If you have to miss a meal a day, which meal will cause you fewest health problems if you don’t eat it? If you have to make a decision of this type, most people (especially very busy people) will choose to skip breakfast.
However, many experts in the field of health consider breakfast ( the meal which “break” you “fast” ) to be the most important t meal of the day. If we eat a good breakfast, they say, we will have the energy and nutrients (营养) we need to begin our working day with vigor(活力) and stay hopeful with good honor. However, many people skip breakfast or substitute a cup of coffee for a well balanced meal. What happens if we ignore the importance of breakfast?
One recent study conducted in the United States tested a large number of people. Participants included both males and females who ranged in age from 12 to 83. The results showed that if a person eats an adequate breakfast, he or she will work more efficiently and more productively than if he or she skips breakfast or eats a very poor breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person’s work involves mental(脑力的) activities. The study showed that if school-children eat fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, they will learn more quickly and will be able to concentrate (集中)on their lessons for a longer period of time than if their breakfast is inadequate.
The study also showed that contrary to what people believe, if you skip breakfast, you will not lose weight. This is because people become so hungry if they skip breakfast that they eat too much for lunch and end up gaining weight instead of losing. So remember, if you want to lose weight, skipping breakfast will not help you. You will likely lose more weight if you decrease your other meals.According to experts, breakfast is the most important meal of the day because _____.
| A．a good breakfast breaks you down fast |
| B．you’ll lose weight quickly if you skip breakfast |
| C．breakfast provides what a person needs to work |
| D．after a long night, you’ll feel very hungry |
The underlined part “substitute a cup of coffee for a well balanced meal”(Para. 2) probably means _______.
| A．to exchange a cup of coffee for a well balanced meal. |
| B．To drink a cup of coffee instead of a well balanced meal. |
| C．To change a cup of coffee into a well balanced meal. |
| D．To regard a cup of coffee as a well balanced meal. |
The example of school-children in para.3 shows that _______.
| A．school-children will be quick and attentive all day if they eat breakfast |
| B．a proper breakfast will make mental workers more efficient |
| C．fruit, eggs, bread and milk are the best breakfast for mental workers |
| D．school-children who have breakfast are much brighter than those who don’t |
Which of the following is NOT true according to Para. 4?
| A．Some people skip breakfast because they want to be slimmer. |
| B．Most people who skip breakfast actually eat more for lunch. |
| C．People put on weight because they eat too much breakfast. |
| D．Skipping breakfast won’t help people who want to lose weight. |
The best title of the passage is _______.
| A．How to Lose Weight |
| B．What’s a Healthy Diet |
| C．Surprising Results of a Study |
| D．Breakfast – A Meal That Breaks You Fast |
Dress codes cause us arguments
The first day of school is always a chaotic(混乱的) time. For many students in the US, this year was even more so. It was all due to one extra school policy. They are now required to wear clothes that meet a new standardized dress code(规范).
According to the handbooks of all high schools in Allentown, Pennsylvania, students must wear short or long sleeve polo shirts and khaki(卡其色的) or black pants. Skinny jeans, leggings(紧身裤), and open toe shoes are not allowed.
Allentown schools are not alone. Overall, about 57 percent of American public schools now have a “strict dress code”, up from more than 47 percent a decade earlier, said USA Today.
Some students don’t mind wearing a similar attire(服装) every day. “It takes away the daily fashion show and helps level the playing fields a little bit with the haves and have-nots,” longtime school safety consultant Ken Trump told USA Today.
But others aren’t happy, claiming that uniforms rob students of individuality(个性).
While school uniforms have been a popular topic to discuss recently in the US, however, in the UK there are much fewer questions about them-they are a tradition.
School uniforms in England were first introduced during the reign(统治) of King Henry VIII in the 16th century. They became popular following the Elementary Education Act of 1870. The UK Department of Education’s website states: “The Department strongly encourages schools to have a uniform as it can…contribute to the beliefs of a school and set the correct tone.
The uniform is now a strong part of school culture in the UK. Schools sometimes even have “Mufti”(便服) days on which students can wear their own clothes if they make a small donation(捐赠) to charity.
However, the tradition does not mean that school uniforms are popular there.
