A

No poem should ever be discussed or “analyzed”, until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling “interpretation” of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching can not replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than “analyzing” it, if there isn’t time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is “ a criticism of life”, and “ a heightening(提升) of life”. It is “an approach to the truth of feeling”, and it “can save your life”. It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don’t like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.

1. To have a better understanding of a poem, one should________.

A. discuss it with others           B. analyze it by oneself

C. copy it down in a notebook      D. practise reading it aloud

2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a function of poetry?

A. Extending your life              B. Saving your life

C. Criticizing life                  D. Heightening life

3. According to the writer, one of the purposes of teaching English is to get students________.

A. to understand life.               B. to enjoy poetry.

C. to become teachers.              D. to become poets

4. What does the last sentence in the third paragraph imply?

A. More stress should be laid on the teaching of poetry.

B. Poetry is more important than any other subject.

C. One cannot enjoy life fully without an understanding of poetry

D. Poetry is the foundation of all language and literature courses

5. The phrase “make room” in the last paragraph could be best replaced by

A. “build a booth”                      B. “provide equipment”

C. “leave a certain amount of time”        D. “set aside enough space”

D

This brief book is aimed at high school students , but speaks to anyone learning at any stage of life.

   Its formal ,serious style closely matches its content ,a school-masterly book on schooling .The author , W .H . Armstrong ,starts with the basics : reading and writing . In his opinion , reading doesn’t just mean recognizing each word on the page ; it means taking in the information, digesting it and incorporating it into oneself just as one digests a sandwich and makes it a part of himself .The goal is to bring the information back to life , not just to treat it as dead facts on paper from dead trees . Reading and writing cannot be completely separated from each other ; in fact ,the aim of reading is to express the information you have got from the text .I’ve seen it again and again ：someone who can’t express an idea after reading a text is just as ineffective as someone who hasn’t read it at all.

Only a third of the book remains after that discussion, which Armstrong devotes to specific tips for studying languages, math, science and history. He generally handles these topics thoroughly and equally, except for some weakness in the science and math sections and a bit too much passion regarding history. Well, he was a history teacher---if conveyed only a tenth of his passion to his students, that was a hundred times more than my history teachers ever got across .To my disappointment, in this part of the book he ignores the arts. As a matter of fact, they demand all the concentration and study that math and science do, though the study differs slightly in kind. Although it’s commonly believed that the arts can only be naturally acquired ,actually ,learning the arts is no more natural than learning French or mathematics.

My other comment is that the text aged. The first edition apparently dates to the 1960s—none of the references(参考文献)seem newer than the late 1950s. As a result, the discussion misses the entire computer age.

These are small points, though, and don’t affect the main discussion. I recommend it to any student and any teacher, including the self-taught student.

According to Armstrong, the goal of reading is to________.

A. gain knowledge and expand one’s view

B. understand the meaning between the lines

C. express ideas based on what one has read

D. get information and keep it alive in memory

The author of the passage insists that learning the arts_________.

A. requires great efforts

B. demands real passion

C. is less natural than learning math

D. is as natural as learning a language

What is a shortcoming of Armstrong’s work according to the author?

A. Some ideas are slightly contradictory.

B. There is too much discussion on studying science.

C. The style is too serious.

D. It lacks new information.

This passage can be classified as________.

A. an advertisement

B. a book review

C. a feature story

D. A news report

A new study by Penn State College of Medicine research team found that honey is a better and safer treatment for children than cough medicines.

   Ian Paul, the study’s lead researcher, was motivated to test honey because treating coughs in children has recently become a sticky subject. Coughing is the body’s way of cleaning irritated (受刺激的) airways to help you breathe. But too much coughing can irritate your lungs and throat even more. It can also make it tough to get the sleep your body needs to heal. Hoping to ease the suffering of their children, parents often give them cough medicines.

But there have never been any good studies showing that they work. Cough and cold medicines may also cause serious side effects. Hundreds of kids die in the hospital each year after receiving too much cough medicine by mistake. Last October, the US Food and Drug Administration suggested that parents should not give cough medicines to children under 6.

In order to search for a different solution, Paul designed a study that involved 105 kids who were sick with coughs and other cold conditions. At bedtime, the kids took buckwheat(荞麦) honey, honey-flavored (蜜蜂味的) DM (one of the most common ingredients成分in cough medicine), or no treatment. Parents and kids in the no-treatment group knew they weren’t getting anything, but the other two groups weren’t told which treatment they were getting.

