Most people in the world like to enjoy nature. Travel is one of the most popular ways. Nowadays modern transportation can take people everywhere. But people who lived before the 1880s probably would not travel very far. They would not have time to travel far from their work. Anyone who travelled  36  would usually walk or ride a horse. But in Germany a man named Karl Benz had an idea that  37  the world in a dramatic way. In 1885, he made  38  . His car had three wheels,  39  most cars today. The car could only go  40  16 kilometres an hour.

At around the same time, the man  41  his first car in Detroit, America is called Henry Ford. Detroit is now still famous all over the world as the centre of American car-making.

Cars were very few and only  42  people could buy them.  43  , in England cars were thought to be  44  at that time, so for a few years someone  45  walk in front of every car  46  a red flag! This was to make sure that the car did not go too fast and hurt  47  .

In the 1910s, Henry Ford had  48  a better kind of car called the Model T Ford and he built a  49  where the cars could be made  50  . In this way the car could be made  51  and the cost was less and more and more people could  52  them. But there was still a problem  53  all the cars were black. That was because it was 54  to produce cars that were all the same color. Now, of course, you can buy cars in all  55  .

Years ago, a cigarette commercial asked if you were smoking more, but enjoying it less. That describes the way many of us live today. We are doing more, but enjoying it less. And when that doesn’t work, we compound the problem. In our frantic search for satisfaction, we try stuffing still more into our days, never realizing that we are taking the wrong approach.

The truth is simple; so simple it is hard to believe. Satisfaction lies with less, not with more. Yet, we pursue the myth that this thing, or that activity, will somehow provide the satisfaction we so desperately seek.

Arthur Lindman, in his devastating book, “The Harried Leisure Class,” described the futility of pursuing more. His research focused on what people did with their leisure time. He found that as income rose, people bought more things to occupy their leisure time. But, ironically, the more things they bought, the less they valued any one of them. Carried to an extreme, he predicted massive boredom in the midst of tremendous variety. That was more than twenty years ago, and his prediction seems more accurate every year.

Lindman, of course, is not the first to discover this. The writer of Ecclesiastes expressed the same thought thousands of years ago. It is better, he wrote, to have less, but enjoy it more.

If you would like to enjoy life more, I challenge you to experiment with me. How could you simplify your life? What could you drop? What could you do without? What could you stop pursuing? What few things could you concentrate on?

The more I learn, the more I realize that fullness of life does not depend on things. The more I give up, the more I seem to gain. But words will never convince you. You must try it for yourself.

1．Arthur Lindman predicted twenty years ago that ______.

A. more things brought more value   B. the more people had, the less they valued them

C. people didn’t like to pursue more  D. massive boredom came from less variety

2．What does the article suggest to make our life happier?

A. To enjoy more things.            B. To buy more things.

C. To sell things we do not need.     D. To get rid of useless things.

3．The passage is probably written to ___________.

A. introduce Arthur Lindman and his book       B. tell the readers what is satisfaction

C. introduce how to simplify people’s life       D. persuade people to simplify their life

Learning how to be patient with people can be challenging for some. After all, not everybody is gifted with great patience. The good news is that it is something that can be learned and eventually perfected.

When the customer before you takes ages to pay for his or her groceries, you tap your foot impatiently and cough every now and then; but no, the customer is still not hurrying up. It takes all of your power not to make a scene.  However, if you picture that customer to be someone you like (say your partner), then you will find yourself not getting too annoyed, right? So the next time you find yourself losing patience with somebody, simply visualize that person to be someone you really, really like and your patience will extend its life.

The second step on how to be patient with people involves whistling. When you whistle a happy tune, you instantly cheer up. You can sing your favorite song if you can't whistle - it really doesn't make a difference. What's important here is that you have done something that makes you feel good. And when you feel good, you are more likely to be patient with the people around you.

Next, when you're stressed, it's almost impossible to learn how to be patient with people. If you know you're going to be in a situation where your patience will be tested, meditate or get yourself a massage(按摩) first. Don't dive into anything unless you've managed to clear yourself off negative emotions. Remember: the more stressed you are, the faster you'll lose your temper. The less stress you have in your life, the longer your patience.

Learning how to patient with people is not a necessity in life. You've seen people who manage to survive day to day with incredibly bad tempers after all. But do you really want to live like they do? If, however, you want a life that has better quality than that, then just follow these steps and embrace the fact that patience is a virtue.

