In the Harry Potter films, Hermione Granger is better than her male friends and is considered the brightest pupil in her grade. Isn’t it often the same in schools of our real world?
“It’s surprising but true that most of the top students have been girls since primary school. Girls are class leaders, club presidents and the top ones in exams,” said Wang Feixuan, 15, who studies at a Chengdu school. By any measure, Wang herself is a high-achiever. She is a top student, a team leader in her school’s sports club and a winner in national English and IT competitions.
But why do so many girls outperform their male peers?
In Sun Yunxiao’s latest book Save Our Boys, he points out that the education system is “more suited to girls, who are good at memorizing and like to sit quietly and read.” Yet he also says that girls have to do so much more when they compete with males for honors, top universities and later good jobs. They can feel great pressure nearly every day.
This seems to be the same in most countries in the world. Young women in the United States are also reported to feel the same pressure to be perfect.
“Let’s look at what we ask of our teenage girls,” says Professor Stephen Hinshaw in an interview. He thinks that it’s no longer enough that a girl does well in school and is a caring friend. On the TV, on the Internet and everywhere, girls see images of impossible perfection.
Today’s young women must be good learners, good athletes, and fill their after-school lives with other activities. But they are also asked to have the styles and looks of popular stars. “Be pretty, sweet and nice. Be athletic, competitive and get straight. Be impossibly perfect.” Stephen Hinshaw sums up.The passage suggests that .
| A．our society asks far too much of teenage girls |
| B．teenage girls shouldn’t be so perfect at school |
| C．boys are always lazy ones rather than girls |
| D．American girls have less pressure than Chinese girls |
According to the passage, it is true that .
| A．boys are less smart than girls throughout school life |
| B．boys usually don’t have so much pressure as girls do |
| C．girls are all fond of the Chinese education system |
| D．girls are better at school because boys don’t work hard |
The underlined word “outperform” means .
| A．hate | B．misunderstand | C．like | D．defeat |
What is the best title for the passage?
| A．Impossibly Perfect Is Possible． | B．Why Are Girls So Perfect? |
| C．Perfect? Pressure Every Day! | D．Perfect: Boys or Girls? |
Eyeglasses correct many different types of sight problems, including nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism (散光). Trying to understand those different numbers on an eyeglass prescription (验光单) requires understanding the measurements optometrists (验光师) use when fitting you for corrective lenses (镜片). 
Diopters (屈光度)
The numbers on your prescription are given in diopters, whose short form is "D". It is used to measure the focusing power, or amount of correction.
O.S. and O.D.
Optometrists use the Latin short form O.S. and O.D. to distinguish between your eyes. O.S. refers to your left eye, while O.D. refers to the right eye.
Generally, your prescription will show a number for O.S. and O.D. (given in diopters). The farther this number is on a number line from zero, the more correction your eyeglasses should provide. A plus sign means the eye is farsighted, while a minus sign means the eye is nearsighted.
Spherical Value
This plus or minus number for each eye is called the spherical value, or the degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness you have. Its short form is "S."
Cylinder
If you have an astigmatism, the optometrist will also measure its degree. The higher the number (given in diopters) marked as the cylinder of astigmatism, (its short form is "C"), the more astigmatism there is in that eye.
Axis
An astigmatism is also measured in terms of its axis, which is a number between 0 and 180. The axis of the astigmatism does not relate to the amount of cylinder, just the location of the irregularity of the astigmatism on that particular eye.According to the first paragraph, various sight problems ______.
| A．should be understood by the patients |
| B．can be avoided by wearing corrective lenses |
| C．should be tested by different optometrists |
| D．can be corrected by wearing eyeglasses |
If you need a pair of corrective lenses, the optometrist will first value the numbers of ______.
| A．Diopters | B．Spherical Value | C．Cylinder | D．Axis |
From the prescription above we can learn that Li Hua ______.
| A．is farsighted | B．is nearsighted |
| C．has no astigmatism | D．is normal in sight |
The text is probably taken from ______.
| A．an education report | B．a school bulletin |
| C．a local newspaper | D．an encyclopedia (百科全书) |
Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for family, health, and life in general. However, Black Friday has turned it into a business.