The surveys showed that kids who swallowed about 2 teaspoons of buckwheat

honey before bedtime coughed less and slept better than kids in other groups.

“When parents want something for their kids to take,” Paul says, “honey seems

 like the best option.”

But what gives honey its healing power? Substances called antioxidants(抗氧化剂) may be part of the answer. All honey contains antioxidants that protect our cells from damage. Studies show that antioxidant levels in the body rise after someone swallows honey.

Which of the following can be the best title for this passage?

A. Sweet solution to kids’ coughing

B. No cough medicines to children

   C. Best treatment for your cold

   D. Cough medicines don’t work

We can learn from Paragraph 2 that coughing ______.

   A. can cure lung and throat diseases

   B. is more harmful to children

C. sometimes does good to people 

   D. helps improve children’s die

During Paul’s experiment, the kids who received treatment __________.

   A. seemed much worse than before

B. had no idea what they swallowed

C. knew they weren’t getting anything

   D. coughed less and slept better

According to the passage, Paul’s experiment proved that ____.

A. honey may have real healing power

B. cough medicines may cause side effect

    C. cough medicines don’t really work

D. buckwheat honey contain more antioxidants

A punctual person is in the habit of doing a thing at the proper time and is never late in keeping an appointment.

The unpunctual man, on one hand, never does what he has to do at the proper time. He is always in a hurry and in the end loses both time and his good name. A lost thing may be found again, but lost time can never be regained. Time is more valuable than material things. In fact, time is life itself. The unpunctual man is for ever wasting and mismanaging his most valuable asset (财产) as well as other’s. The unpunctual person is always complaining that he finds no time to answer letters, or return calls or keep appointments promptly. But the man who really has a great deal to do is very careful of his time and seldom complains of want of it. He knows that he can not get through his huge amount of work unless he faithfully keeps every piece of work when it has to be attended to.

Failure to be punctual in keeping one’s appointments is the sign of disrespect towards others. If a person is invited to dinner and arrives later than the appointed time, he keeps all the other guests waiting for him. Usually this will be regarded as a great disrespect to the host and all other guests present.

Unpunctuality, moreover, is very harmful when it comes to do one’s duty, whether public or private. Imagine how it would be if those who are put in charge of important tasks failed to be at their proper place at the appointed time. A man who is known to be habitually unpunctual is never trusted by his friends or fellow men.

What does the author think is the main difference between a punctual person and an unpunctual person?

A. A punctual person does everything ahead of time while an unpunctual person does everything behind schedule.

B. A punctual person does everything at the right time while an unpunctual person seldom does anything at the correct time.

C. A punctual person has a lot of appointments while an unpunctual person has few appointments.

D. A punctual person has much time to do everything while an unpunctual person has little time to do anything.

According to the passage, the main reason that a person is always unpunctual is that _______.

A. he has more work to do than other people

B. he is always in a hurry when he works

C. he doesn’t care much about time

D. he always mismanages and wastes his time

According to the third paragraph, when you are invited to dinner, you should arrive there _______.

A. after other guests have arrived

B. before all other guests

C. at the appointed time

D. after the host has got things ready

Which of the following statements best describes the harm of unpunctuality?

A. If you are an unpunctual person, you cannot be in charge of any important task.

B. If your friends know that you are unpunctual, they may not see you again.

C. Unpunctuality may bring about heavy losses for both public and private affairs.

D. Unpunctuality may make you miss a lot of appointments and lose friends.

    A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

   A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises(出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar(奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl-friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is _______.

A. repeated without any change                  B. treated as a joke

C. made some changes by the parent            D. set in the present

2. According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is _______.

A. in a realistic setting                       B. heard for the first time

C. repeated too often                                  D. told in a different way

3. The advantage claimed(提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.

A. makes them less fearful

B. develops their power of memory

C. makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

D. encourages them not to have strange beliefs

4. The author’s mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that _______.

A. fairy stories are still being made up

B. there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales

C. people try to modernize old fairy stories

D. there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

5. One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

A. they are full of imagination

B. they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

C. they are not interesting

D. they make teachers of history difficult to teach