Spending as little as $ US5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia found.

Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others – even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier.

"We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn," said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

“No matter how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not," Dunn said in a statement.

Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $US3000 and $US8000. "Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself," they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

They gave their volunteers $US5 or $US20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.

"These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations -- as little as $US5 -- may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day," Dunn said.

1．What is the general idea of the passage?

      A．The more you earn, the greater happiness you will get.

       B．Spending more money on yourself will make you happier.

       C．Money can buy happiness, but only of you spend it on someone else.

20090408
 
       D．You can spend only $US5 a day on someone else to get happiness.

2．The underlined word “boost” in the first paragraph probably means           .

       A．help to find                                         B．help to bring

       C．help to increase                                   D．help to get

3．Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?

       A．Those who spend more money on others can get much more bonus.

       B．People usually think spending money on themselves will make then happier.

       C．Very small changes in spending your money may be enough to gain happiness.

       D．Researchers think that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn.

4．Dunn is          .

      A．a(chǎn)n employee in a company                    B．a(chǎn) psychologist at a university

       C．a(chǎn) reporter in a journal                           D．a(chǎn) volunteer in the experiment

5．It can be inferred from the 6th paragraph that          .

       A．the volunteers not given $US5 or $US20 spent their own money on themselves

       B．those who spent the money on someone or something else felt happier about it

       C．the volunteers were given $US5 or $US20 as a reward for the experiment

       D．half of the volunteers could spend the money as they liked

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What we often see nowadays is that young people juggle an ever larger number of electronic devices(電子產(chǎn)品)as they study. While working, they also surf on the Internet, send out emails, answer the telephone and listen to music on their iPods. In a sense, they are spending a significant amount of time in fruitless efforts as they multitask.

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John Denver has got international fame as a pop star, songwriter, actor and environmental activist ( 環(huán)境保護者). Songs like Take Me Home, Country Road, Rocky

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  A. providing typical examples

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第三部分：閱讀理解（共20小題；每小題2分,滿分40分）
Big things were happening in my life the summer I turned 13. In the middle of that summer, my parents shook my entire world and turned it upside down when they told me they were getting a divorce. I couldn't believe that our family was going to break up. Though I always knew my parents weren't very happy and they often fought, I still wanted my family to stay the same.
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第三部分：閱讀理解（共20小題，每題2分）

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Many Asian countries have used bamboo for hundreds of years． They often use bamboo for buildings and supporting (支撐) new buildings and bridges while they are being built．

In Africa, poor farmers are taught how to find water using bamboo． These African countries need cheap way to find water because they have no money, and their fields often die from no rain and no water．Bamboo pipes (管子) help poor farmers bring water to their thirsty fields without spending a lot of money．

1．How is bamboo like grass?

A．It grows quickly． B．It’s wood．    C．it is easy to cut．  D．It is very thin．

2．Though you can see bamboo everywhere, it doesn’t grow      ．

A．in China      B．in Europe C．on mountains   D．in Africa

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3．In Asia, bamboo has been used for     ．

A．a(chǎn) short time                    B．many thousands of years

C．many hundreds of years          D．a(chǎn)bout 100 years

 

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