Long long ago, there was an old merchant who had three sons. “To which one shall I leave my fortune?” he wondered. “It must be to the cleverest son. But which one is the cleverest?”
He called his three sons to him. “Here is some money,” he told them, “you must each take one coin to buy something that will fill this room. Anyone who can do this shall have my fortune.”
“It is a big room,” said the eldest son.
“One coin will not buy very much,” said the second son.
But the youngest son said nothing. He stood and thought, and then he smiled, “Come, brothers,” he said, “let us go to the market.”
The eldest son bought straw with his coin. But one coin bought only a bit of straw. Even when he had spread it as much as he could, the straw covered only a corner of the room.
The second son bought sand with his coin. But one coin bought only a bit of sand. Even when he had spread it as much as he could, the sand covered only half of the floor.
“What did you buy?” the eldest son angrily asked the youngest son. “You don't have any straw.”
“Yes, what did you buy?” the second son asked angrily. “You don't have any sand.”
“I bought this,” said the youngest son.
“A candle！” cried his brothers. “What good is a candle?”
“Watch”, said the youngest son.
He lit the candle, and all at once the room was filled from wall to wall, from ceiling to floor. It was filled with light!
“Although you are the youngest, you are indeed the cleverest of my sons,” the old merchant said.
And that is how, the old merchant left his fortune to his youngest son, the one who could fill a room with light. Who would get father's fortune?
| A．The oldest son. | B．The richest son. |
| C．The cleverest son. | D．The silliest son. |
The merchant left his fortune to the son
| A．who would fill the room by using something which is worthy of one coin |
| B．who would take care of him when he became old |
| C．who wanted to get his fortune |
| D．who got married first |
How do you think of the youngest son?
| A．He is very clever. | B．He is very lazy. |
| C．He is very mean. | D．He is very diligent. |
The youngest son used _____ to fill the room.
| A．straw | B．candle | C．sand | D．water |
Would you eat a ready meal from the fridge rather than cook? Have you been doing internet shop
ping rather than going to the stores? What can’t you be bothered to do?
A study into how lazy British people are has found more than half of adults are so idle（闲散的）they’d catch the lift rather than climb two flights of stairs.
Just over 2,000 people were quizzed by independent researchers at Nuffield Health, Britain’s largest health charity. The results were shocking. About one in six people surveyed said if their remote control (遥控器)was broken, they would continue watching the same channel rather than get up. More than one third of those questioned said they would not run to catch a bus. Worryingly, of the 654 questioned people with children, 64% said they were often too tired to play with them. This led the report to conclude that it’s no wonder that one in six children in the UK are classifted as obese（肥胖）before they start school.
Dr Sarah Dauncey, medical director of Nuffield Health, said: “People need to get fitter, not just for their own sake, but f
or the sake of their families， too. 
If we don’t start to take control of this problem, a whole generation will become too unfit to perform even the simplest tasks.”
And Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, was shamed as the laziest city in the UK, with 75% surveyed admitting they do not get enough exercise, followed closely by Birmingham and Southampton, both with 67%.
The results pose serious challenges for the National Health Service, where obesity-related illnesses such as heart disease and cancer have been on a steady increase for the past 40 years and are costing billions o
f pounds every year. According to the researchers at Nuffield Health, about ________ people who were surveyed would not run to catch a bus.
| A．10 | B．150 | C．330 | D．660 |
One in six children in the UK are classified as obese before they start school because ________.
| A．they stay too long a time with their pets | B．they spend too much time watching TV |
| C．their parents don’t play with them much | D．they suffer from obesity-related illnesses |
________ is the second laziest city in the UK.
| A．Scotland | B．Glasgow | C．Birmingham | D．Nuffield |
What’s the writer trying to tell us?
| A．Parents have much to do with their children’s obesity-related illnesses. |
| B．British people are getting lazier, which can cause serious social problems. |
| C．The National Health Service has to face a lot of serious challenges every year. |
| D．A study into how lazy British people are has been carried out at Nuffield Health. |
Modern inventions have speeded up people’s loves amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boats (吹嘘) of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left behind on another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientist; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.
However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we 
might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestor faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence. The new products become more and more time-saving because .
| A．our love of speed seems never-ending | B．time is limited. |
| C．the prices are increasingly high. | D．the manufactures boast a lot. |
What does “the days” in Paragraph 3 refer to ?
| A．Imaginary life | B．Simple life in the past. |
| C．Times of inventions | D．Time for constant activity. |
What is the author’s attitude towards the modern technology?
| A．Critical | B．Objective. | C．Optimistic. | D．Negative. |
What does the passage mainly discuss?
| A．The present and past times. | B．Machinery and human beings. |
| C．Imaginations and inventions. | D．Modern technology and its influence. |
As societies develop, their members start to see things not so much according to what they need, but according to what they want. When people have enough money, these wants become demands.
Now, it' s important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to develop effective marketing strategies (策略). There are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets ( 超市), for example, is to interview(采访) customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked what they prefer to buy and then the results of the research can be studied. This provides information on which to base future marketing strategies. It' s also quite normal for top managers from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of how customers act.
Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For example, some fast food restaurants give away tickets in magazines or on the street that permit customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to attract customers and which age-groups to attract.
