As we all know, the Dragon Boat Festival is our country’s traditional festival, but do you know there is also a Dragon Boat Festival in South Korea, which also falls on May 5 of the luar calendar(阴历)? It has been reported that South Korea will apply to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 联合国教科文组织) to make the celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival its own intangible cultural heritage (非物质的文化遗产). If successful, people from other countries may see the Dragon Festival as a Korean creation.
As the birthplace of the yearly event more than 2,000 years ago, China is not happy with the situation. "It would be a shame if another country successfully made a traditional Chinese festival part of its own cultural heritage ahead of China," said Zhou Heping, deputy(副) culture minister. The Ministry of Culture is even thinking of making its own application to UNESCO, covering all traditional Chinese festivals, including the Dragon Boat event.
It is thought that the festival is held in memory of the great poet Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), who lived in the State of Chu during the Warring States Period. Qu was known to be a patriot (爱国者) and admired by ordinary people.
He is said to have jumped into Miluo River, because he had lost hope in his country's future. When people heard about Qu's death, they sailed up and down the river searching for his body. They also beat the drums to frighten away the fish and threw Zongzi into the water to stop the fish touching Qu. Dragon boat racing is said to come from this search for the poet's body.
Over the years, the Dragon Boat Festival has spread throughout the world. In Japan and Viet Nam, as well as South Korea, the festival has mixed with and become part of the local culture.The Dragon Boat Festival _______.
| A．is also kept by South Korea |
| B．comes from South Korea |
| C．was created by South Korea |
| D．is South Korea’s cultural heritage |
What is the reaction of the Ministry of Culture to South Korea’s intending to make the Dragon Boat Festival its own culture heritage?
| A．Fighting against South Korea |
| B．Telling South Korea it’s not right to do so |
| C．Considering to do the similar thing |
| D．Asking South Korea not to do so. |
What is the purpose of the Dragon Boat Festival’s being held?
| A．In memory of Qu Yuan |
| B．In memory of all the patriots of China |
| C．To frighten away the fish |
| D．In honor of QuYuan’s birthday |
After Qu Yuan’s death, Zongzi was thrown into the water to _______.
| A．feed him. |
| B．protect his body from going bad. |
| C．prevent the fish biting his body |
| D．attract his soul |
Now, the Dragon Boat Festival has become ______ activity.
| A．a nationwide | B．a worldwide |
| C．an Asian | D．a foreign |
（BBC）The "father of the personal computer" who kick-started the careers of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen has died at the age of 68. Dr Henry Ed
ward Roberts was the inventor of the Altair 8800, a machine that led to the home computer age.
Gates and Allen contacted Dr Roberts after seeing the machine on the front cover of a magazine and offered to write software for it. The program was known as Altair-Basic, the foundation of Microsoft's business. "Ed was willing to take a chance on us - two young guys interested in computers , and we have always been thankful to hi
m," the Microsoft founders said in a statement.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told technology website CNET that Dr Roberts had taken " a critically important step that led to everything we have today".
Dr Roberts was the founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), originally set up to sell electronics parts to model rocket hobbyists. The company went on to sell electronic calculator parts, but was soon overshadowed by bigger firms.
In the mid-1970's, with the firm struggling with debt, Dr Roberts began to develop a computer kit(配套零件) for hobbyists. The result was the Altair 8800. The $395 kit (around £1,000 today) was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics in 1975, resulting in a flood of orders.
Amongst those interested in the machine were Paul Allen and Bill Gates. The pair contacted Dr Roberts, offering to write software that would help people program the machine. The pair finally moved to Albuquerque - the home of MITS - where they founded Micro-Soft, to develop their software.
Dr Roberts sold his company in 1977. He died in hospital on 1 April after a long period of pneumonia．(肺炎)Why did Dr Roberts probably decide to sell his company?
| A．Because he was in heavy debt in the mid-1980's . |
| B．Because he wanted to take a chance on Gates and Allen. |
C．Because he  wanted to develop a computer kit for hobbyists. |
| D．Because he had difficulty competing with big companies. |
What do we know about MITS?
| A．It was set up by Steve Wozniak. |
| B．It sold electronics parts to big firms. |
| C．It is located in Albuquerque. |
| D．It is a technology website. |
We can learn that Popular Electronics is likely to be ____.
| A．a newspaper | B．a magazine | C．a Website | D．an organization |
What is the best title of this passage?
| A．The story of the Altair 8800 |
| B．The founder of MITS |
| C．Father of the personal computer died |
| D．The story of Dr Roberts |
Funny English Errors and Insights
Laugh... And Learn!
