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  3. For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been fav

For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been fav

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问题     For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favorite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down. Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason", for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that "the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing(unless required todo so forschool) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004."
    So it is a surprise that this trend seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008.
    The increase, modest as it is, has thrown educationalists into excitement "It’s just a blip," one professor told The New York Times. It is certainly a snapshot. But it is not statistically insignificant. As the NEA’s research director, Sunil Iyengar, points out, almost every demographic and ethnic group seems to be reading more. The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics (up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third.
    Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing. Dana Gioia, the NEA’s outgoing chairman, thinks the reason for the turnaround is the public reaction to earlier reports which had sounded the alarm. "There has been a measurable change in society’s commitment to literacy," he says. "Reading has become a higher priority."
    It may also be benefiting from the growing popularity of serious-minded leisure pursuits of many kinds. Museums, literary festivals and live opera transmissions into cinemas are all reporting larger audiences. Mr. Iyengar thinks the division between those who read a lot and those who don’t is eroding. What has not changed, though, is America’s "functional illiteracy" rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn’t, one of the worst rates in the rich world.
The sentence "Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men." (Line 1, Paragraph 4) denotes that young men have
选项 A、started to outperform young women in academic studies.
B、enjoyed reading more comprehensively than young women.
C、narrowed the gap with young women in learning.
D、showed a sign of willingness to read more than before.
答案D
解析 语义理解题。直接定位到第四段。文中提到最显著的表现是青年男子阅读人数增长了24%，与女性阅读方面的差距正在缩小。因此D项为正确答案。A项夸大了年轻男性的进步；B项年轻男性阅读比过去有所增加，而非比年轻女性更愿意阅读；C项引申过度，原文为阅读差距缩小，而非学习差距缩小。
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