大学英语四级考试阅读Matching题练习1

大学英语四级考试阅读Matching题练习1 Reading Passage 1

AUSTRALIA'S SPORTING SUCCESS

A They play hard, they play often, and they play to win. Australian sports teams win more than their fair share of titles, demolishing rivals with seeming ease. How do they do it? A big part of the secret is an extensive and expensive network of sporting academies underpinned by science and medicine. At the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), hundreds of youngsters and pros live and train under the eyes of coaches. Another body, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), finances programmes of excellence in a total of 96 sports for thousands of sportsmen and women. Both provide intensive coaching, training facilities and nutritional advice.

B Inside the academies, science takes centre stage. The AIS employs more than 100 sports scientists and doctors, and collaborates with scores of others in universities and

research centres. AIS scientists work across a number of sports, applying skills learned in one - such as building muscle strength in golfers - to others, such as swimming and squash. They are backed up by technicians who design instruments to collect data from athletes. They all focus on one aim: winning. ‘We can't waste our time looking at ethereal scientific questions that don't help the coach work with an athlete and improve performance,' says Peter Fricker, chief of science at AIS.

C A lot of their work comes down to measurement - everything from the exact angle of a swimmer’s dive to the second-by-second power output of a cyclist. This data is used to wring improvements out of athletes. The focus is on individuals, tweaking performances to squeeze an extra hundredth of a second here, an extra millimetre there. No gain is too slight to bother with. It’s the tiny, gradual improvements that add up to world-beating results. To demonstrate how the system works, Bruce Mason at AIS shows off the prototype of a 3

D analysis tool for studying swimmers. A wire-frame model of a champion swimmer slices through the water, her arms moving in slow motion.

Looking side-on, Mason measures the distance between strokes. From above, he analyses how her spine swivels. When fully developed, this system will enable him to build a biomechanical profile for coaches to use to help budding swimmers. Mason's contribution to sport also includes the development of the SWAN (SWimming ANalysis)system now used in Australian national competitions. It collects images from digital cameras running at 50 frames a second and breaks down each part of a swimmer's performance into factors that can be analysed individually - stroke length, stroke frequency, average duration of each stroke, velocity, start, lap and finish times, and so on. At the end of each race, SWAN spits out data on each swimmer

D …Take a look,' says Mason, pulling out a sheet of data. He points out the data on the swimmers in second and third place, which shows that the one who finished third actually swam faster. So why did he finish 35 hundredths of a second down? ‘His turn times were 44 hundredths of a second behind the other guy,' says Mason. ‘If he can improve on his turns, he can do much better’This is the kind of accuracy that AIS scientists' research is bringing to a range

of sports.

With the Cooperative Research Centre for Micro Technology in Melbourne, they are developing unobtrusive sensors that will be embedded in an athlete's clothes or running shoes to monitor heart rate, sweating, heat production or any other factor that might have an impact on an athlete's ability to run. There's more to it than simply measuring performance. Fricker gives the example of athletes who may be down with coughs and colds 11 or 12 times a year. After years of experimentation, AlS and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales developed a test that measures how much of the immune-system protein immunoglobulin A is present in athletes' saliva. If IgA levels suddenly fall below a certain level, training is eased or dropped altogether. Soon, IgA levels start rising again, and the danger passes. Since the tests were introduced, AIS athletes in all sports have been remarkably successful at staying healthy.

E Using data is a complex business. Well before a championship, sports scientists and coaches start to prepare

the athlete by developing a ‘competition model', based on what they expect will be the winning times. ‘You design the model to make that time,' says Mason. ‘A start of this much, each free-swimming period has to be this fast, with a certain stroke frequency and stroke length, with turns done in these times.' All the training is then geared towards making the athlete hit those targets, both overall and for each segment of the race. Techniques like these have transformed Australia into arguably the world's most successful sporting nation.

F Of course, there's nothing to stop other countries copying-and many have tried. Some years ago, the AIS unveiled coolant-lined jackets for endurance athletes. At the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, these sliced as much as two per cent off cyclists' and rowers' times. Now everyone uses them. The same has happened to the ‘altitude tent', developed by AIS to replicate the effect of altitude training at sea level. But Australia's success story is about more than easily copied technological fixes, and up to now no nation has replicated its all-encompassing system.

