On the whole, it's not something we parents shout about, but one in four of us does it. Hiring
private tutors (指導(dǎo)教師) for our children is now widespread. And this year, as always, the
Easter holidays will be peak time (高峰期) for tutor demand.
     "My husband and I tried to tutor her at home, but we found all our knowledge was out of date.
We also tried a group revision course but all the children were sitting exams for different boards (入
學(xué)考試). On the whole, we think onetoone tuition works best and it is worth the money," says
Ashan Sabri from London, whose daughter Zarren, 18, is having tuition in biology in preparation for
Alevels this summer.
     The real question is: does tutoring do any good?
      "It's not the magic bullet," says educator Judith Ireson. "It's still up to the child to do the learning.
If he or she isn't interested, then sending them to a private tutor won't do any good."
     In this case, it's time to break open the Champagne (香檳酒)? "Not necessarily," says Elaine
Tyrrell, head of a private school.
     "While we recommend private tutoring for children whose first language isn't English, we don't
encourage it for the others," says Tyrrell. "With the level of education they get here, children really
ought to be able to pass the entrance exams. Besides, our biggest worry is that they might just get
in with the help of lastminute tutoring, but once they get to that school, they won't be able to manage."
     It's a point really worth considering. After all, who would want his child to stay at the bottom of
the class?

1. The passage is most probably written by ________.

A. a parent                            
B. a student
C. a famous educator              
D. a headmaster of a private school

2. In Ashan Sabri's opinion, which method is most suitable for her daughter?

A. Teaching her at home by herself.
B. Taking different kinds of exams.
C. Taking part in group revision courses.
D. Hiring a private tutor to help her.

3. Elaine Tyrrell doesn't encourage parents to hire private tutors for their children mainly
    because ________.

A. children may not have the real ability to deal with their further studies
B. the education that children receive in class is enough for them
C. the quality of private tutoring may be poor
D. children may be misled by private tutors

4. What attitude does the author hold towards home tutoring?

A. Supportive.  
B. Critical.
C. Uninterested.    
D. Uncertain.

1. The oldest university in the US is ______.

A. Yale
B. Harvard      
C. Princeton
D. Columbia

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A. Those colleges and universities were the same.
B. People, young or old, might study in the colleges.
C. Students studied only some languages and science.
D. When the students finished their school, they all became lawyers or teachers.

3. As knowledge increased, colleges began to teach ______.

A. everything that was known
B. law and something about medicine
C. many new subjects
D. the subjects that interested students

4. On the whole, the passage is about ______.

A. how to start a university
B. the world-famous colleges in America
C. how colleges have changed
D. what kinds of lessons each college teaches

     Last month, students from one hundred and three universities in eightyeight countries took part in
an international computer programming contest. The Battle of the Brains took place in Harbin, China. 
 __1__
     Jerry Cain, coach of Stanford University Team  California, says, "One of the programming problems
was trying to figure out how to break an arbitrary chocolate bar into a certain number of pieces of a
certain numb er of sizes and to do it as quickly as possible.    __2__"
     The students first listed the problems in order of difficulty.__3__ They designed ways to test their
solutions. And they wrote needed software systems.  Even the winning team from Shanghai Jiaotong
University in China was not able to solve all the problems within the given time limit.  Stanford's team
solved five problems and finished in the 14th place. Stanford was one of twentyone American universities
that took part in the contest this year.
     __4__ It began in 1970 at Texas A&M University. The contest quickly became popular in the
United States and Canada. It developed and grew as more and more schools took part in local and
area contests.
     The first final competition was held in 1977 at the Association for Computing Machinery Computer
Science conference. Today, a network of universities holds area competitions that send the winners to
the world finals, now organized by IBM. Contest spokesman Doug Heintzman says the world champions
receive prizes and scholarships.  __5__
A. The competitors show real interest in IBM.
B. Then they figured out the requirements of each.
C. And that's probably the simplest of all of them.
D. This competition is an opportunity to be recognized by famous universities from the world.
E. Threeperson teams from each school had five hours to solve eleven real world problems.
F. The official name of the Battle of the Brains is the ACM  International Collegiate Programming Contest.
G. They are also guaranteed an offer of employment with IBM.

