题目内容
Suppose you have three things: a piece of wood, a nail and a hammer. Pretend the wood is a person, and the nail is a mean rumor(语言) about that person. If you hammer the nail in, you're obviously hurting him or her. If you then pull out the nail, there's still a hole in the wood, and the damage has been done.
There are many reasons why that nail of a rumor can be so harmful. Rumors are, quite simply, a form of bullying(欺侮). When a person or a group makes up a rumor about someone or decides to spread gossip, it's usually to hurt someone, break up a friendship, or make someone less popular. It's the same thing as teasing, only it's done behind someone's back instead of to his or her face.
When you spread a rumor about someone, you're sending a signal that the person is outside the group, and somehow less worthy of friendship than others. You're making fun of that person or pointing out negative things about him or her. This can let others think that it's OK to make the person feel bad, and make him or her an outsider.
We need to be able to trust our friends, but gossip and rumors can break this trust. If you tell a personal secret to a friend, and he turns around and tells it to someone else, you might feel like you will get burned if you ever get close to him again.
Letting a rumor influence your behavior is like letting someone else make a big decision for you. Let's say you hear that a teacher plans to call a Snowy Day tomorrow because a blizzard(暴风雪) is coming. Expecting a day off, you don't do your homework as usual. The next morning, the blizzard turns out to be nothing more than a drizzle(毛毛雨), and school isn't off after all. You get zeroes on your work.
1.If a rumor is spread about someone, others may ________.
A. keep away from him or her
B. point out his or her advantages
C. not feel he or she is an outsider
D. be hurt if getting close to him or her again
2.To tell the rumor and the teasing apart, you depend on ________.
A. whether it is painful or not
B. whether it is done behind someone
C. whether it is a kind of bullying
D. whether it is spread fast
3.From the last paragraph, we can infer that ________.
A. it is hard to keep rumors a secret
B. rumors can destroy your interest in learning
C. rumors can control your whole life
D. believing rumors can lead to bad choices
4.The purpose of this passage is to ________.
A. advise on how to deal with rumors
B. teach us how to judge a rumor
C. explain why rumors hurt
D. find out why rumors spread fast