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You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect
You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect
admin
2011-02-11
98
问题
You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsection of her mom’s Toyota Sienna, bopping along to the music on her iPod. Now and then she pulls out one of the ear buds so that she can tell her mom some forgotten bit of news or gossip; Chloe’s mom is up to speed on the dramas that are always unfolding in her daughter’s circle of friends, just as she can tell you the date of her next French test, the topic of her coming history paper and the location and scope of her next community service project. They have a great night planned out: they’re going to pick up Chloe’s best friend and then drive back home for a night of DVDs and popcorn in the family room. Her mom will putter around close by, and her dad will probably sit down and watch one of the movies with the girls.
When I was in high school in the 1970s,we had a name for teenagers like Chloe: losers. If an otherwise normal girl thought that the best way to spend a Saturday night was home with her parents—not just co-existing with them, but actually hanging out with them—we would have been looking for a bucket of pig’s blood.
In my day, we did whatever was necessary to get out on a Saturday night: we climbed out of windows; we jumped on the hack of motorcycles; God help us, we hitchhiked. We needed, on the most basic and physical level, to be out in the dangerous night, with one another, away from our parents and the safety of home. It was no way to live, and some of us didn’t. But it was a drive so elemental and essential that there seemed no way to deny it.
That a profound change has taken place in the relationship between American teenagers and their parents is made clear by statistics from the Federal Highway Administration showing a steady decline in the number of licensed teenage drivers. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third.
The reasons have a great deal to do with the cost of car insurance and driver’s education programs. But among middle-and upper-middle-class young adults, the peer power that created the teenage car culture, the compelling energy that once served to blast an adolescent away from his or her parents has begun to drain away. Teenagers report that they don’t need to drive: their parents are willing to take them where they want to go, and they are content to ride shotgun with Mom, texting and yakking all the way to the mall.
I had not taught high school long before I attended my first funeral: an 18-year-old,loud in the halls one day, dead on the side of the road the next. If you want to improve your daughter’s chances of surviving her teens, don’t give her the car keys. If our generation of parents has done one thing right, it has been to manipulate our children into giving up driving.
How have we managed it? Through the very aspect of family life we complain about the most: the extracurricular activities that we pay for and arrange and attend; the risibly involved homework assignments that we are so enmeshed with; the whole annoying side industry of being a "servant" and a "private driver".
These things harass us no end. But they have bound our children to us in complex and powerful ways, and this has been, to some extent, the point of the entire exercise. It means that we can prolong the period of our children’s dependency, to extend the sweet phase of cocooning and protecting well into their adolescence.
An American teenager is part premature and part invalid, able to excel in obscure sports but needing his mother to rush the field with a jacket and thermos of soup when he’s finished. They have been hobbled by our endless meddling; they lack resourcefulness and resilience. They’re like little children, soft and easily wounded.
But for all their fussiness and neediness, they love us; they want to be close to us. They have every reason to believe that we will take care of them, even when they would be better off if we lei them struggle a bit.
Learn to drive? Why would they want to do that?
The second and the third paragraphs do NOT imply that
选项
A、the author in her teenage years would have considered Chloe as abnormal.
B、teenagers usually spent weekends with their friends in 1970s.
C、teenagers in 1970s were more likely to drive out.
D、teenagers in 1970s had a worse relationship With their parents.
答案
C
解析
推断题。第二段和第三段都讲的是上世纪70年代,作者上中学时候孩子们度过周末的方式,即远离父母和家,与朋友们到外面去寻求刺激,故排除B。第二、三段的作用是与第一段Chloe的做法进行对比。作为现如今的中学生,Chloe选择与父母共同娱乐和度过周末,说明与父母的关系比70年代的年轻人与父母的关系亲密,D的说法就是从中推导出来的,故排除D。从第二段的第一句话就可以看出,当年的作者,作为普遍叛逆的中学生的一员,给Chloe的评价是:loser。因此当时的她肯定会将Chloe视为不合群、不正常,就像我们会去找一桶猪血来玩儿一样不正常。故排除A。第三段指出,70年代的中学生们周末的出行方式是motorcycles和hitchhike(搭便车),还没有普遍地开车,故答案为C。要注意的是。第三段最后一句话中的“drive”不是“开车”,而是“冲动”的意思。
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0
专业英语八级
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