In the United States you will find yourself being urged from every page of every newspaper and every television station to buy all kinds of goods.
Not only is there a wide range of prices for goods in America, there is also a wide range in the quality of goods offered for sale. Unlike some countries,
Americans generally pay the price of a product without question, instead of trying to get a lower price by bargaining. However, there are many “sales” in the United States, during which time stores will lower their normal prices. This may all be very confusing to visitors. How are you going to know how to “get your money’s worth” when you shop? Perhaps the best advice is: Don’t hurry. Visit various stores and determine the quality of goods. Read the advertisements so that you can compare prices.
There is a great variety of shops in the United States, ranging from very large stores called “department stores” to very small shops. There are “discount houses” offering goods at low prices, and “dime stores” specializing in a wide range of inexpensive items.
Most department stores in large cities carry better quality products at higher prices. However, they offer the shoppers great convenience since they contain such a wide variety of products.
If convenience isn’t as important to you as price, you may want to shop in discount houses. These stores have nearly as great a variety of goods as department stores, but offer lower prices. They can do so for several reasons. They don’t offer the same services to buyers that department stores do; there may be fewer sales people; and the store probably doesn’t deliver purchases.
Another popular shop is the “dime store”. No longer selling many things for five or ten cents, these stores got their name in the last century when it was decided that a small profit on a great quantity of goods would be better than a large profit on fewer sales. Dime stores specialize in a wide variety of inexpensive items and today, prices range from a quarter or 50 cents up to several dollars.
【小题1】The passage is mainly about______

   根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项，选项中有两项为多余选项。

Taking a math test can be pretty stressful. Even if you know the material, you can still get the problem wrong. Knowing how to go through your math test and check your work can save you from handing in a test full of mistakes that can be avoided.   66 

Write it out

   You can also check a math problem by writing everything out on paper.   67   Writing out math problems reduces your chances of missing anything to the lowest possible level, which is a common cause of incorrect answers.

 68 

 Make sure your answers work by doing the opposite procedure of what your problem calls for, including the answer you got the first time around. In other words, you would use the opposite of this addition problem—subtraction (减法)—to determine whether or not your answer is the correct one.

Plugging in

    You may find that a variable(变量) isn’t good enough or have a problem where you have to solve for a variable.   69   This is the only real way to assure yourself that the answer you’ve found is correct.

Check for a reasonable answer

       70   For example, if you get an answer in the millions and you know it should be in the thousands, you’ve likely misplaced a point. Go back through the work on your paper to make sure all of your formulas and calculations are correct. If everything looks okay, do the problem again and compare the result of the second try to what you’ve got on the first try.

A. Do the opposite

B. Correct the answers

C. Plug the variable in the equation (方程) to check it out.

D. Therefore you’ll improve your grades, as well as your math skills.

E. It also helps you to figure out everything after you have already finished the test.

F. If the result of a problem seems to make no sense, it indicates that the answer is incorrect.

G. This helps you to know what information you have and what information you need to solve.

请认真阅读短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。每个空格只填一个单词。
Back to School: Why Grit(毅力) Is More Important than Good Grades?
The back-to-school season is upon us, and once again, parents across the country have loaded their kids’ backpacks up with snack packs and school supplies. It’s a good moment to reflect on what else we should be giving our kids as they head off to school.
American parents are feeling particularly anxious about that question this year. The educational process feels more than ever like a race, one that starts in pre-school and doesn’t end until your child is admitted to the perfect college. Most parents are more worried than they need to be about their children’s grades, test scores and IQ. And what we don’t think about enough is how to help our children build their character—how to help them develop skills like perseverance, grit, optimism, conscientiousness, and self-control, which together do more to determine success than S.A.T. scores or I.Q.
There is growing evidence that our anxiety about our children’s school performance may actually be holding them back from learning some of these valuable skills. If you’re concerned only with a child’s G.P.A., then you will likely choose to minimize the challenges the child faces in school. With real challenge comes the risk of real failure. And in a competitive academic environment, the idea of failure can be very scary, to students and parents alike.
But experiencing failure is a critical part of building character. A recent research by a team of psychologists found that adults who had experienced little or no failure growing up were actually less happy and confident than those who had experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood. “Overcoming those obstacles,” the researchers assumed, “could teach effective coping skills, help engage social support networks, create a sense of mastery over past adversity, and foster beliefs in the ability to cope successfully in the future.”
By contrast, when we protect our children from every possible failure—when we call their teachers to get an extension on a paper; when we urge them to choose only those subjects they’re good at—we are denying them those same character-building experiences. As the psychologists Madeline Levine and Dan Kindlon have written, that can lead to difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood, when overprotected young people finally confront real problems on their own and don’t know how to overcome them.
In the classroom and outside of it, American parents need to encourage children to take chances, to challenge themselves, to risk failure. In the meantime, giving our kids room to fail may be one of the best ways we can help them succeed.