Another strategy used at some well-known parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their work, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or something like that. This provides them with a perfect chance to examine the scene and watch the customers without being noticed.The text is designed for _______
| A．managers | B．salesmen | C．researchers | D．customers |
Which of the following can help managers get useful information?
| A．Visiting customers themselves. | B．Giving customers free food on the street. |
| C．Visiting parks as ordinary customers. | D．Asking customers questions at supermarkets. |
What does the word "this" underlined in the last sentence refer to?
| A．Visiting Disneyland. | B．Wearing attractive clothes. |
| C．Acting Mickey Mouse. | D．Dressing up and walking around. |
The main idea of the text is _________.
| A．how to do market research | B．how to develop marketing strategies |
| C．how to find out customers' social needs | D．how to encourage customers to spend more money |
How to Be a Winner
Sir Steven Redgrave
Winner of 5 Olympic Gold Medals
“In 1997 I was found to have developed diabetes (糖尿病) . Believing my career (职业生涯)was over, I felt extremely low. Then one of the specialists said there was no reason why I should stop training and competing. That was it----the encouragement I needed. I could still be a winner if I believed in myself. I am not saying that it isn’t difficult sometimes. But I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t finished yet. Nothing is to stand in my way.”
Karen 
Pickering
Swimming World Champion
“I swim 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. I manage that sort of workload by putting it on top of my diary. This is the key to success—you can’t follow a career in any field without being well-organized. List what you believe you can achieve. “Trust yourself, write down your goals for the day, however small they are, and you’ll be a step closer to achieving them.”
Kirsten Best
Poet ＆ Writer
“When things are getting hard, a voice inside my head tells me that I can’t achieve something. Then, there are other distractions, such as family or hobbies. The key is to concentrate. When I feel tense, it helps a lot to repeat words such as ‘calm’, ‘peace’ or ‘focus’, either out loud or silently in my mind. It makes me feel more in control and increas
es my confidence. This is a habit that can become second nature quite easily and is a powerful psychological (心理的) tool.” What does Sir Steven Redgrave mainly talk about?
| A．Difficulties influenced his career. | B．Specialists offered him medical advice. |
| C．Training helped him defeat his disease. | D．He overcame the shadow of illness to win. |
What does Karen Pickering put on top of her diary?
| A．Her training schedule. | B．Her daily happenings. |
| C．Her achievements. | D．Her sports career. |
What does the underlined word “distractions” probably refer to?
| A．Ways that help one to focus. | B．Words that help one to feel less tense. |
| C．Activities that turn one’s attention away. | D．Habits that make it hard for one to relax. |
According to the passage, what do the three people have in common?
| A．Courage. | B．Devotion. | C．Hard work. | D．Self-confidence. |
When you are little, the whole world feels like a big playground. I was living in Conyers, Georgia the summer it all happened. I was a second grader, but my best friend Stephanie was only in the first grade. Both of our parents were at work and most of the time they let us go our own way.
It was a hot afternoon and we decided to have an adventure in Stephanie’s basement. As I opened the basement door, before us lay the biggest room, full of amazing things like guns, dolls, and old clothes. I ran downstairs, and spotted red steel can. It was paint. I looked beyond it and there lay even more paint in bright colors like purple, orange, blue and green.
“Stephanie, I just found us a project for the day. Get some paintbrushes. We are fixing to paint.” She screamed with excitement as I told her of my secret plans and immediately we got to work. We gathered all the brushes we could find and moved all of our materials to my yard. There on the road in front of my house, we painted bit stripes (条纹) of colors across the pavement (人行道). Stripe by stripe, our colors turned into a beautiful rainbow. It was fantastic!
The sun was starting to sink. I saw a car in the distance and jumped up as I recognized the car. It was my mother. I couldn’t wait to show her my 
masterpiece. The car pulled slowly into the driveway and from the look on my mother’s face, I could tell that I was in deep trouble.
My mother shut the car door and walked towards me. Her eyes glaring, she shouted, “What in the world were you thinking? I understood when you made castles out of leaves, and climbed the neighbors’ trees, but this! Come inside right now!” I stood there glaring hack at her for a minute, angry because she had insulted (侮辱) my art.
“Now go clean it up!” Mother and I began cleaning the road. Tears ran down my cheeks as I saw my beautiful rainbow turn into black cement.
Though years have now passed, I still wonder where my rainbow has gone. I wonder if, maybe when I get older, I can find my rainbow and never have to brush it away. I guess we all need sort of rainbow to brighten our lives from time to time and to keep our hopes and dreams colorful. What did the writer want to do when his mother came home?
| A．To introduce Stephanie to her. | B．To prevent her from seeing his painting. |
| C．To put the materials back in the yard. | D．To show his artwork to her. |
In his mother’s eyes, the writer_______.
| A．was a born artist | B．always caused trouble |
| C．was a problem solver | D．worked very hard |
The underlined word “rainbow” in the last paragraph refers to ______.
| A．the rainbow in the sky | B．the stripes on the pavement |
| C．something imaginative and fun | D．important lessons learned in childhood |
It can be learned from the passage that parents should ________.
| A．encourage children to paint | B．value friendship among children |
| C．discover the hidden talent in children | D．protect rather than destroy children’s dreams |
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