How do you know if your home is an easy aim for thefts(偷窃)? Around the holidays, many families don’t consider taking proper measures to prevent their homes from suffering holiday thefts. With just a few simple steps, you can better make sure of the safety of your home during all of the holiday celebrations. Here are a few tips for making it difficult to tell you are away from home.
● Either have a trusted neighbor pick up your mail and newspapers, or tell your mailperson to hold your mail until you return. Nothing says “Hey, we are not home!” like when your postbox is filled with all kinds of mails and you have many different newspapers in your driveway.
● Set several different lights in your house on random timers (随机定时器)。Don’t leave your outdoor lights on all the time. Instead, put your outside lights on timers to be on during the nights.  If an outdoor light remains on for days at a time, it means that nobody is home to turn it off.
● If you have pets that you are not taking with you on vacation, leave them with a friend, rather than having someone come into your house every day to take care of them. When thefts see a neighbor or friend entering your house every day, they will know you are not home.
● Close all your curtains when you leave town. This is effective to deter possible thefts, as no one can see what is in your house. If they don’t know what there is to take, then the risk is even greater for them to break in.
● This article just has suggested a few tips to help you keep your house safe while you are on holiday. Nothing can truly protect your home unless you have it monitored by a professional home security system.
【小题1】. What is the main idea of the passage?

阅读下面短文，从每题所给的四个选项中选出最佳答案.

With his standard Mandarin pronunciation, practiced skills on Chinese expressions and special humour with a Beijing accent, Dashan has become a household name across China.

People have always wondered how the 36-year-old Canadian can be so skillful in the Chinese language even though it is considered by many as one of the most difficult languages in the world．But to Dashan, the great challenge was a piece of cake due to his deep interest, proper method and the excellent environment he created for himself.

“Interest is the best teacher.” That is a universal principle. Even if the 20-year-old Mark Rowswell--Dashan's real name--hadn't fully realized what attracted him to the Chinese department at the University of Toronto in Canada, he was already deeply interested in Chinese culture when he decided to have further study in Beijing.

   Entering the Chinese department of Peking University in 1988, Dashan felt like a duck in water. Study is always a hard job, no matter how much interest you have. Therefore, effective ways are necessary to improvement. “Learn for life and learn in life” is Dashan's belief.

    As a freshman at the University of Toronto, the student did study the textbooks, which especially aimed on foreign Chinese learners. They did help him build a solid foundation.

   However, that's far from enough to grasp the Chinese language. Starting in his junior year, Dashan began to read original Chinese novels, Chinese newspapers and even the selected works of Deng Xiaoping. “Only the material for Chinese native readers could give me a proper sense of the language,” he said.

The language that is the daily means of communication is the principle that Dashan always keeps in his mind．What you have really learned depends on what you can use, not necessarily your mastery of textbooks.

    To learn in daily life requires a favorable language environment, which is also necessary for improvement. Dashan admits it is hard for Chinese English learners to be brought into a good English speaking environment, but insists, “to listen and speak as much as possible does help.”

    To help Chinese English learners develop a favourable environment, Dashan took part in a VCD programme--“Travel with Dashan”-- to teach daily and up-to-date English in real-life situations.

(1)Dashan could learn Chinese very well because of ________.

[　　]

A．his interest

B．practiced skills on Chinese expression

C．his special method

D．special humour with a Beijing accent

(2)The sentence “learn for life and learn in life” here means ________.

[　　]

A．learn things in our daily life, otherwise it will not last long

B．we should study in practice all our lives

C．life is difficult, so we'd better learn more to lead a better life

D．langnage is the necessary part of our daily life, so we must practice it frequently

(3)The main idea of the passage is ________.

[　　]

A．Dashan has become a household name across China

B．how can we master a foreign language in a short time

C．Dashan took part in a VCD programme “Travel with Dashan” to teach

English in real-life situation

D．try to learn English under the direction of Dashan, and you'll succeed one day

(4)The underlined phrase “a piece of cake” here refers to ________.

[　　]

(5)Dashan read the selected works of Deng Xiaoping because ________.

[　　]

A．he admired the former leader of the government

B．he hoped to learn more of the spirits of it

C．he wanted to give him a proper sense of the Chinese language

D．they are very popular in modem times

阅读下面短文，从每题所给的四个选项中选出最佳答案.

With his standard Mandarin pronunciation, practiced skills on Chinese expressions and special humour with a Beijing accent, Dashan has become a household name across China.

People have always wondered how the 36-year-old Canadian can be so skillful in the Chinese language even though it is considered by many as one of the most difficult languages in the world．But to Dashan, the great challenge was a piece of cake due to his deep interest, proper method and the excellent environment he created for himself.

“Interest is the best teacher.” That is a universal principle. Even if the 20-year-old Mark Rowswell--Dashan's real name--hadn't fully realized what attracted him to the Chinese department at the University of Toronto in Canada, he was already deeply interested in Chinese culture when he decided to have further study in Beijing.

