申論題

V. The following is an article from a textbook. Please make a two-paragraph summary and use your summary to design a cloze test of five multiple-choice questions with four options for each question. The answer for each question should be underlined. (10%) “Tom’s phone is ringing, and Ms. Lewis doesn’t hear a thing,” said Belinda as she laughed to herself. “Yes, she is going on with the lesson,” her friend replied. Their classmates started laughing, and Ms. Lewis had no idea what was going on. “When I heard about it, I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Donna Lewis, a high school teacher in Manhattan. “But one of the kids gave me a copy of the ring tone. My colleague and I played it for some first graders. They could all hear it, but we couldn’t.” The ring tone that she couldn’t hear is called the Teen Buzz. It makes use of an invention called the Mosquito. The Mosquito is an annoying 17 kHz buzzer. It was first designed to keep teenagers from hanging around in front of stores. The high-pitched sound made by the Mosquito is so disturbing that young people cannot stand it and go away. Since it is audible only to kids, adults use the Mosquito to keep them away. The invention is based on a scientific fact related to hearing loss. Humans can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. However, the range of audible sounds varies with age. When you are younger, you are able to hear high-pitched sounds. When you get older, it is likely that you will no longer hear these sounds. The Mosquito makes a high-frequency noise that usually only people under the age of 20 can hear. The teenagers then turned the tables on the adults. Some clever teenagers reinvented the device as a ring tone, Teen Buzz. The kids adopted this new technology and took advantage of their better hearing. However, not all teenagers have this advantage. Hearing loss affects not only the elderly but the young as well. They can lose their hearing, especially from exposure to noise. If exposure to noise can cause hearing loss, the younger generation may be on the losing side. Many teenagers listen to MP3 players or other portable music players for long periods of time. They also turn up the volume in noisy places, such as on the subway or the street. If the volume is on too high for too long, there is s risk of hearing damage. Unfortunately, however, any hearing loss a person suffers does not show up right away. It may take months or even years for it to surface. The first signs of damage include a feeling of fullness in the ears and the loss of the ability to hear sounds clearly. One warning sign is an inability to hear radio or television at normal volumes. Another is better hearing in one ear than the other when talking on the telephone. It goes without saying that prevention is always better than a cure. Before you come down with any symptoms, give your ears a break. Turn down the volume on your MP3 player and do not listen to it all day long. Take care of your ears and maybe you will be able to enjoy the advantage of Teen Buzz long after your teen years.