We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong. A day may begin well enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control. Sometimes a single unimportant event may cause a number of things to happen. Let us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye on the baby at the same time. The telephone rings and this causes your troubles to begin. While you are on the phone, the baby pulls the tablecloth off the table, destroying your half-prepared meal. You hang up hurriedly and attend to your baby. Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt. As if this is not enough to bring you to tears, your husband arrives home, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner.

Things can also go wrong on the road. During rush hour one evening two cars collided and the drivers began to argue. The woman driver behind the two cars happened to be a learner. She got into a panic and stopped her car. This forced the driver following her to stop suddenly. This driver’s wife was sitting beside him holding a large cake, and as she was thrown forward, the cake went right through the window and landed on the road. A truck driver seeing a cake flying through the air slammed on the brakes. The truck was carrying empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slid off the back of the truck onto the road, causing a terrible traffic jam. It took the police an hour to get the traffic on the move again. In the meantime, the truck driver had to sweep up hundreds of broken bottles. Only two dogs were enjoying themselves, for they were happily having what was left of the cake.

1.If you want to answer the phone without any trouble, you’d better ___________ .

2.Who is responsible for the accidents that happened on the road?  

3.From this story we learn that ________.  

4.The writer’s purpose in writing this passage is to ___________.  

5.The main idea of this passage is that ________.

United States and Canada are multicultural countries with many national, religious and cultural differences, where people attach great importance to individualism—the uniqueness among people. Teachers value the qualities that make each student special and different. You can see such values through their educational systems. For example, students needn’t memorize lots of information. Instead, they work independently and find answers on their own. There are discussions for children to show their own ideas and opinions.

By contrast, people have the same language, history, and culture in most Asian societies. As a result, Asia’s educational system reflects society’s belief in group goals and purposes rather than individualism. Children in China, Japan, and Korea learn to work together and help one another in assignments. And the teaching methods are often very formal and serious. In class, teachers give lectures while students listen and take notes. Discussion is replaced by reciting rules of information that have been memorized.

These two systems both have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage in Japan is that there is much more math and science than American students learn by the end of high school. In addition, students study more hours each day and more days each year than North Americans do. The difficult system also prepares students for a society that place emphasis on discipline（纪律） and self-control. However, while memorization is an important learning method in Japanese schools, yet many students admit forgetting much of the information that they have memorized after exams.

On the other hand, the educational system in North American has an advantage that students learn to think for themselves, which prepares them for a society that values creativity. The disadvantage is that when they graduate from high school, they haven’t recited as many basic rules and facts as students in other countries have.

1.People in multicultural countries such as the US or Canada lay more stress on __________.

A．team work         B．self-control        C．discipline          D．individualism

2.What is the advantage of the educational system in North America？

A．There is not much discussion.

B．Learning to think for themselves

C．Learning much less math and science

D．They haven’t memorized basic rules and facts.

3.Which words is most suitable to describe the author's attitude in writing this  passage?

A．Supportive        B．Opposite          C．Objective（客观）  D．Subjective（主观）

4.The main idea of this passage is___________.

A．cultural differences in countries such as the United States or Canada

B．comparisons of educational system between North America and Asia

C．there are more advantages of Asian education system of than that of North American

D．there are more disadvantages of Asian education system than that of North American

Due to the increasing number of violence acts produced in schools all over the world, more and more parents prefer to have their children educated at home rather than at school. This way they can assure their safety and well-being. Teachers and school representatives are trying to improve the situation in schools by increasing the number of the persons in charge of the safety of the students.

    The main reason for violence acts are the films and cartoons that fill the children’s time. They want to do everything they watch on TV and never think of the consequences, they may hurt a classmate or a teacher. On the other hand, parents are not fully satisfied with the children’s results obtained in classes and they consider private classes would have better results. When a teacher is obliged to watch 30 students in class he can’t probably see what each of them is doing, how he is writing, or if he understood the explanations. At home the teacher can explain in details everything the child doesn’t understand as many times as he considers proper.

    Many times, the child grows fond of the teacher at home, who becomes his best friend, and who helps him whenever he needs someone to talk to. However, the best solution would be a mixture between the education received at school and that at home. School makes children communicate and socialize. Keeping a child at home for fear something bad might happen to him, only makes the child’s character weak and prevents him from knowing what real life is. Staying in a crystal ball only does harm to the child.

   All in all, schools have been created to help children, not to harm them, so it’s best to keep children in these special places, where they learn, laugh, have fun and make new friends.

