MorethananeyecandyParentsinBei-优题课

Homework and stress are rarely reduced inside the classroom. Meanwhile, outside the classroom, the pressure is on to find scholarships for college.
According to Braintrack, a higher education database with worldwide reach, more than 3 billion US dollars (18 billion yuan) in private scholarships are awarded to college students annually. Average awards range from $2,000 to $3,000.
The scholarship application process is similar to the college application process: forms to be completed, test scores and transcripts to be sent, essays to be written and often interviews to be prepared for.
A few great places to start looking for scholarships are: www.fastweb.com, www.finaid.org and www.collegexpress.com.Check out the annual scholarship guidebooks Scholarships, Grants & Prizes by Peterson’s and the Ultimate Scholarship Book: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships, Grants and Prizes by Gen Tanabe and Kelly Tanabe.
Be selective. Thoroughly research the qualifications required by each of the scholarships. Don’t waste your time applying for those that are need-based if you can’t produce the appropriate documents.
Research past recipients (接受者). Check out the websites of the organizations sponsoring the scholarships. Many post the biographies of past recipients. You don’t need to have cured cancer, but if you don’t think your résumé (履历) measures up to the past winners’, you might be better served by moving onto the next scholarship on your list. Prepare for the interview.
You’ll want to dazzle them with your personality, but above all you’ll want to be prepared. Find someone you trust to conduct a similar interview with you – someone who will be honest with you and provide valuable suggestions.
Let your personality shine through in your essays. The essays are the best way for students to share who they are, where they’ve come from, what they’ve overcome and so on. Tell your story in an interesting and persuasive way. And if you do have an interview, send a thank-you note afterward.
By Lee Bierer
What is the author’s main purpose in writing the article?

A．To explain where to find scholarships for US colleges.

B．To inform readers of the scholarship application process.

C．To introduce some typical scholarships offered by US colleges.

D．To give tips on applying for US college scholarships.

If you want to learn about past recipients of a scholarship, you can use __.

A．www.collegexpress.com

B．the annual scholarship guidebooks published by Peterson’s

C．the websites of the organizations sponsoring the scholarships

D．The Ultimate Scholarship Book: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships, Grants and Prizes

The underlined word “dazzle” in Paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to ___.

A．influence

B．impress

C．guide

D．present

To increase your chance of winning a scholarship, you are advised to ____.

A．apply for as many scholarships as you can

B．tell an interesting story in your essay

C．do a similar interview to help you prepare for the real one

D．have a talk with past recipients and try to talk like they do

Dear Dad,
Today I was at the shopping mall and I spent a lot of time reading the Father's Day cards. They all had a special message that in some way or another reflected how I feel about you. Yet as I selected and read, it occurred to me that not a single card said what I really want to say to you.
You'll soon be 84 years old, Dad, and you and I will have had 55 Father's Days together. I haven't always been with you on Father's Day but I've always been with you in my heart.
You know, Dad, there was a time when we were separated by the generation gap. You stood on one side of the Great Divide and I on the other.
The Father-Daughter Duel shifted into high gear ( 档位) when you taught me to drive the old Dodge and I decided I would drive the '54 Chevy whether you liked it or not. The police officer who sent me home, after you reported the Chevy stolen, didn't have much tolerance for a stubborn 16 year old, while you were so tolerant about it, Dad, and I think that was probably what made it the worst night of my life.
Our relationship greatly improved when I married a man you liked, and things really turned around when we began making babies right and left. Somewhere along the line, the generation gap disappeared. I suppose I saw us and our relationship as aging together, rather like a fine wine.
But the strangest thing happened last week. I was at a stop sign and I watched as you turned the corner in your car. It didn't immediately occur to me that it was you because the man driving looked so elderly and fragile behind the wheel of that huge car. It was rather like a slap in the face delivered from out of nowhere. Perhaps I saw your age for the first time that day.
I guess what I'm trying to say, Dad, is what every son and daughter wants to say to their Dad today. Honoring a father on Father's Day is about respect and sharing and acceptance and tolerance and giving and taking. It's about loving someone more than words can say, and it's wishing that never had to end.
I love you, Dad.
Love,
Jenny
How did Jenny probably feel on the night she was sent home by the police?

