How do you know if your home is an easy aim for thefts(偷窃)? Around the holidays, many families don’t consider taking prop
er measures to prevent their homes from suffering holiday thefts. With just a few simple steps, you can better make sure of the safety of your home during all of the holiday celebrations. Here are a few tips for making it difficult to tell you are away from home.
● Either have a trusted neighbor pick up your mail and newspapers, or tell your mailperson to hold your mail until you return. Nothing says “Hey, we are not home!” like when your postbox is filled with all kinds of mails and you have many different newspapers in your driveway.
● Set several different lights in your house on random timers (随机定时器)。Don’t leave your outdoor lights on all the time. Instead, put your outside lights on timers to be on during the nights. If an outdoor light remains on for days at a time, it means that nobody is home to turn it off.
● If you have pets that you are not taking with you on vacation, leave them with a friend, rather than having someone come into your house every day to take care of them. When thefts see a neighbor or friend entering your house every day, they will know you are not home.
● Close all your curtains when you leave town. This is effective to deter possible thefts, as no one can see what is in your house. If they don’t know what there is to take, then the risk is even greater for them to break in.
● This article just has suggested a few tips to help you keep your house safe while you are on holiday. Nothing can truly protect your home unless you have it monitored by a professional home security system.. What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．to tell us how to prevent the thefts around the holidays |
| B．to let the outdoor lights on all the time |
| C．to tell us many families suffering from the thefts while they are on holiday |
| D．to tell you to have your neighbor go to your house to take care of your pet. |
.If you are on holiday in other places, the lights in your house should________.
A. be lit in an irregular way B. be kept on all the night
C. be replaced by random timers D be turned on only once one day.To make your home is well protected, what does the writer advise you to do?
| A．Have all the curtains closed | B．Stop your mail service at once |
| C．Turn to your close neighbors or friends | D．Equip your home with security system |
. Most of the tips mentioned in the text seem to ______.
| A．be very popular with families | B．have no effect on preventing thefts |
| C．give a false impression on thefts. | D．be a little hard to be brought into effect. |
.The underlined word “deter ”probably means “___________ ”.
| A．discover | B．discourage | C．surprise | D．attract |
It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views of our President. A friend I was talking to agreed with me that it was, in his words, “a brilliantly （精彩地）written book”. However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.
And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven’t. In the World Book Day’s “Report on Guilty Secrets”, Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various authors, which people have lied about reading, and as I’m not one to lie too often (I’d hate to be caught out), I’ll admit here and now that I haven’t read the entire top ten. But I am pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one, George Orwell’s 1984. I think it’s really brilliant.
The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven’t read him, but haven’t lied about it either) and Herman Melville.
Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to “impress” someone they were speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in–depth!
But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J. K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing the story (I’ll come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so).How did the author find his friend a book liar?
| A．By judging his manner of speaking. |
| B．By looking into his background. |
| C．By discussing the book itself. |
| D．By mentioning a famous name. |
Which of the following is a “guilty secret” according to the World Book Day report?
| A．Charles Dickens is very low on the top-ten list. |
| B．42% of people pretended to have read 1984. |
| C．The author admitted having read 9 books. |
| D．Dreams From My Father is hardly read. |
By lying about reading, a person hopes to .
| A．control the conversation | B．make more friends |
| C．learn about the book | D．appear knowledgeable |
What is the author’s attitude to 58% of readers?
| A．Favorable. | B．Uncaring |
| C．Friendly | D．Doubtful |
They baby is just one day old and has not yet left hospital. She is quiet but alert （警觉）. Twenty centimeters from her face researchers have placed a white card with two black spots on it. She stares at it carefully. A researcher removes the card and replaces it by another, this time with the spots differently spaced. As the cards change from one to the other, her gaze（凝视） starts to lose its focus — until a third, with three black spots, is presented. Her gaze returns: she looks at it for twice as long as she did at the previous card. Can she tell that the number two is different from three, just 24 hours after coming into the world?
