If you go to Brisbane, Australia, you can easily get a small book called Discover Brisbane free. The book tells you almost everything in Brisbane: the restaurants, the shops, the cinemas, the streets, the buses, the trains, the banks, etc. Here is something about banks on page 49:
ANZ Banking Group
Cnr. Greek && Queen Sts ……………… 228 3228
Bank of New Zealand
410 Queen Street ……………………… 221 0411
Bank of Queensland
229 Elizabeth Street …………………… 229 3122
Commonwealth Banking Group
240 Queen Street ……………………… 237 3111
National Australia Bank Ltd
225 Adelaide Street …………………… 221 6422
Westpac Banking Corp
260 Queen Street ……………………… 227 2666
Banking hours are Mon.-Thu. 9:30 am to 4 pm. Fri. 9:30 am to 5 pm. All banks close Sat. Sun. && Public Holidays.
Australia has a decimal currency(十进币制) with 100 cents to the dollar.
Notes available are: $100, $50, $20, $10, $5
Gold coins are: $2 && $1
Silver coins are: 50, 20, 10&&5 cent
Copper coins are: 2 && 1 cent You can find ANZ Banking Group on ______.
| A．Queen Street | B．Elizabeth Street |
| C．the corner of Greek Street and Queen Street | |
| D．the corner of Queen Street and Elizabeth Street |
______ seems to be the most important street in Brisbane.
| A．Greek Street | B．Elizabeth Street |
| C．Queen Street | D．Adelaide Street |
On Saturdays, you can go to ______ to put your money in or take your money out.
| A．ANZ Banking Group | B．Bank of Queensland |
| C．National Australia Bank Ltd | D．no bank |
In Australia, the banks have their longest service hours on ______.
| A．public holidays | B．Sundays | C．Saturdays | D．Fridays |
Winners Club
You choose to be a winner!
The Winners Club is a bank account specially designed for teenagers. It has been made to help you better manage your money. The Winners Club is a transaction account(交易账户)where you receive a keycard so you can get to your money 24/7—that’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!
It’s a club with impressive features for teenagers：
● No account keeping fees!
You’re no millionaire so we don’t expect you to pay large fees. In fact, there are no account keeping or transaction fees!
● Excellent interest rates!
You want your money to grow. The Winners Club has a good rate of interest which gets even better if you make at least two deposits without taking them out in a month.
● Convenient
Teenagers are busy — we get that. You may never need to come to a bank at all. With the Winners Club you can choose to use handy tellers and to bank from home using the phone and the Internet...You can have money directly deposited into your Winners Club account. This could be your pocket money or your pay from your parttime job!
● Mega magazine included
Along with your regular report, you will receive a FREE magazine full of good ideas to make even more of your money. There are also fantastic offers and competitions only for Winners Club members.
The Winners Club is a great choice for teenagers. And it is so easy to join. Simply fill in an application form. You will have to get permission from your parent or guardian (so we can organize that cool keycard)but it is easy. We can’t wait to hear from you. It’s the best way to choose to be a winner!The Winners Club is a bank account intended for________.
| A．parents | B．teenagers | C．winners | D．adults |
Which of the following is TRUE about the Winners Club?
| A．Special gifts are ready for parents. |
| B．The bank opens only on work days. |
| C．Services are convenient for its members. |
| D．Fees are necessary for the account keeping. |
The Winners Club provides magazines which________.
| A．encourage spending |
| B．are free to all teenagers |
| C．are full of adventure stories |
| D．help to make more of your money |
If you want to be a member of the Club，you must________.
| A．be an Internet user |
| B．be permitted by your parent |
| C．have a big sum of money |
| D．be in your twenties |
What is the purpose of this text?
| A．To set up a club. |
| B．To provide parttime jobs. |
| C．To organize keycards. |
| D．To introduce a new banking service. |
Outside our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a seemingly ancient woman waited beside the door with her hand outstretched. Every day I put my hand in hers as our eyes met. She never failed to return my smile, my grasp, and my greeting.
On the last day of our visit, I found myself alone on a busy corner across the street from our hotel. Bicycles and motorbikes rushed in front of me. As I hesitated on the sidewalk, I felt a hand on my elbow and looked down to see the smile of my small beggar friend looking up at me. She nodded her head toward the street, indicating that she would take me across. Together, we moved slowly into the chaos.
Then we moved on toward the sidewalk, where she pulled my face down to hers, kissed me on both cheeks, and then left, still smiling and waving back to me.
