Most children don’t enjoy doing housework. They like playing computer games instead of cleaning the rooms. But in Australia, Jim and Robert’s mother, Mrs. Black, has good and right ways to get their children to do housework. Here is an example.
“Mom,have you worked out next week’s housework? Let Jim and me choose the cards. I can’t wait. It’s fun.” When Robert shouted out, his mother had already put all the cards on their big table. On the cards, there are some words like these, “sweep the floor, clean your bedroom, help mom cook, wash vegetables, make beds, feed the fish, cut the wood, clean the bathroom” and many others, Jim and Robert chose two cards for each day from Monday to Friday. Then they would hang them on the week day task board. Jim likes to clean the bathroom, so he picked up the card“clean the bathroom”. Robert loves to make the bed so he picked up his favorite card. Jim again picked up“wash vegetables” and Robert chose“feed the fish”. Soon the two boys were happy to take away all the cards.
To help the children do housework, their mother thought hard and came up with this idea. Of course, the parents did the housework on weekends and left Jim and Robert two days free.
【小题1】From the passage we know that most children like          .

A．doing homework	B．playing computer games
C．playing cards	D．doing housework

【小题2】 Jim and Robert chose _________ cards for each day from Monday to Friday.

A．two	B．four
C．eight	D．ten

【小题3】Jim likes to ________.

A．clean the bathroom	B．make the bed
C．feed the fish	D．sweep the floor

【小题4】The underlined phrase“came up with”probably means“         ”.

A．looked at	B．gave up
C．thought out	D．gave away

【小题5】Who did the housework on weekends?

A．Jim	B．Robert
C．The parents	D．The whole family

as usual   B.difficult    C.well     D.properly     E.out of

I had to make a big decision. Five years ago, I was working for a small engineering company. However, things were not going very well for the company and it was losing money. One day, the boss told us that the company was     【小题1】      business. We were all unemployed.
That lunch time we went to the pub 【小题2】   . We were all very sad.Well,of course, we talked about the problem. Then the landlord of the pub heard the news. He said, "Why don't you buy the company?" At first we all laughed,but then we started to discuss it     【小题3】     . We knew the problems. The company had lost a lot of customers because it hadn't developed new products, but finally we decided to go for it.
So we bought the company. The first few years were very   【小题4】   . But we worked hard and we had a bit of luck. We began to improve three years ago. Since then we have done pretty well. Last year we took on(招聘)four new people. And so far we haste taken on another ten.

A. they think they should have done                B. you have done nothing C. people try and tell you they are not so bad         D. someone just said to me E. it’s a time to remember the things

 
Birthdays are strange things. The more you have, the more you try and pretend they don’t matter, and the more     【小题1】  . I’m not really sure why they think so. It’s true that you are getting older, but as     【小题2】  , “Who isn’t getting older every day?” The problem may be that a birthday reminds people of all the things     
【小题3】  , but have not. I certainly understand that feeling, though I think    【小题4】    that I most want to do — a kind of personal re-ordering (重新排序) of the to-do list. What makes you depressed(郁闷) on your birthday is that you realize your re-ordered to-do list is exactly the same as it was last year. That makes you feel     【小题5】  , and not been anywhere. I have not had that experience this year. I look back at where I was last year and find things have changed since then.