Schooling Matters
March 25, 2014 Chengdu Michelle Obama
You see, the truth is that I grew up like many of you. My mom, my dad, my brother and I, we lived in a tiny apartment in Chicago, which is one of the largest cities in America. My father worked at the local water plant…
While we certainly weren’t rich, my parents had big dreams for me and my brother. They had only a high school education themselves, but they were determined to send us both to universities.
So they poured all of their love and all of their hope into us, and they worked hard. They saved every penny. And I know that wasn’t easy for them, especially for my father. You see, my father had serious illness called multiple sclerosis(多发性硬化症). And as he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk, and it took him longer to get dressed in the morning.
But no matter how tired he felt, no matter how much pain he was in, my father hardly ever missed a day of work, because he was determined to give me and my brother a better life. And every day, like so many of you, I felt the weight of my parents’ sacrifices on my shoulders. Every day, I wanted to make them proud.
So, while most American kids attend public schools near their homes, when it was time for me to attend high school, I took an exam and got into a special public high school where I could get a better education. But the school was very far from my home, so I had to get up early every morning and ride a bus for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half if the weather was bad. And every afternoon, I’d ride that same bus back home and then immediately start my homework, often studying late into the night – and sometimes I would wake up at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning to study even more.
And it wasn’t easy. But whenever I got tired or discouraged, I would just think about how hard my parents were working for me. And I would remember something my mother always told me – she said, “A good education is something that no one can take away from you.”The passage can be sorted as a ．
| A．self-introduction | B．short story | C．news report | D．speech draft (草稿) |
Which of the following is TRUE about Michelle Obama and her family?
| A．Her parents were poor but had good educational backgrounds. |
| B．She attended a public high school near her home. |
| C．Her father suffered a serious disease and became disabled. |
| D．She was aware of her parents’ sacrifices and expectations. |
Which of the following words best describes Michelle’s father?
| A．Optimistic. | B．Humorous. | C．Strong-minded | D．Generous |
What does Michelle mainly want to tell readers in this excerpt?
| A．We should work hard and get good educations. |
| B．Our parents always have high expectations for us. |
| C．She is an ordinary person from an ordinary family. |
| D．The road to the US First Lady is not easy. |
LIPITOR
ABOUT LIPITOR
Lipitor is a prescription medicine. Along with diet and exercise, it lowers “bad” cholesterol (胆固醇) in your blood. It can also raise “good” cholesterol.
Lipitor can lower the risk of heart attack in patients with several common risk factors, including family history of early heart disease, high blood pressure, age and smoking .
WHO IS LIPITOR FOR?
Who can take LIPITOR:
·People who cannot lower their cholesterol enough with diet and exercise
·Adults and children over l0
Who should NOT take LIPITOR:
·Women who are pregnant, may be pregnant, or may become pregnant. Lipitor may harm your unborn baby.
·women who are breast-feeding. Lipitor can pass into your breast milk and may harm your baby.
·People with liver (肝脏) problems
POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF LIPITOR
Serious side effects in a small number of people:
·Muscle (肌肉) problems that can lead to kidney (肾脏) problems, including kidney failure
·Liver problems. Your doctor may do blood tests to check your liver before you start Lipitor and while you are taking it.
Call your doctor right away if you have:
·Unexplained muscle pain or weakness, especially if you have a fever or feel very fired
·Swelling of the face, lips, tongue, and/or throat that may cause difficulty in breathing or swallowing
·Stomach pain
Some common side effects of LIPITOR are:
·Muscle pain
·Upset stomach
·Changes in some blood tests
HOW TO TAKE LIPITOR
DO:
·Take Lipitor as prescribed by your doctor.
·Try to eat heart-healthy foods while you take Lipitor.
·Take Lipitor at any time of day, with or without food.
·If you miss a dose (一剂), take it as soon as you remember. But if it has been more than 12 hours since your missed dose, wait. Take the next dose at your regular time.
Don’t:
·Do not change or stop your dose before talking to your doctor.
·Do not start new medicines before talking to your doctor.What is a major function of Lipitor?
| A．To help quit smoking. | B．To control blood pressure. |
| C．To improve unhealthy diet. | D．To lower “bad” cholesterol. |
Taking Lipitor is helpful for _________.
| A．breast-feeding women | B．women who are pregnant |
| C．adults having heart disease | D．teenagers with liver problems |
If it has been over 12 hours since you missed a dose, you should _________. .
| A．change the amount of your next dose |
| B．eat more when taking your next dose |
| C．have a dose as soon as you remember |
| D．take the next dose at your regular time |
Which of the following is a common side effect of taking Lipitor?
| A．Face swelling. | B．Upset stomach. |
| C．Kidney failure. | D．Muscle weakness. |
A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what is on the printed text in the actual situation, so much the better.
A charge (指责) made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises (出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.There are also people who are against fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two -- headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so strong that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men trying to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.
No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ___________ .
| A．repeated without any change | B．treated as a joke |
| C．made some changes by the parent | D．set in the present time |
According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ________ .
| A．in a realistic setting (背景) | B．heard for the first time |
| C．repeated too often | D．told in a different way |
The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.
| A．makes them less fearful |
| B．develops their power of memory |
| C．makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of |
| D．encourages them not to have strange beliefs |
One of the reasons why some people are against fairy tales is that __________.
| A．they are full of imagination |
| B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth |
| C．they are not interesting |
| D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach |
Technology has been an encouragement of historical change. It acted as such a force in England beginning in the eighteenth century, and across the entire Western World in the nineteenth. Rapid advances were made in the use of scientific findings in the manufacture (制造) of goods, which has changed ideas about work. One of the first changes was that other forms of energy have taken the place of human power. Along with this came the increased use of machines to manufacture products in less time. People also developed machines that could produce the same parts for a product: each nail was exactly like every other nail, meaning that each nail could be changed for every other nail. This means that goods could be mass production, although mass production required breaking production down into smaller and smaller tasks.