Traveling in poorer nations, I have witnessed a variety of ways to deal with beggars. The most common response of tourists faced with the poverty-stricken is to ignore them and focus their eyes elsewhere. I have seen people push away an outstretched hand in angry annoyance. A few may drop a few coins into the hand in a hurry, hoping that other ragged pursuers won’t immediately appear on the scene.
For many reasons, giving money is not the best response to an outstretched hand. Many world travelers have discovered that the greatest gift they can give is their time and respect. Everyone needs recognition, to be seen as worthy of being known, to feel appreciated and loved. And I believe that everyone is worthy and worth knowing.The woman beggars helped the author go across the busy street because __________.
| A．the author gave her material assistance |
| B．the author treated her kindly and friendly |
| C．the author would help her as a reward |
| D．the author was a foreigner |
From the story, what position of the beggars in the author’s mind might be?
| A．equal | B．superior | C．lower | D．valuable |
In common cases, people will do the following things to the beggars EXCEPT for ________.
| A．pretending to see nothing |
| B．handing out some money |
| C．refusing them angrily |
| D．greeting them normally |
According to the author, the most important things beggars really need are _________.
| A．mercy and pity | B．money and food |
| C．smile and greeting | D．attention and respect |
The purpose of the passage is to _________.
| A．show how poor the beggars are in Vietnam |
| B．offer some advice on dealing with begging |
| C．express what we should offer the beggars |
| D．describe an experience with a beggar |
Whether we’re 2 years old or 62, our reasons for lying are mostly the same: to get out of trouble, for personal gain and to make ourselves look better in the eyes of others. But a growing body of research is raising questions about how a child’s lie is different from an adult’s lie, and how the way we deceive changes as we grow.
“Parents and teachers who catch their children lying should not be alarmed. Their children are not going to turn out to be abnormal liars,” says Dr. Lee, a professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Institute of Child Study. He has spent the last 15 years studying how lying changes as kids get older, why some people lie more than others as well as which factors can reduce lying. The fact that children tell lies is a sign that they have reached a new developmental stage. Dr. Lee conducted a series of studies in which they bring children into a lab with hidden cameras. Children and young adults aged 2 to 17 are likely to lie while being told not to look at a toy, which is put behind the child’s back. Whether or not the child takes a secret look is caught on tape.
For young kids, the desire to cheat is big and 90% take a secret look in these experiments. When the test-giver returns to the room, the child is asked if he or she looked secretly. At age 2, about a quarter of children will lie and say they didn’t. By 3, half of kids will lie, and by 4, that figure is 90%, studies show.
Researchers have found that it’s kids with better understanding abilities who lie more. That’s because to lie you also have to keep the truth in mind, which includes many brain processes, such as combining several sources of information and faking that information. The ability to lie — and lie successfully — is thought to be related to development of brain regions that allow so called “executive functioning”, or higher order thinking and reasoning abilities. Kids who perform better on tests that involve executive functioning also lie more.What’s the purpose of children telling lies?
| A．To help their friends out. |
| B．To get rid of trouble. |
| C．To get attention from others. |
| D．To create a popular image. |
The underlined word “deceive” in Paragraph 1 can be replaced by “ ”.
| A．tell lies | B．handle troubles |
| C．raise questions | D．do research |
From the second paragraph we can know that .
| A．which factors can reduce lying |
| B．why some lie more than others |
| C．it is normal for kids to tell lies |
| D．how lying changes as kids grow |
It can be inferred from the passage that .
| A．children’s lies are the same as adults’ |
| B．the better kids are, the more they lie |
| C．the older kids are, the more they lie |
| D．kids always keep the truth in their mind |
What is NOT included in the passage?
| A．The reasons why kids tell lies. |
| B．Which kind of kids tells more lies. |
| C．Experiments about lying of young kids. |
| D．What to do with lying children. |
Technology improves our lives but ruins those of everyone who hangs out with us. I spend nearly as much of my life waiting for people I’m with to answer a call, text back or finish a tweet（发帖）as they do waiting for me.
I’ve already known that owning Google Glass---the eyeglasses with a computer attached---will completely turn my life into a virtual reality（虚拟实境）exactly like moving my cell phone fives inches closer to my face. What I need to know is what it’s like to communicate with someone who’s weaning Google Glass.
