Don’t _______ your breath trying to persuade them; they’ll never listen.

A. use                   B. waste  C. spend                 D. put

Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.

As we all know, Chinese handwriting has infinite power to express differences of character and cultivation. But we have to admit that traditional handwriting has become a __50__ art, now that kids start using keyboards as soon as they begin school. However, writing things out by hand may be a __51__ way we train our brains, several studies suggest. Many psychologists think that handwriting can make you __52__!

Writing by hand is different from __53__ because it requires using strokes to create a letter, __54__ just selecting the whole letter by touching a key, says Virginia Berninger, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. These __55__ movements activate large regions of the brain __56__ in thinking, memory, and language. Handwriting helps children learn letters and shapes, improves their composition of ideas, and may also __57__ fine-motor skills development.

A study by Berninger found that in grades two, four, and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more __58__ when writing essays by hand than when typing on a keyboard.

A separate study by researchers at Indiana University found that children who practiced printing by hand had more active__59__than kids who __60__ looked at letters.

It’s not just children who __61__ from writing things out by hand, says a study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Adults learning a new language remember its __62__ better if they write them out by hand than if they produce them with a keyboard.

As more people __63__ their days on the computer, says neuroscientist P. Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University, “__64__ people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise.”

1.A. charming       B. dying            C. mixing       D. challenging

2.A. common         B. critical         C. classic      D. standard

3.A. smarter        B. calmer           C. deeper       D. quicker

4.A. clicking       B. talking      C. typing       D. moving

5.A. in addition to B. rather than      C. except for       D. other than

6.A. body          B. eye          C. letter          D. finger

7.A. ended      B. led          C. included         D. involved

8.A. boost          B. weaken       C. decline      D. prospect

9.A. meanings       B. ideas            C. information D. emotions

10.A. mood      B. behavior     C. fingers      D. brains

11.A. simply        B. rarely          C. hardly       D. specially

12.A. benefit           B. keep        C. result          D. learn

13.A. rules             B. sounds           C. characters       D. sentences

14.A. get          B. waste            C. spend            D. rely

15.A. retreating       B. returning        C. repeating        D. retraining

—Were you busy last weekend?

 —Very. Rather than ____ time playing cards as usual, I devoted every effort to ____ an advertisement.

 A. wasting; making        B. waste; make

 C. to waste; make        D. a waste of; making

Disposing(处理) of waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal problem becomes increasingly difficult.

During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dumpsite. Residents or trash haulers(垃圾托运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically(定期的) some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.

Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.

Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential(住宅区的)neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.

Awareness of pollution dangers has resulted in more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.

Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 percent of a city's reusable waste.

The most suitable title for this passage would be ______.

   A. Places for Disposing Waste            B. Waste Pollution Dangers

   C. Ways of Getting Rid of Waste          D. Waste Disposal Problem

During the 18th century, people disposed their waste in many ways EXCEPT for ______.

   A. burying it                          B. recycling it

   C. burning it                          D. throwing it into rivers

What can be inferred from the fourth paragraph?

   A. Farm areas accept waste from the city in modern society.

   B. There is cheap land to bury waste in modem society.

   C. It is difficult to find space to bury waste in modem society.

   D. Ways to deal with waste in modem society stay the same.

The main purpose of writing this article is to ________.

   A. draw people's attention to waste management

   B. warn people of the pollution dangers we are facing

  C. call on people to take part in recycling programs

   D. tell people a better way to get rid of the waste

Don’t _______ your breath trying to persuade them; they’ll never listen.

A. use     B. waste   C. spend      D. put