[文章大意及重要词汇]
父母通过有技巧（techniques）的朗读可以让孩子的语言能力得到迅速的发展（development）。这一事实虽令人吃惊，但却是真实的。父母和孩子谈话的方式对孩子的语言能力发展影响很大（makes a big difference）。如果父母鼓励孩子对其所朗读的内容做出积极反应（respond），孩子的语言能力就会有很大的提高。
我们在30个三岁的孩子和他们的父母中间做了一个实验。一半孩子属于实验（experimental）组，另一半是控制组。实验组的家长接受了一个两个小时的培训，要求他们问孩子们开放式的问题而不能问用“是”或者“不是”来回答的简单问题，如何引导他们思考其他选择的可能性以及如何表扬（praise）孩子的正确选择。
实验初期，孩子的语言能力发展并没有明显区别。一个月后，实验组的孩子们比控制组的孩子在语言表达和词汇量方面领先5.5个月。9个月后，实验组的孩子们仍然在这些方面比控制组的孩子领先（advance）6个月。
6. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
A. Children who talk a lot are more intelligent.
B. Parents who listen to their children can teach them more.
C. Active children should read more and be given more attention.
D. Verbal ability can easily be developed with proper methods.
答案：D 推断题。答案在第一段。
7. What does "it" in line 2 can most probably be replaced by?
A. Parents increasing children's language development
B. Reading techniques being simple
C. Parents reading to children
D. Children's intelligence development
答案：A 词义题。根据上下文，it指父母能提高孩子的语言能力。
8. According to the author, which of the following questions is the best type to ask children about?
A. Do you see the elephant? B. Is the elephant in the cage?
C. What animals do you like? D. Shall we go to the zoo?
答案：C推断题，答案在第二段，可以看出，父母应该问一些开放性的问题，而不是只需回答是或不是问题。
9. The difference between the control group and the experimental group was __________.
A. the training that parents received
B. the age of the children 可以看出，父母接受了两个小时的培训，而控制组的父母并没有此培训。
C. tile books that were read
D. the number of the children
答案：A细节题，答案在第二段，区别在于实验组里的家长接受了培训。
10. The best conclusion we can draw from the passage is that __________.
A. parents should be trained to read to their children
B. the more children read, the more intelligent they will become
C. children's language skills increase when they are required to respond actively
D. children who read actively seem six months older
答案：C推断题，答案在第一段最后一句。选项C即为该句的同义改写。
Passage 3
Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage:
(79)[The agriculture revolution in the nineteenth century involved two things: the invention of labor-saving machinery and the development of scientific agriculture.] Labor-saving machinery naturally appeared first where labor was scarce. "In Europe", said Thomas Jefferson, "the object is to make the most of their land, labor being sufficient; here it is to make the most of our labor, land being abundant". It was in America, therefore, that the great advances in nineteenth-century agricultural machinery first came. At the opening of the century, with the exception of a crude(粗糙的) plow, farmers could have carried practically all of the existing agricultural tools on their backs. (80)[By 1860，most of the machinery in use today had been designed in an early form]. The most important of the early inventions was the iron plow. As early as 1890 Charles Newbolt of New Jersey had been working on the idea of a cast-iron plow and spent his entire fortune in introducing his invention. The farmers, however, would home none of it, claiming that the iron poisoned the soil and made the weeds grow. Nevertheless, many people devoted their attention to the plow, until in 1869, James Oliver of South Bend,
