阅读理解。

People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behavior are formed. It is not easy to

explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another is competitive.

Social scientists are of course extremely interested in these types of questions. They want to explain why

we possess certain characteristics and exhibit certain behavior. There are no clear answers yet, but two

distinct schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might expect, the two approaches are very

different from each other, and there is a great deal of debate between proponents of each theory. The

controversy is often conveniently referred to as "nature and nurture".

Those who support the"nature" side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behavior patterns are

largely determined by biological factors. That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities,

characteristics and behavior is central to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory states that our behavior

is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our instincts (本能).

Proponents of the "nurture" theory, or, as they are often called, behaviorists, claim that our environment is

more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviorist, B. F.

Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behavior is almost completely shaped by their surroundings. The

behaviorists' view of the human being is quite mechanistic. They state that, like machines, humans respond to

environmental stimuli (刺激) as the basis of their behavior.

Socially and politically, the consequences of these two theories are far-reaching. In the US, for example,

blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some "nature" proponents to

conclude that blacks are genetically lower in status than whites. Behaviorists, on the contrary, say that the

differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often robbed of many of the educational and other

environ mental advantages that whites enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not develop the same responses

that whites do.

Neither of these theories can yet fully explain human behavior. In fact, it is quite likely that the key to our

behavior lies somewhere between these two extremes and that the controversy will continue for a long time

is certain.

1. This passage is mainly concerned with _____.

A. relation between personality and behavior

B. relation between behavior and environment

C. different accounts of patterns of human behavior

D. different theories of the formation of human behavior

2. The underlined word "proponents" in Paragraph 2 means _____.

A. creators

B. advisors

C. advocates

D. judges

3. In Paragraph 5, the author mainly writes about _____.

A. the considerable influence of the two theories

B. differences between the blacks and whites

C. racial discrimination in the United States

D. different responds to intelligence tests

4. What's the author's purpose in writing the passage?

A. To call our attention to the changes of human behavior.

B. To urge scientists to do more research in social science.

C. To give us a detailed explanation of human behavior.

D. To present an argument in the field of social science.

答案

1-4 DCAD

考点名称：科教类阅读

科教类阅读的概念：

科教类阅读主要考查考生对书面语篇的整体领悟能力和接受及处理具体信息的能力。试题的取材，密切联系当前我国和世界经济、科技等方面的变化，有关数据的来源真实可信。

科教类文章阅读技巧：

一、材料特点：

这类文章的总体特点是：科技词汇多，句子结构复杂，理论性强，逻辑严谨。具体说来它有以下几个特点：

1、文章中词汇的意义比较单一、稳定、简明，不带感情色彩，具有单一性和准确性的特点。这类文章通常不会出现文学英语中采用的排比、比喻、夸张等修辞手法，一词多义的现象也不多见。

2、句子结构较复杂，语法分析较困难。为了描述一个客观事物，严密地表达自己的思想，作者经常会使用集多种语法现象于一体的长句。

3、常使用被动语态，尤其是一些惯用被动句式。

二、命题特点：

科普类阅读的主要命题形式有事实细节题、词义猜测题、推理判断题以及主旨概括题等，其中推理判断题居多。