adolescence means old people.（)

grams of instruction, but motivation to learn is very high since language is the most effective means for a child to obtain what he or she wants. If the learning of a new language begins before lower adolescence, one is likely to be able to speak such a language with complete naturalness, but if learned after upper adolescence some hangover of a mother-tongue feature is very likely to persist. But not only do languages exhibit such learning patterns, but so do cultural traits, for example, shaking hands, kissing, and embracing.

Although many persons assume that languages exist in dictionaries and grammars, in fact they only exist in people's heads. But this is equally true of cultural traits, which indicate clearly a they only exist in people's heads. But this is equally true of cultural traits, which indicate clearly a person's value system when crucial decisions need to be made before there is any time to think about alternatives, for example, diving into a flooding stream to rescue a drowning child.

vidual: ideology here is defined as the presence of roughly consistent attitudes, more or less organized in reference to a more encompassing set of general principles. As such, political ideology is dim or absent at the beginning of adolescence. Its acquisition by the adolescent, in even the most modest sense, requires the acquisition of relatively sophisticated cognitive skills; the ability to manage abstractness, to synthesize and generalize, to imagine the future. These are accompanied by a steady advance in the ability to understand principles.

The child's rapid acquisition of political knowledge also promotes the growth of political ideology during adolescence. By knowledge I mean more than the dull "facts" such as the composition of country government, that the child is exposed to in the conventional ninth-grade school course. Nor do I mean only information on current political realities. These are facts of knowledge, but they are less critical than the adolescent's absorption of a feeling for those many unspoken assumptions about the political system that comprise the common ground of understanding, for example, what the state can "appropriately" demand of its citizens, and vice versa, or the "proper" relationship of government to subsidiary social institutions, such as the schools and churches. Thus, political knowledge is the awareness of social assumptions and relationships as well as of objective facts. Much of the naivete that characterizes the younger adolescent's grasp of politics stems not from an ignorance of "facts" but from an incomplete comprehension of the common conventions of the system, of which is and not customarily done, and of how and why it is or is not done.

Yet I do not want to over-emphasize the significance of increased political knowledge in forming adolescent ideology, Over the years I have become progressively disenchanted about the centrality of such knowledge and have come to believe that much current work in political socialization, by relying too heavily on its apparent acquisition, has been misled about the tempo of political understanding in adolescence. Just as young children can count numbers in series without grasping the principle of ordination, young adolescents may have in their heads many random hits of political information without a secure understanding of those concepts that would give order and meaning to the information.

Children's minds pick up bits and pieces of data, but until the adolescent has grasped the encompassing function that concepts and principles provide, the data remain fragmented, random, disordered.

The author's primary purpose in the text is to ______.

A．clarify the kinds of understanding an adolescent must have in order to develop a political ideology

B．dispute the theory that a political ideology can be acquired during adolescence

C．explain why adolescents are generally uninterested in political arguments

D．suggest various means of encouraging adolescents to develop personal political ideologies

青春期(adolescence)

青春期延后(adolescence delay)

Former social ceremonies that used to mark adolescence have given place to ________.

[A] graduations from schools and colleges

[B] social recognition

[C] socio-economic status

[D] certain behavioral changes

A.innocence

B.community

C.adolescence

D.recreation

A.发育期（puberty）

B.成年早期（young adults）

C.潜伏期（latency）

D.青春期（adolescence）