Most parents are not __________ the danger of their babies’ eating jelly, which causes most unfortunate incidents to happen.

Freshmen, eager to get home for the Chinese New Year, queue up at the railway station for hours．Days later, they squeeze into a crowded train and dream of the home-cooked meals and love they'll enjoy once they arrive home．This, they say, makes all the trouble of getting home worthwhile.

However, many freshmen come to find that home is not exactly how they remembered it．Living away from their parents has exposed them to a new life of freedom – one that within hours of arriving some begin to miss．Household chores（家务活）and complaining parents are just a few of the things that can ruin students' winter fantasies．“My parents still treat me like I was in senior high,” Song Ying, a 19-year-old freshman at Shandong University, complained．“I get an earful from them every day.”

During her first term away from her Hubei home, Song missed everything – from her parents cooking to the city bus．She cried and ached to sleep in her own bed．So, upon finishing her exams, she fled home, thinking everything would be just as it used to be．But she was wrong．Now, she spends entire days at a friend's home to “avoid all the restrictions”．She logs online to update friends' profile on SNS, skips meals and sleeps in – just like she did on campus.

Things have been even tenser at home for Luo Ruiqi, a 19-year-old freshman at Beijing Jiaotong University．Instead of moving to a friend's house, though, he has decided to challenge his parents' rules for his right to be an adult at home．When they complained about the amount of time he spent in the toilet, Luo said he decided “enough is enough” and lost his temper．He feels guilty about his attitude, but he still argues that he is grown up enough to live by his own rules．“I just want to live my own way of living, wherever I am,” said Luo．

Recent graduates like Wang Kai know what Song and Luo are going through．But Wang, who graduated in 2008 and now works in Beijing, says students should value the time spent with their family and “just try to be nicer.” Wang says he acted the same way when he first returned home from college, but now, living 1,500 km away from his hometown in Hunan, he regrets his behavior．He realizes that his parents meant well．And, looking back, he says that “the way of living that we got used to on campus is not that healthy anyway”.

Parents, meanwhile, are more understanding than you might think．“Living on their own in a strange place can be hard –we've been there before,” said Luo's father．“We want to make sure that they are healthy and happy．Sometimes maybe we just worry too much.” As for the tension that's arisen between father and son, Luo senior laughed and said, “It's not a problem at all – he's my son; we work things out, always.”

1．Having read the passage, we can infer that home is now a(n) ___________for most freshmen.

         A．birdcage                       B．paradise

         C．temporary station in life         D．open house

2．Why are things even tenser at home for Luo Ruiqi during the Chinese New Year?

         A．He has to spend entire days at a friend's home to “avoid all the restrictions”.

         B．He has decided to go against his parents for his right to be an adult at home.

         C．He feels guilty about his attitude towards his parents.

         D．He has wasted much money his parents gave to him.

3．According to the text, there exists a main problem between parents and children that_______.

         A．parents want to bring their children under control as before.

         B．children look down upon what their parents always do.

         C．their way of life is apparently different now.

         D．they are always misunderstanding each other.

4．Who the text implies is mainly responsible for the bad parent-child relationship?

         A．parents         B．social changes               C．professors           D．freshmen

5．What does the underlined part in the 2nd paragraph probably mean?

         A．learn a lot                B．receive much punishment

         C．get a scolding             D．have a narrow escape

  Chinese are very generous when it comes to educating their children. Not caring about the money, parents often send their children to the best schools or even abroad to England, the United States or Australia. They also want their children to take extra-course activities where they will learn a musical instrument or ballet or other classes which will give them a head start in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is, the better it is. So the parents will spend an unreasonable amount of money on education. Even poor couples will buy a computer for their son or daughter.

However, what most parents fail to see is that the best early education they can give their children is usually very cheap.

Parents can see that their children’s skills vary, skilled in some areas while poor in others. What most parents fail to realize though, is that today’s children lack (缺乏) self-respect and self-confidence.

The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents aren’t teaching them the most important skills they need to be confident, happy and clever.

Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing housework.

Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It’s an enjoyable but difficult experiment. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and gradually to finish his job successfully. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and a lot of self-confidence.

Some old machines , such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your children to play with will make him curious (好奇) and arouse his interest He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities aren’t merely teaching a child to read a book, but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important.

1.Parents in China, according to this passage, _________.

A. are too strict with their children        

B. are too rich to educate their children

C have some problems in educating their children correctly

D. are too poor to educate their children

2.Generally speaking, children’s skills_______.

3.The writer of this passage doesn’t seem to be satisfied with_______.

4.Doing some cooking at home helps children_________.

5.According to the last paragraph, we can conclude that_________.

When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as mere entertainment, but certainly not an education priority （优先）.This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students.

Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their thinking and values, as well as the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society.

Music provides a kind of perception（感知）that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotional meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.

The arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings "talk" to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, and our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses.

Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love.

So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.

1.According to Paragraph 1，students_________.

A. regard music as a way of entertainment

B. disagree with their parents on education

C. view music as an overlooked subject

D. prefer the arts to science

2.In Paragraph 2, the author uses jazz as an example to ___________.

A. compare it with rock music

B. show music reflects a society

C. introduce American musical traditions

D. prove music influences people's lifestyles

3.According to the passage, the arts and science________.

A. approach the world from different angles

B. explore different phenomena of the world

C. express people's feelings in different ways

D. explain what it means to be human differently

4.What is the main idea of the passage?

A. Music education deserves more attention.

B. Music should be of top education priority.

C. Music is an effective communication tool.

D. Music education makes students more imaginative. '

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