Mr. Smith lives in Toronto. He is a doctor. His wife teaches English in a middle school. They have two children, one is a son called Mike and the other is a daughter. She is only three months. Mike loves the baby very much. He often shows her to the guests. He is young and doesn’t go to school. He stays at home to help his mother look after the baby.

One day Mike’s aunt comes to see the baby. She works in another city and sees the baby foe the first time. Mike shows the baby to his aunt.

“Look at the baby, Aunt;” says Mike, “She’s beautiful. I think she looks like me.”

“Does she like playing with you?” asks his aunt.

“I don’t know,” answers the boy, “She can’t speak yet.”

1.Mike is ____________.

2.Ther’re __________ people in Mr Smith’s family.

3.Mrs Smith is a __________.

4.The baby is Mike’s __________.

5.Little Mike thinks ___________.

The Vieira family moved to the United States in 1981. At that time, they decided to stop speaking Spanish at home and only communicate in English. This was because they were now living in an English-speaking country.
Now the Vieira children are adults, and they sometimes travel to Spain to visit their family and friends. But they cannot communicate with them. Unfortunately this is common. When people move to new countries, they often leave their own customs and mother language behind. This is a mistake because there are many benefits（益处）of knowing more than one language.
One advantage of speaking more than one language is that you can communicate directly with more people around the world. You do not have to depend on others to talk for you, so you’re more independent. People who know only one language must use others to help them communicate.
Furthermore, speaking a second language also allows people to experience other cultures and customs more effectively（有效地）. Local expressions, vocabulary, and even jokes can have a powerful effect on a person’s understanding of another culture. So, knowing more than one language increases your knowledge of other cultures.
Finally, having more multi-language speakers improves relationships between countries. If people from different countries can communicate well, the world can become closer. Countries will then have more respect for each other and better understand each other’s problems.
The benefits of knowing more than one language are clear. In fact, there are no disadvantages. It is very sad that many people don’t try to learn another language. It is even worse when people let themselves forget their mother language and become silenced.
【小题1】The passage begins with the experience of the Vieira family in order to______.

You’re ________ more confident than I am.

Over the last 70 years, researchers have been studying happy and unhappy people and finally found out ten factors that make a difference. Our feelings of well-being at any moment are decided to a certain degree by genes. However, of all the factors, wealth and age are the top two.
Money can buy a degree of happiness. But once you can afford to feed, clothe and house yourself, each extra dollar makes less and less difference. Researchers find that, on average, wealthier people are happier. But the link between money and happiness is complex. In the past half-century, the average income has sharply increased in developed countries, yet happiness levels have remained almost the same. Once your basic needs are met, money only seems to increase happiness if you have more than your friends, neighbors and colleagues.
“Dollars buy status (social position), and status makes people feel better,” say some experts, which helps explain why people who can seek status in other ways, scientists or actors, for example, may happily accept relatively poorly-paid jobs.
In his research, Professor Alex Michalos found that the people whose desires, not just for money, but for friends, family, job, health, rose furthest beyond what they already had, tended to be less happy than those who felt a smaller gap. Indeed, the size of the gap predicted happiness about five times better than income alone. “The gap measures just blow away the measures of only income.”says Michalos.
Another factor that has to do with happiness is age. Old age may not be so bad “Given all the problems of aging, how could the elderly be more satisfied?” asks Professor Laura Carstensen. In one survey, Carstensen interviewed 184 people between the ages of 18 and 94, and asked them to fill out an emotion questionnaire. She found that old people reported positive emotions just as often as young people. Some scientists suggest older people may expect life to be harder and learn to live with it, or they’re more realistic about their time running out. Older people have learned to focus on things that make them happy and let go of those that don’t.
“People realize not only what they have, but also that what they have cannot last forever,” she says. “A goodbye kiss to a husband or wife at the age of 85, for example, may bring far more complex emotional responses than a similar kiss to a boy or girl friend at the age of 20.”
【小题1】Some actors would like to accept poorly-paid jobs because the jobs__________.

There is no way that you cannot have any embarrassing moments. You can’t control everything that happens, so you’re going to be in an embarrassing situation one day. So how can you solve this problem? The answer is to control your actions and try not to get upset.

    ◆Remember that you'll probably laugh about it in a few days, so try to see the funny side of it right away.

    ◆If it is something so embarrassing that you feel you will never laugh about it, please remember that the ______________(1) will be over after some time.

    ◆Ask your friends to give you a break and not to make fun of you. If you’ve done the same for them, they’re more likely to agree to give you a break.

    Always remember that you are not alone. Everyone has embarrassing moments. While you are sure that everyone is going to remember this moment forever, that fact is that they’ll probably forget it very soon. Most of us remember the moments in which we feel embarrassed, but very few of us remember other people’s embarrassing moments.

    Most people have short memories. So while you may never forget the moment when your skirt was torn(撕裂) in gym class, most of the other people probably forget it at once. Although a short memory may not be a(n) ____________ (2) thing when you are trying to remember facts in a history test, it is useful when you are trying to forget life’s most embarrassing moments.

任务一：请根据短文内容，分别写出（1）和（2）两处所缺单词。（每空限填一词）

1.(1) ________________          (2) _________________

任务二：根据短文内容，选择正确答案

2. It can be inferred(推断) from the passage that __________ when you fall down after making a speech.

    A. everyone will remember the moment forever

    B. you may never forget the moment

    C. other people will feel embarrassed

    D. you will not remember the moment

任务三：请把上文中画线的句子译成汉语

3. _____________________________________________.

任务四：请根据短文内容，回答下列问题

4. According to the passage, why does the writer say “you are not alone”?

    ______________________________________________.

5.What’s the main idea of the passage?

    It’s mainly about how to _______________________ when you are embarrassed.