Traditionally, the true value of Thanksgiving lies at home not the shopping centers. However, Black Friday has nowadays allowed society to ignore this as individuals long for something that they do not need or even truly want. Shopping on Black Friday becomes a sign of a shift into a culture that values material wealth over spending time with loved ones. People are willing to force their way through the crowds in their desperate search for marked-down sweaters and necklaces.
In recent years, Thanksgiving has become a pre-Black Friday holiday for many families. They are devoted to mapping out shopping routes and making organized schedules for which stores to hit first. By drawing individuals out to shopping centers with "matchless savings", businesses encourage this behavior of ignoring Thanksgiving. Many families take their home-cooked meals while camping out at the door of shopping centers. With each new year, Thanksgiving is becoming victim to over-commercialization—switching from a meaningful time of thanks and family to a day dedicated to products and profit.
Black Friday has shown that with current common standards, people cannot even set aside a single day to appreciate what they already have without immediately buying more. Families have lost sight of what is truly important in life, and have found reasons in debating between a low cost HD television and an appreciation for what they already have. Remember, Thanksgiving should be a day in which people are grateful for all that they have.The underlined word "this" in paragraph 2 probably refers to ______.
| A．the sign of a shift | B．the material wealth |
| C．the shopping crowd | D．the true value of Thanksgiving |
In recent years, what will many families do when thanksgiving comes?
| A．Make full preparations for the Black Friday shopping. |
| B．Visit some newly-opened shopping centers in advance. |
| C．Find it difficult to choose a store for their first visit. |
| D．Go camping at the gate of shopping center for a good deal. |
In the last paragraph, the author mainly intends to tell us that we should ______.
| A．set aside a single day to buy more |
| B．try to spend less to get low cost products |
| C．stay with our families as long as we can |
| D．appreciate what we've possessed with our families |
What's the author’s attitude towards the present ways people celebrate Thanksgiving?
| A．Annoyed. | B．Worried. | C．Supportive. | D．Unconcerned. |
Snapshots, the new fashion for an artistic portrait (肖像) photo: Take it underwater. Zhang Xiaomei, a 20 something Shanghai native who works in the media industry, tried it out twice.
"It was a completely different experience," says Zhang of her first such experience last May. "You get the feeling that you're cut off from the rest of the world. But also it s romantic and like a fairy tale."
She then successfully convinced her husband to be to have their wedding photos taken underwater a couple of months after her first try. "Can you imagine a 1.87-meter-tall man trying out something like a fishtail under the water?" Zhang says, laughing.
A commercial underwater photo portrait is perfect for post 80 and post 90 generations who adore taking snapshots, but are looking for new ways to be artistic, says Ai Cheng, owner and photographer of No.55 Underwater Photography in Shanghai.
Ai opened a studio in Shanghai's suburb of Songjiang two years ago, building a 5-meter- deep, fan-shaped pool equipped with heating facilities to start up the business. A 30-minute training on how to smile under the water so that you won't drink too much water and how to open your eyes underwater is offered in his studio for those who don't know how to swim.
Ai says most of his customers are female—half of them coming for an artistic portrait photo and the rest for wedding pictures. "Some of them drag their boyfriends or husband-to-be, who are unwilling to go down to the water, to shoot as well," he says.What would be the best title for the text?
| A．The Best Smiles May Be All Wet. |
| B．The Sweetest Smile in the World. |
| C．Smiling, a Universal Language. |
| D．A New Challenge, a New Trend. |
What does Zhang Xiaomei think of underwater snapshot?
| A．Funny. | B．Dangerous. | C．Fantastic. | D．Strange. |
Who are most likely to take photos underwater?
| A．Young people eager to be special. |
| B．Senior people to recall their old days. |
| C．Couples to celebrate their anniversary. |
| D．Artists to create new styles. |
It can be inferred from the last two paragraphs that ______.
| A．young people are in for this fashion |
| B．fewer men would show interest in this fashion |
| C．men are more romantic than women |
| D．women would like to take more adventures |
Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been made illegal. But one popular form continues to exist, that is alphabetism (字母排序法). This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames(姓氏)begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
It has long been known that the cars of a taxi firm called AAAA have a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers look through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbot has in life over Zoe Zysman. English names are fairly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a quite large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K.