Questions 1-7

Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 a reference to the exchange of expertise between different sports

2 an explanation of how visual imaging is employed in investigations

3 a reason for narrowing the scope of research activity

4 how some AIS ideas have been reproduced

5 how obstacles to optimum achievement can be investigated

6 an overview of the funded support of athletes

7 how performance requirements are calculated before an event

Reading Passage 2

Why some women cross the finish line ahead of men?

A Women who apply for jobs in middle or senior management have a higher success rate than men, according to an employment survey. But of course far fewer of them apply for these positions. The study, by recruitment (征召新成员) consultants N

B Selection, shows that while one in six men who appear on interview shortlist get jobs, the figure rises to one in four for women.

B The study concentrated on application for management positions in the $45,000 to $110,000 salary range and found that women are more successful than men in both the private and public sectors. Dr Elisaebeth Marx from London-based NB Selection describe the findings as encouraging for women, in that they send a positive message to them to apply for interesting management positions. But she added, “We should not lose sight of the fact that significantly fewer women apply for senior position in comparison with men.”

C Reasons for higher success rates among women are

difficult to isolate. One explanation suggested is that if a woman candidate manages to get on a shortlist, then she has probably already proved herself to be an exceptional candidate. Dr. Marx said that when women apply for positions they tend to be better qualified than their male counterparts but are more selective and conservative in their job search. Women tend to research thoroughly before applying for positions or attending interviews. Men, on the other hand, seem to rely on their ability to sell themselves and to convince employers that any shortcomings they have will not prevent them from doing a good job.

D Managerial and executive progress made by women is confirmed by the annual survey of boards of directors carried out by Korn International. This year the survey shows a doubling of the number of women serving as non-executive directors compared with the previous year. However, progress remains painfully slow and there were still only 18 posts filled by women out of a total of 354 non-executive positions surveyed.

E In Europe a recent feature of corporate life in the

recession has been the de-layering of management structures. Hilary Sears said that this has halted progress for women in as much as de-layering has taken place either where women are working or in layers they aspire to. Sears also noted a positive trend from the recession, which has been the growing number of women who have started up on their own.

F In business as a whole, there are a number of factors encouraging the prospect of greater equality in the workforce. Demographic trends suggest that the number of women going into employment is steadily increasing. In addition a far greater number of women are now passing through higher education, making them better qualified to move into management positions. Organizations such as the European Women's Management Development Network provide a range of opportunities for women to enhance their skills and contacts.

G However, Ariane Antal, director of the International Institute for Organization Change for Archamps in France, said that there is only anecdotal evidence of changes in recruitment patterns. And she said: "It's still so hard for

women to even get on to shortlists -there are so many hurdles and barriers." She agreed that there have been some positive signs but said: "Until there is a belief among employers, until they value the difference, nothing will change."

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 has 7 paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

14.The drawbacks of current company restructuring patterns.

15.Associations that provide support for professional women.

16.The success rate of female job applicants for management positions.

17.Male and female approaches to job applications.

18.Reasons why some women are being employed in the business sector.

19.The improvement in female numbers on company management structures.

Reading Passage 3

Play is a serious business

A. Playing is a serious business. Children engrossed in a make-believe world, fox cubs play-fighting or kittens teaming a ball of string aren’t just having fun. Play may look like a carefree and exuberant way to pass the time before the hard work of adulthood comes along, but there’s much more to it than that. For a start, play can even cost animals their lives. Eighty percent of deaths among juvenile fur seals occur because playing pups fail to sport predators approaching. It is also extremely expensive in terms of energy. Playful young animals use around two or three per cent of energy cavorting, and in children that figure can be closer to fifteen per cent. ‘Even two or three per cent is

huge,’says John Byers of Idaho University. ‘You just don’t find animals wasting energy like that,’he adds. There must be a reason.

B. But if play is not simply a developmental hiccup, as biologists once thought, why did it evolve? The latest idea suggests that play has evolved to build big brains. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Playfulness, it seems, is common only among mammals, although a few of the larger-brained birds also indulge. Animals at play often use unique signs –tail-wagging in dogs, for example –to indicate that activity superficially resembling adult behavior is not really in earnest. In popular explanation of play has been that it helps juveniles develop the skills they will need to hunt, mate and socialise as adults. Another has been that it allows young animals to get in shape for adult life by improving their respiratory endurance. Both these ideas have been questioned in recent years.

