Children like to imagine they are someone else in a game. As a parent you might never guess how it can benefit your child. It helps your child：
Develop Social Skills
As children play pretend games，they explore relationships between family members，friends and coworkers and learn more about how people interact.Playing doctors，they imagine how physicians care for their patients.Imaginative play helps develop empathy(移情) with others.If children can imagine how it feels to be left out of a game or to lose a pet，they are better able to help those in need.They become more willing to play fair，to share，and to cooperate.
Build Selfconfidence
Young children have very little control over their lives.Imagining oneself as a builder of skyscrapers or a super hero defending the planet is inspiring to children.It helps them develop confidence in their abilities and their potential.
Promote Intellectual Growth
Using imagination is the beginning of abstract thought.Children who can see a king's castle in a mound of sand or a delicious dinner in a mud pie are learning to think symbolically.This skill is important in school where a child will have to learn that numbers symbolize groups of objects，letters symbolize sounds，and so on.
Practice Language Skills
Kids who pretend with their friends do a lot of talking.This helps increase their vocabulary，improve sentence structure and develop communication skills.
Get Rid of Fears
Pretending can help children get rid of their fears and worries.When children roleplay the big，bad monster under the bed，they gain a sense of control over him and he doesn't seem quite so big or so bad.Which of the following can help children develop social skills in a game?
| A．Pretending to be a super hero. |
| B．Preparing a delicious dinner with mud. |
| C．Helping a doctor to attend patients. |
| D．Pretending to be a doctor. |
Why can imagination build children's selfconfidence?
| A．It makes them feel as if they were much more powerful than they really are. |
| B．It helps them protect people and make much greater progress. |
| C．It helps them gain control over themselves. |
| D．It makes them more willing to play fair. |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the article?
| A．While playing pretend games，children learn to get along with others. |
| B．Playing pretend games helps children to do well while they are in school. |
| C．Playing pretend games only helps children psychologically. |
| D．Playing pretend games is good for children's development. |
The best title for this passage probably is________.
| A．Benefits of Playing Pretend Games |
| B．Tips on How to Improve Your Children's Imagination |
| C．Advantages of Playing Outdoors |
| D．Skills in Playing Pretend Games |
With around 100 students scheduled to be in that 9 am Monday morning lecture, it is no surprise that almost 20 people actually make it to the class and only 10 of them are still awake after the first 15 minutes; it is not even a surprise that most of them are still in their pyjamas(睡衣). Obviously, students are terrible at adjusting their sleep cycles to their daily schedule.
All human beings possess a body clock. Along with other alerting(警报)systems, this governs the sleep/wake cycle and is therefore one of the main processes which govern sleep behaviour. Typically, the preferred sleep/wake cycle is delayed in adolescents, which leads to many students not feeling sleepy until much later in the evenings. This typical sleep pattern is usually referred to as the“night owl”schedule of sleep.
This is opposed to the“early bird”schedule, and is a kind of disorder where the individual tends to stay up much past midnight. Such a person has great difficulty in waking up in the mornings. Research suggests that night owls feel most alert and function best in the evenings and at night. Research findings have shown that about 20 percent of people can be classified as“night owls”and only 10 percent can be classified as“early birds”—the other 70 percent are in the middle. Although this is clearly not true for all students, for the ones who are true night owls this gives them an excellent excuse for missing their lectures which unfortunately fall before midday. What does the author stress in Paragraph 1?
| A．Many students are absent from class. |
| B．Students are very tired on Monday mornings. |
| C．Students do not adjust their sleep patterns well. |
| D．Students are not well prepared for class on Mondays. |
Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 2?
| A．Most students prefer to get up late in the morning. |
| B．Students don’t sleep well because of alerting systems. |
| C．One’s body clock governs the sleep/wake cycle independently. |
| D．Adolescents’delayed sleep/wake cycle isn’t the preferred pattern. |
Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “classified”?
| A．Criticised. | B．Grouped. | C．Organised. | D．Named. |
What does the text mainly talk about?
| A．Functions of the body clock. |
| B．The “night owl” phenomenon. |
| C．Human beings’ sleep behaviour. |
| D．The school schedule of “early birds”. |
One afternoon last week, I saw three tearful children from my son’s school being comforted by teachers. That morning, my 11-year-old had stomach pains, retching(干呕)into a bowl. Talking to other mothers later, I heard about other children with stomachache or difficulty sleeping the night before.