1.what does the underlined phrase in paragraph 2 mean?

A．quarrel publicly                        B．make something appear

C．drive away                             D．feel happy

2.Which of the following can best summarize the topic of paragraph2?

A．We should love everyone around us.

B．Show your impatience when your customers aren’t in a hurry.

C．Think of others fondly.

D．To be patient is really difficult occasionally.

3.When you realized that your patience is being examined, you should________.

A．it is possible to control it

B．let it known by whoever you are facing

C．do whatever you like and don’t care what others say

D．learn to relax yourself in a possible way

4.Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the text?

A．We have to learn to be patient with others because it can benefit us.

B．When you are under pressure, it is unavoidable to be impatient.

C．Doing something that you like may make you feel good when you are impatient.

D．Patience is a quality that can be improved.

There was a story many years ago of a school teacher--- Mrs. Thompson. She told the children on the first day that she loved them all the same. But that was a lie. There in the front row was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard. He didn’t play well with the other children and he always needed a bath. She did not like him.

Then Mrs. Thompson got to know that Teddy was actually a very good boy before the death of his mother. Mrs. Thompson was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when, like all her other students, Teddy brought her a Christmas present too. It was his mother’s perfume(香水)。

Teddy said, “Mrs. Thompson, today you smell just like my Mom used to.” After the children left she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she stopped teaching reading, writing and math. Instead, she began to teach children.

Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. The boy’s mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he improved. By the end of the sixth grade, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class.

Six years went by before she got a note from Teddy. He wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in his whole life. He went to college. Mrs. Thompson got two more letters from him with the last one signed, Theodore F. Stoddard, M. D. (医学博士).

The story doesn’t end there. On his wedding day, Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson’s ear, “Thank you, Mrs. Thompson, for believing in me. You made me feel important and showed me that I could make a difference.”

Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back, “Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn’t know how to teach until I met you.”

1.What did Mrs. Thompson do on the first day of school?

2.What did Mrs. Thompson find out about Teddy?

3.In what way did Mrs. Thompson change?                                             

4.Why did Teddy thank Mrs. Thompson at his wedding?

Whether we’re 2 years old or 62, our reasons for lying are mostly the same: to get out of trouble, for personal gain and to make ourselves look better in the eyes of others. But a growing body of research is raising questions about how a child’s lie is different from an adult’s lie, and how the way we deceive changes as we grow.

“Parents and teachers who catch their children lying should not be alarmed. Their children are not going to turn out to be abnormal liars,” says Dr. Lee, a professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Institute of Child Study. He has spent the last 15 years studying how lying changes as kids get older, why some people lie more than others as well as which factors can reduce lying. The fact that children tell lies is a sign that they have reached a new developmental stage. Dr. Lee conducted a series of studies in which they bring children into a lab with hidden cameras. Children and young adults aged 2 to 17 are likely to lie while being told not to look at a toy, which is put behind the child’s back. Whether or not the child takes a secret look is caught on tape.

For young kids, the desire to cheat is big and 90% take a secret look in these experiments. When the test-giver returns to the room, the child is asked if he or she looked secretly. At age 2, about a quarter of children will lie and say they didn’t. By 3, half of kids will lie, and by 4, that figure is 90%, studies show.

Researchers have found that it’s kids with better understanding abilities who lie more. That’s because to lie you also have to keep the truth in mind, which includes many brain processes, such as combining several sources of information and faking that information. The ability to lie — and lie successfully  — is thought to be related to development of brain regions that allow so called “executive functioning”, or higher order thinking and reasoning abilities. Kids who perform better on tests that involve executive functioning also lie more.

1.What’s the purpose of children telling lies?

   A. To help their friends out.

B. To get rid of trouble.

   C. To get attention from others.

D. To create a popular image.

2.The underlined word “deceive” in Paragraph 1 can be replaced by “       ”.

A. tell lies                                B. handle troubles

C. raise questions                      D. do research

3.From the second paragraph we can know that       .

    A. which factors can reduce lying

B. why some lie more than others

C. it is normal for kids to tell lies

D. how lying changes as kids grow

4.It can be inferred from the passage that        .

A. children’s lies are the same as adults’

B. the better kids are, the more they lie

C. the older kids are, the more they lie

D. kids always keep the truth in their mind

5.What is NOT included in the passage?

A. The reasons why kids tell lies.

B. Which kind of kids tells more lies.

C. Experiments about lying of young kids.

D. What to do with lying children.