Baths and bathing have long been considered of medical importance to man. In Greece there are the
ruins of a water system for baths built over 3,000 years ago. The Romans had warm public baths. In
some baths, as many 3,000 persons could bathe at the same time.
      Treating disease by taking bathing has been popular for centuries. Modern medical bathing first
became popular in Europe and by the late 1700's has also become popular in the United States.
       For many years frequent(经常的) bathing was believed to be bad for one's health. Ordinary bathing
just to keep clean was avoided, and perfume was often used to cover up body smells!
       By the 1700's doctors began to say that soap and water were good for health. They believed that it
was good for people to be clean. Slowly, people began to bathe more frequently. During the Victorian
Age of the late 19th century, taking a bath on Saturday night became common.
       In the United States ordinary bathing was slow to become popular. During the 18th and early 19th
centuries, many Americans were know as "The Great Unwashed!" In one American city , for example, a
person was only allowed to take a bathe every thirty days! That was a law!
       Frequency of bathing today is partly a matter of habit. People know that bathing for cleanliness is
important to health, Doctors know that dirty bodies increase the chance of diseases. As a result, in the
United States, people generally bathe often. Some people bath once a day at least. They consider a daily
bath essential (=necessary) to good health.

1. A water system for baths was built by ______ over 3,000 years ago.

A. the Romans  
B. the Greeks      
C. the Americans      
D. the Europeans

2. In the 18th century doctors believed that being clean was __________.

A. unimportant    
B. good for health    
C. harmful    
D. important

3. The underlined word perfume probably means _____________.

A. a sweet smelling substance                
B. good health
C. a strange smelling substance              
D. large wealth

4. Which  of the following gives the main idea of the passage?

A. Everybody in America takes a daily bath.        
B. A bath a day keeps the doctor away.
C. Taking baths has become popular in the world.  
D. Bathing has become easier and cheaper.

     As a kid, I can remember going to the supermarket and grabbing eggs off the shelf. I would run them
home to my mother because they were usually going into a delicious cake. Times  have  changed.  
Cagefree?  Organic?  Brown? White? Omega3s? Help! Here are some tips to help you figure out which
eggs you should choose:
     ●Brown or white? In fact, color is simply a sign of the breed of hen. Find the freshest egg with the
most flavor and let color be a secondary concern.
     ●Extra Omega3s? Omega3 eggs come from a hen whose diet has added flaxseed(亚麻籽) ,which
produces an egg containing an average of 225 mg of Omega3 fatty acids and Vitamin E. The countless
health benefits for humans make these eggs an attractive purchase. My opinion? Eat a piece of fresh fish
and get a pure dose of Omega3s. Let eggs be eggs.
     ●Does your egg need exercise? Freerange eggs are from hens raised without the confines of a cage,
though they may or may not have spent much time outdoors. Organic eggs are from hens whose feed
must meet organic standards. These hens must be raised humanely, and they must be given time to stay
outdoors. Hey, happier hens do lay tastier eggs.
     ●Does local make a difference? Nothing is better than local eggs. They may have a feather or two
stuck to them or be a little imperfect shape and they may or may not be certified (证明) organic;
however, they have one quality I prize: I know exactly where my food came from and how it came to be!
In some cases I can even ask the farmer when the eggs were laid and what the hens were fed.

1. What does the author think of Omega3 eggs?

A. They are a good choice for people to purchase.
B. They contain fewer Omega3s than fresh fish.
C. They have the highest content of pure Omega3s.
D. They are not the best source of Omega3s.

2.The underlined part "Freerange" probably means"______".

A. wild      
B. organic
C. special    
D. Omega3free

3. According to the passage, which of the following has nothing to do with an egg's quality?

A. The egg's color.    
B. The hen's exercise.
C. The hen's living conditions.  
D. The hen's food.

4. This passage is most probably taken from a book named________.

A. Shopping Skills 
B. Eggs and Cooking
C. Raising Hens  
D. Healthy Diet

     It is true that good writers rewrite and rewrite and then rewrite some more. But in order to work up
the desire to rewrite, it is important to learn to like what you write at the early stage.
     I am surprised at the number of famous writers I know who say that they so dislike reading their own
writing later that they even hate to look over the publishers' opinions. One reason we may dislike reading
our own work is that we're often disappointed that the rich ideas in our minds seem very thin and plain
when first written down. Jerry Fodor and Steven Pinker suggest that this fact may be a result of how our
minds work.
     Different from popular belief, we do not usually think in the words and sentences of ordinary language
but in symbols for ideas (known as'mentalese'),and writing our ideas down is an act of translation from
that symbolic language. But while mentalese contains our thoughts in the form of a complex tapestry (织锦),writing can only be composed one thread at a time. Therefore it should not be surprising that our first
attempt at expressing ideas should look so simple. It is only by repeatedly rewriting that we produce new
threads and connect them to get closer to the ideas formed in our minds.
     When people write as if some strict critics (批评家) are looking over their shoulder, they are so
worried about what this critic might say that they get stuck before they even start. Peter Elbow makes an
excellent suggestion to deal with this problem. When writing we should have two different minds. At the
first stage, we should see every idea, as well as the words we use to express it, as wonderful and worth
putting down. It is only during rewrites that we should examine what we excitedly wrote in the first stage
and check for weaknesses.

1. What do we learn from the text about those famous writers?

A. They often regret writing poor works.
B. Some of them write surprisingly much.
C. Many of them hate reading their own works.
D. They are happy to review the publishers' opinions.

2. What do people generally believe about the way human minds work?

A. People think in words and sentences.
B. Human ideas are translated into symbols.
C. People think by connecting threads of ideas.
D. Human thoughts are expressed through pictures.

3. What can we conclude from the text?

A. Most people believe we think in symbols.
B. Loving our own writing is scientifically reasonable.
C. The writers and critics can never reach an agreement.
D. Thinking and writing are different stages of mind at work.

     Popeye the Sailor first became a popular cartoon in the 1930s.The sailor in that cartoon ate lots of
spinach to make him strong. People watched him, and they began to buy and eat a lot more spinach.
Popeye helped sell 33 percent more spinach than before! Spinach became a necessary part of many
people's diets. Even some children who hated the taste began to eat the vegetable.
     Many people thought that the iron in spinach made Popeye strong, but this is not true. Spinach does
not have any more iron than any other green vegetable.
     People only thought spinach had a lot of iron because the people who studied the food made a
mistake. In the 1890s, a group of people studied what was inside vegetables. This group said that
spinach had ten times more iron than it did. The group wrote the number wrong, and everyone accepted
it.
     Today, we know that the little iron there is in spinach cannot make a difference in how strong a person
is.However, spinach does have something else which the body needs-folic acid.
     It is interesting to point out that folic acid can help make a person strong. Maybe it was really the folic
acid that made Popeye strong all along.    

1. A good title for this reading passage is______.

A. Popeye the Sailor
B. The Truth About Spinach
C. A Mistake with Numbers
D. Folic Acid Makes You Strong

2. Why did many people eat spinach after they saw Popeye the Sailor?

A. They thought spinach made them strong.
B. They thought Popeye was funny.
C. Spinach had a lot of iron.
D. People liked folic acid.

3. A research group told people that spinach______.

A. made Popeye strong
B. was a green vegetable
C. had less iron than other green vegetables
D. had more iron than other green vegetables

4. The reading passage says that perhaps Popeye got his strength from______.

A. iron
B. folic acid
C. spinach
D. exercise

5. Folic acid is ______.

A. something in food
B. a vegetable
C. dangerous
D. a certain kind of spinach