原版真题篇
雅思 A 类真题｜剑 14 Test 1 Passage 1：The Importance of Children's Play
导语：本篇为剑桥雅思 14 官方 A 类阅读真题，教育类高频话题，题型包含笔记填空与正误判断，难度适中，适合基础阶段刷题训练。
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the passage 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, especially in urban areas, are diminishing. Among the factors contributing to this are fear of traffic, fear of crime, increased competition in schooling, the social pressures on families and the closing of public play spaces. The reduction in play is also associated with increased levels of anxiety in children and poorer self-regulation.
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.
Whitebread's own 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 the International Play Association, points out that 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. 'Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. Problems in play behaviour are often an early warning sign of deeper issues.'
In the past, people had a far better understanding of the value of play, says Whitebread. 'Children in the 19th century were expected to play for large parts of the day, and that was seen as perfectly normal. Now, play is often seen as a trivial thing, or as something that should be structured and educational, rather than just play for play's sake.'
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.
'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.'
Questions 1–8（Notes Completion）
Choose ONE WORD ONLYfrom the passage for each answer.
Children's play
Uses of children's play
building a 'magical kingdom' may help develop 1 ________ board games involve 2 ________ and turn-taking
Recent changes affecting children's play
populations of 3 ________ have grown opportunities for free play are limited due to: fear of 4 ________ fear of 5 ________ increased 6 ________ in schools
International policies on children's play
it is difficult to find 7 ________ to support new policies research needs to study the impact of play on the rest of the child’s 8 ________
Questions 9–13（TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN）
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?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
Children with good self-control are known to be likely to do well at school later on.
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