Thus the American presidents and vice-presidents have surnames starting with B and C separately and 26 of those before George Bush took office (including his father ) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chretien and Koizumi). The world's three top central bankers ( Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami)are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. The same case are the world's five richest men ( Gates, Buffet and so on) .
Can this merely happen by chance? At the start of the first year in primary school, teachers seat pupils, alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So shortsighted and small-sized Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is seldom asked the improving questions by those teachers. At that time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.
The unfairness continues. At university graduation parties, the ABCs proudly get their awards first. However, by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are a little tired. Lists of job interviews and conference speakers and attendees all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their readers lose interest as they plough through them.What does the author intend to show with AAAA cars and Zodiac cars?
| A．An example of competition of two kinds of cars. |
| B．Some advantages of AAAA cars in the taxi firm. |
| C．An example of unfairness caused by alphabetism. |
| D．Some disadvantages of Zodiac cars in the taxi firm. |
What can we infer from the first three paragraphs?
| A．The alphabet is to blame for the failure of Zoe Zysman. |
| B．In both East and West, names are important to success. |
| C．Customers often pay a lot of attention to companies' names. |
| D．The discrimination in alphabetism can be found in many areas. |
The fourth paragraph suggests that .
| A．alphabetically disadvantaged often escape from class |
| B．teachers should pay equal attention to all their students |
| C．questions are often put to the more intelligent students |
| D．students should be seated according to their eyesight |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．VIPs in the western world gain a great deal from alphabetism. |
| B．People with surnames beginning with N to Z are often misunderstood. |
| C．Putting things alphabetically may lead to unintentional unfairness. |
| D．The movement to get rid of alphabetism still has a long way to go. |
A report brought back by most visitors to the US is how friendly, polite, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fair, this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians, and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small-minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet American’s friendliness and helpfulness is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment.
For a long period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of distraction, and brought news of the outside world．
The tough realities of the border also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone traveling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest settler agent. It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or only a charitable impulse (冲动） on the part of the settlers. It reflected the hardship of daily life: if you didn't take in the stranger and take care of him, there was no one else who would. And someday, remember, you might be in the same situation．
Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the exhausted traveler. Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US, especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist routes. "I was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner, amazing." Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be understood neither as superficial（表面的）nor as artificial（虚伪的）, but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition.
As is true of any developed society, in America a complex set of cultural signals and customs is the basis of all social inter-relationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fail to "translate" cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example when an American uses the word "friend", the cultural meanings of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor's language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to tell polite customs from individual interest. Yet, being friendly is a virtue （美德） that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.In the eyes of visitors from the outside world, ________．
| A．rude taxi drivers are hardly seen in the US |
| B．small-minded officials deserve a serious comment |
| C．Canadians are not so friendly as their neighbors |
| D．most Americans are ready to offer help |
We can know from the last paragraph that _______．
| A．culture has an influence over social inter-relationship |
| B．polite customs and individual interest are inter-related |
| C．various virtues shows themselves only among friends |
| D．social inter-relationships equal the complex set of cultural customs |
Families who lived far from one another used to entertain strangers _______．
| A．to improve their hard life | B．in view of their long-distance travel |
| C．to add some taste to their own daily life | D．out of a charitable impulse |
The tradition of hospitality to strangers _______．
| A．tends to be superficial and artificial |
| B．is generally well kept up in the United States |
| C．is always understood properly |
| D．has something to do with the busy tourist route |
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