C. Take the exercise theory. If play evolved to build muscle or as a kind of endurance training, then you would expect to see permanent benefits. But Byers points out that

the benefits of increased exercise disappear rapidly after training stops, so many improvement in endurance resulting from juvenile play would be lost by adulthood. ‘If the function of play was to get into shape,’says Byers, ‘the optimum time for playing would depend on when it was most advantageous for the young of a particular species to do so. But it doesn’t work like that.’Across species, play tends to peak about halfway through the suckling stage and then decline.

D. Then there’s the skills- training hypothesis. At first glance, playing animals do appear to be practising the complex manoeuvres they will need in adulthood. But a closer inspection reveals this interpretation as too simplistic. In one study, behavioural ecologist Tim Caro, from the University of California, looked at the predatory play of kittens and their predatory behaviour when they reached adulthood. He found that the way the cats played had no significant effect on their hunting prowess in later life.

E. Earlier this year, Sergio Pellis of Lethbridge University, Canada, reported that there is a strong positive

link between brain size and playfulness among mammals in general. Comparing measurements for fifteen orders of mammals, he and his team found large brains (for a given body size) are linked to greater playfulness. The converse was also found to be true. Robert Barton of Durham University believes that, because large brains are more sensitive to developmental stimuli than smaller brains, they require more play to help mould them for adulthood. ‘I concluded it’s to do with learning, and with the importance of environmental data to the brain during development,’he says.

F. According to Byers, the timing of the playful stage in young animals provides an important clue to what’s going on. If you plot the amount of time juvenile devotes to play each day over the course of its development, you discover a pattern typically associated with a ‘sensitive period’–a brief development window during which the brain can actually be modified in ways that are not possible earlier or later in life. Think of the relative ease with which young children –but not infants or adults –absorb language. Other researchers have found that play in cats,

rats and mice is at its most intense just as this ‘window of opportunity”reaches its peak.

G. ‘People have not paid enough attention to the amount of the brain activated by plays,’says Marc Bekoff from Colorado University. Bekoff studied coyote pups at play and found that the kind of behaviour involved was markedly more variable and unpredictable than that of adults. Such behaviour activates many different parts of the brain, he reasons. Bekoff likens it to a behavioural kaleidoscope, with animals at play jumping rapidly between activities. ‘They use behaviour from a lot of different contexts –predation, aggression, reproduction,’he says. ‘Their developing brain is getting all sorts of stimulation.’

H. Not only is more of the brain involved in play that was suspected, but it also seems to activate higher cognitive processes. ‘There’s enormous cognitive involvement in play,’says Bekoff. He points out that play often involves complex assessments of playmates, ideas of reciprocity and the use of specialised signals and rules. He believes that play creates a brain that has greater behavioural flexibility and

improved potential for learning later in life. The idea is backed up by the work of Stephen Siviy of Gettysburg College. Siviy studied how bouts of play affected the brain’s levels of particular chemical associated with the stimulation and growth of nerve cells. He was surprised by the extent of the activation. ‘Play just lights everything up,’he says. By allowing link-ups between brain areas that might not normally communicate with each other, play may enhance creativity.

I. What might further experimentation suggest about the way children are raised in many societies today? We already know that rat pups denied the chance to play grow smaller brain components and fail to develop the ability to apply social rules when they interact with their peers. With schooling beginning earlier and becoming increasingly exam-orientated, play is likely to get even less of a look-in. Who knows what the result of that will be?

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage 3 has 9 paragraphs, A-I.

Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

27.the way play causes unusual connections in the brain which are beneficial

28.insights from recording how much time young animals spend playing

29.a description of the physical hazards that can accompany play

30.a description of the mental activities which are exercised and developed during play

31.the possible effects that a reduction in play opportunities will have on humans

32.the classes of animals for which play is important

Answers

1.B

2. C

3. B

4. F

5. D

6. A

7.E

14.E 15. G 16. A 17. C 18. F

19. D

27. H 28. F 29. A 30. H 31. I 32. B