2025届高考英语外刊阅读天天练 综合训练七
阅读理解
Don’t Try to Rescue Your Kid From The ‘Learning Pit’
【The Wall Street Journal (February 8-9, 2025)】
On a winter evening I joined for a meeting at my daughter’s school. We watched as an English teacher put up a picture of something called the Learning Pit, which looked like a cartoon ditch with a kid at the bottom. This, he explained, was the shape that learning takes. The high ground, before the ditch, is the excitement and spark of a new idea. Immediately after comes the false belief that you understand it. Then comes the descent into realizing you don’t really understand it: falling into the pit. Over time, very gradually, you figure it out; you climb out of the pit.
James Nottingham, a British teacher, developed the idea of the Learning Pit in the 2000s after noticing that his students almost always played things extremely safe. They only raised their hands when they were certain of the answer. Given choices about what topics to explore, they stuck closely to things they knew. Nottingham wondered how he could help them take more risks in the pursuit of learning: asking more questions, admitting when they didn’t know something, being brave enough to test different approaches. He used a picture of a U-shaped curve to explain to kids how their comfort level would drop and then, in time, rise again.
Letting kids struggle is not the norm in the U.S. In 1999, the Department of Education released a detailed study comparing how teachers teach eighth-grade math in different countries. In Japan, teachers spent 44% of their time giving students material they don’t know and challenging them to figure it out; in the U.S., teachers took this approach 1% of the time. Parents like me often make things worse. Nottingham says there are three mental states kids occupy when they are learning something new: relatively comfortable, relatively uncomfortable and panicked. Too often parents step in at relatively uncomfortable. “It’s counterproductive,” he said in an interview. “Struggle is where we learn.”
Watching your own kid suffer is a special form of hell. But a kid who struggles—and sometimes fails—will end up better prepared for life’s challenges than one who breezes through their work without breaking a sweat. Independence in learning is critical to success in an era where generative AI will require us not just to know things but to know what we want to do with our knowledge. This does not mean that we stop offering help, dialogue and love. High standards can coexist with deep support. Our job is to notice how our kid is doing and to give them just enough guidance to make sure they don’t get into full-on panic mode. The difference is not doing it for them but letting them know you are with them as they muddle through.
The Learning Pit is a useful metaphor because all kids can remember being a novice at something and then gaining competence. Children have the muscles they need to learn, and letting them scramble out of the pit without
hauling them out is not an act of negligence but an act of love.
1. What does the “Learning Pit” metaphor represent
A. The excitement of learning something new.
B. The process of learning, including struggle and eventual understanding.
C. The fear of failure in education.
D. The role of teachers in guiding students.
2. Why did James Nottingham develop the Learning Pit concept
A. To encourage students to take risks and embrace challenges.
B. To help students avoid difficult tasks.
C. To make learning more comfortable for students.
D. To reduce the amount of time teachers spend on challenging material.
3. According to the 1999 study, how did U.S. teachers approach teaching compared to Japanese teachers
A. U.S. teachers spent more time challenging students with new material.
B. U.S. teachers spent less time challenging students with new material.
C. U.S. and Japanese teachers used similar teaching methods.
D. U.S. teachers focused more on student comfort than Japanese teachers.
4. What is the author’s view on letting children struggle in learning
A. It is harmful and should be avoided.
B. It is necessary for developing independence and resilience.
C. It is only useful in certain subjects like math.
D. It is less important than providing constant support.
II. 七选五
How polar bears stop ice from freezing on their fur
【New Scientist (February 8, 2025)】
Polar bears have a hidden-in-plain-sight superpower that anyone who has watched a wildlife documentary could have spotted: ice doesn't stick to their fur.
____1___. Bodil Holst at the University of Bergen in Norway and her colleagues have shown that the ice resistance of polar bear fur is due to natural oils secreted onto the hairs rather than a property of the fur itself.
Holst and her colleagues obtained samples of polar bear fur from Svalbard in Norway and compared them with human hair. ___2___That means the bears can easily shake any ice off. Washing polar bear fur removed its ice resistance, suggesting that the oily coating on the hairs is the key to its properties.____3___
Arctic peoples have used polar bear fur in ways that make use of its ice-resistant properties. ___4___They also strapped polar bear fur to the soles of boots while stalking animals, to avoid the noise made by ice-coated surfaces.
Holst's team is now exploring potential applications, such as creating environmentally friendly ski waxes that don't contain the long-lasting fluorocarbon compounds currently used to prevent icing. __5_____
A.A hair wax based on polar bear sebum could also help people who work in cold environments.
B.They found that the force required to remove ice from polar bear hair was a quarter of what was needed for human hair.
C.Arctic peoples such as the Inuit have traditionally prepared polar bear fur in a way that preserves the sebum unlike methods used for other furs.
D.This has long been known to Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, but only now has it been noticed and studied by scientists.
E.This is, after all, a problem for many other land mammals in cold environments
F.This substance, known as sebum(皮脂), is secreted by glands connected to hair follicles.
G.Inuit hunters are known to have placed small pieces of polar bear fur under the legs of the stools used by hunters to stop them sticking to ice.
语法填空
DeepSeek: the battle for AI dominance
【The Week UK (February 2, 2025)】
The launch of a new AI chatbot from the Chinese startup DeepSeek last month caused widespread panic, said The Economist. About a trillion dollars ____1_____(wipe off) the value of the US tech giants, as ____2_____ became clear that DeepSeek had made an AI model ____3___(near) as good as OpenAI’s or Google’s, for a fraction of the cost – even though it had been barred from using cutting-edge chips by US export controls. Policymakers in Washington fretted ___4___ the US’s lead in AI technology seemed under threat. But for the world at large, DeepSeek’s success “should be a cause for optimism”. It shows how “competition and innovation will make AI cheaper and therefore ____5_____(useful)”. Before DeepSeek, it seemed likely that AI would be dominated by a handful of firms ____6____(charge) “vast, monopoly-like” prices. The future now looks very different. DeepSeek is an open-source product: anyone is free to use, adapt or commercialise it.
AI systems “have the potential ____7____(redraw) global power in ways we’ve scarcely begun to imagine. ____8____ country builds the best and most widely used models will reap the rewards for its economy, national security and global influence.” The US government now has to pursue various extraordinarily challenging _____9____(objective) simultaneously. It must ensure that the US races ahead of China in AI capabilities, while also preparing for a world in ____10___ China has extremely powerful AI systems. At the same time, it must defend against the inherent and well-attested risks of articial intelligence.
BABB
DBFGA
was wiped off;it;nearly;that;more useful;charging;to redraw;Whichever;objectives;which

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