If you ask some people, “How did you learn English so well?” you may get a surprising answer: “In my sleep!”
These are people who have taken part in one of the recent experiments (实验) to test “the learn while you sleep” method (方法), which is now being tried in several countries, and with several subjects. English is among them.
Scientists say that this sleep study method greatly speeds language learning. They say that the ordinary person can learn two or three times as much during sleep as in the same period during the day—and this does not affect (影响) his rest in any way. However, sleep teaching will only put into your head what you have studied already while you are awake.
In one experiment, ten lessons were broadcast over the radio for two weeks. Each lesson lasted twelve hours — from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. The first three hours of English grammar and vocabulary (词汇) were given with the students awake. At 11 p.m. a lullaby (催眠曲) was broadcast to send the student to sleep and for the next three hours the radio in a soft and low voice broadcast the lesson again into his sleeping ears. At 2 a.m. a sharp noise was sent over the radio to wake the sleeping student up for a few minutes to go over the lesson. The soft music sent him back to rest again while the radio went on. At 5 o’clock his sleep ended and he had to go through the lesson again for three hours before breakfast.
【小题1】In the experiment, lessons were given____ .

A．in the night time	B．after lullabies were broadcast
C．while the student was awake	D．all through the twelve hours

【小题2】Before each lesson finishes, the student has to____ .

A．get up and take breakfast

B．be woken up by a loud voice

C．listen to the lesson again in sleep

D．review (复习) the lesson by himself

【小题3】The sleep study method is being tried in many countries to teach____ .

A．the English language	B．grammar and vocabulary
C．a number of subjects	D．foreign languages

Can you remember the day when you spoke your first word? If you can, you are unusual. Try to imagine what first few months of your life were like. I am sure you just spent most of your time eating, sleeping and crying. As you grow older, you were awake more of the time. It took your parents more time to play with you and talk to you. You watched and listened curiously. You began to know that people made certain sounds to go with certain things.
Then you began to try making the sounds you heard. And step by step you were able to make the right sound for one thing.On that day you came to understand the secret of language. The secret is that a certain sound means a certain thing. One sound might be as good as another. But it is no good as a word unless everybody agrees on its meaning. Only when a group of people use the same set of sounds of things, can they understand each other. Then, and only then do these people have a LANGUAGE.
After you found the secret of language, you learned words. Some of the words meant things, such as BOOKS, CHAIRS and SHOES. Some words meant doing things, such as GO and SWIM. And other words describe things, such as GOOD and DIRTY. Soon you learned to put words together to express one’s idea, such as “I want to go out and play with my friends.” This is language. By means of language people can communicate. So we say languages are means of communication.
【小题1】When you were a little baby, you_________.

A．made sounds to let people know that you wanted to eat

B．spent most of your time playing with your parents

C．could not hear any sound around you

D．spent most of your time eating, playing and crying

【小题2】The secret of language is that___________.

A．one sound might be as good as another

B．people can understand each other

C．a certain sound is for a certain thing

D．there is a special sound for each person

【小题3】You could learn words__________.

A．before you knew what the language was

B．after you knew what the language was

C．if you knew the secret of the language

D．when you were a baby

【小题4】The aim in using language is___________.

A．to get everying one wants from others

B．to say what one wants to know

C．to share ideas, opinions, news, etc with one another

D．to make oneself understood by others

For many parents, raising a teenager is like fighting a long war, but years go by without any clear winner. Like a border conflict（冲突）between neighboring countries, the parent-teen war is about boundaries: Where is the line between what I control and what you do?
Both sides want peace, but neither feels it has any power to stop the conflict. In part，this is because neither is willing to admit any responsibility for starting it. From the parents’ point of view, the only cause of their fight is their adolescents’ （青少年）complete unreasonableness. And of course, the teens see it in exactly the same way, except oppositely. Both feel trapped.
In this article, I’ll describe three no-win situations that commonly arise between teens and parents and then suggest some ways out of the trap. The first no-win situation is quarrel on unimportant things. Examples include the color of the teen’s hair, the cleanness of the bedroom, the preferred style of clothing, the child’s failure to eat a good breakfast before school, or his tendency to sleep until noon on the weekends. Second, blaming. The goal of a blaming battle is to make the other admit that his bad attitude is the reason why everything goes wrong. Third, needing to be right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is—politics, the laws of physics, or the proper way to break an egg—the point of these arguments is to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong，for both wish to be considered an authority—someone who actually knows something—and therefore to command respect. Unfortunately, as long as parents and teens continue to assume that they know more than the other, they’ll continue to fight these battles forever and never make any real progress.
【小题1】Why does the author compare the parent teen war to a border conflict?

