It is found that American students spend less than 15% of their time in school. While there’s no doubt that school is important, a number of recent studies reminds us that parents are even more so. A study published earlier this month by researchers at North Carolina State University, for example, finds that parental involvement — checking homework, attending school meetings and events, discussing school activities at home — has a more powerful influence on students’ academic performance than anything about the school the students attend. Another study, published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, reports that the effort put forth by parents (reading stories aloud, meeting with teachers) has a bigger impact on their children’s educational achievement than the effort devoted by either teachers or the students themselves. And a third study concludes that schools would have to increase their spending by more than $1,000 per pupil in order to achieve the same results that are gained with parental involvement.
So parents matter. But it is also revealed in researches that parents, of all backgrounds, don’t need to buy expensive educational toys or digital devices for their kids in order to give them an advantage. They don’t need to drive their offspring (子孙，后代)to enrichment classes or test-preparation courses. What they need to do with their children is much simpler: talk.
But not just any talk. Recent research has indicated exactly what kinds of talk at home encourage children’s success at school. For example, a study conducted by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health and published in the journal Pediatrics found that two-way adult-child conversations were six times as potent in promoting language development as the ones in which the adult did all the talking. Engaging in this reciprocal（双向的) back-and-forth gives children a chance to try out language for themselves, and also gives them the sense that their thoughts and opinions matter.
The content of parents’ conversations with kids matters, too. Children who hear talk about counting and numbers at home start school with much more extensive mathematical knowledge, report researchers from the University of Chicago. While the conversations parents have with their children change as kids grow older, the effect of these exchanges on academic achievement remains strong. Research finds that parents play an important role in what is called “academic socialization” — setting expectations and making connections between current behavior and future goals. Engaging in these sorts of conversations has a greater impact on educational acplishment.
【小题1】Parents are even more important than schools because .A．parental involvement makes up for what schools are not able to doB．teachers and students themselves do not put in enough effortC．parental involvement saves money for schools and the local governmentD．students may well make greater achievements with parents' attention【小题2】It can be inferred from the 2nd paragraph that .A．educational toys are unaffordable nowadaysB．digital devices can give children an advantageC．some parents believe in enrichment classesD．talking with children is a very simple task【小题3】The word potent is closest in meaning to .A．powerfulB．difficultC．necessaryD．resistant【小题4】Which of the following will more encourage children's success at school according to the passage?A．Parents order their children to stop playing video games.B．Parents discuss with their children the possible future career.C．Parents lecture their children on getting too low marks on tests.D．Parents introduce colleges around the US to their children.D
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(答案→)D
解析：文章介绍了父母与孩子之间有意义的对话对孩子的教育有很大的影响。
【小题1】推断题：从第一段第三句中：for example, finds that parental involvement — checking homework, attending school meetings and events, discussing school activities at home — has a more powerful influence on students’ academic performance than anything about the school the students attend.例如，研究发现父母的参与—检查家庭作业、参加学校会议和事件、在家讨论学校活动— 在学生学习成绩上比学生在学校所做的有更多的影响力。故选D。
【小题2】推断题：根据第二段内容可知所有父母不需要为了给孩子提供一个优势而购买昂贵的教育玩具或数码设备。他们不需要让他们的后代上提高类或备考类课程。他们和孩子所需要做的很简单：说话。文中没有提到买齐买不起的问题，故A不正确；文中并没有说数字设备可以给孩子优势，故B不正确；文中没有说谈话是一项简单的任务，故D不正确；C项说有一些父母相信提高班，他们送孩子去上这类班就是因为他们相信，故选C。
【小题3】推断题：powerful有力的；difficult困难的；necessary 必须的；resistant抵抗的。“two-way adult-child conversations were six times as potent in promoting language development as the ones in which the adult did all the talking”成人与孩子的双向交流在提高语言发展上比一直由成人主导的交流上有六倍的效力。A更贴近语境，故选A。
【小题4】推断题：最后一段最后两句可知研究发现,父母在所谓的“学术社会化”扮演着重要的角色——设置期望,使目前的行为和未来的目标之间的连接。从事这类对话对教育成绩有更大的影响。故选B。