unit12

Part A

01

Alexandar Nechita is thirteen and she is clled”the new Picasso”. She paints large pictures and sells them for between ＄10,000 and ＄80,000.

Alexandar was born in Romania but now she lives in the United states with her family. She coul d paint well when she was only four but her parents couldn’t understand her pacitures.Alexandra says,〞I paint how I feel,sometimes I’m happy and sometimes sad.I can’t stop painting.”Every day after school she does her homework,play with her little brother,then paints for two or three hours until bedtime.

Alexandar doesn’t spend any money,she saves it.She said,〞We were very poor when we were first in America. We couldn’t buy many things,but now I can buy a big Rome.It was fantastic.”

02

Lukas V o ndracek is ten years old,He’s a shy boy but every year he travel the world and meets hundreds of people.Lukas is a brilliant pianist and he gives lots of https://www.360docs.net/doc/6214380394.html,st year he was in Washington,Chicago and London.He is sometimes called〞the new Mozart〞.He says,〞I’m shy,but I love giving concerts.〞

Lukas was born in the Czech Republic but he lives with his parents in Vienna,where he practised the piano six hours a day,He goes to school two days a week.Lukas could play the piano when he was only two years old and he could read music before he could read books.Now he can write music,too.

Lukas doesn’t just play the piano,he plays football too.He says,〞Mozart was poor and he couldn,t play football,so I’m not like him at all!”

Part B

01

What Is Intelligence?

For over 20 years,there has been a debate about intelligence:what is it,who has it and how do we measure it?The argument is fueled by findings from two camps of research.One group looks at the statistic and biology of IQ and tries to determine how much of intelligence a person is born with.the other group focuses on enviroment and points out the changing of intelligence and the unfairness of IQ test.

Unfortunately,the two lines of study seldom meet because their methods are so different.Rarely does one group communicate with the other.

Therefore ordinary people are on the outside of the debate.They rely on their personal beliefs about intelligence.The only trouble is our theories of ineligence

Are too narrowly construct.They tend to ignore existing data,even thought a lot of data exist on the topic.

At the every least,intelligence can be defined as the ability for complex thinking and

reasoning.One thing the reasining shows for sure:much of the ability for complex reasoning depends on the stituation.A person can be a genius at the racetrack but a fool in the stock market,even though both require comparable mental activities,But the knowledge is organized in the mind differently in different areas,so what a person koows about the racetrack can lie inactive on Wall Street.

02

A 2-Year-Old Runs Cash Register at an Eatery

Green Gardens restaurant has unusual worker at the cash register:2-year-old Gordan Tan.〝He can do the credit card machine too,”said his mother,Tiffany Lei,who is the owner of the restaurant.

It was a busy day in January at the restaurant when Gordan first climbed up onto a chair,took customers’tickets,rang up totals on the register,took the cash,then counted out their change—correctly,Lei said.Earlier that month,he had celebrate his second birthday.

Gordon’s father said the toddler can tell credit cards from debit cards.He swipes them and enters the four-digit code to complete the sale.

When Gordan’s not at the register,he’s walking around the restaurant helping with day-to-day operations.He runs to the back of the store to tell his parents hoe many customers just walked in.He knows the number assigned to each table,so he knows where to seat them,too.

When they run out of shrimp—“shah shah”in Chinese—Gordan runs into the kichen and yells,〞No shah shah!”

Customers were amazed the first time they saw him at the register.One waitress at the restaurant said Gordon’s performance is doubly amazing:fi rst when Gordan rings up customers’tickets,then they count their money and find that he has got it right.

Some families visit the restaurant just to watch the boy.And they bring him presents.

Gordon’s parents encourage and correct him if he gets something wrong.At the register,he’ll tell them to leave him alone-he can do it himself.

His mother is glad for the help she gets from Gordon.She is pregnant with a baby girl due in May.But soon,however,Gordon won’t have as much time to help out.He’ll be starting da y care.

Part D

01

Two Teenage Geniuses

Ivan Mursky is thirteen and he is the number 13 chess player in the world.

He was born in Russia but now lives in America with his father,Vadim.They live in a

one-room flat in Brooklyn.Ivan doesn’t have a jo b.They practise chess problems all

day,morning,afternoon,and evening.

Ivan was different from a very young age:he could ride a bike when he was eighteen months old and read before he was two.He could play cards at three and the piano at four.When he was twelve,he was the under-20 chess champion of Russia.

His father can’t speak English and can’t play chess,either!Ivan translate for him.Vadim says,〞I know that I can’t play chess,but I can still help Ivan.He and I don’t have any friends-we

don’t wa nt any friend s.Other teenagers are boring!We don’t like playing sports or watching TV.We live for chess!”

Jaya Rajah is fourteen,but he doesn’t go to school.He studies medicine at New York University in a class of twenty year-old.Jaya was born in Madras in India but now lives in a house in New York with his mother,father,and brother.They can all speak English fluently,His father is a doctort.

Jaya was different from a very young age.He could count before he could say〞Mummy”or〝Daddy〞.He could do algebra when he was eight.Now he studies from 8:15 to 4:00 every day at the university.Then he studies at home with his father from 6:30 to 10:00 every evening.Jaya doesn’t have any friends.He never goes out in the evenings,but he sometimes watch TV.He says,〝I live for one thing—I want to be a doctor before I am seventeen.Other children of my age are boring.They can’t understand me.〞

02

An American study suggests that babies who are bigger at birth generally are more intelligent later in life.It found that the intelligence of a child at seven years of age is directly linked to his or her weight at birth.The study organizers say this is probably because heavier babies received more nutrition during important periods of brain development before they were born.

The study involved almost 3,500 children.Researchers in New York City used traditional tests to measure intelligence.Brothers and sisters were tested so that the effects of birth weight alone could be separated from the effects of diet or other considerations.The researchers found that children with higher birth weight generally did better on the intelligence tests.Also,the link between birth weight and intelligence later in life was stronger for boys then for girls.

Another Ameican study examined the development of very low birth weight babies.They were born early,before the end of the normal nine-month development period.Researchers in Cleveland,Ohio studied 242 people who were born in late 1970s.At birth,they weight an average of 1,179 grams.On average,they were born during the 29th week of pregnancy.By comparison,a pregnancy is considered full term at 37 weeks.The researchers compared the progress of those born early with other children over a 20 year period.They found that the young people who had been very low birth weight babies were less likely to complete high school.They also did not perform as well on intelligence test as other adults.