Many “children hate them”, according to Aisha on the BBC Newsround website. Ask UK students why they wear a school uniform and their answer will mostly likely be, “because we have to”.We can infer from the first three paragraphs that ________.
| A．there is a strict standardized dress code in most American public schools |
| B．the high schools in Allentown, Pennsylvania have the strictest dress code in the US |
| C．there has been a growing trend of strict dress codes in US high schools in the last decade |
| D．the new standardized dress code in Allentown’s high schools was put forward by teachers and parents |
We can learn from the article that students’ attitudes towards dress codes are _____
| A．negative | B．divided |
| C．supportive | D．doubtful |
What does paragraph 7 mainly talk about?
| A．The popularity of school uniforms in the UK. |
| B．The history and tradition of school uniforms in the UK. |
| C．The benefits of promoting school uniforms in the UK. |
| D．The UK Department of Education’s requirements on school uniforms. |
According to the article, on Mufti days, students in some UK schools ______.
| A．are required to make a donation to charity |
| B．can vote to choose their own school uniforms |
| C．can wear their own clothes if they contribute to charity |
| D．are allowed to wear whatever they like for the morning |
“Indeed,” George Washington wrote in his diary in 1785, “some kind of fly, or bug, had begun to eat the leaves before I left home.” But the father of America was not the father of bug. When Washington wrote that, Englishmen had been referring to insects as bugs for more than a century, and Americans had already created lightning-bug(萤火虫). But the English were soon to stop using the bugs in their language, leaving it to the Americans to call a bug a bug in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The American bug could also be a person, referring to someone who was crazy about a particular activity. Although fan became the usual term, sports fans used to be called racing bugs, baseball bugs, and the like.
Or the bug could be a small machine or object, for example, a bug-shaped car. The bug could also be a burglar alarm, from which comes the expression to bug, that is, “to install (安装) an alarm”. Now it means a small piece of equipment that people use for listening secretly to others’ conversation. Since the 1840s, to bug has long meant “to cheat”, and since the 1940s it has been annoying.
We also know the bug as a flaw in a computer program or other design. That meaning dates back to the time of Thomas Edison. In 1878 he explained bugs as “little problems and difficulties” that required months of study and labor to overcome in developing a successful product. In 1889 it was recorded that Edison “had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his invented record player.”We learn from Paragraph 1 that ___________.
| A．Americans had difficulty in learning to use the word bug |
| B．George Washington was the first person to call an insect a bug |
| C．the word bug was still popularly used in English in the nineteenth century |
| D．both Englishmen and Americans used the word bug in the eighteenth century |
What does the word “flaw” in the last paragraph probably mean?
| A．Explanation. | B．Finding. |
| C．Origin. | D．Fault. |
The passage is mainly concerned with__________.
| A．the misunderstanding of the word bug |
| B．the development of the word bug |
| C．the public views of the word bug |
| D．the special characteristics of the word bug |
Win a Week in England
You still don’t know what to do this summer? Well, here’s your chance to win a one-week language course in Kent, England! Free4Fun and ETC(English Travel Connections) are giving away two trips to Rochester. This historic city is less than an hour’s drive from London and close to the sea resort of Herne Bay. It is also the home of one of England’s most famous writers, Charles Dickens. The town of the Rochester is in Southeast England. Charles Dickens often wrote about it in his books. His home, Gad’s Hill，is there too. A popular attraction is Rochester Castle，a large Norman fortress（堡垒）. It was built in the 11th century and rebuilt during the 14th century. Other attractions are Rochester Cathedral, which was built during the 13th century, and Dickens Centre. It has got it’s name in honour of Dickens himself.
The trip to England includes:
* travel by train (via the Eurotunnel) to and from any railway station in Germany
* room and full board with a guest family for one week
* language course in small groups
* two trips to London
* large choice of sports and entertainment
* German-speaking advisors available 24 hours a day
Interested? All you have to do is to answer the following question: When was Charles Dickens born?
So, take the chance and send your answer by May1 to:
Free4Fun “Rochester”
Free4Fun, 24 Elphinstone Road, Hastings, 2FQ6VJ
Fax: 089/85-763-103
e-mail: free4fun@netlight.com
The two winners will be contacted directly before May5. They will also be announced in the June issue of Free4Fun. Good luck!
For further information contact:
Phone: (03212)144-43
Fax: (03212) 144-42
e-mail: info@etc.comRochester Cathedral was built in the ___________.
| A．1400s | B．1300s | C．1200s | D．1100s |
What activities can you participate in during the trip?
| A．Enjoying sports and entertainment. |
| B．Learning the German language. |
| C．Traveling by train with a guest family. |
| D．Working as a language advisor. |
This advertisement was designed to target _______.
| A．Italians | B．Germans |
| C．Europeans | D．Americans |
How could we tell time if there were no watches or clocks anywhere in the world?