A．Disappointed.	B．Nervous.
C．Guilty.	D．Frightened.

We can learn from the passage that Jenny and her father_________.

A．kept in touch by writing each other

B．are separated due to the generation gap

C．have been getting along very well

D．had a hard time understanding each other

Why did Jenny feel strange when she saw her father last week?.

A．She seldom saw him driving that huge car.

B．She had never realized his being old and weak.

C．She didn't expect to meet with him there.

D．She had never seen him driving so slowly before.

Jenny wrote his father this letter to _________

A．tell him about their conflicts

B．say sorry for her being stubborn

C．express her gratitude to him

D．remind him of the early incident

If you could take a large snapshot (照片) of everyone in the United States today, it would contain six minion more females than males. In this country, women outlive men by about seven years. Throughout the modern world, cultures are different, diets are different, ways of life and causes of death are different, but one thing is the same--- women outlive men.
It starts before birth. At conception, male fetuses(胎儿) outnumber female by about 110 to 100; at birth, the rate has already fallen to about 105 boys to every 100 girls. By the age of 30, there are only enough men left to match the number of women. Then women start taking a lead. Beyond the age of 80, there are nearly twice as many women as men.
“If you look at the top ten or twelve causes of death,” said Deborah Wingard, a disease expert at the University of California at San Diego, “every single one kills more men.” She listed out one sad fate after another – heart disease, lung cancer and so on. Each kills men at roughly twice the rate of that it does women.
More than a century ago American men surpassed and outlived the women. But in the 20th century, women began living longer, primarily because pregnancy（怀孕) and giving birth to children had become less dangerous. The gap grew steadily. In 1946, for the first time ever in the United States, females outnumbered males.
Parts of the reasons are self-made. Men smoke more, drink more and take more life-threatening chances than women. Men are murdered (usually by other men) three times as often as women are. They commit suicide at a higher rate and have more than twice as many fatal car accidents as women do. Men are likely to be involved in alcohol-related deaths.
But behavior doesn’t explain away the longevity gap.
Today, some scientists studying the gender gap believe that the data point to one conclusion Mother Nature may be partial(偏袒) to women.
Every living thing is assembled according to instructions on its chromosomes (染色体), and humans have 23 pairs of them. But in males, one of these is a weak non-matching pair, expressed by “xy”. The agreement pair in females is “xx”, and its genetic “backup” power is sometimes listed as a clue to woman’s superior restoring force. If the male’s single “x” chromosome isn’t perfect, it is possible for a serious genetic disorder to appear. Some blood diseases, for instance, are diseases caused by a shortcoming in a single gene on the “x” chromosome. They are far more common in males than females.
What may the underlined word “outlive” in Paragraph1 mean?

A．Become stronger than.	B．Live longer than.
C．Be wiser than.	D．Be born more earlier than.

What can we infer from the second paragraph?

A．Female fetuses are more than male.

B．The female are surpassing the male with age increasing.

C．By the age of 30, the female are more than the male.

D．Over 90, men are more than women in the United States.

How many exact diseases are mentioned as examples killing twice men than women?

A．Two.

B．Three.

C．Ten.

D．Five.