What caused so much pain? Sports day. Sports day might be necessary at a highly-competitive independent school, but not at a village primary school. For the children who can fly like the wind, sports day causes no problem. For those who are overweight or just not good at sport, it is a nightmare(噩梦). Even for those who enjoy running but fall halfway down the track in front of the entire school and their parents, it can prove a disaster.
Why do we put our children through this annual suffering? Some may say competition is character building; or it’s taking part, not winning, that’s important; or that it is a tradition of school life. I just felt great pity for those children in tears or in pain.
Team games at the end of sports day produced some close races, wild enthusiasm, lots of shouting—and were fun to watch. More importantly, the children who were not so fast or quick at passing the ball were hidden a little from everyone’s eyes. Some of them also had the thrill of being on the winning side.
I wish that sports day could be abandoned and replaced with some other less-competitive event. Perhaps an afternoon of team games, with a few races for those who want them, would be less stressful for the children and a lot more fun to watch.What can we learn about the author’s son from Paragraph 1?
| A．He talked with some mothers. |
| B．He comforted his classmates. |
| C．He had difficulty in sleeping. |
| D．He suffered from stomachache. |
Sports day is still an annual event in this school probably because .
| A．this is an independent school |
| B．it is a tradition of the school |
| C．it helps children lose weight |
| D．children enjoy watching sports |
What does the author think about team games?
| A．They should include more stressful races. |
| B．They are acceptable to different children. |
| C．They should be abandoned at primary schools. |
| D．They are less fun for those who love running. |
What is the author’s attitude towards sports day?
| A．Critical. | B．Neutral. | C．Positive. | D．Ambiguous. |
It’s such a happy-looking library, painted yellow, decorated with palm-tree stickers and sheltered from the Florida sun by its own roof. About the size of a microwave oven, it’s pedestrian-friendly, too, waiting for book lovers next to a sidewalk in Palm Beach Country Estates, along the northern boundary of Palm Beach Gardens.
It’s a library built with love.
A year ago, shortly after, Janey Henriksen saw a Brian Williams report about the Little Free. Library organization, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that aims to promote literacy and build a sense of community in a neighborhood by making，books freely available, she announced to her family of four, “That’s what we’re going to do for our spring break!”
Son Austin, now a 10th-grader, didn’t see the point of building a library that resembles a mailbos. But Janey insisted, and husband Peter unwillingly got to work. The 51-year-old owner of a ship supply company modified a small wooden house that he’d built years earlier for daughter Abbie’s toy horses, and made a door of glass.
After adding the library’s final touches(装点), the family hung a signboard on the front, instructing users to “take a book, return a book,” and making the Henriksen library, now one of several hundred like it nationwide and among more than 2,500 in the world, the only Little Free Library in Palm Beach county.
They stocked it with 20 or so books they’d already read, a mix of science fiction, reference titles, novels and kids’ favorites. “I told them, keep in mind that you might not see it again,” said Janey s stay-at-home mom.
Since then, the collection keeps replenishing(补充) itself, thanks to ongoing donations from borrowers. The library now gets an average of five visits a day.
The project’s best payoff, says Peter, are the thank-you notes left behind. “We had no idea in the beginning that it would be so popular.”In what way is the library “pedestrian—friendly”?
| A．It owns a yellow roof. |
| B．It stands near a sidewalk. |
| C．It protects book lovers from the sun. |
| D．It uses palm-tree stickers as decorations. |
Janey got the idea to build a library from .
| A．a visit to Brian Williams |
| B．a spring break with her family |
| C．a book sent by one of her neighbors |
| D．a report on a Wisconsin-based organization |
What can we infer about the signboard?
| A．It Was made by a user of the library. |
| B．It marked a final touch to the library. |
| C．It aimed at making the library last long. |
| D．It indicated the library was a family property. |
The flying car has been talked about for many years, but now it appears to become a reality.