A．Both can continue for generations.	B．Both are about where to draw the line.
C．Neither has any clear winner.	D．Neither can be put to an end.

【小题2】What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．The teens blame their parents for starting the conflict.

B．The teens agree with their parents on the cause of the conflict.

C．The teens accuse their parents of misleading them.

D．The teens tend to have a full understanding of their parents.

【小题3】Parents and teens want to be right because they want to__________.  

A．give orders to the other	B．know more than the other
C．gain respect from the other	D．get the other to behave properly

【小题4】What will the author most probably discuss in the paragraph that follows?

A．Causes for the parent-teen conflicts	B．Examples of the parent-teen war
C．Solutions for the parent-teen problems	D．Future of the parent-teen relationship

A friend is better than fortune. A friend is worse than poison in some cases. 
The two sentences above have opposite meanings and seem to be unreasonable, but they can be explained as follows: the first refers to all good friends who drive us towards good while the second all bad ones who lead us into bad ways.
　　My ideal friend is of course a good friend whose goodness is shown below — he has no bad habits, such as smoking and drinking. He lives in frugality (节俭). He studies hard so as not to waste his golden time. At home he honors his parents and loves his brothers; at school he respects his teachers and shares the feelings of his classmates. He treats those truly who are true to him. In a word, he has all the good characteristics that I don’t have. I can follow him as a model. With his help I can be free from all difficulties.
Indeed, if I have such a person as my friend, I shall never fear difficulty and I shall never know the existence of the word “failure”.
【小题1】This passage tells us ____.

A．how to make friends with others

B．how to help friends

C．what kind of person the writer’s friend is

D．what kind of person we should make friends with

【小题2】According to the writer, an ideal friend refers to _______.

A．a friend without bad habits

B．a famous man

C．a perfect man

D．a respectable man

【小题3】From the passage we can learn that ________.

A．the writer and his ideal friend have a lot to learn from each other

B．the writer has a lot to learn from his ideal friend

C．the writer’s ideal friend has a lot to learn from him

D．the writer has only a little to learn from his ideal friend

【小题4】From the second paragraph, we can infer the writer is sure that _______.

A．friendship means a great deal to him

B．nothing can be done without friends

C．he who does not smoke or drink must be a good friend

D．good friends should always help each other

Parents have widely different views on the problem of pocket money. Four new fathers were asked this question and this is how they answered. 
Ashish Khanna: Although many argue that pocket money helps develop children’s sense of value, I don’t agree. I wouldn’t give my child any pocket money. First of all, I never got pocket money and I seem to have a good value for money. If my child ever needed something and I felt it was a reasonable (合理的) request, I would buy it for him.
Sharad Sanghi: No, I wouldn’t give my child pocket money because I don’t want to create the perception (观念) of “her” money and “my” money. Besides, if I refuse to buy her something that I think is bad for her, she may buy it with her pocket money on the sly. In this way, I would lose control over my child’s requests. I feel it also encourages children to care more about money than anything else. I don’t want my child to start judging other children by the amount of money or pocket money they have.
Rakesh Shah: Yes, I would give my child pocket money because I feel that children should learn to spend money properly. I will give him a fixed amount every month and if he spends the money before the month is over, he will learn a lesson and not spend money so freely. He will learn what his limitations (限制) are and feel the difficulty when he has to pay for something that is over his own pocket.
Rajiv Patel: Yes, I would give my child pocket money because it is important that he learns to manage money. But I would not give it to him on a weekly or monthly basis. He would have to earn it. If he helped me finish some of my jobs or helped his mother with housework, I would reward him. This helps him realize that “money does not grow on trees” and it requires hard work to earn money.
【小题1】Ashish Khanna may agree that _____.

A．he was given too much pocket money when young

B．he can take much control of his child by money

C．he will buy anything he thinks his child really needs

D．pocket money helps children develop a good value for money

【小题2】The underlined phrase “on the sly” in Paragraph 3 is the closest in meaning to “_____”.

A．for free	B．at a lower price
C．happily	D．secretly

【小题3】Who would give his child pocket money every month?

A．Ashish Khanna.	B．Sharad Sanghi.
C．Rakesh Shah.	D．Rajiv Patel.

【小题4】What do Rakesh Shah and Rajiv Patel have in common?

A．They want their children to learn to manage money from an early age.

B．They ask their children to get pocket money by working.

C．They teach their children the difficulty of making money.

D．They allow their children to spend money freely.

