As the new semester begins,millions of college students across the country are trying hard to remember how best to write a paper-or,more likely,how best to delay that paper.
Procrastination is the thief of time and a lot of students suffer from it.They can spend whole days in the library doing nothing but staring into space,eating snacks,surfing the Internet,watching videos and looking at their pretty peers sitting around them,who,most likely,are doing nothing either.
Paralyzed by their habit to procrastinate,they write micro blogs about their fears,asking their online friends if they sometimes have the same issue.But this does nothing to solve their problems.
According to a recent report by the BBC,95 percent of us procrastinate at some point and 20 percent of the world’s population are procrastinators,complicating their lives with their continual delaying of tasks.
Procrastinators like to find excuses to justify their behavior,but BBC columnist Rowan Pelling says they are all wrong.Many procrastinators tell themselves they are perfectionists who work best under pressure.Pelling says this is nonsense,as work done at the last minute is more likely to have mistakes than work done on time.
She says the behavior of procrastinators often makes them feel flustered and ashamed,inconveniences others,and annoys loved ones.
Fortunately,social scientists have made tireless efforts to understand this behavioral shortcoming and offer strategies to control it.Piers Steel,a Canadian social scientist and author of The Procrastination Equation,believes humankind is“designed”to procrastinate.Nevertheless,he suggests a couple of good ways to get through the task at hand.
The first one is obvious:Break the task down into small pieces and work your way through them methodically.
The second is clever:Give a trusted friend a sum of money and tell them that if you don’t complete the task you have undertaken by a specific time,they can keep it or donate it to a cause you hate.What does the underlined word“Procrastination” in the second paragraph refer to?
A.A bad habit of putting work or tasks off. |
B.A thief who steals time and money in college. |
C.A college student who learns nothing. |
D.A study way of doing nothing in the library. |
According to Rowan Pelling,we can learn that procrastinators .
A.can find reasonable excuses for their behavior |
B.are able to work best under pressure |
C.are more likely to avoid mistakes at work[] |
D.may upset themselves and their loved ones more frequently |
Which of the following may Piers Steel support?
A.Human beings are not born to be procrastinators. |
B.Complete your tasks or work step by step. |
C.Give your trusted friend money and ask him to help you finish your tasks. |
D.You can’t control procrastination but you can avoid it. |
What’she best title of the text?
A.Who steals my time? |
B.The solutions to procrastination |
C.I’ll do it tomorrow,I swear! |
D.Don’t do nothing! |
We had known for along time that flowers of different plants open and close at different time of day. Yet no one really understands why flowers open and close like this at special time. The question is not as simple as we might think, as recent experiments have shown. In one experiment, flowers were kept in constant (持续的)darkness. We might expect that the flowers ,without any information about the time of the day, did not open as they usually do. In fact, they continue to open at their usual time. This shows that they have some special ways of knowing the time. Their sense(感觉) time does not depend on information from the outside world. It is inside them: a kind of "inner (内部的)clock". This discovery may not seem to be very important. However, it is later found that not just plants but animals have this "inner clock" which control(控制)the working of their bodies and influences their activities. Human beings, then, are also influenced by it. Whether we wish or not, itaffectssuch things in our life as our need for sleep or need for food.Before the experiment arrived at a conclusion, people had thought that the flowers would____.
A.never open in constant darkness |
B.change their usual time to open |
C.open ahead of the time as they usually did |
D.continue to open at usual time |
The sense of time that flowers have is connected with_____________.
A.its age and size |
B.light and temperature |
C.a kind of strange power(力量)inside them |
D.some unknown information from the outside world |
What will happen if we make good use of the "inner clock"
A.We'll need less sleep or food. |
B.We'll be able to sleep as long as we wish to. |
C.We'll be able to change our work time when necessary. |
D.We'll have more energy to do our work better. |
What's the Chinese meaning of the underlined word" affects"
A.产生 | B.影响 | C.给予 | D.依赖 |
Roger was a thief,but he wasn't very clever. When he was in school, he stole apples or oranges from other children. Sometimes he stole pencils or books from other children. But he always got caught.
The teacher spoke to Roger's parents and they tried to stop him from stealing things, but Roger wouldn't stop. He kept stealing.
When he was older, he began to steal from stores, but he was still stupid. Once, he went into a store wearing the clothes he had stolen the day before. The still had the price tags(标签) on them, and the store manager called the police. They warned him that he would go to jail if he didn't stop stealing.
Then Roger decided to rob a bank. He planned everything. He got some gloves so that he would not leave fingerprints, and a mask so that no one would recognize him.
" But what if they recognize my voice?" he thought.
He decided to write his message on a piece of paper so that he wouldn't need to speak. He found an old envelope and wrote "give me all the money" on the back of it. He got a toy gun and went to the bank. He put on his mask and his gloves( and showed the note to the bank clerk. The clerk gave him all the money, and Roger ran out of the bank and went home.
Ten minutes later he heard a knock on the door. It was the police. They had come to arrest him for robbing the bank.
" How did you find me so quickly?" asked Roger
" It was easy," said the police." Your address was on the envelope!"How old was Roger when he started stealing things?
