Have you ever thought about what you would like to do after school? Perhaps one of these rather different jobs will suit you.
TASTER: Food companies need people to taste the products that they are making. So many kinds of no bad-tasting food are put onto the supermarket shelves. All tasters do all day is take small bites of food. They make notes of what tastes good and what tastes bad. It is not a job for those who would like to stay thin.
SNAKE MILKER: This involves taking the poison out of a snake’s teeth. You hold the snake over a glass and make it open its mouth very wide. The poison will then drip from the back of the teeth into the glass; this is known as milking the snake. You have to be very brave if you want to try this.
GOLF BALL HUNTER: You will spend your day diving into waterholes at different golf courses to hunt for lost golf balls. You could be picking up as many as 5,000 balls a day. Many golfers are willing to buy used golf balls and you could be making a lot of money.
CLOCK CLEANER: Every day you will be climbing to the top of the clock towers in the city. Your responsibilities will be to oil, wind and repair the clocks. This is not a job for someone who is afraid of heights.
【小题1】 If you are a taster, you will          .

Like any good mother, when Karen found out that another baby was on the way, she did what she could to help her 3-year-old son, Michael, prepare for a new baby. They find out that the new baby is going to be a girl, and day after day, night after night, Michael sings to his sister in Mommy's stomach.

In time, the labor pains come. But complications arise during delivery. Finally, Michael's little sister is born. But she is in serious condition. With alarm in the night, the ambulance rushes the infant to the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Mary's Hospital, Knoxville, Tennessee. The days go by. The little girl gets worse. The pediatric (儿科的) specialist tells the parents, “There is very little hope. Be prepared for the worst.”

Karen and her husband contact a local cemetery about a burial plot. They have fixed up a special room in their home for the new baby, but now they plan a funeral. Michael keeps begging his parents to let him see his sister, "I want to sing to her," he says. But kids are never allowed in Intensive Care. Karen makes up her mind. She will take Michael whether they like it or not. If he doesn’t see his sister now, he may never see her alive.

She dresses him in an oversized suit and marches him into ICU. He looks like a walking laundry basket, but the head nurse recognizes him as a child and shouts, "Get that kid out of here now. No children are allowed. Never disturb patients here.” The mother rises up strongly and said," He is not leaving until he sings to his sister!"

Karen leads Michael to his sister's bedside. He gazes at the tiny infant losing the battle to live. And he begins to sing. In the pure hearted voice of a 3-year-old, Michael sings:" You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray…" Instantly the baby girl responds. The pulse rate begins to calm down and becomes steady.

“Keep on singing, Michael.”encouraged Karen with tears in her eyes. "You never know, dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away."

The next day, the very next day, the little girl is well enough to go home! Woman's Day magazine called it "the miracle of a brother's song". The medical staff just called it a miracle. Karen called it a miracle of Gods love!

Never give up on the people you love.

1.What may the underlined words "the infant" refer to?

A．The baby          B．Karen            C．Mary             D．Michael

2.What do we know about the little sister after she was born?

A．She was driven to St. Mary's shop.           B．A doctor came to see her in her house.

C．She was very thin and couldn't speak.        D．She was in great danger.

3.Why did Karen firmly let little Michael see his sister in ICU?

A．Because he could make his sister alive.

B．Because his sister would be sent to a far hospital.

C．Because his sister was going to die soon.

D．Because his father wanted to take him away.

4.What do we know about the head nurse?

A．The head nurse was careful.               B．The head nurse was rude.

C．The head nurse was responsible.            D．The head nurse had no sympathy.

5.What is the general idea of the text?

A．A boy’s singing saved his sister’s life.

B．The little girl is well enough to go home.

C．Michael's little sister is born with a serious disease.

D．No children are allowed to enter the intensive care unit.