Derrius Quarles, 19, had an unhappy childhood. But the Chicago teen didn’t give up. He tried his best and won $1 million in college scholarships (奖学金)! Now Derrius is a successful college student with a bright future.
When Derrius was 4, his father was killed. His mother couldn’t take care of him because of taking drugs. Derrius and his 9-year-old brother sometimes had to steal food to eat. Derrius felt different from other kids. In seventh grade, Derrius went to live in a foster home (寄养家庭). His foster parents weren’t nice to him. They told him that he’d never be anything in life.
Derrius didn’t do his best in school. The summer after ninth grade, that changed. Derrius had signed up for a biology class. He didn’t go to class the first day. On the second day, he showed up late. His teacher took him outside. She told him he was smart, but that he was wasting his potential (潜力). The talk inspired him and he planned to prove that he could be anything if he worked hard enough.
Adults at a summer program helped Derrius find out about scholarships he could earn to pay for college. In his senior year, Derrius filled out lots of applications. He told his friends, “You’re not going to see me for a long time.” Derrius’s hard work paid off. He won more than $1 million in scholarships! He has a lot to be proud of. But he’s most proud of helping others. Derrius gives speeches to teens, telling them how to find scholarships. In high school, Derrius got help buying a computer. He wanted to help others who needed them. Last year, he gave two laptops to high schoolstudents. There’s a lot of work in his future. Derrius doesn’t mind — hard work has got him where he is today. He knows it can take him anywhere.
【小题1】 From Paragraphs 2 and 3, we can learn that Derrius _____.

A．always studied hard in school

B．lived in the same foster home with his brother

C．hated his parents very much

D．was encouraged a lot by his biology teacher

【小题2】The underlined word “it” in the last paragraph refers to _____.

A．great success	B．a scholarship
C．hard work	D．a computer

【小题3】What kind of person do you think Derrius is?

A．Lazy but kind-hearted.

B．Selfish and naughty.

C．Confident but troublesome（带来麻烦的）.

D．Determined and generous（慷慨的）.

【小题4】What does the author want to tell us?

A．The way to win a scholarship to a college.

B．The importance of family background.

C．Never forget people who have helped you.

D．Hard work pays off sooner or later.

Laptop computers are popular all over the world. People use them on trains and airplanes, in airports and hotels. These laptops connect people to their workplace. In the United States today, laptops also connect students to their classrooms.
Westlake College in Virginia will start a laptop computer program that allow students to do schoolwork anywhere they want. Within five years, each of the 1500 students at the college will receive a laptop. The laptops are part of a ＄10 million computer program at Westlake, a  110-year-old college. The students with laptops will also have access to the Internet. In addition, they will be able to use e-mail to “speak” with their teachers, their classmates, and their families. However, the most important part of the laptop program is that students will be able to use computers without going to computer labs. They can work with it at home, in a fast-food restaurant or under the trees-anywhere at all!
Because of the many changes in computer technology, laptop use in higher education, such as colleges and universities, is workable. As laptops become more powerful, they become more similar to desktop computers. In addition, the portable computers can connect students to not only the Internet, but also libraries and other resources. State higher-education officials are studying how laptops can help students. State officials are also testing laptop programs at other universities, too.
At Westlake College, more than 60 percent of the staff use computers. The laptops will allow all teachers to use computers in their lessons. As one Westlake teacher said, “Here we are in the middle of Virginia and we’re giving students a window on the world. They can see everything and do everything.”
【小题1】The main purpose of the laptop program is to give each student a laptop to ________.

A．use for their schoolwork	B．access the Internet
C．work at home	D．connect them to libraries

【小题2】Why is the word “speak” in the second paragraph in quotation marks(引号)?

A．They don’t really talk.	B．They use the computer language.
C．Laptops have speakers.	D．None of the above reasons is correct.

【小题3】Which of the following is true about Westlake College?

A．All teachers use computers.	B．1500 students have laptops.
C．It is an old college in America.	D．Students there can do everything.

【小题4】‘A window on the world ’ in the last paragraph means that students can           .

A．attend lectures on information technology

B．travel around the world

C．get information from around the world

D．have free laptops

【小题5】What can we infer from the passage?

A．The program is successful.	B．The program is not workable.
C．The program is too expensive.	D．We don’t know the result yet

