While we are still children ,most of us live at home with our parents, more or less peacefully . But as we become teenagers , things change ,and we begin to grow apart from our parents . This means we are almost ready to leave the house where we grew up and make a new home of our own .
All humans must do this ,but they don’t all do it in the same way . If ,for instance ,you belong to a primitive tribe (原始部落) ，then as you grew up ,you’d learn the skills you needed as an adult---how to catch fish ,how to keep the house and look after children . You would be ready to marry in your early teens and you would build a house and live near your family in the village.
This seems a very old way of life , but it is what humans have been used to through hundreds of years. And it is what we are still used to in the 21st century ,for man hasn’t changed in the short time since he became civilized(文明的). But could you leave home and look after yourself during the teen years ? Most people would not do very well . Why ? Because although man hasn’t changed very much , the society he lives in has changed greatly ,which means that we have to learn more and more before we are ready to leave our parents’ shelter( 居所 ) and live alone .
However ,sometimes it is very frustrating to live at parents’ home . Parents can be very upset about late nights ,criticizing friends and always saying that we are noisy and dirty . But we still need our emotional (情感的) shelter till we finish our studies , and that is why we usually stay in our parents’ home until we feel grown up enough to deal with living alone .
【小題1】When does the relationship with parents start changing ?

Mr. Strong is a London taxi driver. The following talk is given by him.

“I have been a taxi driver     1     nearly ten years. It’s a nice job most of the time. You meet a lot of people. I always work at night,     2    there is too much traffic during the day. I go to work at 5:30 in the afternoon, and I usually    3    between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.”

“Some     4     things happened late at night.     5     day I was taking a woman home from a party. She had her little dog with her. When we got to her house, she found that she had lost her     6     . So I waited in the car    7      she climbed in through the windows.”

    “I waited and waited. After half an hour of ringing the bell I decided to find out  8    was going on. I tied the dog to a tree and started to     9    in through the window. The next thing I knew was that the police came. They thought I was a thief.”

    “Luckily the woman came downstairs. She     10     have gone to sleep and forgotten me and the dog!”

1. A．in                B．for                  C．before             D．a(chǎn)fter

2. A．if                 B．so                   C．though             D．because

3. A．go home       B．go shopping     C．do sports         D．do housework

4. A．sad             B．good                C．strange            D．disappointing

5. A．The other   B．Another      C．The others           D．Other

6. A．money         B．bag                 C．box                 D．key

7. A．until             B．while               C．since               D．a(chǎn)s soon as

8. A．what            B．which              C．who                D．that

9. A．drive            B．walk                C．climb               D．run

10. A．will            B．can                  C．may                D．must

When women sit together to watch a movie on TV, at the same time they usually talk about a lot of subjects, including children, men, careers and what’s happening in their lives. When groups of men and women watch a movie together, the men usually end up telling the women to shut up. Men can either talk or watch the screen---they can’t do both---and they don’t understand that women can. Besides(此外), women think that the point of all getting together is to have a good time and develop relationships--not just to sit there like couch potatoes staring (盯著) at the screen.
During the ad breaks, a man often asks a woman to explain the plot(the story that is told in a novel or play or movie etc.) and tell him where the relationship between the characters is going. He is unable, unlike women, to read the small body language signals that show how the characters are feeling emotionally(情緒上). Since women originally spent their days with the other women and children in the group, they developed the ability to communicate successfully because they want to keep relationships. For a woman, speech continues to have such a clear purpose: to build relationships and make friends. For men, to talk is to connect to the facts.
Men see the telephone as a communication tool for sending facts and information to other people, but a woman sees it as a way of keeping relationship. A woman can spend two weeks on vacation with her girlfriend and, when she returns home, telephone the same girlfriend and talk for another two hours.
There is no convincing(令人信服的)evidence that social conditioning, the fact that girls’ mothers talked them more, is the reason why girls talk more than boys. Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Lewis, author of Social Behaviour and Language Acquisition, conducted experiments that found mothers talked to and looked at baby girls more often than baby boys. Scientific evidence shows parents reply to the brain differences of their children. Since a girl’s brain is better organized to send and receive speech, we talk to them more. As a result, mothers who try to talk to their sons are usually pointed to receive only short complaints in reply.
【小題1】While watching TV with others, women usually talk a lot because they ___________.