I invited Heather Anne Campbell to have lunch with me and wear her Google Glass the whole time. Heather, a comedian who appears on the new Whose Line Is It Away?, is one of about 8000 people Google chose to buy the $ 1500 device before it’s made available to the public.
I did not think our lunch would go well since I’m one of the few people who believe putting your phone on the table suggests that you don’t think I can tell a story as well as someone without a face or body.
When Heather arrived, I noticed that while she is very attractive, she looks even better wearing her Google Glass. Shortly after sitting down, Heather told me that she would never actually wear these glasses to a lunch. “It’s a social threat.” She explained, since by moving her head or saying an order, she could make the glasses shoot video or , worse, look me up on Wikipedia, which would certainly end lunch early. Besides, you can’t be nearly as secret with Glass as I thought: I could find when the tiny screen over her left eye was on , so I’d know immediately if she wasn’t really paying attention.
It’s not the technology that makes the Glassbole (a person who talks to their Google Glass often without noticing the outside world ); it’s the person using the technology. There’s a chance that by making the first Glass wearers hand in plans on how they’d use them ,they’ll set a good example. Maybe, in fact, Google will be responsible enough to never sell me one.Why did the author invite Heather to lunch?
| A．To borrow her Google Glass. |
| B．To talk about her new comedy. |
| C．To interview her about the user experience. |
| D．To experience Google Glass as a lunch companion. |
The author didn’t expect the lunch to be good because he thought_________.
| A．he couldn’t tell good stories. |
| B．Heather might not like his cooking. |
| C．Heather’s Google Glass would be a problem. |
| D．their lunch would be disturbed by Heather’s fans. |
What does Heather mean by saying “It’s a social threat” in Paragraph 5?
| A．Google Glass is bad for interpersonal communication. |
| B．Google Glass causes great harm to her health. |
| C．Conversation can’t go on with Google Glass. |
| D．One has no secrets with Google Glass. |
What’s the best title of the passage？
| A．Google Glass | B．Heather Anne Campbell |
| C．Modern Communications | D．The Widespread Use of Phone |
I vividly remember walking back to my house after collecting the afternoon mails. I saw a credit card statement and or bank statements. It was in that moment that I felt a deep tension.
I realized that even though I had married a man who I adored, I really didn’t have a clear sense of how he handled money and how the two of us were going to combine our different approaches to handing money in our marriage. I was more organized and detailed, but he was more of a laid---hack type. I knew that getting on the same financial page was a key factor in creating a successful marriage and financial future.
I asked my husband if he would be willing to set up a time each week to talk about our finances and develop a plan for getting rid of our credit card debt. My husband said he would be willing to do this. Admittedly, he was skeptical(怀疑)------but willing.
We came to refer to our weekly meetings as our Financial Dates. We didn’t really have a clue as to what we were doing. All we knew was that we needed to give our finances serious attention. Some Dates were filled with tense conversations. Other Dates were filled with laughter, joy and creativity. However, we kept showing up for our Dates and we never gave up. What started out as a means for survival became a powerful connecting thread in our relationship. Something shifted within us.
Instead of our finances becoming a source of divisive（不和的）tension that pulled us apart, they became the glue（粘着剂）that held us together as we became a unified team.
I still recall the day that we excitedly crossed off our last credit card payment on the chart we had created. We had finally arrived. We were free. We had been given wings to fly.
Now, whenever I feel huge stress I ask myself, “ How am I contributing to what is happening right now?” This gives me the great power to take action. Even though my husband and I don’t have any guarantee against future challenges, I am left with something deep within that is unshakable and that can never be taken away----the memory of our past successes and the power to integrate（整合）these lessons in my day—to—day life.Why did the author feel nervous when collecting the afternoon mails?
| A．She was not sure about her marriage. |
| B．She didn’t know how to handle money. |
| C．She could feel the pressure of the huge debt. |
| D．She was reminded of the quarrels in the family. |
Which word can replace the underlined word “laid—back” in the second paragraph?
| A．Relaxed | B．Doubtful | C．Cautious | D．Confident. |
What can we learn from the Financial Dates?
| A．They showed the couple clear direction at first. |
| B．They left the couple nothing but deep sadness. |
| C．They were once interrupted but quickly continued. |
| D．They strengthened the couple’s relationship at last. |
We can infer that when faced with stress the author will___________.
| A．try to change the situation |
| B．focus on what contributes to it |
| C．get power from the memory |
| D．feel free to do what she likes |