     A primary school has banned Valentine's Day cards because of concerns that young pupils spend too much time talking about boyfriends and girlfriends.
     Ashcombe Primary School in WestonsuperMare, Somerset, has told parents that cards declaring love
can be "confusing" for children under the age of 11, who are still emotionally and socially developing.
     In his February newsletter (簡(jiǎn)訊), Peter Turner,head teacher, warned that any cards found in school
would be confiscated.
     He wrote, "We do not wish to see any Valentine's Day cards in school this year. Some children and
parents encourage a lot of talks about boyfriends and girlfriends."
      "We believe that such ideas should wait until children are mature enough emotionally and socially to
understand the commitment involved in having or being a boyfriend or girlfriend."
     Mr. Turner said any families wanting to support the Valentine's Day concept should send cards in the
post or deliver them to home addresses by hand.
     His views were supported by Ruth Rice, 46, who has twins Harriet and Olivia,9,at the school.
     She said, "Children at that age shouldn't really be thinking about Valentine's Day, and they should be
concentrating on their schoolwork."
      "They are at an age when they are easily influenced and most parents including myself are with
Mr. Turner."
      She added, "The cards caused too much competition. If someone gets a card and another doesn't then he will be disappointed."
      However, Rajeev Takyar, 40, who sells newspapers and has two children Jai, 11, and Aryan, 5, at the school, said he was "genuinely outraged"．
     He said, "There are schools that have banned conkers (康克戲) and snowballs, and now Valentine's
Day cards."
      "I think banning the cards stops children from having social skills. How are they going to learn about relationships otherwise? It's ridiculous."
     Alec Suttenwood, founder of the AntiPolitical Correctness Group, said of the ban, "It's totally
ridiculous. Young children just send the cards to each other as friends and to their parents. It's just a bit of harmless fun. There is no difference between this and Mother's or Father's Day."

1. Valentine's Day cards may cause confusion among young children because ________.

A. they are too young to understand what love is
B. teachers haven't taught them how to make friends
C. children shouldn't learn about social relationships
D. students talk too much about boyfriends and girlfriends

2. The underlined word "confiscated" in Paragraph 3 can probably be replaced by "________"．

A. collected                
B. destroyed            
C. taken away        
D. burnt away

3. Ruth Rice was in favor of Mr. Turner's view in that ________.

A. children like to compare Valentine's Day cards
B. children should focus their mind on their lessons
C. sending holiday cards waste both time and money
D. making friends has a negative influence on children

4. Which statement is TRUE according to the text?

A. Most of English parents want children to have fun.
B. Children should learn how to develop social skills.
C. English schools don't allow students to play games.
D. Some parents think it unreasonable to ban the cards.

5. What is the best title of the text?

A. School Bans Valentine's Day Cards
B. Shall We Send Valentine's Day Cards?
C. Different Opinions on Valentine's Day Cards
D. Parents' Concern about Valentine's Day Cards

