It’s a goal for millions and millions of families every year to keep the Christmas spending within a certain amount of money, but you can still afford the gifts because your loved ones will enjoy them. This concern (忧虑) is becoming greater and greater theses days. Even so, there are several things that you can do to help.

Hit the sales. No one wants to get up at four o’clock in the morning and fight to get a good deal (交易) on Black Friday ( the first Friday at Christmas time). It’s surely very difficult to pick up the courage and get out there in the cold for a good deal. But sometimes it can be well worth. Many retailers (零售商) offer specials all through the day. Some even offer online Black Friday specials, so we may still be able to get a great deal on Black Friday.
Read advertisements regularly. Once the Christmas shopping season is coming, retailers will be hungry for business. They will try their best to get us into the store. Please read the weekly advertisements of sales among the major retailers from time to time. We may be lucky enough to find different prices for the same thing in different shops.
Shop online. Some of us don’t like running from store to store to get the best price on the perfect gift. Some of us don’t like to go out in the cold at all, and then, we can do online shopping.
The world of online shopping makes it possible for us to visit all the major retailers and some
specialty stores on the Internet. We can find exactly what we are looking for at the best possible price without even having to leave the house. With traditional Christmas shopping, it will always take us a long time to wait if we want to get the perfect gift.
【小题1】 The underlined word “specials” in Paragraph 2 means______.

One morning, a blind* boy sat in front of a building with a hat by his feet .He held a sign* which said,“I am blind. Please help me. There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat .He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by could see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps* and ask,“Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?”

The man said,“I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way.”

What he had written was,“Today is a beautiful day, but I can’t see it.”

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty* of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.

The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.

There are at least two lessons we can learn from this simple story.

The first is: Treasure*what you have. Someone else has less. Try your best to help those who need your help.

The second is: Be creative. Think differently. There is always a better way.

1.On the sign what the man wrote was,“_______.”

A. Treasure what we have already had.

B. Today is a beautiful day, but I can’t see it.

C. We are so lucky that we are not blind.

D. Try your best to help those who need your help.

2.The word“recognized”here in Chinese means______.

A.承认                                    B.接受

C.表扬                                    D.认出

3.From the passage we know that _____.

A. the boy always has a hat on his head.

B. the man is one of his friends.

C. the boy is blind and needs help.

D. the boy works for the man.

4.According to the passage, which of the following is TRUE?

A .The hat began to fill up after the man wrote some words on the sign.

B. The man took away all the few coins from the hat.

C. The boy wanted to get enough money to go to school.

D. Nobody wanted to give any coins to the blind boy.

Here’s a shopping receipt(收据) of Linda.

1.What time did Linda go shopping?

2.How many things did Linda buy?

3.How much money did Linda spend buying them?