Language is always changing. In a society where life continues year after year with few changes, the language does not change, either. The earliest known languages had difficult grammar but a small, limited vocabulary. Over the century, the grammar changed, and the vocabulary grew. For example, the English and Spanish people who came to America during the sixteenth century gave names to all new plants and animals they found. In this way, hundreds of new words were introduced into English and Spanish vocabularies. Today life is changing very fast, and language is changing fast too.

There are several major language families in the world. Some scientists say there are nine main families, but other scientists divide them differently. The languages in each family are connected, and scientists think that they came from the same parent language About 3 percent of the people in the world speak languages that are not in these major families.

1. The early language had ______.

2.In the next few hundred years we can expect language to ______.

3.What this article shows is that ______.

4. From this article we can see that ______.

However important we may regard school life to be, there is no denying the fact that children spend more time at home than in the classroom. Therefore, the great influence of parents cannot be ignored or discounted by the teacher. They can become strong allies of the school personnel or they can consciously or unconsciously hinder and frustrate curricular objectives.

Administrators have been aware of the need to keep parents informed of the newer methods used in schools. Many principles have conducted workshops explaining such matters as the reading readiness program, manuscript writing and developmental mathematics. Moreover, the classroom teacher, with the permission of the supervisors, can also play an important role in enlightening parents. The informal tea and the many interviews carried on during the year, as well as new ways of reporting pupils’ progress, can significantly aid in achieving a harmonious interplay between school and home.

To illustrate, suppose that a father has been drilling Junior in arithmetic processes night after night. In a friendly interview, the teacher can help the parent sublimate (升华) his natural paternal interest into productive channels. He might be persuaded to let Junior participate in discussing the family budget, buying the food, using a standard or measuring cup at home, setting the clock, calculating mileage on a trip and engaging in scores of other activities that have a mathematical basis.

If the father follows the advice, it is reasonable to assume that he will soon realize his son is making satisfactory progress in mathematics, and at the same time, enjoying the work. Too often, however, teachers’ conferences with parents are devoted to petty (不重要的) accounts of children’s misdeeds, complaints about laziness and poor work habits, and suggestion for penalties and rewards at home.

What is needed is a more creative approach in which the teacher, as a professional adviser, plants ideas in parents’ minds for the best utilization of the many hours that the child spends out of the classroom.

In this way, the school and the home join forces in fostering the fullest development of youngsters’ capacities.

(Note:Answer the questions or complete the statements with NO MORE THAN 14 WORDS)

1.Why do parents also have great influence on children?

_________________________________________________________________________ .

2.Through which ways can the teacher play an important role in enlightening parents?

_________________________________________________________________________ .

3.According to the teacher, that parents should let the boy ____________________________ if he wants to sublimate his natural paternal interest into productive channels in teaching his son arithmetic.

4.A more creative approach is needed for ___________________of children out of classroom.

Only in this way _________ make progress in our English study.

  A. can we        B. we can       C. we are able to       D. can we be able to

The idea about the phoenix goes back to Ancient Egypt, where we find the phoenix described as a handsome, eagle-like bird, with part-golden, part-red plumage, that spent most of its life in the Arabian deserts. It was rarely seen and according to one version of the story, only appeared in Egypt once every five hundred years, when it flew to Heliopolis, “city of the sun”, and deliberately burnt itself to ashes by settling on the altar (祭坛) flame there! However, it seems it did not really die because from those same ashes a young, fully formed phoenix was born and flew away, apparently back to Arabia.

It is pretty obvious that no one has ever seen or will see a living phoenix. The interesting thing is that we can find certain clues which may explain one aspect of the Egyptians’ idea. It may sound unbelievable, but some birds are apparently quite charmed by flames and small fires, especially members of the crow family. One zoologist actually proved this by setting fire to some straw near to a tame（驯养的）rook, a large black bird like a crow. Far from becoming nervous and backing away, the bird deliberately stood over the flames, with raised and vibrating wings. It didn’t get burnt, but the image it presented by its strange behavior was almost exactly like that shown in illustrations of the mythical phoenix!

Why birds should occasionally behave in this strange way is not clear. One idea is that they carefully use the heat of the flames to relieve the annoyance caused by their feather mites (虱) which all birds have. Whatever the reason, it is quite possible that the Ancient Egyptians saw birds behaving in this way, from time to time, and used it as the basis of their phoenix myth, adding fanciful details which closely linked it to their worship of the sun and their belief in resurrection.

Nowadays, the phoenix is much less important to us than it was to the Egyptians. But the logo of modern fire insurance companies, which employ the phoenix as one of their symbols, refers that in one sense the idea of it remains.  

1. According to the passage, the phoenix _________ .

2. The reason why birds stand above flames is probably that _________ .

3.Which of the following statements is NOT correct?

4.Which of the following is closest to the underlined word “resurrection” in the 3^rd paragraph?

5.What does the phoenix probably mean in the logo of a fire insurance company?