剑桥雅思阅读4-14原文+译文+解析

剑桥雅思14Test1阅读Passage1文章题目为儿童游戏的重要性，这篇文章考试题型比较经典，是按照顺序出题的。这有利于我们从阅读原文中找到答案。接下来一起来看看剑桥雅思14Test1阅读Passage1真题内容。

剑桥雅思14Test1阅读Passage1真题文本

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN’ S PLAY

Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she’s creating an enchanting world. Although she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his ‘teacher’, she’s practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

‘Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,’ says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. ‘It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.’

Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. ‘The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,’ he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents’ increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children’s right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

‘The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable - but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old “to play”, then you as the researcher have intervened,’ explains Dr Sara Baker. ‘And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It’s a real challenge.’

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child’s later life.

Now, thanks to the university’s new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

‘A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children’s self-control,’ explains Baker. ‘This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes — it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.’

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. ‘This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.’

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

Gibson adds: ‘Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.’

Whitebread’s recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children’s writing. ‘Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.’ Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created their story with Lego_ with similar results. ‘Many teachers commented that they had always previously had children saying they didn’t know what to write about. With the Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.’

Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he describes, ‘the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.’ Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such as school starting age.

‘Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It’s regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with “work”. Let’s not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let’s make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.’

_Lego: coloured plastic building blocks and other pieces that can be joined together

Questions 1-8

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9 Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.

10 The way a child plays may provide information about possible medical problems.

11 Playing with dolls was found to benefit girls’ writing more than boys’ writing.

12 Children had problems thinking up ideas when they first created the story with Lego.

13 People nowadays regard children’s play as less significant than they did in the past.

剑桥雅思14test1阅读passage1原文译文

passage 1

儿童嬉戏玩耍的重要性

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN’S PLAY

Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she’s creating an enchanting world. Although she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

一块又一块积木，六岁的Alice正在搭建一个魔法王国。通过想象那些童话故事里的塔楼和喷火的巨龙、邪恶的巫师和勇敢的英雄，她在创造一个充满神秘魅力的世界。尽管她自己并没有意识到这一点，但这种天马行空的幻想正在帮助她迈出创造力的最初几步，从而将会对她今后的成年生活产生重要的影响。

Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younger brother. When she bosses him around as his ‘teacher’, she’s practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence. Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

几分钟之后，Alice抛下了这个王国，开始和她的小弟弟玩起了假装上学的游戏。当她扮演他的“老师”指挥他干这干那的时候，她是在通过这种假扮行为练习如何控制自己的情绪。再后来，等他们玩腻了这个游戏，坐下来开始进行一局棋盘游戏的时候，她是在学习了解：需要遵守规则并与搭档交替出手。

‘Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,’ says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK. ‘It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.’

“玩耍嬉戏，以其各种各样的丰富形式，是人类这个物种最伟大的成就之一，”英国剑桥大学教育系的David Whitebread博士这样说。“它为我们如何成长为有智慧、能解决问题的成年人奠定了基础，也对我们成功地成为一个有着高度适应能力的物种起着至关重要的作用。

Recognising the importance of play is not new: over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life, and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century.

对游戏之重要性的认可并非什么新鲜事：两千多年以前，希腊哲学家柏拉图(Plato)就热烈赞美了它的好处，认为它是为成年生活开发各项技能的手段，而自从19世纪以来就不断在发展出各种寓学习于游戏的理念。

But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. ‘The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,’he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents’ increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

但我们生活在变化中的时代里，而Whitebread注意到了玩耍这件事在全球范围内的缩减，他指出：全世界有一半以上的人口现在居住在城市里。“自由玩耍，我在童年里几乎每天都有机会体验，现在却正变得越来越稀缺，”他说道。户外玩耍活动之所以被削减，是出于对交通事故风险的担忧，以及家长们逐渐攀升的、保护自己孩子不受犯罪行为侵害的愿望，同时还由于当前对“更早就是更好”的强调，这导致了在学科学习和学校中更激烈的竞争。

International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children’s right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

诸如联合国和欧盟这样的国际组织己经开始着手制定一些关注儿童游戏权利的政策，并开始考虑这对休闲设施和教育项目所产生的连带影响。但他们通常所缺少的是赖以制定各项政策的证据。

‘The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable - but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old “to play”, then you as the researcher have intervened,’ explains Dr Sara Baker. ‘And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It’s a real challenge.’

“我们所感兴趣的那类游戏是儿童自己开启的、自发进行的和不可预测的——但是，一且你让一个五岁大的孩子‘去玩儿吧’，那你作为研究者就已经是进行了干预，”Sara Baker博士这样解释。“而我们想要了解游戏的长线影响是什么。这是个真正的挑战。”

Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child’s later life.

Jenny Gibson博士表示同意并指出：虽然在游戏究竟何等重要、以及为什么如此重要这个谜题中，有一些阶段已经得到了审视研究，然而在它对儿童之后的人生究竟产生何种影响这个方面，还是数据寥寥。

Now, thanks to the university’s new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

现在，多亏了这所大学新成立的“教育发展学习型游戏研究中心”(简称PEDAL)Whitebread、Baker、Gibson这些人和一支研究团队希望能提供出证据，展示游戏在一个儿童成长的过程中到底扮演何种角色。

‘A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children’s self-control,’ explains Baker. ‘This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes — it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.’