A.10 | B.40 | C.70 | D.22 |
What is something Roger did not steal?
A.money | B.food | C.a shirt | D.a bicycle |
In this story, the underline word "recognize" means __________.
A.know | B.make | C.watch | D.understand |
How did the police catch Roger?
A.His friend worked in the bank. | B.The clerk knew his voice. |
C.They found his picture. | D.They knew his address. |
Sam, a dog, was left behind in Colorado while his owners, Mr. And Mrs. Green moved to Southern California. They did not give the dog up. They found him a very nice home before they moved. They would have let Sam accompany them, but they were afraid the dog’s presence would make it difficult for them to rent a house when they reached their destination.
The Green family lived in Colorado for less than a year. Before that, they had lived in the same neighborhood in California to which they returned. So Sam had been there before, but only for a short time when he was young.
Several months after the Greens left Colorado, after they were comfortably settled back in California, they heard a scratch at the door. They couldn’t imagine who might be there. It never occurred to them that it might be Sam, because they were sure he was happily set up with his new family back in Colorado. When they opened the door, the Greens saw a dirty, tired dog with very hurting feet. The animal looked a little bit like Sam, but no one could believe that Sam could have walked 840 miles on his own. The tired dog spent the night under the family car. The next day, when he was more rested, he performed some of his old tricks. The Greens knew they had their own dog back. The story suggests that _______ .
A.dog owners have trouble renting | B.many people treat their pets badly |
C.keeping a dog is easy | D.dogs are too much trouble |
Which is the right order of the following events according to the passage?
a. Sam walked to California. b. The Greens moved to Colorado.
c. The Greens left Sam. d. The Greens returned to California.
e. Sam spent the night under the family car.
A.b, d, c, e, a | B.b, c, d, a, e | C.a, c, b, e, d | D.c, e, d, a, b |
The underlined word “destination” in the first paragraph means _________.
A.the cost of living | B.the country of one’s birth |
C.the damage to oneself | D.the place to which one is going |
The Greens knew the dog was Sam ________.
A.because of his hurting feet | B.from the color and the markings |
C.by the way he walked | D.after he did some tricks |
A good memory is a great help in learning a language. Everybody learns his own language by remembering what he hears when he is a small child, and some children, like boys and girls who live abroad with their parents, seem to learn two languages almost as easily as one. In school it is not easy to learn a second language because the pupils have so little time for it, and they are busy with other subjects, too.
A man’s mind is rather like a camera, but it takes photos not only of what we see but of what we feel, hear, smell and taste. When we take a real photo with a camera, there is much to do before the photo is finished and ready to show to our friends. In the same way there is much work to be done before we can keep a picture forever in our mind.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. We usually begin to learn our own language by ________ it.
A.speaking | B.hearing | C.saying | D.teaching |
If you have a good ________ , you’ll have less difficulty in learning something.
A.teacher | B.camera | C.memory | D.family |
The children who live abroad with their parents can learn two languages more easily, because ______.
A.they are very clever | B.they have good teachers |
C.they have more chances to use these languages | D.they have a better life |
Memory is ________ that we write in our mind and carry about.
A.the best diary | B.the best camera | C.a great help | D.a beautiful picture |
It’s not easy growing up. Growing up can be a real “pain” for some of us. Sometimes we feel trapped, sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we are fearful, and sometimes we just don’t understand why we can’t stay young forever. But we should take a look back on all the hardships in life with a positive attitude and learn from them. We must overcome every obstacle one small step at a time. We should realize that all of our growing pains actually turn into growing gains!
Throughout our lives we are going to face many challenges and pains, but we should never let these obstacles keep us from following our dreams. We must overcome every obstacle one small step at a time.
As a young girl, my parents forced me to do so many things that I didn’t like. They made me learn to play the violin and then the piano. At that time I hated music and I also hated them. But looking back now, I am so glad that my parents encouraged me to take music lessons. Music has enriched(丰富) my life in so many ways. I now realize that my parents and teachers wanted me to have a better life than they did themselves.
We are all going to experience growing pains, but they are just part of our life. They might seem so huge at the time, but we must be strong. Think about how we would feel if we had no challenges and lived a life like that. Life would be really boring and meaningless. The future is ours! A little hard work and sweat never hurt anyone! If we realize that these pains are just small bumps(碰撞) on our road to success, we will realize that our growing pains are actually growing gains!The underlined word “obstacles” (in Paragraph 2) roughly means things that ______.
A.are related to your studies |
B.you easily achieve |
C.make you happy |
D.make it difficult for you to do something |
How does the author now feel when remembering what her parents did for her in the past?
A.She is fearful | B.She is grateful |
C.She feels trapped | D.She feels hateful |
We can know from the last paragraph that _____________.
A.life without challenges is dull |
B.life needs no pains but sunshine and happiness |
C.we should give up faced with challenges as the future is ours |
D.we shouldn’t easily pay a little hard work in growing up |
The purpose of the passage is to tell readers____________.
A.life is full of hardships |
B.growing pains can turn into growing gains in a positive way |
C.everyone is painful in growing up |
D.everyone should do what they don’t like when young |