The best title for this passage is _____

A．Why women live longer than men

B．Women are different from men

C．American men once lived longer than the women

D．Men smoke and drank more than women

What did your school smell like? Was it noisy or peaceful? It might not seem important, but a growing body of research suggests that smells and sounds can have an impact on learning, performance and creativity．
Bridget Shield has been conducting studies and advising people on the effects of all sorts of noises, such as traffic and sirens, as well as noise made by the children themselves． "Everything points to a harmful impact of the noise on children’s performance, in numeracy, in literacy, and in spelling,” says Shield．
Shield says the sound of “babble” －the chatter of other children, is particularly distracting in the classroom．。People are very distracted by speech-particularly if it is understandable, but you’re not involved in it．” This phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech effect, she says, adding that “it’s a very common finding in open-plan offices as well．’’
In a series of studies published last year, Ravi Mehta found that people were more creative when the background noises were played at a medium level than when volume was low． Loud background noise, however, damaged their creativity． Ravi Mehta suggests there maybe some benefit to playing music or other sounds in an art class or other situations where creativity is the key．
Many teachers all over the world already play music to students in class． Many are inspired by the belief that hearing music can boost IQ in their tasks, the so-called Mozart effect． While the evidence actually suggests it’s a guess to say classical music boosts brainpower, researchers do think pleasant sounds before a task can sometimes lift your mood and help you perform well, says Ravi Mehta," If you like the music or you like the sound-even listening to a Stephen King novel-then you did better． It didn’t matter about the music,“ he says．
However, it’s worth considering that music is not always helpful while you’re trying to work． Trying to perform a task which involves serial recall - for instance, doing mental mathematics-will be distracted by sounds with audio variation, says Ravi Mehta． Songs with lyrics, on the other hand, are more likely to interfere（干扰）with tasks that involve languages-such as reading comprehension．
This isn’t the only sense being related to affecting learning．
The second paragraph implies that _________.

A．general noise also has a harmful effect．

B．students are sensitive to noise．

C．some children need special sounds to do tasks．

D．children aren't affected by their own noise．

The irrelevant speech effect refers to the fact that _________.

A．you don’t understand what others are talking

B．you are interrupted by the chatting of others

C．you are unwilling to chat with other people

D．you find what others are talking irrelevant to you

According to the text, Ravi Mehta believes that __________.

A．music matters when you want to do better．

B．music will help you do mental arithmetic．

C．any music can be beneficial as long as you like it．

D．songs with lyrics will improve your reading comprehension．

What might be discussed in the following paragraph?

A．Whether music is helpful all the time．

B．What sound can promote a person’s creativity．

C．When smell can improve students’ behavior．

D．How smell affects children’s performance．

“A very disruptive (调皮捣蛋的) six-year-old child kicked my legs and clawed at my hand,” said one teacher. “I broke up a fight and was kicked between my legs,” said another. Many people have heard stories like this. But the situation is more worrying still and it involves parents.
Every child, regardless of the circumstances into which they are born, has the right to achieve their potential, regardless of their parents’ wealth and class. And we recognize that, as a nation, it is a long way to achieve this goal. But with rights come responsibilities and what worries people is that we are in danger of neglecting the latter.
Far too many children are behaving badly at school, even to the point of being violent to staff. This is terrible enough, but it is hard to be surprised since many children are just mirroring the behaviour of their parents. Too many are starting school unable to hold a knife and fork, unused to eating at a table, and unable to use the lavatory(卫生间) properly.
We are in danger of becoming a nation of families living separate lives under one roof. The bedroom, once a place to sleep, has become the living space for the young. Spending hours in front of computer screens, on social networking sites or being immersed (沉迷于) in computer games, children and young people spend little time with their parents. Parents are unable to monitor just what their children are watching.
Schools cannot right the wrongs of society and teachers cannot become substitute parents. Both parties need to work together. Parents must be helped and given confidence to take back control. They are responsible for setting boundaries for their children’s behaviour and sticking to those boundaries. They are responsible for setting a good example to their children and for devoting that most precious of resources---time---so that children come to school ready and willing to learn.
In the opinion of the writer, what problem do people ignore?

A．The violence in the school

B．The pressure of students’ learning

C．The right to achieve students’ potential

D．The responsibilities of the students.

The underlined part in paragraph 4 means________.

A．parents care little about children’s life at home

B．parents and children live in their separate rooms

C．children don’t live with their parents in the same house

D．children live a different life from that of parents at home

The writer’s attitude to the behaviours of parents may be_______.

A．unconcern	B．understanding
C．dissatisfied	D．tolerant