     On a PC (個(gè)人電腦), having to fill out a form and type in a credit card number to buy something
is only mildly annoying. On a cellphone, it could make you want to skip the purchase entirely.
     This is why investors, startups (初創(chuàng)企業(yè)) and major corporations are pouring money into services
that make it easier to use cellphones to buy goods and transfer money. The aim is to turn phones into
virtual credit cards or checkbooks, enabling the kind of clickandbuy commerce and online banking that
people have come to expect on their PCs. But shrinking down (縮小) those services presents serious
challenges.
     The services must work on many different phones and through many cellphone service providers,
which usually control the billing relationships with customers. That adds complexity to the already tricky
business of safely and securely transferring funds among financial institutions and merchants.
     Mobile payment systems have been tried before, with only modest success. Driving a new flurry (一
陣興奮) of deal making, industry analysts and executives say, is the success of the iPhone, BlackBerry
and other sophisticated (尖端的) devices. These phones make complex interactions easier.
     Now the race is on to develop new payment systems-and to get several percentage points in fees
from each transaction. They're seeing that returns could be so huge. Obopay, a startup that lets people
transmit money to one another via text message, raised $ 35 million from Nokia's investment. Also, a
mobile payments startup called Boku announced that it had received $ 13 million in venture capital
financing.
     When people can use their phone numbers to make a purchase, they are 10 times as likely to follow
through on a transaction as when they have to type in credit card and billing information, said David
Marcus, chief executive of a startup called Zong.
     Mobile payment companies also need to get cooperation from merchants, which must add a payment
option to their mobile sites or applications.
     But the potential opportunity to get fees from the growing number of mobile transactions is too__
juicy__to__pass__up,__despite the risks, said an analyst with IDC Financial Insights, a market research
company.

1. From the passage, we should face ________ great difficulties while purchasing through
    cellphones instead of PCs. 

A. one                
B. two
C. three                
D. four

2. According to the passage, using phones to make a purchase is ________.

A. expensive            
B. convenient
C. troublesome          
D. impossible

3. What does the underlined phrase "too juicy to pass up" in the last paragraph probably mean?

A. Too profitable to ignore.                            
B. Too difficult to seize.
C. Too heavy to lift.                                    
D. Too unsafe to handle.

4. What would be the best title for the passage? 

A. The Benefit of Purchasing via Cellphone
B. The Great Risks on Payments via Cellphone
C. How to Deal with Payments via Cellphone
D. Investors Bet on Payments via Cellphone

     Hightech machines have made life easier for millions around the world. However, some people
still prefer lowtech ways of doing things. Here's an example of why this is happening. You can
microwave a frozen hamburger in 60 seconds. However, it won't taste as good as the one you cook
on the stove. And if you're in that much of a hurry, you probably won't take time to toast the bun.  
Hightech cooking saves time, but it doesn't make bettertasting meals.
     Most people get their news from hightech sources like television or the Internet. This has many
advantages. For example, electronic news is more up to date than newspapers or magazines. It's also
more exciting to see live and videotaped news events than photographs. However, newspapers and
magazines have some important advantages. They give more background and details. They also let
you read the parts that are important to you and skip the rest.
     Other hightech timesavers have similar disadvantages. For example, most people use the phone
or email to stay in touch with friends and family members who live in other places. But when you use
the Internet or the phone, you don't always think carefully about what you are saying, and sometimes
you forget the important things you want to communicate. Similarly, when you wordprocess a
homework assignment instead of handwriting it, you can check your spelling electronically and put in
fancy headings.  However, some students are so busy with the computer that they don't pay enough
attention to the actual words they are writing.

1. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A. The writer likes hightech cooking.
B. Lowtech cooking produces bettertasting meals.
C. Hightech news programs always keep you reading what is important to you.
D. Handwritten homework is better than wordprocessed homework.

2. How does the writer feel about hightech tool?  

A. Better late than never.
B. Easy come, easy go.
C. Every coin has two sides.
D. Learn to walk before you run.

3. What is the main subject discussed in the text?

A. Hightech vs lowtech.
B. Advantages vs disadvantages.
C. Newspapers and magazines vs television and the Internet.
D. Wordprocessing vs handwriting.

4. How is the text organized?  

A. Main idea-Argument-Explanation.
B. Opinion-Discussion-Description.
C. Topic-Comparison-Supporting examples.
D. Introduction-Supporting examples-Discussion.