Bored by the Chinese courses he was majoring in, Zuo Cheng, 18, couldn't imagine having to drag himself into class day after day, week after week, for four years．

The Beijing Language and Culture University student decided that enough was enough．

61  

"It may seem like I've wasted a year and have to start college all over again, but now that I've settled on a field I'll be able to concentrate．" Zuo said．

Zuo is not alone．

At the China Three．Gorges University in Yicljang in Hubei Province 53 out of 59 students in the Physics Department took transfer exams last semester．  62  

"   63   Many students picked colleges before majors, only to discover their mistakes a few weeks after arrival on the campus．" said Jiang Xin, 20, who was able to switch to electrical engineering and automation from physics．He said that physics graduates had few other options besides going into teaching,     64  

A new survey, of 2,500 students nationwide starting in September this year, suggests that as much as 35 percent of students are disappointed by their courses．

However, Shao Yangfang, who works at the admission office of University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, advised students to consider both short-term and long-term goals．

"After graduation do you want to find yourself in a job very specially related to your college major? Or, would you like to possess the knowledge and skills that will enable you to work in many areas?    65    Above all, your choice of major should be based on your own interest, abilities and personality．" Shao said．

E．Many college students don't care about their future career．

F．When we were at high schools very few of us understood how a major relates to a career．

G．When we were at high schools, we already knew what are hot majors and what are unexpected ones．

Boys' schools are the perfect place to teach young men to express their emotions and involve them in activities such as art, dance and music.
Far from the traditional image of a culture of aggressive masculinity (阳刚), the absence of girls gives boys the chance to develop without pressure to obey a stereotype（陈规旧俗），a US study says.
Boys at single-sex schools were said to be more likely to get involved in cultural and artistic activities that helped develop their emotional expressiveness, rather than feeling they had to obey the "boy code" of hiding their emotions to be a "real man".
The findings of the study go against received wisdom that boys do better when taught alongside girls.
Tony Little, headmaster of Eton, warned that boys were being failed by the British education system because it had become too focused on girls. He criticized teachers for failing to recognize that boys are actually more emotional than girls.
The research argued that boys often perform badly in mixed schools because they become discouraged when their female peers do better earlier in speaking and reading skills.
But in single-sex schools teachers can tailor lessons to boys' learning style, letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom, wrote the study's author, Abigail James, of the University of Virginia.
Teachers could encourage boys to enjoy reading and writing with "boy-focused" approaches such as themes and characters that appeal to them. Because boys generally have more acute vision learn best through touch, and are physically more active, they need to be given "hands-on" lessons where they are allowed to walk around. "Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine (女性的) and prefer the modern type in which violence and sexism are major themes, "James wrote.
Single-sex education also made it less likely that boys would feel they had to obey a stereotype that men should be "masterful and in charge" in relationships. "In mixed schools boys feel forced to act like men before they understand themselves well enough to know what that means," the study reported.
【小题1】The author believes that a single-sex school would ______.

I have had just about enough of being treated like a second-class citizen, simply because I happen to be that unfairly treated member of society --- a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels, banks and post offices, railway stations, airports and the like, the more I am convinced the things are being run solely to suit the firm, the system, or the union. There seems to be a deceptive (欺骗的) new motto for so-called “service” organizations --- Staff Before Service.
　　 How often, for example, have you queued for what seems like hours at the Post Office or the supermarket because there were not enough staff on duty to man all the service grilles or checkout counters? Surely in these days of high unemployment it must be possible to hire cashiers and counter staff. Yet supermarkets, hinting darkly at higher prices, claim that uncovering all their cash registers at any one time would increase operating costs. And the Post Office says we cannot expect all their service grilles to be occupied “at times when demand is low”.
　　  It is the same with hotels. Because waiters and kitchen staff must finish when it suits them, dining rooms close earlier or menu choice is cut short. As for us guests, we just have to put up with it. There is also the nonsense of so many friendly hotel night porters having been thrown out of their jobs in the interests of “efficiency” and replaced by coin-eating machines which offer everything from lager to laxatives (从贮藏啤酒到通便剂). Not to mention the tea-making kit in your room: a kettle with a mixed collection of tea bags, plastic milk boxes and lump sugar. Who wants to wake up to a raw teabag? I do not, especially when I am paying for “service”.
　　Can it be stopped, this worsening of service, this growing attitude that the customer is always a bore? I angrily hope so because it is happening, sadly, in all walks of life.
　　Our only hope is to hammer home our anger whenever and wherever we can and, if all else fails, bring back into practice that other, older slogan --- Take Our Deal Elsewhere.
【小题1】The writer feels that nowadays customers __________.