I must have been about fourteen then, and I put away the incident from my mind with the easy carelessness of youth. But the words, Carl Walter spoke that day, came back to me years later, and ever since have been of great value to me.

Carl Walter was my piano teacher. During one of my lessons he asked how much practicing I was doing. I said three or four hours a day.

“Do you practice in long stretches, an hour at a time?”

“I try to.”

“Well, don’t, ” he said loudly. “When you grow up, time won’t come in long stretches. Practice in minutes, whenever you can find them five or ten before school, after lunch, between household tasks. Spread the practice through the day, and piano-playing will become a part of your life.”

When I was teaching at Columbia, I wanted to write, but class periods, theme-reading, and committee meetings filled my days and evenings. For two years I got practically nothing down on paper, and my excuse was that I had no time. Then I remembered what Carl Walter had said. During the next week I conducted an experiment. Whenever I had five minutes unoccupied, I sat down and wrote a hundred words or so. To my astonishment, at the end of the week I had a rather large manuscript(手稿) ready for revision. Later on I wrote novels by the same piecemeal （零碎的）method. Though my teaching schedule had become heavier than ever, in every day there were moments which could be caught and put to use.

There is an important trick in this time-using principle: you must get into your work quickly. If you have but five minutes for writing, you can’t afford to waste it in chewing your pencil. You must make your mental preparations beforehand, and concentrate on your task almost instantly when the time comes. Fortunately, rapid concentration is easier than most of us realize.

I admit I have never learnt how to let go easily at the end of the five or ten minutes. But life can be counted on to supply interruptions. Carl Walter has had a significant influence on my life. To him I owe the discovery that even very short periods of time add up to all useful hours I need, if I throw myself into it without delay.

1.The meaning of “stretch” in the underlined part is the same as that in the sentence “_______”

A. The dog woke up, had a good stretch and wandered off.

B. Bob worked as a government official for a stretch of over twenty years.

C. My family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.

D. This material has a lot of stretch in it.

2.Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A. The author didn’t take the teacher’s words to heart at first.

B. Rapid concentration is more difficult than people imagine.

C. The author thanked his teacher for teaching him to work in long stretches.

D. Carl Walter has influenced the writer greatly since he was a student.

3.We can infer that the author______.

A. had new books published each year however busy his teaching is

B. is tired of interruptions in life because he always has much work

C. has formed a bad habit of chewing a pencil while writing his novels

D. makes mental preparations beforehand so as to focus on work quickly

4.What is probably the best title for this text?

A. Concentrate on Your Work            B. A Little at a Time

C. How I Became a Writer                            D. Good Advice

Many people now think that teachers give pupils too much homework .They say that

it is _51 for children to work at home in their free time. _52 ,they argue that most teachers do not_ 53 plan the homework tasks they give to pupils. The result is that pupils have to_54 tasks which they have already done at school.

Recently in Greece many parents_ 55_ about the difficult homework which teachers gave to their children. The parents said that most of the homework was a waste of time ,and they wanted to_56__it. Spain and Turkey are two countries which stopped homework recently .In Denmark ,Germany and several other countries in Europe, teachers cannot set homework at weekends .In Holland, teachers allow pupils to stay at school to do their homework .The children are free to help one another.Similar_57 _also exists in some British schools.

Most people agree that homework is not___58 .A pupil who can do his homework in a quiet and_ 59  room is in a much better position than a pupil who does his homework in a small,noisy room with the television on.Some parents help their children with their homework.Other parents take no_ 60  at all in their children's homework.

51.A.unnecessary      B. uninteresting      C. unfortunate     D. unimportant

52.A.Nevertheless     B. However           C. Therefore        D. Moreover

53.A.considerably     B. favourably        C. properly         D. pleasantly

54.A.finish           B. repeat            C. attend           D. accomplish

55.A.quarrelled       B. puzzled           C. explored         D. complained

56.A.delay             B. stop             C. block          D. prove

57.A.schedule          B. operation        C. arrangement    D. behaviour

58.A.fair              B. average          C. balanced       D. comparative

59.A.furnished         B. expensive        C. comfortable    D. suitable

60.A.interest          B. curiosity        C. notice         D. Attention

Has all that ____ without delay ____ yet?