     When people lose legs after accidents or illnesses, emergency care and artificial limbs(假肢) often
allow them to walk again. Newts (蠑螈)in the same situation, on the other hand, can grow limbs back
their own! Scientists have known for a long time that certain animals can regrow limbs, but they haven't
quite figured out how these creatures do it.
     Researchers have now come up with some new ideas. Their work may give people the ability to
regrow lost limbs.  The researchers started with two simple experiments: when you cut a newt's leg at
the ankle, only the foot grows back; when you cut off a leg at the very end, the whole leg grows back.
  In both cases, the regrowth begins with stem cells.  Stem cells can develop into nearly any type of cell
in the body.
     How do a newt's stem cells know when to grow only a foot and when to regrow a whole leg?
     This question relates to another mystery. In newt's, a cutoff leg will grow back only if the nerve
bundle(神經(jīng)束) in it also grows back, but if something prevents the nerve bundle from growing  the
stem cells at the wound won't  regrow a new leg.
     In its study, a British team focused on a protein called nAG.  When the team prevented nerves in
a limb from growing, but added the nAG protein to stem cells in the limb, the limb still regrew. That
protein seems to guide limb regrowth. People have proteins that are similar to nAG.  Further research
into these__materials may someday help human limbs recover by themselves.

1. A newt will regrow its leg if________.

A. its ankle was cut off but the nerve bundle was good
B. its leg was cut off and the nerve bundle stopped growing
C. its leg was cut off and the nerve bundle could grow back
D. its ankle and the nerve bundle could grow back

2. What do the underlined words "these materials"  refer to?

A. Nerve bundles and proteins.  
B. Proteins similar to nAG.
C. Stem cells and proteins.  
D. Stem cells and nerve bundles.

3. The first sentence of the passage________.

A. acts as a leadin
B. shows where researchers got their new ideas
C. states the author's opinion
D. describes the result of researchers' studies

4. What's the purpose of studying the newts?

A. To find out whether newts would regrow after being cutting off.
B. To find out the similarity between human and newts.
C. To find out what is nAG.
D. To find a way of helping human limbs recover by themselves.

     Why should I teach my children history? That sounds like a stupid question to even ask. But, as I hear
different home schooling teachers discuss history, I get the idea that there may be different reasons for
teaching history. Let me briefly explain the three good reasons for studying history and two bad reasons
for studying history.
     The major reason I see for studying history is that we can learn from the past. I am convinced that the
world would be a much better place if more people understood the successes and failures of the past and
the things that made these successes and failures. However, as the unfortunately true statement goes "the
one thing we seem to learn from history is that we don't seem to learn from history." Perhaps at least in
teaching history, to my children I can do a small part in changing this.
     A second major reason for studying history is that it is hard to understand the current political climate
in the absence of an understanding of its historical context. We can- not even understand why we are and
where we are without history, much less (更不必說(shuō)) try to figure out where we are going or how we
should get where we want to be.
     I teach my children history, for one more reason. I purchased a set of historical audio (錄音機(jī)) tapes
for our children. My seven-year-old son listened to them over and over. It was my hope that he would
become inspired by the accomplishments of people like the Wright brothers to accomplish things by
himself. I think that it is good that we celebrate the accomplishments of people like Martin Luther King Jr.
if, in doing so, young people are called on to stand for the principles that he stood for and accomplish what
he accomplished. I also think that by studying people like Adolph Hitler, people can learn to stand against
the things that he stood for.

1. What message can we get from the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2?

A. Many people aren't clever enough to learn well from the past.
B. Many people fail to make good use of history and make the same mistakes.
C. Many people feel it hard to understand history.
D. Many people have no interest in studying history.

2. In Paragraph 3, the author shows that history is useful because _____.

A. it makes the current political situation go smoothly
B. it helps us realize the importance of historical events
C. it helps us understand why things are the way they are
D. it helps people accept the present situation where they live

3. Some historical figures are mentioned in the last paragraph to show _____.

A. people can be inspired to do good, while can also learn to fight against evil
B. people may also learn from bad historical figures
C. more celebrations should be held to honor their achievements
D. today's people can also achieve what they achieved

4. What would be talked about in the following paragraph?

A. How to teach history effectively.
B. Some negative reasons for studying history.
C. How to get more people to study history.
D. Some bad historical figures.

