On average, American kids ages 3 to 12 spent 29 hours a week in school, eight hours more that they did in 1981. They also did more household work and participated in more of such organized activities as soccer and ballet (芭蕾舞). Involvement in sports, in particular, rose almost 50% from 1981 to 1997: boys now spendan average of four hours a week playing sports; girls log hall that time. All in all, however, children’sleisure time dropped from 40% of the day in 1981 to 25%
“Children are affected by the same time crunch (危機) that affects their parents,” says Sandra Hofferth,who headed the recent study of children’s timetable. A chief reason, she says, is that more mothers are working outside the home. (Nevertheless, children in both double-income and “male breadwinner” householdsspent comparable amounts of time interacting with their parents 19 hours and 22 hours respectively. In contrast, children spent only 9 hours with their single mothers.)
All work and no play could make for some very messed-up kids. “Play is the most powerful way a child explores the world and learns about himself,” says T. Berry Brazelton, professor at Harvard Medical School Unstructured play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to negotiate their relationships withtheir peers, but kids ages 3 to 12 spent only 12 hours a week engaged in it.
The children sampled spent a quarter of their rapidly decreasing “free time” watching television. But that, believe it or not, was one of the findings parents might regard as good news. If they’re spending less time in front of the TV set, however, kids aren’t replacing it with reading. Despite efforts to get kids more interested in books, the children spent just over an hour a week reading. Let’s face it, who’s got the time?
練習題：
Choose correct answers to the question:
1. By mentioning “the same time crunch” (Line 1, Para. 2) Sandra Hofferth means ________.
A. children have little time to play with their parents
B. children are not taken good care of by their working parents
C. both parents and children suffer from lack of leisure time
D. both parents and children have trouble managing their time
2. According to the author, the reason given by Sandra Hofferth for the time crunch is ________.
A. quite convincing
B. partially true
C. totally groundless
D. rather confusing
3. According to the author a child develops better if ________.
A. he has plenty of time reading and studying
B. he is left to play with his peers in his own way
C. he has more time participating in school activities
D. he is free to interact with his working parents
4. The author is concerned about the fact that American kids ________.
A. are engaged in more and more structured activities
B. are increasingly neglected by their working mothers
C. are spending more and more time watching TV
D. are involved less and less in household work
5. We can infer from the passage that ________.
A. extracurricular activities promote children’s intelligence
B. most children will turn to reading with TV sets switched off
C. efforts to get kids interested in reading have been fruitful
D. most parents believe reading to be beneficial to children
1.[C] 語義理解題。該短語所在句子的上文(第1段最后一句)表明“孩子的課余時間比以前少了”,而本句指出父母和孩子都受time crunch的影響，可見the same time crunch是指空閑時間不夠用，故C正確。
2.[B] 觀點態度題。第2段第2句中括號里的內容表明了作者的觀點。轉折詞Nevertheless說明作者的觀點跟上文Sandra Hofferth的看法不完全一致，而作者在下文舉例中提到，單身母親因為要上班，與孩子在起的時間只有9個小時，確實少了很多，這與Hofferth所述一致，因此選B。
3.[B] 事實細節題。第3段最后一句表明孩子自由玩樂能促使他們獨立思考，并使他們學會處理與同齡關系，其中unstructured play 相當于B中的play in his own way，故B正確。
4.[A] 觀點態度題。文章一開頭作者就說孩子們比1981年時上學的時間每周多8小時，他們還做更多的家務,參加更多的有組織性的活動等等,而這些均是造成孩子們空閑時間越來越少的原因，而孩子們空閑時間少也正是作者憂慮的問題，故可推知本題選A。B是作者在第2段括號里反駁過的觀點;C錯在more and more time，而且作者對孩子看電視也不完全反對;孩子們事實上要做更多家務，故D錯。
5.[D] 推理判斷題。文章最后一段倒數第2句說“盡管父母費盡心思培養孩子的讀書興趣，可孩子們一周也只不過花一個多小時讀書”。由此可見,父母認為讀書對孩子有好處，即D。A中的extracurricular activities包含 structured and unstructured activities，文中只說unstructured activities有助于培養孩子獨立思考以及與同齡人交往的能力，沒有說structured activities對intelligence有什么幫助;B與文章的倒數第3句不符;C與倒數第2句不符。
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