学进去

Picture this: You’re searching the Internet and come across a website with interesting articles. Some are news stories. Their goal is to share information. Others only look like news stories. They’re actually advertisements, or ads. The goal of an ad is to get you to buy something. How do you, the reader, tell the difference between a news story and an ad?

Back when I was growing up, it was easier. We got most of our information from newspapers. Big news stories appeared on the front page, and ads were boxed off and clearly labeled. But on the Internet, the two are often shown together. It can be hard to tell which is which.

That’s why my research group did a study. My research team showed kids the home page of a popular digital magazine. We asked them to tell us which was a news story and which was an ad.

Most were great at identifying certain types of ads. “It has a coupon (优惠券) code, a big company logo, and the words limited (有限的) time offer”, one student wrote about an ad on the site. So where did kids get sturnped?

Some ads seem exactly the same as real news stories. They have titles and contain information. But they may also include the words sponsored content. Sponsored content is a way of saying that something is an ad. Companies paid money for it to appear so that readers will see their stories, buy their products, and like what the company stands for.

As a reader, you have a right to know who’s behind the information. So look for the phrase sponsored content. (And look carefully. Sometimes, it will be written in tiny letters.) The Internet is a sea of information. To use it well, we not only have to know how to swim but also how to avoid the sharks. Learning to tell the difference between an ad and a news story is an important stop to becoming Internet-smart.

1．The goal of the news stories on a website is often to ________.

A．get you to buy something

B．help you to learn languages

C．compare prices for you

D．share information with you

2．In paragraph 3, the kids were asked to ________.

A．find out sponsored content	B．tell news stories from ads on a digital magazine
C．share the experience of being fooled by online ads	D．look out for the ads that looked quite like news stories

3．The underlined phrase ‘get sturnped^’ in paragraph 4 probably means ________.

A．buy things

B．read the ads

C．find it difficult

D．tell the difference

4．If an article is labeled as ‘sponsored content’, it means ________.

A．it is a paid ad

B．it is a real news story

C．you need to pay to read it

D．you will he paid if you read it

5．The author writes this article to ________.

A．introduce the study he did	B．explain what sponsored content is
C．describe what a news story looks like	D．warn kids to stay alert (警惕的) to ads online