“Children who eat less salt and drink fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks may significantly lower their risks of obesity,” researchers recently reported in the journal Hypertension.

“Sugar-sweetened soft drinks are a significant source of calorie intake in children,” said Feng J. He, a researcher at St George’s University of London, England. “It has been shown that sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption is related to obesity in young people.” They wanted to know whether there is a link between salt intake and sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption.

Dr He and colleagues analyzed data from a 1997 national survey of more than 2,000 people between 4 and 18 in Britain. “We found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank less fluid,” said He. “From our research, we estimated that 1 gram of salt cut from their daily diet would reduce fluid intake by 100 grams per day.”

The researchers also found that children eating a lower-salt diet drank fewer sugar-sweetened soft drinks. From their research, they predicted that reducing salt intake by 1 gram each day would reduce sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption by 27 grams per day, after. “If children aged 4 to 18 cut their salt intake by half, there would be a decrease of about two sugar-sweetened soft drinks per week per child, so each child would decrease calorie intake by almost 250 kilocalories per week,” Dr He said.

In previous studies, researchers found that a low-salt diet lowers blood pressure in children, and prevents the development of high blood pressure later in life. “Both high blood pressure and obesity increase the risk of having strokes and heart attacks,” Dr He said.

Dr He recommends that parents check labels and choose low-salt food products. “Small reductions in the salt content of 10 to 20 percent cannot be detected by the human salt taste receptors (感受器) and do not cause any technological or safety problems,” Dr He said.

According to the passage, obesity is directly linked to ______.

A. high-salt foods     

B. sugar-sweetened soft drinks

C. high blood pressure   

D. strokes and heart attacks

Compared with previous studies, the recent one found that ______.

A. a lower-salt diet may mean less sugar-sweetened soft drink consumption

B. a low-salt diet keeps children out of high blood pressure

C. children face the risk of having strokes and heart attacks

D. low-salt food products do not do harm to people’s health

Which of the following statements would Dr He agree to?

A. The less salt people eat, the healthier people become.

B. Children should reduce fluid intake in their daily life.

C. No high-salt food products will be available in shops.

D. A low-salt diet may prevent both high blood pressure and obesity.

After reading the passage, who should take effective action?

A. Children.   B. Parents.   C. Doctors.   D. Researchers.

Imagine a boy from a small village in East Africa, He from a very early age has been looking after cattle. At twelve years old he knows more about cattle than most of you. However, he has never been to school. Has this boy ever had any education?

Education is discovering about ourselves and about the people and things around us. All the people who care about us — our parents, brothers, sisters, friends — are our teachers. In fact, we learn something from everyone we meet. We start learning on the day we are born, not on the first day" we go to school. Every day we have new experiences, like finding a bird's nest, discovering a new street in our neighborhood, making friends with someone we didn't like before. New experiences are even more fun when we share them with other people.

Encouragement from the people around us enables us to explore things as much as possible. As we grow up, we begin to find out what we are capable of doing. You may be good at cooking, or singing or playing football. You find this out by doing these things. Just thinking about cooking doesn't tell you if you are good at it.

We learn so much just living from day to day. So why is school important? Of course you can learn some things better at home than at school, like how to do the shopping, and how to help old or disabled people who can' t do everything for themselves. At school, teachers help us to read and write. With their guidance, we begin to see things in different ways.

1. The writer takes the African boy as an example to show that _______.

A. African children are very poor          

B. some children are unlucky

C. education takes many ways               

D. schools are of great importance

2.In the eyes of the writer       .

A. we have to learn from the people around us  

B. school is not important at all

C. only the people caring for us can teach us      

D. education takes place everywhere

3.One can find out what he is good at by     _.

A. the encouragement of people around       B. the teachings of those he or she meets

C. thinking of it when growing up           D. trying practicing it

4. How the writer looks at the role of school is that       .

A. school is not so important as our living places

B. school enables us to understand the world in other ways

C. school teaches us something useless at home

D. school cannot prepare us for our daily lives

5. The passage tells us that _     .

A. everyone gets education from the day he or she is born

B. different education trains different classes of people

C. school is absolutely necessary if one wants to understand the world

D. everyone will find out what he or she is good at

He ________ from other people in that he always looked farther ahead in his work．

A．agreed           B．disagreed         C．differed           D．improved

By this time next year he       from the college.

He__________from his seat and answered the question__________by the teacher.

    A. raised; rose         B. raised; risen        C. rose; raised         D. risen; raised