Want to know the current population of India? The Internet is your best choice. Need a quick review on the phases of the moon(月相)? Go ahead, read a story online (or two or three). But if you really need to learn something, you’re probably better off with print. Or at least that’s what a lot of research now suggests. 

Many studies have shown that when people read on-screen, they don’t understand what they’ve read as well as when they read in print. Even worse, many don’t realize they’re not getting it. For example, researchers in Spain and Israel took a close look at 54 studies comparing digital and print reading. Their 2018 study involved more than 171,000 readers. Comprehension, they found, was better overall when people read print rather than digital texts.

Patricia Alexander is a psychologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. She studies how we learn. Much of her research has deeply researched the differences between reading in print and on-screen. Alexander says students often think they learn more from reading online. When tested, though, it turns out that they actually learned less than when reading in print.

Reading is not natural. Learning to read takes real work. The brain has no special network of cells just for reading, so it might slip into skim(浏览) mode when you’re reading on a screen. And it may switch to deep-reading mode when you turn to print. But the results don’t just depend on the device, however. It also depends on what you assume about the text. If we think it will be easy, we might not put in much effort. Much of what we read on-screen tends to be text messages and social-media posts. They’re usually easy to understand. So, when people read on-screen, they read faster. When reading fast, we may not absorb all the ideas as well.

1.Why does the author raise two questions in the first paragraph?

A To persuade readers to read online.

B To express his/her own doubts.

C To show different ways of reading.

D To introduce the topic of the text.

解析：选D。D推理判断题。作者提出两个问题并建议读者去网上查询答案，接下来作者才引入本文主题：纸质阅读才能帮助读者更好地学到知识。故选D。

2.What did the 2018 study find?

A People preferred digital reading to print reading.

B People couldn’t understand what they read on-screen.

C People understood better when reading print texts.

D People liked print reading better than digital reading.

解析：选C。C细节理解题。根据第二段最后一句“Comprehension, they found, was better overall when people read print rather than digital texts.”可知，他们发现读者读纸质材料时对材料理解得更好。故选C。

3.What might Patricia Alexander suggest doing?

A Never throwing away your books.

B Increasing your on-screen reading time.

C Learning more from reading online.

D Trying to understand what you read in print.

解析：选A。A推理判断题。根据第三段中的“Alexander says students often think they learn more from reading online. When tested, though, it turns out that they actually learned less than when reading in print.”可知，学生通过网上阅读所习得比纸质阅读所习得更少，由此推断她会建议多阅读纸质书。故选A。

4.Why do we often read faster online than in print?

A Reading in print takes real work.

B Not all ideas online are important.

C Online text is often considered easy.

D The brain slips into deep-reading mode.

解析：选C。C细节理解题。根据最后一段的“It also depends on what you assume about the text.”和倒数二、三句“Much of what we read on-screen tends to be text messages and social-media posts. They’re usually easy to understand. So, when people read on-screen, they read faster.”可知，人们常常主观地认为电子产品上的信息更简单，因此会读得更快。故选C。