When I was in the third grade, I was picked to be the princess(公主）in the school play. For weeks my mother had helped me practice my lines. But once on stage, every word disappeared from my head. Then my teacher told me she had written a narrator's（解说者的）part for the play, and asked me to change roles. Though I didn't tell my mother what had happened that day, she sensed my unhappiness and asked if I wanted to take a walk in the yard. 
It was a lovely spring day. We could see dandelions(蒲公英）popping through the grass in bunches, as if a painter had touched our landscape with bits of gold. I watched my mother carelessly bend down by one of the bunches. "I think I am going to dig up all these weeds, "she said. "From now on, we'll have only roses in this garden. "
"But I like dandelions, "I protested. "All flowers are beautiful-even dandelions!"
My mother looked at me seriously. "Yes, every flower gives pleasure in its own way, doesn't it?" she asked thoughtfully. I nodded. "And that is true of people, too, " she added. 
When I realized that she had guessed my pain, I started to cry and told her the truth. 
　　“But you will be a beautiful narrator, ”she said, reminding me of how much I loved to read stories aloud to her. 
Over the next few weeks, with her continuous encouragement, I learned to take pride in the role. The big day finally came. A few minutes before the play, my teacher came over to me. “Your mother asked me to give this to you, ”she said, handing me a dandelion. After the play, I took home the flower, laughing that I was perhaps the only person who would keep such a weed. 
【小题1】The girl did not play the role of the princess mainly because . 

A．she felt nervous on the stage.

B．she lost her interest in that role.

C．she preferred the role of the narrator

D．she had difficulty memorizing her words

【小题2】Why did the mother suggest a walk in the garden?

A．To remove the dandelions

B．To enjoy the garden scene

C．to have a talk with her daughter.

D．to help her daughter with the play.

【小题3】What is the main idea of the story?
A. Everybody can find his or her own way to success. 
B. Everybody has his or her own value in the world. 
C. Everybody should learn to play different roles
D Everybody has some unforgettable memory. 

The evidence for harmony（和谐）may not be clear in some families. But it seems that four in five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly- held image(印象)of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.
An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. ”We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families, ”said one member of the research team. ”They’re expected to be rebellious(叛逆的) and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds; they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation(商议) and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don’t want to rock the boat. ”
So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat the children as friends. ”My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me, ”says 17-years-old Daniel Lazall. ”I always tell them when I’m going out clubbing. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it. ”Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. ”Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that. ”
Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenagers’ rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, ”Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in out social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over. ”
【小题1】What is the popular images of teenagers today?

A．They worry about school	B．They dislike living with their parents
C．They are locked in to avoid trouble	D．They quarrel a lot with other family members

【小题2】The study shows that teenagers don’t want to ___

A． share family responsibility	B． cause trouble in their families
C． go boating with their family	D． make family decisions

【小题3】Compared with parents of 30 years age, today’s parents___.

A． go to clubs more often with their children

B． are much stricter with their children

C． care less about their children’s life

D． give their children more freedom

【小题4】What is the passage mainly about?

A． Negotiation in family	B． Education in family
C． Harmony in family	D． Teenage trouble in family

【小题5】Which of the following NOT TRUE?
A.Parents are stricter than their own parents.B Parents get along well with their kids C.Parents will discuss something with their kids  D. Harmony in family is important.

For many years there's been a debate about rewarding our children. Does it work? Is it effective?
Some people think we should establish a standard with our kids and give them something for meeting this standard as a reward. Punishment is given out in much the same way, but it’s used when certain standards of performance, behavior, etc. have not been met. Kids will often become more dutiful when threatened with punishment, and work harder when promised a valuable reward. The problem is what happens when you aren’t around.
To develop responsible, self-disciplined kids, parents need to promote certain ideas. One of these ideas is that everyone pitches in and helps in your family. Another idea is that there can be enjoyment in doing any task if we choose to make it so. When a task is for a worthy cause (our family can enjoy the house more because I helped clean it), this message can have a big impact.
This is how we help our kids develop a sense of responsibility. When our children develop this responsibility, they’ll be more disciplined, and they’ll control their emotions better. When we give rewards to our kids, we reduce the sense of responsibility. We also create children who may temporarily perform to a certain standard, but who aren’t likely to continue the performance without the carrot hanging in front of them. 
“Rewards and punishment can change behavior for a while, but they cannot change the person who engages in the behavior,” said Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards. “Good values have to be grown from the inside out.” Parents can help give their children a sense of shared responsibility and discipline which can last a life time. The real rewards that your children receive will be their readiness for the complex and demanding world that waits for them—a world that rewards those who have learned the secrets of discipline responsibility. So keep those shiny rewarding to yourself, and let your kids find their own rewards.
【小题1】According to the passage, when children are threatened with punishment, ______.

A．they may lose interest in their work

B．the results will be worse than usual

C．they may change to another person

D．they may appear to be well-behaved

【小题2】The underlined part “the carrot” in Paragraph 4 probably refers to _____.

A．apologies

B．aims

C．rewards

D．doubts

【小题3】According to the passage, Alfie Kohn would agree that parents should ______.

A．never pay attention to the way their children do things

B．show their children how to behave by example

C．help their children establish good values

D．never punish their children

【小题4】What’s the best title for the passage?

A．Should parents reward their children?

B．Do you often reward your children?

C．When should parents reward their children?

D．What can parents reward their children with?