The sun was probably the world’s first “clock”, except in the far north, where the Eskimos(爱斯基摩人) live. There it’s dark most of the winter, and light most of the summer. But in most of the world, people have used the sun for a clock. Even today if you don’t have a clock that shows time, you still know that when the sun shines, it’s day; and when it’s dark, it’s night. The sun can not only tell you whether it’s day or night but also it’s morning, noon, or afternoon. When the sun is almost directly overhead, it’s noon.
People who live near the sea can tell time from the tides. In the daytime, for about six hours, the water rises higher and higher on the beach. And then it goes down and down for another six hours. The same thing happens again at night. There are two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours.
Seamen on a ship learn how to tell time by looking at the moon and the stars .The whole sky is their clock.
In some places in the world the wind comes up at about the same time every day or changes direction or stops blowing. In these places, the wind can be the clock.
A sand clock is an even better clock. If you had fine dry sand in a glass shaped like the one in the picture above, you would have what is called an hourglass. The sand in the hourglass goes from the top part to the bottom part in exactly one hour. When the hourglass it turned over, the sand will take another hour to go back again.The Eskimos in the far north can’t use the sun for a clock because ______.
| A．they know very little about the sun |
| B．the sun there never goes down in winter. |
| C．it’s too cold for them to go out to watch the sun |
| D．there are long dark winters and long light summers in the far north |
The underlined word “tides” in paragraph 3 means ___________.
| A．ocean current |
| B．storm |
| C．a regular rise and fall of the sea |
| D．wave |
In which part of the newspaper can you probably read this passage?
| A．News | B．Science |
| C．Business | D．Advertisement |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Different Ways to Tell Time |
| B．Useful Machine to Tell Time |
| C．The History of the Clock |
| D．The Development of the Clock |
How many ways are mentioned in the passage to tell time?
| A．Five | B．Four | C．Six | D．Three |
How long has 3-D technology been around? Most of us might think of crowds of teenagers in a 1950’s movie house watching Bwana Devil in 3-D. But 3-D technology made its first appearance on the scene in 1838 with the first stereoscope(体视镜). And the first actual 3-D movie was a 1903 film called Le Ariveed’un Train.
Although it has such a long history, the technology has still remained based on one simple principle-----to make 3-D effects you must find a way to project two slightly different pictures to each eye. Modern 3-D technology works by rapidly flickering(闪动) two versions of the movie and projecting them onto each eye. The brain does the rest of the work, combining the two pictures together into one and giving the show the appearance of depth, the third dimension.
But does this exposure, especially long exposures, cause harm to the child’s developing brain and visual system? Unfortunately, long-term studies on new flicker digital 3-D technology and children aren’t yet available. We do not know if regular or daily 3-D viewing over years affects the developing visual system, although older 3-D methods basically do the same thing and are not considered harmful.
The question of possible harm in modern 3-D use in TV is really based on two facts: the amount of time children will now be watching 3-D TV each day and the sensitivity some children show in reaction to 3-D viewing. It is difficult to make actual lab studies of longer term 3-D viewing in children because of the possible harm of the experiment. Researchers will have to wait until 3-D TV technology is already in the marketplace for a number of years, then check heavy 3-D TV watchers and compare them with non-watchers.
With a 3-D television technology in the home, we will soon be able to answer the question of whether or not longer and more frequent periods of 3-D exposure cause more changes in the visual system. We may find that the bigger problem is the introduction of a new technology that leads to even more time spent on TV rather than playing outdoors.
| A．was refused by people when it first appeared. |
| B．will soon change the way we watch TV. |
| C．does no good to our visual system. |
| D．has a history of nearly 200 years. |
| A．how 3-D technology works. |
| B．why 3-D movies are popular |
| C．the history of 3-D technology. |
| D．the influence of 3-D technology. |
| A．To wait and see | B．To carry out lab studies |
| C．To stop making 3-D movies | D．To improve 3-D technology |
| A．ask children not to watch 3-D movies |
| B．discuss if 3-D viewing is harmful to children. |
| C．introduce the advantages of 3-D technology. |
| D．predict the development of 3-D technology. |