Or do newborns simply prefer more to fewer? The same experiment, but with three spots shown before two, shows the same return of interest when the number of spots changes. Perhaps it is just the newness? When slightly older babies were shown cards with pictures of objects (a comb, a key, an orange and so on), changing the number of objects had an effect separate from changing the objects themselves. Could it be the pattern that two things make, as opposed to three? No again. Babies paid more attention to squares moving randomly on a screen when their number changed from two to three, or three to two. The effect even crosses between senses. Babies who were repeatedly shown two spots became more excited when they then heard three drumbeats than when they heard just two; likewise （同样地） when the researchers started with drumbeats and moved to spots.The experiment described in Paragraph 1 is related to the baby’s.
| A．sense of sight | B．sense of touch |
| C．sense of hearing | D．sense of smell |
Babies are sensitive to the change in______.
| A．the size of cards | B．the colour of pictures |
| C．the number of objects | D．the shape of patterns |
Why did the researchers test the babies with drumbeats?
| A．To reduce the difficulty of the experiment. |
| B．To carry their experiment further. |
| C．To see how babies recognize sounds |
| D．To keep the babies’ interest. |
Where does this text probably come from?
| A．Science fiction. | B．Children’s literature. |
| C．A science report. | D．An advertisement. |
Some people will do just about anything to save money. And I am one of them. Take my family’s last vacation. It was my six-year-old son’s winter break form school, and we were heading home from Fort Lauderdale after a weeklong trip. The flight was overbooked, and Delta, the airline, offered us $400 per person in credits to give up our seats and leave the next day. I had meetings in New York，So I had to get back. But that didn't mean my husband and my son couldn't stay. I took my nine-month-old and took off for home.
The next day, my husband and son were offered more credits to take an even later flight. Yes, I encouraged—okay, ordered—them to wait it out at the airport, to "earn" more Delta Dollars. Our total take: $1,600. Not bad, huh?
Now some people may think I'm a bad mother and not such a great wife either. But as a big-time bargain hunter, I know the value of a dollar. And these days, a good deal is something few of us can afford to pass up.
I've made living looking for the best deals and exposing （揭露） the worst tricks. I have been the consumer reporter of NBC's Today show for over a decade. I have written a couple of books including one titled Tricks of the Trade: A Consumer Survival Guide. And I really do what I believe in.
I tell you this because there is no shame in getting your money’s worth. I’m also tightfisted when it comes to shoes, clothes for my children, and expensive restaurants. But I wouldn't hesitate to spend on a good haircut. It keeps its shape longer, and it's the first thing people notice. And I will also spend on a classic piece of furniture. Quality lasts.Why did Delta give the author's family credits?
| A．Their flight had been delayed. |
| B．Their flight had been cancelled. |
| C．They had early bookings |
| D．They took a later flight |
What can we learn about the author?
| A．She rarely misses a good deal. |
| B．She seldom makes a compromise. |
| C．She is very strict with her children |
| D．She is interested in cheap products. |
What does the author do?
| A．She's a teacher. | B．She's a media person |
| C．She's a housewife. | D．She's a businesswoman. |
What does the author want to tell us?
| A．How to expose bad tricks. | B．How to reserve airline seats. |
| C．How to make a business deal. | D．How to spend money wisely |
Women were friends, I once would have said, when they totally love and support and trust each other, and bear to each other the secrets of their souls, and run—no questions asked—to help each other, and tell harsh truths to each other(No, you can’t wear that dress unless you lose ten pounds first.) when these truths must be told.
In other words, I once would have said that a friend is a friend all the way, but now I believe that’s narrow point of view. Friendships serve many different functions，meet different needs and range from those as all-the-way as the friendship of the soul sisters mentioned above to that of the most casual playmates.
Convenience friends are women with whom we’d have no particular reason to be friends: a next-door neighbor or the mother of one of our children’s closest friends. They’ll lend us their cups for a party. They’ll drive our kids to school when we’re sick. They’ll take us to pick up our car when we need a lift .As we will for them. But we don’t , with convenience friends, ever come too close or tell too much; we maintain our public face and emotional distance.
Special-interest friends aren’t intimate（亲密）,and they needn’t involve kids or cats. Their value lies in some interest jointly shared .And so we may have an office friend or a tennis friend.
“I’ve got one woman friend,” says Joyce,” who likes, as I do, to take music courses, which makes it nice for me and her. I’d say that what we’re doing is doing together, not being together.”
