阅读练习十五
班级：号数：姓名：
A
Finding a new voice
IT was time for more difficult speech therapy (). Delvin Washington said his name again and again, making sure to bite his lower lip to pronounce the V in his first name. The 18-year-old from Texas, US, has had to practice this every day since he woke up from a coma (昏迷) in late September.
Over half a year ago, Washington was preparing for the biggest day of his young life –graduating from high school. But on a cloudy day in May, he had a serious car a ccident.
He survived, but his life changed forever. His friends have left for college, his mom has return
ed to work and he recently began all-day physical rehabilitation (康复). He is relearning almost everything, from the names of his best friends to simple physical tasks, like swallowing his saliva (唾液).
His friends and family ha ve given him a lot of support. While Washington lay in a coma in hospital, friends and family filled his room during visits. They celebrated his 18th birthday in July while he was still unconscious.
Two days after Thanksgiv ing, eight friends from high school visited Washington at his home. The friends looked through photos on Facebook, showing them all to Washington. As he sat in his wheelchair, friends asked him to recognize the people in the photos, helping him recover his brain.
Washington’s popularity doesn’t come from nowhere. He was determined to become a police officer after college and behaved like a respectable police officer at school.
His high school principal (校长), Eric Markinson, said Washington was always a gentleman. “He was incredibly gracious (和善的) and incredibly helpful,” he said.
His accident has damaged Washington’s brain. It has caused his left side, from his fac e to his feet, to all but shut down. His personality has also changed. The serious police-officer behavior is gone. He laughs a lot and smiles when he sees children, his mom said.
Now Washington is working hard on all-day rehabilitation. So far, he has made tremendous (巨大的) improvement, said his therapist Lindsay Sims.
“I try to live as independently as possible,” Washington said slowly but firmly.
1. What happened to Delvin Washington last May?
A. He started to make improvements in his speech therapy.
B. He was seriously injured in a car accident.
C. He graduated from high school with good grades.
D. He suffered a heart attack and went into a coma.
2. How did Washington’s friends support him when he was in need of help?
A. They helped Washington make up for the lessons he had missed.
B. They worked together to collect money for Washington on campus.
C. They helped Washington realize his dream of becoming a police officer.
D. They regularly visited Washington and helped him with his rehabilitation.
3. What is the article mainly about?
A. Washington’s friendship with his friends.
B. Washington making great efforts to achieve his dream.
C. What makes Washington so popular at school.
D. How Washington is recovering his brain.
B
Crows show cleverness
People may use the expression “birdbrain” in English to talk about someone who is stupid, but crows (灰鸦) prove that this is unfair. Now it has been discovered that crows may understand analogies (类推法).
It was once thought that only humans could understand analogies, which help us to solve problems creatively, put things into categories, and make scientific discoveries.
appreciatesTo test this ability in animals, scientists do “relational matching-to-sample (RMTS, 依照示例中物品的关联进行匹配)” tests, according to the IFL Science website. If a pair was AA, for example, then picking BB to match it would be correct. If the pair was CD, however, then EF would be correct.
Apes (猿) and monkeys have learned RMTS, but scientists wanted to know if crows could do it, too. An international team led by Edward Wasserman from the Un iversity of Iowa in the US first trained two hooded crows to match things by color, shape, and number in what is called “identity matching-to-sample (IMTS, 依照示例进行匹配)”, then moved onto RMTS.
For the IMTS test, the birds were put in a cage with a plastic tray (塑料盘) that had three cards and two cups in it. The card in the middle was the sample card. The cups on either side were covered with the other two cards: One was the same as the sample (in the color, shape, or number of shap es pictured), while the other wasn’t. The cup with the card that matched the sample card contained two worms (虫子) to eat.
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