Once this was done, workers no longer started on the product and labored to complete it. Instead, they might work only one thousandth of it, other workers completing their own parts in certain order. There is nothing strange about this manufacturing work by today's standards. Highly skilled workers were unable to compare with the new production techniques, as mass production allowed goods of high standard to be produced in greater number than could ever be done by hand. But the skilled worker wasn't the only loser, the common workers lost too. Similar changes forced farmer away. The increased mechanization (机械化) of agriculture freed masses of workers from ploughing the land and harvesting its crops. They had no choice but to stream toward the rapidly developing industrial centers. Increasingly, standards were set by machines. Workers no longer owned their own tools, their skill was no longer valued, and pride in their work was no longer possible. Workers fed, looked after and repaired the machines that could work faster than humans at greatly reduced cost.In this passage, which of the following is NOT considered as a change caused by the use of scientific findings in the production of goods?
| A．Other forms of energy have taken the place of human power. |
| B．The increased exploitation (剥削)of workers in the 19th century. |
| C．The increased use of machines to make products in less time. |
| D．The use of machines producing parts of the same standard. |
The underlined word “this ”in the second paragraph refers to the change that ______
| A．each nail could be taken the place of by every other nail |
| B．each nail was exactly like every other nail |
| C．producing tasks became smaller and smaller |
| D．goods could be mass produced |
According to the writer, highly skilled workers ______
| A．completely disappeared with the coming of the factory system |
| B．were dismissed(解散) by the boss |
| C．were unable to produce goods of high standard |
| D．were unable to produce fine goods at that same speed as machines |
According to the passage, what did the farmers have to do with the coming of mechanization of agriculture?
A. Many of them had to leave their farmland for industrial centers.
B. They stuck to their farm work.
C. They refused to use machines.
D They did their best to learn how to use the machines.
With the possible exception of equal rights, perhaps the most heated argument across the United States today is the death penalty (死刑). Many argue that it is an effective deterrent (威慑) to murder（谋杀）, while others think there is no enough proof that the death penalty reduces the number of murders. The argument advanced by those who are against the death penalty is that it is cruel and inhuman punishment, that it is a mark of a bad society and finally that it is of questionable effectiveness as a deterrent (威慑物) to crime (罪行) anyway.
In our opinion, the death penalty is a necessary action. Throughout recorded history there have always been those peculiar persons in every society who made terrible crimes such as murder. But some are more dangerous than others. For example, it is one thing to take the life of another in time of blind anger, but quite another to coldly plan and carry out the murder of one or more people in the style of a butcher. Thus, murder, like all other crimes, is a matter of different degree. While it could be argued with some reason that the criminal in the first instance should be merely kept from society, such should not be the fate of the latter type murderer.
The value of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime may be open to discussion. But the majority of people believe that the death penalty protects them. Their belief is proved by the fact that the death penalty prevents murder. For example, from 1954 to 1963, when the death penalty was carried out from time to time in California, the murder rate remained between three and four murders for each 100, 000 population. Since 1964 the death penalty has been done only once, and the murder rate has risen to10.4 murders for each 100, 000 population. The sharp climb in the state's murder rate, which began when killings stopped, does not happen by chance. It certainly shows that the death penalty does stop many murderers. If the law about death penalty is vetoed (否决), some people will be murdered----some whose lives may have been saved if the death penalty were in effect. This is really a life or death matter. The lives of thousands of people must be protected.The main purpose of this passage is to _________.
| A．speak for the majority |
| B．argue against the value of the death penalty |
| C．speak ill of the government |
| D．argue for the value of the death penalty |
Which of the following is among the heated arguments across the USA besides death penalty?
| A．Air pollution. | B．The war against Iraq. |
| C．Equal rights. | D．Election of president. |
The numbers in the last paragraph show that ______.
| A．if they stick to death penalty, the number of murders will be reduced |
| B．death penalty almost stopped from 1954 to 1963 |
| C．the population of California has risen |
| D．death penalty is of little value |
It can be inferred that the writer thinks that ______.
| A．the death penalty is the most important problem in the United States today |
| B．the second type of murderers (in Paragraph 2) should be sentenced to death |
| C．the veto of the law about death penalty is of little importance |
| D．the value of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime is not to be discussed |
There is an English saying: “Laughter is the best medicine.” Until recently, few people took the saying seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to look into (调查) laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found that laughter really can improve people’s health. Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their heart, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart beating and breathing; it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial (有益的).
Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group that tolerated (忍受) the pain for the longest time was the groups which listened to a funny program. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce a kind of chemicals in the brain which reduce both stress (紧张；压力) and pain.
As a result of these discoveries, some doctors in the United States now hold laughter clinics (诊所), in which they help to improve their patients’ condition by encouraging them to laugh. They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.The underlined phrase “took the saying seriously” in the first paragraph probably means “________”.
| A．treat the saying as important | B．treat the saying as interesting |
| C．treat the saying as dangerous | D．treat the saying as funny |
The main idea of the passage is _______.
| A．laughter and physical exercises have similar effects on the human body |
| B．smile can produce the same effects as laughter |
| C．pain can be reduced by laughter |
| D．laughter is the best medicine |
Doctors hold laughter clinics _______.
| A．to give better condition to their patients |
| B．in order to improve patients’ health |
| C．to make patients smile |
| D．to prove smile and laughter have the same effect |
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