Here are five letters from readers listed in 1-5. All the greetings and signatures are left out. Suppose you are a secretary of the magazine CR (Crazy English Reader), for each one find a suitable reply from A-F. Mark the correct letter (A-F) on your answer sheet. There is one extra reply which you don’t need to use.

   1. I am a reader of CR. Recently I found students translate some articles of CR. I appreciate your offering an opportunity to us beginners to practise using English. So I want to ask how they can obtain these articles and translated them for you, and what qualities you require. Thank you.

   2. I love your Crazy English Reader magazine! It provides valuable data for work in our English teaching. My wife and I are teaching Conversational English so I’ve been giving you a bit of a plug at our middle school. I told the students to “get a copy!” It’s good stuff! Fantastic!

     3. I’m one of Yao’s fans from Guangzhou. I have read the Yao Ming articles in No.7 Crazy English Reader. I want to know his correspondence address and the official website. Could you please tell me? Thank you very much indeed.

     4. First of all, I must say thank you very much to all the CE Reader editors who gave us a really good English magazine. Secondly, I want to give you a piece of advice. In each passage, you gave us some new words with their Chinese translation. However, as far as my knowledge, I think you should give us not only the Chinese meaning but also the English meaning so as to know the words more accurately. Thank you!

     5. I am an editor of the English Monthly of our school. I have a question that is how to say the position of the paper e.g., 总编 责任编辑 and so on. I hope you can help me to tell me the word in English. The more the better. Thank you so much! I love the book very much. Now, I do this work, I need study more information about this work, if you have time, please email me. Thank you.

Thank you for your suggestion. We may try that in some future issues of CR. I think the best way to improve your reading vocabulary is to be able to guess the meaning of the word from the other words around it. Also, if you have an English dictionary, it’s good to look up the words and then mark them down in a notebook and review them later on. Then if you really want to learn how to use the words, try using them in conversation or in writing. Hope this helps.

The best way for you to learn the different positions in a newspaper or magazine is to get a copy of an all-English magazine or newspaper and then copy down the different positions. There are also titles such as Managing Editor, reporter, Copy Editor, Photo Editor and Layout Editor. I hope this helps. If you have some more specific questions, you can send them to me and I’ll try to answer.

C．The best way to reach Yao directly is through his home team, the Shanghai Sharks. You can write him at 2570 Xietu Road, Shanghai. For more information on Yao, you can look at the sports section in sina. com. I hope this helps. Another idea is that you can try to write Yao while he’s living and playing in Houston. You can try to reach Yao in the US at:   Yao Ming   Compaq Centre 10  Houston, TX 77046

Thank you for being such a careful reader of CR. Yes, you’re right we made a mistake in the writing of that Chinese word. Each issue we try to read very carefully each article and its translation to make sure there are no mistakes, but unfortunately a few mistakes always get by. But you encourage us to keep improving, so thank you.

Yes, we do have several students who help us translate some of the articles in our magazine. We contact these translators directly after interviewing their translation work. Afterwards we assign the articles to them for translation. If you are interested in being one of our translators you can send us some information about yourself and a sample of your translation work.

Thank you for helping us to promote CR. We’re glad it’s helpful to your students. We always try to include articles that reflect real life. It’s our hope that CR will not only improve student’s English but also open up a different worldview.

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。

Improve your memory, improve your life

Mark began to introduce the guest speaker to the audience, but then he paused in horror. ____1_____

Barbara hid her jewelry when she went on vacation. When she came back, she couldn’t remember where she’d put it.

____2______. Most people have. But memory can be developed.

First, relax. If you’re overanxious about remembering something, you’ll forget it. ____3____.Take a deep breath and tell yourself that you have all the time in the world to remember.

Second, avoid being negative. If you keep telling yourself that your memory is bad, your mind will come to believe it and you won’t remember things. When you forget something, don’t say, “ Gee, I need to have my brain rewired(重装电线).”

