I bought a jasmine（茉莉花）plant for my office. When I bought it, I was told it would bloom（开花）and the sweet smell would fill my office. I had the plant for two months, and every day I looked at it, but there weren’t any flowers or pleasant smell. I was not happy, so I gave the plant to my friend Linda.
One day, another friend Mary called and invited me to her office. When I walked in, her jasmine flowers surprised me. I reached out to touch the flowers. Mary cut some and gave them to me. I couldn’t help smelling them. Surrounded by the sweet smell of only a handful of these flowers, I suddenly understood something.
Mary bought her plant the same time I did. It took a year for her jasmine to bloom. I was so impatient for mine to bloom; regretfully, I gave it away.
In a way my life is like the jasmine plant. I need to be patient and let things happen.
Last Sunday Linda told me that she was going abroad the next week. Before she left, she returned the plant to me. This time I am going to wait. I have learned that when we want something in our life, we have to be patient. I am slowly learning to have that patience to wait for my jasmine to bloom.
【小题1】 Before she gave the jasmine away, the writer had it for.

Now I know that we black people are much more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes (糖尿病) than white people. And they often lead to heart attacks and other untreated diseases. For example, black people are three to four times more likely than white people to have high blood pressure and twice as likely as the white population to die of a stroke (中风).
New research has found out the surprisingly high levels of salt in many of black people’s favorite meals. I stopped putting extra salt in my food at the table long ago and I try to cut down on the salt. I use in cooking. The suggested daily level of salt for adults is 6 grams. It is easy to see that if you try not to eat too many processed (加工过的) foods and use salt in your cooking within the limit, you won’t reach more than the daily level.
The research showed how much salt there is in some foods that we buy from restaurants and takeaways. An average salad with rice and peas has 6.2 grams of salt. This is more salt than you are supposed to eat for the whole day.
A researcher talked about the importance of home cooking rather than take-outs. At home, he pointed out, not only can you hold control of the salt bottle, but also you can create tasty food which is low on salt. The researcher later provided curry goat and rice and peas. They were low on salt, but completely delicious.
I do not suppose Jamaicans are going to stop buying takeaways soon. But if you suffer from high blood pressure, it is probably better not to buy them often.
【小题1】The underlined word “they” in Paragraph 1 refers to _______.

—What has ________ done since 1989?.
—It has built many schools for poor children .

Look at the centre circles of Diagram (图)A and Diagram B. Which of the centre circles looks larger? In fact, they are exactly the same size.
Then look at the picture on the right. What do you see? A vase? Or two faces？Does the picture change quickly from one to the other again and again? Maybe or maybe not, but you can never see them at the same time.

“What’s happening? Is something wrong with my eyes?” You may wonder at what you see. Don’t worry. Here is how it goes:
When we look at things, our eyes send messages to our brains and then our brains interpret（解读）the information. However, sometimes our brains interpret the received information in a wrong way. It seems that our eyes are playing a joke on us. This often happens and we call it “visual illusion(视觉错误)”.
Movie makers often make use of visual illusions. They make the objects around actors much smaller or bigger than usual. This makes us believe that the actors are much larger or smaller than they usually are. The movies Jurassic Parkand Honey I shrunk the kids just make use of visual illusions.
【小题1】Why does the centre circle in Diagram A look smaller than that in Diagram B?

Where there is a will, there is a way.

Nick Vujicic was born, without arms and legs, in 1982 in Melbourne, Australia. Nick faced all kinds of problems and troubles in his life. But he never gives up. Now Nick has his own speaking company; Attitude Is Attitude. And he has traveled around the world to give speeches. He shares with his audience his audience the importance of vision and dreaming big. He says attitude (态度) is the most powerful tool in the life and failure (失败) is just a learning experience.

Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, is only 28. In only 8 years, Zuck turned his small website into a world famous network. Zuck once wrote to his workmates, "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services"

Jeremy Lin's excellent performances in basketball courts attracted the eyes of both Americans and Chinese this year. Then what has led this young man to such a success? The following may help us understand it. 1. Believe in yourself; 2. Catch the chance when it comes up; 3. Find the system that works for your style; 4. People will love you for being yourself; 5. Stay humble (谦逊).