B

Sun Liping, 6 , lives in a small village in Yunnan. Her biggest wish is to have running water in her home. All 35 families in Sun’s village have a serious problem--- they don’t have enough water. Every day, the villagers have to walk 20 minutes to get water.

Last year, the worst drought since the 1950s hit Yunnan, making more than 2 million people short of drinking water. This year, the drought is even worse.

Not only Yunnan, but many other provinces in China are short of water as well, such as Gansu and Qinghai.

According to a report on February 17, each Chinese person has about 28% of the world’s average（平均的） person’s amount of available(可用的) water. Two thirds of China’s cities are short of water and nearly 300 million people in rural areas don’t have safe water for drinking.

Every drop of water is important. Waste a drop of water a day and you lose a bucket(桶) a year. How can we use water in a smart way? Here are some tips for you to save water in your daily life:

1. Put plastic bottles of water in your toilet to cut down the water waste when you flush (沖洗) your toilet.

2. Don’t keep the water running while you’re brushing your teeth or washing your face and hands.

3. Use low-flow(低流量) shower heads .

4. Use a bucket to collect shower water while you wait for it to warm up.

5. Make your shower time shorter.

6. Set up a rain bucket to collect rainwater for watering plants or flowers.

1. What is the problem in Sun’s village?

2. What does the underlined word drought mean in the second paragraph?

3. According to the report, __________________________________.

A. China has just 28 percent of the world’s available water.

Each Chinese person can use more water than the world’s average person.

There is not enough water in two thirds of China’s cities.

D. There are about 300 million people in China’s cities who don’t have enough water.

4.Which of the following would lead to a waste of water?

The Chinese are very generous when it comes to educating their children. Some parents send their children to the best schools or even abroad to England, the US or Australia, regardless of how much this costs. Many also want their children to take extra-curriculum activities (課外活動) where they either learn a musical instrument or ballet, or other classes that will give them a better start in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is, the better it is, so parents often spend a large amount of money on education. Even poor parents manage to buy a computer for their son or daughter.

In fact, most parents fail to see that the best education they can give their children is usually very cheap. Parents can see that their children’s skills are different; they will usually be skilled in some areas while poor in others. However, they fail to realize that today's children are lack (缺乏) of self-respect and self-confidence.

The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take exams and how to study effectively. They are not teaching them the most important skills they need. They do not teach them to be confident, happy and clever.

Parents can help achieve this by teaching their children practical skills like cooking, sewing and other housework.

Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It is an enjoyable but difficult experience. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and finish his job step by step. The result, a well--cooked dinner, will give a child a lot of satisfaction and confidence. All these will help the children step to success in the future.

An old machine such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your child as a toy may make him curious and arouse(喚醒) his interest. If he will spend hours looking at it, and try to mend it; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. Such activities do more than teaching a child to read a book. They teach them to think and to use their minds. This is much more important than learning by reading a book.

1. Is the writer satisfied with the Chinese parents’ ideas of educating their children?

2. Put the underlined sentence “the more expensive an education is, the better it is” into Chinese.

3.What are the children lack of today?

4. How is the experience of cooking according to the fifth paragraph?

5.What does the underlined word “They” refer to(所指的是) in the last paragraph?

--- ______________?
--- I don’t have enough money to buy that nice skirt.

Zach Linsky, 11, watches TV for 3 and a half hours a day and plays video games every other day. Zach, a sixth grader in Washington, D. C., is an American. But unlike many kids, he doesn’t have a TV, VCR, or computer in his bedroom. He only has a boom box (手提錄音機(jī)).
The survey of 3,155 kids, aged 2 to 18, shows that they spend 5 hours and 29 minutes on average(平均的) a day using some types of media outside of school, including 2 hours and 46 minutes watching TV, 21 minutes on the computer, 20 minutes playing video games, and 8 minutes on the Internet. The good news: The total includes 44 minutes spent reading.
The survey also shows that those aged 2 to 7 spend 3 hours and 9 minutes watching TV every day and shows that 32 percent in that age group have TV sets in their rooms. Among those aged 8 to 18, 21 percent have computers in their rooms, 65 percent have TV sets, and 61 percent say their parents don’t stop them from watching TV. Nearly 1 in 4 say they watch more than 5 hours a day.
“Kids are living much more lonely lives than ever before,” says Kay S. Hytnowitz. “They just disappear into their rooms and spend all of their time with these media.”
【小題1】At what age do children in America spend about five and a half hours on the media a day?