“存在这样一种极大的可能性：游戏助力了儿童自我控制的早期发展阶段，”Baker解释说。“这种能力使我们有意识地关注自我的思考过程一一它影响到了我们能多有效率地去从事各种富于挑战的活动。

In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. ‘This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.’

Baker博士在一项对幼儿和学龄前儿童展开的研究中发现：在探索一个需要引入科学分析的陌生领域时，有着更强自控力的儿童能更快地解决问题。“这类证据令我们确信，给予儿童嬉戏玩耍的机会从更长远来看将会让他们成长为更成功的问题解决者。”

If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

研究者们认为，如果游戏体验确实能促进这个方面的发展，这对于教育领域该如何举动来说就是极度重要的，因为已经有证据证明：自我管控能力是学业成就高低的一个关键性预示因素。

Gibson adds: ‘Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.’

Gibson补充说：“游戏行为还是健康的社交和情感发展的一个重要指标。在先前的研究中，我曾了解过观察游戏中的儿童如何可以为我们提供重要线索，从而看出他们是否处在良好的成长状态，甚至还能为诊断出例如自闭症这样的神经发展失调问题提供帮助。”

剑桥雅思14test1阅读passage1答案解析

Question 1

答案：creativity

关键词：magical kingdom, help

定位原文：原文第1段，Brick by brick, six-year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. … Although she isn’t aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

解题思路：选择magical kingdom和help作为关键词，空格做develop的宾语，所以可知是名词，句意问的是“帮助发展…”。回到原位定位第1段。第一段后半部分说到，由helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity可知，帮助她发展的是capacity for creativity，填一个名词，选择creativity，创造力。

Question 2

答案：rules

关键词：board games, turn-taking

定位原文：原文第2段，Later on, when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she’s learning about the need to follow rules and take turns with a partner.

解题思路：利用board games及turn-taking可以直接定位到原文第2段最后一句。由题干可知，空格做involve的宾语，并且和turn-taking构成并列关系。在定位句中，turn-taking换成了take turns，与take turns构成并列关系的是follow rules，由于我们的答案只能写一个词，所以involve和follow构成替换关系，答案为rules。

Question 3

答案：cities

关键词：changes, populations

定位原文：原文第5段，But we live in changing times, and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play, pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities.

解题思路：利用changes定位到原文第5段的changing times。题干中问的是“…的人口增长了”，所以进一步利用populations定位，空格做of的宾语，是名词或动名词。在定位句中，populations换成了people，句中说的是“世界上超过半数的人口现在生活在城市中”，由此可知，是“城市的人口增长了”。

Question 4

答案：traffic

关键词：opportunities, fear

定位原文：原文第5段，‘The opportunities for free play, which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,’ he says. Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, …

解题思路：根据填空题的顺序性，利用opportunities可以确定大致定位。题干中的limited替换原文的curtailed(缩减)，fear替换原文的risk，所以fear(害怕)的是traffic。

Question 5

答案：crime

关键词：fear, 并列关系

定位原文：原文第5段，Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents’ increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, …

解题思路：承接第四题，第五题问的也是fear(害怕)什么，答案位于of后面，同样是一个名词或动名词，且和上一题的traffic构成并列关系。原文定位句中，as well as表示并列关系，后面的句子中，说到“家长越来越希望保护孩子免受犯罪行为侵害”，所以，fear(害怕)的应该是犯罪行为，即原文中的crime。

Question 6

答案：competition

关键词：increased, schools

定位原文：原文第5段，… and by the emphasis on ‘earlier is better’ which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

解题思路：题干问到“学校里增加的…”，需要一个名词。承接第四题和第五题，第六题信息与traffic及crime构成并列关系。在原文中，and的后面为答案所在的部分，其中，题干中的increased换成了greater，所以答案为competition。

Question 7

答案：evidence

关键词：international policies, difficult

定位原文：原文第6段，International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children’s right to play, … But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

解题思路：利用international policies定位文章文章第6段，原文中替换成了international bodies，题干中空格做find的宾语，所以是名词。句意为，“很难找到…来支持新政策”，回到文章中，对应but 转折之后，lack(缺乏)替换了“difficult to find”，所以缺少的是evidence。

Question 8

答案：life

关键词：impact, rest

定位原文：原文第7-8段，‘And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. … Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child’s later life.

解题思路：题干问的是，“调查需要研究玩耍对于孩子们余下的…的影响”空格处需要一个名词。impact在第7段和第8段各出现了一次，第7段的impact大致说明了research的内容，第8段的impact具体说到“the impact it has on the child’s later life”，所以题干中的rest相当于原文中的later，空格答案为life。

Question 9

答案：TRUE

关键词：children, self-control

定位原文：原文第11段，…she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. ‘This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.’

解题思路：利用children和self-control定位到原文第11段，题干中的good self-control替换成了greater self-control。从定位句中可以看出，自控力更强的孩子处理问题会更快，引号中的句子进一步说明，in the long run(长期来看)，这会使得孩子们更成功地解决问题。这层意思与题干中说到的，“自控力很强的孩子可能在之后的校园生活中表现更好”，是基本吻合的，所以答案选择TRUE。

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