1. The writer’s purpose in writing the text is to_____________ .

A. teach parents the ways to keep the children safe

B. show solutions to developing children’s character

C. explain the main reason for violence acts in schools

D. analyze an education problem and give opinions

2. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A. Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Classes

B. Who is to Blame, Parents or Schools?   

C. which is Better, School Study or Home Study?  

D. The Relationship between Teachers and Children   

3. What does “a crystal ball” in the passage refer to?

A. A toy that can be used for entertainment.

B. A safe and comfortable environment.

C. An object that is made of crystal.

D. A setback that is hard to overcome.

4. We call infer from the passage that____________.

A. violence TV programs have bad effects on children’s behavior

B. the teacher at home is more patient than the teacher at school

C. children today are weak from lack of sense of right and wrong

D. there are too many students in class for a teacher to teach

It’s high time someone spoke up for today’s college students.  They’re probably the most hardworking, ambitious people in America and their problems are not properly appreciated.

People like the Secretary of Education simply don’t know what they’re talking about when they knock students.  Nor do those who complain about falling academic standards.

The vast majority of the nation’s 12 million students are struggling to pay for their educations.  They are part of the invisible workforce.  Many hold down full-time jobs.  They’re frying hamburgers, photographing weddings, working in construction, and waiting on tables.  The fact that they even show up for classes is a wonderful event.

The financial situation of most students explains a lot about what is happening in schools.  Why are the traditional courses so unpopular?  Why are students flocking to accounting and computer science and any professional programs that seem to lead to careers?

Answer: Today’s working student has been forced into a kind of premature matter-of-fact way of viewing things.  Romance is gone.  The notion of transforming one’s self through study alone has disappeared.  Today’s students seek freedom from manual labor, and the status conferred by a good job.

There are other consequences.  Today’s students don’t have much time or energy to be devoted, and carry out independent research or even do serious homework.  That’s the secret behind falling academic standards.  Students have become consumers.  They want grades and certifications.  Their professors can’t be expected to give a grade of failure to students who are clearly tired from the effort to pay their bills.

There’s a lot wrong with this situation.  It’s twisting the definition of education out of shape.  Worse, it’s creating a generation that is totally unpleasant.  The brightest students turn out to be yuppies (雅皮士).  The vast majority are, at least, good-natured semi-literates.

The time has run out for philosophical debates about fixed courses of study.  What this country needs is someone to stand up and say that being a full-time student during one’s formative years is an honorable calling worthy of support.  If families can’t or won’t give it to their children, then the government should.

1.The author’s purpose in writing this article is to __________.

2.The most suitable word to describe the author’s feelings about today’s college students  is _________.

3.Which of the following cannot be learned from the passage?

4.By saying “Romance is gone” in paragraph 5, the author means ____________.

5.Which of the following suggestions will the author not agree with?

Now let us look at how we read. When we read a printed text, our eyes move across a page in short, jerky movement. We recognize words usually when our eyes are still when they fixate. Each time they fixate, we see a group of words. This is known as the recognition span or the visual span. The length of time in which the eyes stop ---the duration of the fixation ----varies considerably from person to person. It also varies within any one person according to his purpose in reading and his familiarity with the text. Furthermore, it can be affected by such factors as lighting and tiredness.

Unfortunately, in the past, many reading improvement courses have concentrated too much on how our eyes move across the printed page. As a result of this misleading emphasis on the purely visual aspects of reading, numerous exercises have been devised to train the eyes to see more words at one fixation. For instance, in some exercises, words are flashed on to a screen for, say, a tenth or a twentieth of a second. One of the exercises has required students to fix their eyes on some central point, taking in the words on either side. Such word patterns are often constructed in the shape of rather steep pyramids so the reader takes in more and more words at each successive fixation. All these exercises are very clever, but it’s one thing to improve a person’s ability to see words and quite another thing to improve his ability to read a text efficiently. Reading requires the ability to understand the relationship between words. Consequently, for these reasons, many experts have now begun to question the usefulness of eye training, especially since any approach which trains a person to read isolated words and phrases would seem unlikely to help him in reading a continuous text.

1.The time of the recognition span can be affected by the following facts except ________ .

A. the length of a group of words.

B. lighting and tiredness.

C. one’s familiarity with the text.

D. one’s purpose in reading.

2.The author may believe that reading ______.

A. demands an deeply-participating mind.

B. demands more mind than eyes.

C. requires a reader to take in more words at each fixation.

D. requires a reader to see words more quickly.

3.What does the author mean by saying “but it’s one thing to improve a person’s ability to see words and quite another thing to improve his ability to read a text efficiently.” in the second paragraph?

A. The reading exercises mentioned can’t help to improve an efficient reading.

B. The reading exercises mentioned has done a great job to improve one’s ability to see words.

C. The ability to see words is not needed when an efficient reading is conducted.

D. The reading exercises mentioned can’t help to improve both the ability to see or comprehend words.

4.Which of the following is NOT true?

A. The emphasis on the purely visual aspects is misleading.

B. The eye training will help readers in reading a continuous text.

C. The visual span is a word or a group of words we see each time.

D. Many experts began to question the efficiency of eye training.

5.The tune of the author in writing this article is ________.

　　A. pessimistic  B. optimistic   C. critical  D. neutral