II. Read the following passage and answer the following questions. Write your answers in the provided space.
(1pt.)
SLEEPY TEENS
When school superintendent Russell Dever enters the local coffee shop at around 7:20 A.M., it is crowded with
students. “The line is out the door because our high school kids are getting coffee,” he said. And they are not standing in line
for the decaf – they need the caffeine to stay awake in class. Talk to American high school students and you hear the
complaints about how late they stay up, how little they sleep – and how early they must be in class.
These days, there is increasing concern in schools across the United States about students who are not completely
awake in morning classes. School officials in some states have even changed start times so teenagers can sleep later.
According to sleep expert Mary Carskadon, the fact that many teenagers work long hours outside of the school and have
computers and televisions in their bedrooms contributes to a serious lack of sleep. But, she said, the problem is also due to
biology. As the bodies of teenagers develop, their brains also change. These changes make teens more likely than adults to
have trouble sleeping at night.
Teenagers need at least eight to nine hours of sleep a night, but the average teen gets a lot less. Carskadon’s
study, completed in the fall of 2001 with researcher Amy Wolfson, showed that nearly 30 percent of students in the tenth
grade slept less than six hours on school nights. Less than 15 percent got more than eight hours of sleep each night. Eighth-
graders averaged eight hours of sleep a night, although that age group, she said, needs at least nine hours a night. Even
more remarkable are the results of a 1997-1998 school year study. In that study, 12 out of 24 U.S. high school students who
were part of an experiment at a sleep laboratory had brain wave patterns similar to those of someone with narcolepsy, a
serious condition that affects sleep. “What’s going in on is that at 8:30 in the morning these kids ... would normally be in
school sitting in a classroom, but ... their brain is still in the middle of the night,” said Carskadon.
Parent Dawn Dow says her son just cannot go to bed before 10 P.M. “Last year he was trying to put himself to bed
at 8:30 and was coming in 9:30 and 10 in tears saying, ‘I just can’t go to sleep.’ It is not a case of children wanting to be up
late ... It is a change in his chemistry.”
So would letting teenagers wake up later make a difference? Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota in the
United States studies the effects of changing school starts time. She has looked at students in Edina and Minneapolis, two
cities in Minnesota, where public school officials have moved high school starting times past 8:30 A.M. In Minneapolis, the
middle school begins at 9:30 A.M. She said the later starting times have reduced students absences. They have also lowered
dropout rates by 8 percent over four years. In addition, she said, teachers report that students are not sleeping at their desks
during the first two hours of class anymore. She said 92 percent of parents from Edina reported that their teenagers are
easier to live with. The students reported that they were feeling less depressed and were getting better grades.
Big changes in school start times may not be possible in some areas. However, Wahlstrom said her research
shows that even small changes can contribute to a solution to this serious problem.
Questions 1 to 6: Decide if the following statements are true, false, or not given according to the information
in the reading passage. Write T (true), F (false), or NG (not given) in the provided space.
Question 1 Most teenagers sleep more than they should.
Question 2 There are scientific reasons that explain why teenagers have difficulty sleeping at night.
Question 3 The brains of teenagers are the same as the brains of adults.
Question 4 Teenagers can do their best schoolwork in the early morning.
Question 5 Some schools start their classes later so that teenage students can get more sleep in the morning.
Question 6 Many parents do not want high school officials to change school start times.