Crossroads friends are important for what was for the friendship we shared at a crucial（关键的）,now past, time of life. A time, perhaps, when we roomed in college together or went together through pregnancy, birth and that scary first year of new motherhood.
Crossroads friends develop powerful links, links strong enough to endure with not much more contact than once-a-year letters at Christmas. And out of respect for those crossroads years, for those dramas and dreams we once shared, we will always be friends.
Crossroads friends seem to maintain a special kind of intimacy ----dormant（休眠的） but always ready to be revived（复活） ---and though we may rarely meet ,whenever we do connect, it’s personal and strong. Another kind of intimacy exists in the cross-generational friendships, the friends that form across generation in what one woman calls her daughter-mother and her mother-daughter relationships.
There are good friends, pretty good friends and very good friends, and these friendships are defined by their level of intimacy. We might tell a good friend, for example, that yesterday we had a fight with our husband. And we might tell a pretty good friend that this fight with our husband made us so mad that we slept on the couch. And we might tell a very good friend that the reason we got so mad in that fight that we slept on the couch had something to do with a girl who works in his office. But it’s only to our very best friends that we’re willing to tell all, to tell what’s going on with that girl in his office.The underlined word “harsh”(in Para.1)probably means “------“
| A．protective | B．impossible |
| C．unpleasant | D．unbelievable |
What can we know about convenience friends?
| A．People may share their sorrow and pain with their convenience friends. |
| B．People may borrow a large sum of money from their convenience friends. |
| C．People may ask their convenience friends to pick up their children for them. |
| D．People would like to seek comfort and convenience from their convenience friends. |
What is the similarity between crossroads friends and cross-generational friends?
| A．They often write to each other but never meet. |
| B．They become friends at a crucial time of their life. |
| C．They both enjoy a special kind of intimacy with each other. |
| D．The relationship usually exists between mothers and daughters. |
The friendships in the passage are classified（分类） according to _________.
| A．different stages of one’s life |
| B．the purpose of making friends |
| C．how people make friends with others |
| D．how close the relationship is |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．The value of friendship |
| B．How to make lasting friendships |
| C．Ways to avoid destroying your friendship |
| D．Friends, good friends and such good friends |
In 1896, Einstein went to Zurich to study physics. There he met a girl from Hungary. They studied in the same class and the same interest in physics brought them together and they became good friends. Before long they fell in love. In 1903 when Einstein was 24, he married Merits, who was 4 years older than he.
After their marriage, Einstein devoted himself to the research of the great theory. To give her husband more help, Merits gave up her own work, and became a good wife and assistant. She tried her best to encourage him whenever possible. She was sure that her husband would succeed. They often discussed the theory while walking outside or sitting together in the room. They even did that in their letters when one of them was away from their home.
In1914, Einstein moved to Berlin and settled down there. At that time his theory proved to be correct and he had become famous all over the world. But it was not long before the First Would War broke out. Merits as well as her two sons, who were on holiday in Switzerland, couldn’t come back to Berlin any more. The war not only stopped Einstein’s work but also broke up the warm, happy family. In 1919, Einstein and Merits had to get divorced(离婚).In which year was Merits born? ___
| A．1896 | B．1875 | C．1883 | D．1879 |
We can learn from the passage that Merits ______.
| A．greatly helped Einstein with his research work |
| B．supported Einstein but helped him little |
| C．was also a great scientist |
| D．was the real discoverer of the theory |
The underline phrase "settled down" in the last paragraph means _____.
| A．to become restless |
| B．solve problems |
| C．decide to leave |
| D．to begin living a stable and orderly life |
Why did Einstein and Merits get divorced?
| A．Because Merits didn’t love Einstein after the war broke out. |
| B．Because Einstein was famous all over the world. |
| C．Because Einstein only cared about his research. |
| D．Because the war stopped Merits from coming back to Berlin. |
The writer wanted to tell us that _____.
| A．Merits should be respected as greatly as her husband |
| B．We should remember Merits when talking about Einstein’ theory |
| C．The bitter (苦难的) suffering was the mother of success |
| D．Einstein suffered a great deal in his life |