My name is Jack. I’m a Chinese student living in the United States. When my family moved to America in 2016 from a small village in Guangdong, China, we brought not only our bags, but also our village rules and culture. One of the rules is that young people should respect(尊敬) the elderly. Unluckily, this rule led to my very first embarrassment(窘迫) in the United States.

I had a part-time job as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. At one time, when I was serving food to an old couple(夫妇), the wife asked me how I could serve the food so quickly. I told her that I tried to get their food quickly because I respected the elderly. As soon as I said that, her face showed great displeasure. My manager, who happened to hear what I said, took me aside and told me about how sensitive Americans are and how they dislike the description “old”. I then walked back to the table and said sorry to the wife. After the couple heard my reason, they understood that cultural differences caused the problem, so they laughed and were no longer angry.

In my village in China, people are proud of being old. Not so many people live to their seventies or eighties, and people who reach such an age have the most knowledge and experience. Young people always respect older people because they know they can learn from their rich experience.

However, in the United States, people think “growing old” is a problem since “old” shows that a person is too weak to work or that the body is not working well. Here many people try to keep themselves away from growing old by doing exercises, and women put on makeup, hoping to look young. When I told the couple in the restaurant that respected the elderly, they got angry because this caused them to feel they were not able to stay young. I told them something they didn’t want to hear.

After that, I changed the way I had been with older people. It is not that I don’t respect them any more, I still respect them, but now I don’t show my feelings through words.

1.After this experience in the Chinese restaurant, Jack ________.

A.no longer respected the elderly B.changed his way with older people

C.lost his job in the restaurant D.made friends with the couple

2.Which of the following is TRUE?

A.The more Jack explained, the angrier the couple got.

B.From this experience, Jack learnt more about American culture.

C.The manager went back to the table and said sorry to the couple.

D.Jack wanted to show his feeling through words after his experience.

3.The word “sensitive” in Paragraph 2 probably means “________ ”.

A.respecting people deeply B.taking nothing seriously

C.getting upset easily D.treating others nicely

4.What is the main purpose of the passage?

A.To show that we should act differently with different people and culture.

B.To tell the readers that we should always follow rules of our hometown.

C.To introduce Americans and Chinese different ideas on “being old”.

D.To explain why most Americans don’t like to be called “old”.

It was Saturday again. Grace and Karen disliked Saturdays. That was another thing the twins had in common. They shared the same clothes and tied their hair in the same manner. In fact, it was hard for their classmates and teachers to tell them apart sometimes.

Unlike their classmates, they had to get up early at seven every Saturday to prepare for their lessons. Grace had to attend the art lesson and Karen had to attend her ballet lesson. “How I wish I could do something different today,” said the twins with one voice. All at once, an idea came to Grace and Karen at the same time. “How would you like to be me for a day?” they asked each other. It seemed like a wonderful plan to them. After giving each other a description of their own friends, Grace put on Karen’s ballet dress while Karen put Grace’s brushes and paints into her bag. Then they left for their classes.

When the art lesson started, Karen was lost. Unlike Grace, Karen was poor at drawing. When the art lesson finally ended, Karen didn’t dare to hand in her work.

Meanwhile, Grace was struggling in the ballet class as well. As she had no idea about the dance steps, she had to follow her classmates blindly. As a result, she kept knocking into them. Their ballet teacher became impatient with her, “Karen, you should remember the basic steps. You can’t rely on copying what others are doing.”

When Karen and Grace got home, they were tired out. They decided that they would never try to be someone else they were not. It seemed thatthe grass was not always greener on the other side.

1.Did Grace and Karen like Saturdays?

2.When did the twins get up on Saturdays?

3.What was the twins’ plan when they decided to do something different?

4.How did Karen feel at the beginning of the art lesson?

5.Why did the ballet teacher become impatient?

6.What does the underlined part “the grass was not always greener on the other side” at the end of the story try to tell us?

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