   Entering the Chinese department of Peking University in 1988, Dashan felt like a duck in water. Study is always a hard job, no matter how much interest you have. Therefore, effective ways are necessary to improvement. “Learn for life and learn in life” is Dashan's belief.

    As a freshman at the University of Toronto, the student did study the textbooks, which especially aimed on foreign Chinese learners. They did help him build a solid foundation.

   However, that's far from enough to grasp the Chinese language. Starting in his junior year, Dashan began to read original Chinese novels, Chinese newspapers and even the selected works of Deng Xiaoping. “Only the material for Chinese native readers could give me a proper sense of the language,” he said.

The language that is the daily means of communication is the principle that Dashan always keeps in his mind．What you have really learned depends on what you can use, not necessarily your mastery of textbooks.

    To learn in daily life requires a favorable language environment, which is also necessary for improvement. Dashan admits it is hard for Chinese English learners to be brought into a good English speaking environment, but insists, “to listen and speak as much as possible does help.”

    To help Chinese English learners develop a favourable environment, Dashan took part in a VCD programme--“Travel with Dashan”-- to teach daily and up-to-date English in real-life situations.

(1)Dashan could learn Chinese very well because of ________.

[　　]

A．his interest

B．practiced skills on Chinese expression

C．his special method

D．special humour with a Beijing accent

(2)The sentence “learn for life and learn in life” here means ________.

[　　]

A．learn things in our daily life, otherwise it will not last long

B．we should study in practice all our lives

C．life is difficult, so we'd better learn more to lead a better life

D．langnage is the necessary part of our daily life, so we must practice it frequently

(3)The main idea of the passage is ________.

[　　]

A．Dashan has become a household name across China

B．how can we master a foreign language in a short time

C．Dashan took part in a VCD programme “Travel with Dashan” to teach

English in real-life situation

D．try to learn English under the direction of Dashan, and you'll succeed one day

(4)The underlined phrase “a piece of cake” here refers to ________.

[　　]

(5)Dashan read the selected works of Deng Xiaoping because ________.

[　　]

A．he admired the former leader of the government

B．he hoped to learn more of the spirits of it

C．he wanted to give him a proper sense of the Chinese language

D．they are very popular in modem times

    The brain blood flow studies show that reciting the days of the week and months of the year increases blood flow in appreciate areas, whereas problem solving which demands intense concentration of a reasoning type produces much larger changes in the distribution of blood in the brain.

    Between these basic studies of brain function and real life situations there is still a considerable gap, but reasonable deduction seems possible to try and understand what happens to the brain. Life consists of a series of events which may be related to work or to our so-called leisure time. Work may be relatively automatic—as with typing, for instance. It requires intense concentration and repetition during the learning phase to establish a pattern in the brain. Then the typist's fingers automatically move to hit the appropriate keys as she reads the words on the copy.

    However, when she gets tired she makes mistakes much more frequently. To overcome this she has to raise her level of arousal and concentration but beyond a certain point the automaticity is lost and thinking about hitting the keys leads to more mistakes.

    Other jobs involve intense concentration such as holding bottles of wine up to a strong light and turning them upside down to look for particles of dirt falling down. This sounds quite easy but experience teaches that workers can do this for only about thirty minutes before they start making a mistake. This is partly because the number of occasions with dirt in the bottle is low and the arousal level, therefore, falls. Scientists have shown that devices to raise arousal level will increase the accuracy of looking for relatively rare events. A recent study of the effect of loss of sleep in young doctors showed that in tests involving a challenge to their medical judgment when short of sleep they raised their arousal level and became better at tests of grammatical reasoning as well.

　　  1. Problem solving——according to the brain blood flow studies.

　　　　   A. is based on the ability to recite the time

　　　　   B. causes changes in the distribution of blood in the brain

　　　　   C. increases blood flow in some areas of the brain

　　　　   D. demands intense concentration of blood in certain areas

　　  2. The writer suggests that——.

　　　　    A. the difference between the laboratory studies and real-life situations will be reduced

　　　　    B. the gap between the laboratory studies and real-life situations is too large to fill up

　　　　    C. the gap between the laboratory studies and real-life situations can be closed by proper reasoning

　　　　    D. the results obtained in the laboratory exactly reflects the real-life situations

　　  3. Why does say the examining bottles of wine is a hard work?

　　　　    A. Because it requires high level of automaticity.

　　　　    B. Because the bottles must be held upside down.

　　　　    C. Because it is difficult to see the particles of dirt.

　　　　    D. Because most bottles are all fight.

　　  4. A key factor is the ability to reason in——according to the passage.

　　　　    A. the amount of sleep the subject has had

　　　　    B. the extent to which the subject has been taught to reason

　　　　    C. the subject's knowledge of grammar

　　　　    D. the level of arousal of the subject