Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.
For questions 1-7, mark
Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with information given in the passage;
N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;
NG (for NOT GIVES) if the information is not given in the passage.
For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.
The New Science of Siblings
For a long time, researchers have tried to nail down just what shapes us—or what, at least, shapes us most. And over the years, they've had a lot of eureka moments (突发灵感的时刻). First it was our parents, particularly our mothers. Then it was our genes. Next it was our peers, who show up last but hold great sway. And all those ideas were good ones—but only as far as they went. Somewhere, there was a sort of temperamental(捉摸不定的)dark matter exerting an invisible gravitational pull of its own. More and more, scientists are concluding that this unexplained force is our siblings.
From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our scolds, protectors, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride. Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we'll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. Siblings are with us for the whole journey.
At research centers in the U. S. , Canada, Europe and elsewhere, scientists are gaining intriguing insights into the people we become as adults. Does the student struggling with a professor who plays favorites summon up the coping skills acquired from dealing with a sister who was Daddy's girl？ Do husbands and wives benefit from the inter-gender negotiations they waged when their most important partners were their sisters and brothers？ Today serious work is revealing exactly how our brothers and sisters influence us.
Why childhood fights between siblings can be good
By the time children are 11, they devote about 33% of their free time to their siblings—more time than they spend with friends, parents, teachers or even by themselves. Adolescents, who have usually begun going their own way, devote at least 10 hours a week to activities with their siblings. Siblings are like the nurses on the warD. All that proximity breeds an awful lot of intimacy—and an awful lot of friction.
Laurie Kramer, professor of applied family studies at the University of Illinois has found that, on average, sibs between 3 and 7 years old engage in some kind of conflict 3.5 times an hour. Kids in the 2-to-4 age group top out at 6.3—or more than one clash every 10 minutes, according to a Canadian study.
But as much as all the fighting can set parents' hair on end, there's a lot of learning going on too, specifically about how conflicts, once begun, can be settleD. Shaw and his colleagues conducted a years-long study and found that the kids who practiced the best conflict-resolution skills at home carried those abilities into the classroom. "Siblings have a socializing effect on one another," Shaw says. "Unlike a relationship with friends, you're stuck with your sibs. You learn to negotiate things day to day."
It's that permanence, researchers believe, that makes siblings a rehearsal tool for later life. Somewhere in there is the early training for the e-mail joke that breaks an office silence or the husband who signals that a fight is over by asking his wife what she thinks they should do about that fast-approaching vacation anyway. "Sibling relationships are where you learn all this," says developmental psychologist S

A. Y
B. N
C. NG