A long time ago, in 1893, in the United States, some people were talking about fruits and vegetables. They asked, “What are fruits and what are vegetables? How are fruits different from vegetables and vegetables different from fruits?” They talked for a long time and then they decided, “We eat vegetables as part of a meal, but we eat fruits before or after a meal.”
In real life, people do not think the dictionaries give the right meaning of a word. For example, the dictionaries say that tomatoes are fruits. But few people know that. Most people think they are vegetables. They call them vegetables and eat them as vegetables. To most people, fruits mean sweet things like apples, pears, oranges and watermelons.
What are vegetables then? We call many plants and grasses vegetables. Some people think some fruits are vegetables, such as apples, pears and bananas. But to most people, vegetables mean things like potatoes, onions and carrots.
【小题1】A long time ago, some people in the United States _______.

For many in the United States, Arab-Americans are an invisible part of the population. Though Arab-Americans as a community have made great contributions to American society in fields from literature to politics to medicine, many Americans know very little about Americans of Arab backgrounds.
Arab history in the United States goes back to the late 1800’s when large numbers of Arab immigrants first began making their journey to a land known simply as “Amreeka”.
Historians generally describe Arab immigration to America in two waves. The first wave took place between 1860 and 1924.The first wave consisted of Lebanese and Syrian, and some Egyptian immigrants. These new immigrants, who were mostly Christian, came to America in search of better opportunities. Even the doomed Titanic, which set sail for America in 1912,had close to a hundred Arab passengers aboard. The majority of Arab-Americans today are descendents of the first wave of immigrants; they are the third or more generation Americans.
The second wave of immigrants followed after World War Ⅱ,caused by political unrest in the Middle East. This second wave of immigrants consists of mainly Arab Muslims（穆斯林）and continues to this day.
Arab-Americans make up 3 million of the population in the United States, according to demographers. And quite different from popular belief, 64 percent of them are American-born. Eighty-two percent of Arab-Americans are US citizens.
Arab-Americans are beyond the national average in both education and income. Education is important among Arab-Americans; 82 percent have high school diplomas, 36 percent have bachelor’s degrees or higher, and 15 percent have graduate degrees. The-median（中位数的）average income among Arab-Americans is $39,580, which is higher than the US average.
【小题1】The first wave of immigrants took place because__________.