Several dollars equal nothing for some people, but make a difference for others. Steve has just lost his wife to cancer and everything they had is gone due to the treatment. He now lives in the shelter for the homeless. So we know each other.
Just like other homeless people, he didn’t think he needed anything. But once he mentioned to me he needed eye glasses. His voice hesitated a bit, he looked down, and it appeared like he thought such a request was just a dream. Too much to hope for? It was as if his wish were known by me only.
I submitted an application for him to a program that is supposed to provide a free eye examination and glasses. Three months later, I phoned to ask what was up with the appointment but they told me there was a cash flow problem until late summer.
Steve showed disappointment, thanked me and started to walk away. I said, “Hold on, I will figure out a way to get you an eye examination and glasses.” His face lit up a tiny bit. He had seen some of the things I have done for other people in our shelter and to me it looked like he might have a line of hope.
I took a picture of him and posted his picture and his story in the Twitter. In about 4 days, eight people from around the world donated $25 each and one person donated $40 and I made up the rest to get him an eye exam and glasses.
Steve picked up his glasses on Wednesday: May 11th, 2011. Today Steve has returned to a previous job he had in a nearby car wash. Because he now has glasses he will be able to see what he is doing while cleaning the vehicles. He is starting a second job at a pet center next week!
【小題1】We can learn from the first two paragraphs that ______.

Old-Fashioned Play-For Pay
Kids! Come to have a ball! Or 60,000 of them! There’s a new type of business franchise（特許經銷權）that is appearing in shopping malls and neighborhood across America offering pay-per-use  indoor playgrounds, which feature toys, games, guided fun and a workout that doesn’t break the family bank.
As public playgrounds grow increasingly worn and dirty, the for-profit centers offer clean, safe guided activity as well as a variety of challenging exercises to develop kids’ physical fitness, usually for a fee of around $ 5 an hour. “Playgrounds are dirty, not guided,” says Dick Guggenheimer, owner of the two-month-old Discovery Zone in Yonkers, N. Y., part of Kansas City-based chain, “We are indoors; we are padded; parents can feel their child is safe”.
In order to satisfy the need of two-earner families, the new franchise stays open in the evenings, long after traditional public playgrounds have grown dark and unusable. However, these new playgrounds are not meant to be day-care centers. Parents are expected to go stay and play with their kids rather than drop them off. But several also provide high-tech baby-sitting services. At some of the Discovery Zones, parents can register their children in special guided programs, then leave them and slip away for a couple of hours to enjoy a movie or dinner. If there is a problem, Mom and Dad are called.
The most fun of all, though, is getting to do what parents used to do in the days before two-earner families and two-hour commutes（兩小時上下班往返）, play with their kids. That, at least, is old-fashioned, even at per-hour rates.
【小題1】What is this article mainly talking about?

Isn’t it interesting how we expect others to behave in a certain way so we can feel good about ourselves? And then when people don't behave as we want them to, we feel so disappointed and angry ––– when really, most times, we’re not actually surprised at their actions? We just want those actions to be different ––– actions we’d be more comfortable with.
This week I shared a friend a wonderful home-cooked meal and a bottle of wine. About the time we got to the freshly-baked cookies, the conversation turned to her somewhat crazy sister. I had to smile, just a little, since her sister-stories had had much the same theme for the last two decades.When her frustration was just about to peak over her sister’s latest unbelievably selfish act, I suggested she begin trying “The Law of Patient Acceptance.” “How can I possibly accept her behavior?” my friend asked. “Acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean tolerance,” I shared. “It just means that you accept the person for who they are and you stop knocking yourself out trying to change them.”
Everyone has these difficult people in their lives from time to time. “Think of it this way,” I said. “If you were to go out and buy an ottoman(擱腳凳) today, thinking you were buying a chair, you’d be really angry that the ottoman was such a pathetic(差勁的) chair. But once you realize what you’re dealing with, once you accept the ottoman for what it is and you stop trying to turn it into a chair, your anger largely goes away.”
You have to accept people for who they are. Even when you’ve had high hopes that they might have been able to be someone else. “You can’t change people,” my Mother always said. And she was right. The best we can do is to see people as clearly and objectively as possible. For they rarely change.
【小題1】According to the second paragraph, we can know that ________.

