, 使得災禍
2. culpritn. 犯人,罪犯,刑事被告
3. deprivationn. 剝奪
4. cognitivea. 認知的,認識的,有感知的
5. fill outv. 填寫
6. inattentionn. 疏忽,不注意,粗心
7. slumbern. 睡眠;vi. 睡眠
8. dunce capn. 以前的學生被罰時所戴的紙帽
9. impactn. 衝擊,碰擊;效果,影響,作用; vt. 衝擊,碰撞
【Section Three】Reference
1. Sleep All Day!
2. Sleeping Your Way to the Top
【Section Four】Question
1. Please translate the last sentence into Chinese.
"Understanding why we don't sleep could lead to better ways of helping us get more z's — anything but counting sheep."
2. What is the main idear of this Article?
3. Lack of sleep during which period can lead to detrimental effects on behavior and development later in life?
4. The article mentioned "For every hour of sleep you lose, you work 20 minutes more." Right? Why?
參考答案：
1. 瞭解我們不能入睡的原因可以幫助我們找到更好的入睡方式，而不是靠數數來入睡。
2. No standard answers.
3. Before about 3.5 years of age.
4. False!You can find the correct answer in the sixth paragraph. "For every hour of sleep you lose, you work 30 minutes more."
託業考試寫作範文模擬練習1
Childhood is certainly not the happiest time of your life’
It’s about time somebody exploded that hoary old myth about childhood being the happiest period of your life. Childhood may certainly be fairly happy, but its greatest moments can’t compare with the sheer joy of being an adult. Who ever asked a six-year-old for an opinion? Children don’t have opinions, or if they do, nobody notices. Adults choose the clothes their children will wear, the books they will read and the friends they will play with. Mother and father are kindly but absolute dictators. This is an adult world and though children may be deeply loved, they have to be manipulated so as not to interfere too seriously with the lives of their elders and betters. The essential difference between manhood and childhood is the same as the difference between independence and subjection.
For all the nostalgic remarks you hear, which adult would honestly change places with a child? Think of the years at school: the years spent living in constant fear of examinations and school reports. Every movement you make, every thought you think is observed by some critical adult who may draw unflattering conclusions about your character. Think of the curfews, the martial law, the times you had to go to bed early, do as you were told, eat disgusting stuff that was supposed to be good for you. Remember how ‘gentle’ pressure was applied with remarks like ‘if you don’t do as I say, I’ll…’ and a dire warning would follow.
Even so, these are only part of child’s troubles. No matter how kind and loving adults may be, children often suffer from terrible, illogical fears which are the result of ignorance and an inability to understand the world around them. Nothing can equal the abject fear a child may feel in the dark, the absolute horror of childish nightmares. Adults can share their fears with other adults; children invariably face their fears alone. But the most painful part of childhood is the period when you begin to emerge from it: adolescence. Teenagers may rebel violently against parental authority, but this causes them great unhappiness. There is a complete lack of self-confidence during this time. Adolescents are over-conscious of their appearance and the impression they make on others. They feel shy, awkward and clumsy. Feeling are intense and hearts easily broken. Teenagers experience moments of tremendous elation or black despair. And through this turmoil, adults seem to be more hostile than ever.
What a relief it is to grow up. Suddenly you regain your balance; the world opens up before you. You are free to choose; you have your own place to live in and your own money to spend. You do not have to seek constant approval for everything you do. You are no longer teased, punished or ridiculed by heartless adults because you failed to come up to some theoretical standard. And if on occasion you are teased, you know how to deal with it. You can simply tell other adults to go to hell: you are one yourself.
託業考試寫作範文模擬練習2
The Fox and the Chicken
The frigid winter and scarce food supply famish many animals, including a ferocious fox. He is almost forlorn because he has garnered little food when the land was fertile, and the flora is extraneous to his diet. He used to be fussy and extravagant with his food but now has to fetter his stomach and be frugal. “What a formidable winter!” he gabbles.
Just then his eyes flicker due to a fortuitous discovery. After ferreting about the whole grassland fraught of snow for fishy objects, he finally found a small finch with fuzzy feather and fragrant smell. A chicken! “Haha, facile prey!” the fox was exultant, “Hmm…She looks so fatuous and feeble. But I shall not go forthright, because the feud between foxes and chickens will fluster or fret her, and foment her escape. I must make her believe her foe through frauds.”
After fitful garnishing, the fox comes up to the fluffy fowl with a genial smile on his face. He feigned that he is a gentry with genteel speaking genre: “Hey, my fraternal friend! I’m coming to extricate you from a disaster. It’s not facetious. Your nest is too flimsy and frail to be a fixture for living. It cannot foil great gales coming soon. However, I can help building a new nest with many fortes for you, which can forestall water exuding. I just want to show my genuine feat and won’t extort money from you.”
“Stop your futile fraudulent figment. It’s such gauche farce.” Flouted the chicken, “Look at the frowsy gash on your cheek. You’re the fickle figurehead of the fox clan who just failed in the factious fights.”
The fox cannot gainsay the chicken’s words and left in frenzy frustration.