With your workload growing, you may be telling yourself a vacation is one luxury you can’t afford.  【小题1】 A vacation allows you the opportunity to recharge your physical and motional batteries, disconnect from everyday concerns, and return to work rested and refreshed. Some facts have proved employees are more productive after a vacation than before one. Here are some tips for you to plan your vacation to make sure that your time away from the office is worry free.
Time is right. A Robert Half survey shows that July and August are the most favorable months for employees to take a break because these months offer ideal beach weather and many businesses slow down during this time.  【小题2】 For instance, if a big task is planned for the summer, you may consider postponing your trip until the fall.
Ask others for assistance.  【小题3】 Your supervisor can help you determine who is the most qualified for a particular task.
Let your contacts know. Give colleagues and customers you frequently work with a few weeks’ notice before you start off.  【小题4】
Conduct a technical review. Before you leave, make sure there is plenty of room in your e-mail inbox so you don’t exceed (超越) your storage limit while you’re out of the office, which might prevent you from sending messages when you return. 【小题5】
In short, taking vacation is necessary and beneficial for your job. But you must plan your vacation properly in order to work free and worry free on holiday.

We are all interested in equality, but while some people try to protect the school and examination system in the name of equality, others, still in the name of equality, want only to destroy it.

Any society which is interested in equality of opportunity and standards of achievement must regularly test its pupils. The standards may be changed ---- no examination is perfect ---- but to have no external(外部的)tests or examinations would mean the end of equality and of standards. There are groups of people who oppose this view and who do not believe either in external examinations or in any controls in schools or on teachers. This would mean that everything would depend on luck since every pupil would depend on the efficiency, the ideal and the purpose of each teacher.

Without external examinations, employers will look for employees from the highly respected schools and from families known to them ---- a form of favoritism will replace equality. At the moment, the bright child from an ill-respected school can show certificates（证书）to prove he or she is suitable for a job, while the lack of a certificate shows the unsuitability of a dull child attending a well - respected school. This defense of excellence and opportunity would disappear if external examinations were taken away, and the bright child from a poor family would be a prisoner of his or her school's fame, unable to compete for employment with the child from the favored school.

The opponents（对手）of the examination system suggest that examinations are an evil force because they show differences between pupils. According to these people, there must be no special, different, academic class. They have even suggested that there should be no form of difference in sport or any other area: all jobs or posts should be filled by unsystematic selection. The selection would be made by people who themselves are probably selected by some computer.

These people are not just against school organization, but are at war with the whole idea of modem competitive society and they are using children in schools for their destructive purposes. There is no reason why we should allow such people to determine the way our schools are organized when it is to the obvious disadvantage of the pupils, of the schools and of our society as a whole.

41．According to the passage, the writer thinks that ________.

A. changing the standards could mean the end of equality

B. standards must keep changing in order to achieve equality

C. there would be no standards without external examinations

D. we cannot have standards because examinations are not perfect

42．In the writer's opinion, what would happen if external examinations were taken away?

A. There would be no more opportunities and no more excellence.

B. Children from poor families would not be able to change schools.

C. Going to a favored school should be the only way to get a good job.

D. Schools for bright children would lose their fame.

43．The situation at the moment is that ________.

A. many children who are suitable for a job have no proof of their suitability

B. a school's fame is not important, as long as a child has a certificate.

C. children attending well - respected schools need not get certificates.

D. a bright child doesn't need a certificate a t all to get a good job.

44．Which of the following sentences is TRUE?

A. Most students from poor families can't get a good job.

B. Some people are using students to destroy our society.

C. The writer thinks it a good way to choose a job by computer.

D. The opponents of the examination want to reorganize schools.

45．The opponents would agree that _________.

A. computers should be selected to take over many jobs

B. particular people should not be chosen for particular jobs

C. well-respected schools should be got rid of as soon as possible

D. the students are not equally treated if they take external examinations