A few days ago we ––– that’s me and the husband ––– took a cab to the station. Chat with the driver fell to the wrong of cyclists, and the misunderstanding of the road rules. So far as the rules of the road go, there seems to be one basic principle: when you are driving a car you hate bikes, when you are riding a bike you hate cars (and I guess walkers hate everyone).
There is an obvious difference of viewpoint built in here. It wasn’t until I started to drive a car (almost 20 years after I had first ridden a bike) that I actually realized that you could not see a cyclist at night without lights. In fact I now want to shout at late night cyclists without lights (like motorists once did at me): “ You’ll get killed, sunshine, I can’t see you.”
The problem is that cyclists do ride headlong into danger. It's not just not having lights. It’s biking on pavements (and so threatening to injure a load of innocent walkers in the process) and biking down one-way streets the wrong way.
I admit that I do bike the wrong way down a one-way street sometimes. My feeble(軟弱無力) defense is that I try always to do it as if I know I was doing wrong. That is slowly, with an apologetic look on the face, and ready to get off at any minute. I can’t bear the guys(一伙人) (usually, but not always it is guys) who do it as if they owned the place, and at high speed.
So cyclists are not entirely innocent. But they are among the disadvantaged groups, because the bottom line is that a car or a lorry can kill a cyclist and not the other way around.
【小題1】 When did the writer realize the danger for late night cyclists without lights?

Does Fame Drive You Crazy?
Although being famous might sound like a dream come true, today’s star, feeling like zoo animals, face pressures that few of us can imagine. They are at the center of much of the world’s attention. Paparazzi (狗仔隊) camp outside their homes, cameras ready. Tabloids (小報) publish thrilling stories about their personal lives. Just imagine not being able to do anything without being photographed or interrupted for a signature.
According to psychologist Christina Villareal, celebrities — famous people — worry constantly about their public appearance. Eventually, they start to lose track of who they really are, seeing themselves the way their fans imagine them, not as the people they were before everyone knew their names. “Over time,” Villareal says, “they feel separated and alone.”
The phenomenon of tracking celebrities has been around for ages. In the 4th century B.C., painters followed Alexander the Great into battle, hoping to picture his victories for his admirers. When Charles Dickens visited America in the 19th century, his sold-out readings attracted thousands of fans, leading him to complain (抱怨) about his lack of privacy. Tabloids of the 1920s and 1930s ran articles about film-stars in much the same way that modern tabloids and websites do.
Being a public figure today, however, is a lot more difficult than it used to be. Superstars cannot move about without worrying about photographers with modern cameras. When they say something silly or do something ridiculous, there is always the Internet to spread the news in minutes and keep their “story” alive forever.
If fame is so troublesome, why aren’t all celebrities running away from it? The answer is there are still ways to deal with it. Some stars stay calm by surrounding themselves with trusted friends and family or by escaping to remote places away from big cities. They focus not on how famous they are but on what they love to do or whatever made them famous in the first place.
Sometimes a few celebrities can get a little justice. Still, even stars who enjoy full justice often complain about how hard their lives are. They are tired of being famous already.
【小題1】It can be learned from the passage that stars today     .

Jobs and work do much more than most of us realize to provide happiness and contentment.We're all used to thinking that work provides the material things of life—the goods and services that make our modern civilization possible.But we are much less conscious of the degree to which work provides the more important psychological well­being that can make the difference between a full and an empty life.
Historically，work has been associated with slavery and sin (罪惡)and punishment.And in our own day we are used to bearing traditional complaints.Against this background，it may well come as a surprise to learn that not only psychologists but other behavioral scientists have come to accept the positive contribution of work to the individual's happiness and sense of personal achievement.Work is more than a necessity for most human beings；it is the focus of their lives，the source of their identity and creativity.
Rather than a punishment of a burden，work is the opportunity to realize one's potential.And the opposite is true，too.For large numbers of people，the absence of work is harmful to their health.Retirement often brings many problems surrounding the “What do I do with myself？”question，even though there may be no financial cares.Large numbers of people regularly get headaches and other illnesses on weekends when they don't have their jobs to go to，and must take care of themselves.It has been observed that unemployment，quite apart from financial pressures，brings enormous psychological troubles and that many individuals'conditions become worse rapidly when jobless.
But why？Why should work be such a significant source of human satisfaction？A good share of the answer rests in the kind of pride that is stimulated by the job，by the activity of accomplishing.
【小題1】Which of the following statements can NOT be learned from the passage?