An international company has built a two-seater plane that, at the touch of a button, transforms into a car perfectly suitable for driving on public roads. It takes 15 seconds to switch between flying and driving. With its wings fully open and the propeller(螺旋桨) spinning, it can take off from any airfield.
Flying cars are quicker than traditional ones, and they can run on ordinary fuel. Another big advantage is that they are cool, like something you would see in an action film. At the moment, however, the flying car’s wheels are illegal to leave the ground. That is not because of technical reasons or problems with the design. It is because the various road and aircraft authorities simply cannot agree on whether it is a car or a plane.
Nevertheless the company hopes to produce and deliver its first flying car soon. The company already has orders for 40 of them. The majority potential customers are older and some are retired. There have even been orders from some people who have no pilot’s license.
The flying car will cost around $ 200,000. “For an airplane, that’s a very reasonable price, but for a car, it’s quite expensive,” explains Alan. “But it just is not possible to make a $ 10,000 flying car yet.”
This latest means of transport will not become a mass-market item in the near future, but in the long term it has the potential to change the way you travel. It will become no more expensive than driving your car on the motorway. Travel time could be reduced by more than half.
So the next time you are told to fasten your seat belt, it may be to prepare for take-off.We know from the passage that the flying car .
| A．has to run on special fuel |
| B．will replace traditional planes |
| C．is popular with the rich |
| D．can shift between two forms |
The flying car is presently forbidden to take off because .
| A．many people think driving is not very safe |
| B．it’s hard to decide whether it’s a car or a plane |
| C．the government and the authorities accept it |
| D．there are still some technical problems to be solved |
According to the passage, we can learn .
| A．in the future few people will be able to afford a flying ear |
| B．owning two kinds of driving licenses is of great importance |
| C．because of the appearance of the flying car, traffic jams will disappear |
| D．flying cars may share the market in the future |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Your Car Is Ready for Take-off |
| B．Flying Car Will Be the Leading Means of Transportation |
| C．Affording a Flying Car Is a Necessity |
| D．The Advantages of Flying Cars |
In 1947 a group of famous people from the art world headed by an Austrian conductor decided to hold an international festival of music, dance and theatre in Edinburgh. The idea was to reunite Europe after the Second World War.
It quickly attracted famous names such as Alec Guinness, Richard Button, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich as well as the big symphony orchestras(交响乐团). It became fixed event every August and now attracts 400,000 people yearly.
At the Same time, the “Fringe” appeared as a challenge to the official festival. Eight theatre groups turned up uninvited in1947, in the belief that everyone should have the right to perform, and they did so in a public house disused for years.
Soon, groups of students firstly from Edinburgh University, and later from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham were making the journey to the Scottish capital each summer to perform theatre by little-known writers of plays in small church halls to the people of Edinburgh.
Today the “Fringe”, once less recognized, has far outgrown the festival with around 1,500 performances of theatre, music and dance on every one of the 21 days it lasts. And yet as early as 1959, with only 19 theatre groups performing, some said it was getting too big.
A paid administrator was first employed only in 1971, and today there are eight administrators working all year round and the number rises to 150 during August itself. In 2004 there were 200 places housing 1,695 shows by over 600 different groups from 50 different countries. More than 1.25 million tickets were sold.What was the purpose of Edinburgh Festival at the beginning?
| A．To bring Europe together again. |
| B．To honor heroes of World War II. |
| C．To introduce young theatre groups. |
| D．To attract great artists from Europe. |
Why did some uninvited theatre groups come to Edinburgh in 1947?
| A．They owned a public house there. |
| B．They came to take up a challenge. |
| C．They thought they were also famous. |
| D．They wanted to take part in the festival. |
Who joined the “Fringe” after it appeared?
| A．Popular writers. |
| B．University students. |
| C．Artists from around the world. |
| D．Performers of music and dance. |
We may learn from the text that Edinburgh Festival .
| A．has become a non-official event |
| B．has gone beyond an art festival |
| C．gives shows all year round |
| D．keeps growing rapidly |