To improve your memory, you’ll need to take an active role. Like your body, your memory can be strengthened through exercise. ___4______ For example, if you’re learning a language, try to actively remember irregular verbs.

You may also want to make associations, or links, between what you’re trying to remember and things you already know. For example, if you need to catch a plane at 2:00pm, you can imagine a plane in your mind and notice that it has two wings. ___5_______.  

A．Don’t worry.

B．He had forgotten her name.

C．Perhaps you’ve had experiences like these.

D．Look for opportunities to exercise your memory.

E. Jokes like this will have a negative effect on your memory.

F. You are now ten times more likely to remember the take-off time.

G. Relaxing will help improve your awareness and ability to concentrate.

Where have all the boys gone？You may be able to find them in the gym, at work or hanging out, but there’s one important place where boys are under­represented, and the problem seems to be getting worse. These days, at high school graduation ceremonies, there are a lot more girls than boys.

In fact, every year, 10 percent more girls graduate from high school than boys. “I think that there’s a tendency to focus on boys as problems at this point, rather than recognize that boys have problems,” says Joanne Max, PhD. Experts say the problems start in grade school, where there’s often an emphasis on sports instead of reading, for example. “I think that with boys there’s some idea that it’s not masculine(男子汉的)to read,” says Rob Jenkins, an English professor.

There’s also a shortage of male teachers as role models. “I think boys need role models, so if you’re a boy and you don’t have a dad in your home and then you have one male teacher and it’s your athletic coach then I don’t think you have a message that education is very important,” says Carol Carter, another expert. In addition, classrooms often have too little activity and too much passive listening, which is not conducive(有益的)to boys’  learning.

Experts say parents can fight back in many ways. Read to your sons early and often; show by your actions that you value their education. Ask them about their schoolwork, offer help, drop by their classroom and finally, appeal to their competitive spirit: challenge them to do better and help them understand that their future depends on it.

1.The underlined part “one important place” in Paragraph 1 refers to “______”.

A. classrooms                         B. factories

C. high school graduation ceremonies      D. gyms

2.According to the passage，boys have the problem that they think ______.

A. reading is more important than sports    

B. it is shameful for boys to read

C. boys should not work as a teacher       

D. boys lack the gift for reading

3.Carol Carter’s words implied that ______.

A. parents play an important role in education

B. athletic coaches contribute a lot to education

C. lack of male teachers affects boys’ attitudes to school work

D. classrooms lack enough activities that are suitable for boys

4. According to experts，parents should do the following except ______.

A．often read to their sons when they are young

B．keep an eye on their sons’ studies at school

C．encourage their sons to compete with others

D. prevent their sons from taking part in sports

Onceupon a time there was a wise man that used to go to the sea to do his writing. Hehad a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.One day he waswalking along the shore. As he looked down at the beach, he saw a human figuremoving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought that someone woulddance on the beach. So he began to walk faster to catch up. As he got closer, hesaw that it was a young man and the young man wasn’t dancing, but instead he wasreaching down to the shore, picking up something and throwing itinto the ocean. As he got closer, he called out, “Good morning! What are youdoing?’’

Theyoung man paused, looked up and replied, “Throwingstarfishes(海星)in theocean.”

“I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfishes in the ocean?”

“The sun is up and the tide is going out.And if I don’t throw them in, they’ll die”.

“But, young man, don’t you realize thatthere are miles and miles of beach and starfishes all along it. You can’tpossibly make a difference!”

Theyoung man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked another starfish andthrew it into the sea, and said, “It made a difference for that one.”Thereissomething very special in each and every one of us. We have all beengifted with the ability to make a difference. And if we can know that gift, wewill gain through the strength of our vision the power(力量)toshape the future.

We musteach find our starfish. And if we throw our starfish wisely and well, the worldwill be better. 

1.The underlined words “something very special” refers to _____. 

2.From the last two paragraphs, we can learn that _____.

3.The writer told this story to show us _____.