A. can do…being done       B. done…been done

C. ought to be done…to do   D. should be done…been done

Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each bank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.

As Christmas drew near, Ursula was faced with just that problem. She had come to live in an American home and learn English.  50 , she would mind the children and do anything she was asked.

One of her tasks was to keep track of   51 Christmas presents. Ursula did this faithfully, but she became increasingly worried. What could she buy for her   52 with the little money she had that would compare with the gifts she was recording daily?  53 ,even without any of the gifts , her employer seems to have everything.

Ursula _ 54 _ long and hard. On Christmas Eve, she went to a store. She moved slowly through crowds of shoppers,   55 things in her mind. Finally she bought a baby dress. She immediately called   56  . “Excuse me, please, can you help me find a poor family with a baby?”  “A poor family?” said the   57  driver. “Yes, a very poor family.” Ursula told the man of what she was trying to do. He   58 in silence, and then said, “I know a family who   59 just about everything.”

When they reached a   60 the driver said, “They live on the third floor.” Ursula shook her head, “Would you take this dress to them and tell them it’s from someone …someone who has everything.”

Early the next day, Ursula   61 everyone for the presents she received. Then, she began to      62  why there seemed to be none from her. She told about what she did the night before. When she finished, there was a long   63 . “You see,” she added, “I try to do a kindness in your   64 . And this is my Christmas present to you.”

50. A. In return         B. As a result             C. By the way           D. In a sense

51. A. delivering        B. mailing                 C. arriving                D. sending

52. A. American family B. own family       C. friends                 D. classmates

53. A. Otherwise       B. Therefore             C. Besides                D. However

54. A. talked             B. worked                C. waited                 D. thought

55. A. selecting         B. matching              C. remembering        D. organizing

56. A. a shop            B. a taxi                   C. her employer        D. her parents

57. A. delighted        B. anxious                 C. surprised              D. respectful

58. A. noticed           B. listened                C. got out                 D. carried on

59. A. buys               B. has                      C. uses                     D. needs

60. A. garage            B. building               C. station                 D. yard

61. A. thanked          B. encouraged           C. praised                 D. admired

62. A. settle              B. repeat                  C. argue                   D. explain

63. A. delay              B. silence                 C. time                    D. break

64. A. case               B. opinion                C. memory               D. name

Psychologists(心理学家) have known that what's going on inside our head affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter. Professor Remi Radel wanted to investigate(look into) how this happens -- whether it's right away, as the brain receives signals from the eyes, or a little later, as the brain's higher-level thinking processes get involved.
Radel chose 42 students and each student was told to arrive at the lab at noon after three or four hours of not eating on the day of the test. Then they were told there was a delay. Some were told to come back in 10 minutes; others were given an hour to get lunch. So half the students were hungry when they did the experiment and the other half had just eaten.
For the experiment, the participant looked at a computer screen. One by one, 80 words flashed on the screen. A quarter of the words were food-related. After each word, the person was asked how bright the word was and asked to choose which of two words they'd seen -- a food-related word like gateau (cake) or a neutral (中性的) word like bateau (boat).
Hungry people saw the food-related words as brighter and were better at identifying food-related words. Because the word appeared too quickly for them to be reliably seen, this means that the difference is in perception (直觉), Radel says—it's not because of some kind of processing happening in the brain after you've already figured out what you're looking at.
"This is something great to me, that humans can really realize what they need or what they hope for, to know that our brain can really arrange for our motives and needs," Radel says. "There is something inside us that selects information in the world to make life easier.”
【小题1】The purpose of Radel's research is to let us know ____.