One summer day my father sent me to buy wire for our farm. At 16，I liked ____ better than driving our truck，____ this time I was not happy. My father had told me I’d have to ask for credit(賒賬) at the store.
Sixteen is a ____age，when a young man wants respect，not charity. It was 1976，and the ugly ___ of racial discrimination was ____ a fact of life. I’d seen my friends ask for credit and then stand，head down，while the store owner ___ whether they were “good for it.” I knew black youths just like me who were ___ like thieves by the store clerk each time they went into a grocery.
My family was ___.We paid our debts. But before harvest，cash was short. Would the store owner ____ us?
At Davis’s store，Buck Davis stood behind the cash desk，talking to a farmer. I nodded ____ I passed him on my way to the hardware shelves. When I brought my ____ to the cash desk，I said ____，“I need to put this on credit.”
The farmer gave me an amused，distrustful ___.But Buck’s face didn’t change. “Sure，” he said ___.“Your daddy is ___ good for it.” He ___ to the other man. “This here is one of James Williams’s sons.”
The farmer nodded in a neighborly __.I was filled with pride. James Williams’s son. Those three words had opened a door to an adult’s respect and trust.
That day I discovered that the good name my parents had ____ brought our whole family the respect of our neighbors. Everyone knew what to ___ from a Williams: a decent person who kept his word and respected himself ____ much to do wrong.

One of my father’s favorite sayings as I was growing up was “Try it!” I couldn’t say I didn’t like    , whatever it might be,     I tried it. Over the years I’ve come to     how much of my success I owe to my    of those words as one of my values. My     job was just one I decided to try for a couple of years until I     what I wanted to do as a career.      I believed I would work for a few years, get married, stay home and raise a family, so I didn’t think the job I took     that much. I couldn’t have been more    . I mastered the skills of that beginning level position and I was given the opportunity to    through the company into different     .I accepted each new opportunity with the     , “Well, I’ll try it; if I don’t like it I can always go back to my     position.” But I was with the same company for the past 28 years, and I’ve     every career change I’ve made. I’ve discovered I     a large number of different talents and skills that I never would have thought were within me had it not been for my being    trying new opportunities. I’ve also discovered that if I      what I am doing and work hard at achieving my     , I will succeed. That’s why I am so     to be a part of CareerFables.com. I think     has come and I am determined to make it a success.

In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what “keeping up with the Joneses” is about. It is the story of someone who tried to look as rich as his neighbours.
The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself. He began earning $ 125 a week at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighbourhood outside New York City. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired(雇傭) a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbours.    It was like a race, but one could never finish this race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They moved back to an apartment in New York City.
Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich lifestyle of their neighbours. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories. He called it “Keeping up with the Joneses” because “Jones” is a very common name in the United States. “Keeping up with the Joneses” came to mean keeping up with rich lifestyle of the people around you. Momand’s series appeared in different newspapers across the country for over 28 years.
People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are “Joneses” in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.
【小題1】Some people want to keep up with the Joneses because they _____.

It may help you to know that there is no such thing as a perfect speech．At some point in every speech, every speaker says something that is not understood exactly as he has planned．Fortunately, the moments are usually not obvious to the listeners. Why ? Because the listeners do not know what the speaker plans to say. They hear only what the speaker does say. If you lose your place for a moment, wrongly change the order of a couple of sentences, or forget to pause at a certain point, no one will be any the wiser．When such moments occur, don’t worry about them. Just continue as if nothing happened．
Even if you do make an obvious mistake during a speech, that don’t really matter. If you have ever listened to Martin Luther King’s famous speech – “ I have a dream”, you may notice that he stumble（結巴）his words twice during the speech．Most likely, however, you don’t remember．Why? Because you were fixing your attention on its message rather than on his way of speech-making. People care a lot about making mistakes in a speech because they regard speech-making as a kind of performance rather than as an act of communication. They feel the listeners are like judges in an ice-skating competition．But, in fact, the listeners are not looking for a perfect performer. They are looking for a well-thought-out speech that expresses the speaker’s ideas clearly and directly．Sometimes a mistake or two can actually increase a speaker’s attractiveness by making him more human．
As you work on your speech, don’t worry about being imperfect．Once you free your mind of this, you will find it much easier to give your speech freely．
【小題1】The underlined part in the first paragraph means that no one will ___________．