Section A

Directions:  After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct.  For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Amazon’s New Alexa for Kids Will Raise Your Child For You

According to the musical Mary Poppins, the perfect nanny (or babysitter, or caregiver, etc.) has a cheery mood, no imperfection, and plays games, all sorts. You (21) ______ have noticed there is no rule against her being a robot. Kids, meet your new nanny, Alexa.

On Wednesday, Amazon announced the release of (22) ______ kids’ version of its artificially intelligent digital assistant Alexa called FreeTime, as well as a kid-friendly model of its Echo smart speaker, called an Echo Dot Kids Edition. This new Echo, (23) ______ is priced at $79.99 and starts shipping May 9, is basically an Echo Dot mini-speaker (24) ______£¨wrap£©in a colored rubber case and prepackaged to include a one-year subscription to Nanny Alexa.

What does Nanny Alexa do? Actually Alexa does (25) ______ parents tell her to, via parental controls. In most instances, this means it will be harder for kids to do things with Alexa like shopping or listening to songs with clear words, and parents can also put a limit on how much kids (26) ______£¨allow£©to use Alexa. Nanny Alexa has also been engineered to be more used to kids’ voices, and will supposedly answer questions differently (27) ______ more context and using language that will help children learn manners.

FreeTime comes in two levels; the unlimited version can be downloaded onto (28) _____£¨exist£©Echo devices (though not those with screens) for a monthly subscription fee. There’s also a free version available, which includes some of the same kid-friendly features, but less access to kids’ content like radio stations and audiobooks.

Kids love smart speakers, (29) ______ introducing a special one for them feels like a smart move for Amazon. But (30) ______ parents already had doubts about letting their kids befriend an A.I. or allowing a smart speaker into their household, slapping a more colorful case on the Echo is unlikely to reduce their fears. That’s a problem even a spoonful of sugar can’t fix. 

Section B

Directions:  Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box.  Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

“Love and Logic” Formula (¹«Ê½)

Bill Gates doesn’t pretend he lives in an ordinary household. When it comes to parenting his three children, Gates says he and his wife have been quite __31__ about the model they’ve used to raise their three children. He said the couple __32__ a 1970s “Love and Logic” parenting model. It’s a formula that was created by a group of three men — a mix of psychologists, psychiatrists and former school administrators. The core idea of their __33__ is centered on the idea that exercising emotional control, essentially minimizing emotional reactions like shouting kids.

“One of the greatest __34__ of applying Love and Logic is that it helps us learn how to keep a tighter control on our emotions and on our tongues,” co-founder Charles Fay wrote in a blog post about his model. Gates admits he and his wife haven’t been __35__ at carrying out the approach. “Can you get rid of the emotion? You can’t totally do it,” he said.

Aside from checking hot-blooded parent tempers, the love and logic model also stresses the importance of not leaning into rewards for kids, but instead demonstrating __36__ love and admiring kids for who they are, not what they do (or don’t) achieve, like a poor test score or a bad grade. “Many __37__ successful people struggled with grades as children,” Fay wrote on his site. “What’s most important is that our children develop good character, curiosity, and problem-solving skills.”

Gates says the “Love and Logic” method is a far cry from the way he grew up, but he knew he wanted to do things __38__ with his own kids. It wasn’t the only way he set __39__ for his children while they were growing up. None of his kids owned a cell phone until they were 14 years old. The children also will each get about $10 million of their parents fortune as inheritance, a mere part of their $90 billion. “We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything, but not a lot of money __40__ on them so they could go out and do nothing,” Gates once told TED.

III. Reading Comprehension

Section A

Directions:  For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D.  Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.