5. The main purpose of this passage is to _____.

A. inspire the parents to teach their children history
B. show the importance of history in politics
C. explain the reasons why children study history
D. introduce the writer's own way of teaching history

     In meditation (冥想), people sit quietly and focus their attention on their breath. As they breathe in and 
out, they attend to their feelings. As thoughts go through their minds, they let them go. Breathe. Let go. 
Breathe. Let go. 
     According to a recent study at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. three months 
of training in this kind of meditation causes a marked change in how the brain allocates (分配) attention. 
It appears that the ability to let go thoughts that come into mind frees the brain to attend to more rapidly 
changing things and events in the outside world. Expert mediators are better than other people at catching 
such fast—changing stimuli (刺激), like facial expressions.
     The study provides evidence for changes in the workings of the brain with mental training. People can
 learn and improve abilities of all sorts with practice, everything from driving to playing the piano. The 
study has shown that meditation is good for the brain. It appears to reduce pressure and promote a
 sense of well-being.
      In an experiment, 17 volunteers with no meditation experience in the experimental group spent three
 months meditating 10 to 12 hours a day. A control group also with no meditation experience meditated
 for 20 minutes a day over the same period. Both groups were then given the tests with two numbers in a
 group of letters. As both group looked for the numbers, their brain activity was recorded.
     Everyone could catch the first number. But the brain recordings showed that the less experienced 
mediators tended to grasp the first number and hang onto it, so they missed the second number. Those 
with more experience gave less attention to the first number, as if letting it go, which led to an increased 
ability to grasp the second number. This shows that attention can change with practice.
    Just ask Daniel Levision, who meditated for three months as part of the study. "I am a much better 
listener," he said. "I do not get lost in my own personal reaction to what people are saying."

1. The underlined word "them" in Paragraph 1 refers to _____ .

A. feelings        
B. minds         
C. people         
D. thoughts

2. Meditations manage their daily tasks better because they  _____ .

A. are given less pressure            
B. allocate their attention better 
C. have more stimuli for life         
D. practice them more frequently

3. In the experiment, volunteers doing meditation for longer hours   _____.

A. were more likely to catch both of the members.     
B. were used to memorizing numbers in groups.   
C. usually ignored the first number observed.   
D. paid more attention to numbers than to letters.

4. The study proves that  _____ .    

A. meditation improves one's health      
B. brain activity can be recorded    
C. human attention can be trained        
D. mediators have a good sense of hearing

     Today about 70 countries use Daylight Saving Time (DST). Daylight Saving was first introduced during
World War I in Australia. During the world wars, DST was used for the late summers beginning January
1917 and 1942, and the full summers beginning September 1942 and 1943.
     In 1967, Tasmania experienced a drought (干旱). The State Government introduced one hour of daylight
saving that summer as a way of saving power and water. Tasmanians liked the idea of daylight saving and the
Tasmanian Government has declared daylight saving each summer since 1968. Persuaded by the Tasmanian
Government, all states except two passed a law in 1971, for a test use of daylight saving. In 1972, New South
Wales, South Australia and Victoria joined Tasmania for regular daylight saving, but Queensland did not do so
until 1989.
     Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia have had irregular plans, often changing their dates due to politics
or festivals (節(jié)日). For example, in 1992, Tasmania extended (延長(zhǎng)) daylight saving by an extra month while
South Australia began extending daylight saving by two weeks for the Adelaide Festival. Special daylight saving
plans were made during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.
     The differences in daylight saving in Australia continue to cause serious problems in transport and many
other social activities. It also reduces the number of hours in the working day that are common to all centers
in the country. In particular, time differences along the east coast cause major differences, especially for the
broadcasters of national radio and television.