Welcome tothe website for Funny English Errors and Insights (2010), a new book of unconscious humour published by the National Library of Australia.
Funny English Errors and Insights will be launched at the National Library in Canberra on 29th, October 2010.
In the meantime, explore this website for other collections of real-life English language mistakes,including funny answers to exam questions, media misprints, and silly signs.
See Funny English Errors: The B List for more than a hundred examples of funny English gaffes（失言）. For more funny English errors, read author Troy Simpson's blog. For still more examples,, join this website to download a free PDF version of English As She Is Taught, which lists our top 250 funny English language mistakes from that classic howlers book.
Join this website FREE, and you can also:
oEnter member-only competitions
oContribute your comments
oDownload free e-Cards
oBe the first to know about our much-anticipated book, Funny English Errors and Insights (2010) ...
Features
Follows in the tradition of the runaway best-seller Howler
s books of the 1920s and 1930s
oIncludes quotes(引文) that have never been published before in this way
oIncludes more than 30 carefully selected funny photos
oTopics include English, science, history, geography, religion, mathematics, and more
oA perfect gift for students, teachers, parents, grandparents, public speakers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, clergy and religious, and anyone with a sense of humour! The word launched in the second paragraph is closest to the meaning:
| A．sent up for the first time. | B．written for the first time. |
| C．for sale for the first time. | D．printed for the first time. |
On the website ,you can do the following things except.
| A．read some funny news |
| B．know something about this book previously |
| C．find a lot of examples about English errors |
| D．express your opinions freely |
About this book, you know that .
| A．it only includesEnglish, science, history |
B．it is quite different from Howlers books |
| C．all the quotes in it are familiar with us | |
| D．it is intended for people all walks of life |
The text is aimed at introducing .
| A．a popular website | B．some selected funny photos |
| C．a new book | D．some funny English errors |
Maggiano is an award-w
inning teacher in the Social Studies Department at West Springfield High School in Virginia. He has taught in public and private schools for 25 years .In a piece on his blog called “The Classroom Post,” he calls for more males to enter the profession(职业).
Men Teach, a non-profit organization that encourages men to enter teaching, reports that in 2008, 18.8% of all elementary and middle school teachers were men. At the high school level during the same year, men comprised（构成） 44% of the work force.
Why are there so few men in teaching? Men Teach says low pay and lack of prestige（声望）, as well as a perception in our culture that teaching is for women. As a result, there is no organized effort across the country to attract men into the teaching profession.
A study in 2008 by the National Education Association showed that the number of male teachers hit a record 40-year low. Males comprised 24.5 percent of public schoolteachers. States with high percentages: Kansas (33.6 percent), Oregon (31.6 percent), Alaska (30.9 percent) and Indiana (30.5percent).States with the lowest percentage : Arkansas (16.2 percent), Virginia (17.4 percent), Mississippi (17.5 percent), Louisiana (18 percent), South Carolina (18.5 percent) and Georgia (19.7 percent).
There is no definitive(确定) research that male students--or female students, for that matter-- learn better from a particular sex.
But as Maggiano put it, “Kids today, both boys and girls, must have the same opportunity to learn from outstanding, devoted men that I did. However, I have heard little discussion about this problem coming from our national leaders. What w
orries Maggiano is that_______.
| A．nobody will take his place when he retires |
| B．male teachers are not so excellent |
| C．men are not interested in teaching |
| D．there is not enough teachers in the schools |
According to the text , we can infer that______.
| A．the number of male teachers hit a record 40-year low in 2008 |
| B．it is not sure students will learn better from male teachers |
| C．male teachers get a higher pay |
| D．organized efforts have been made to call on men into the teaching profession |
In which state are male teachers most badly needed?
| A．Alaska | B．Virginia | C．Georgia | D．Arkansas |
What does the last paragraph suggest?
| A．The government doesn’t pay much attention to the shortage. of male teachers in the school. |
| B．Students find it easy to learn from male teachers. |
| C．I’m glad to hear the discussion about the shortage of male teachers in the school. |
| D．The shortage of male teachers in the school has no effect on students. |
After more than a year of bitter political debate, President Obama sat down in the White House East Room on March 23 and signed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law with a pen，and then another pen，and another. Obama used 22 pens to sign the 
$938 billion health care bill.
The practice of using different pens to sign important legislation（法规）dates at least as far back as Franklin Roosevelt. The reason is fairly simple. The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often give pens to supporters of the newly signed legislation. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he reportedly used more than 75 pens and gave one of the first ones to Martin Luther King Jr. And in 1996, President Clinton gave the four pens he used to sign the Line-Item Veto bill to those most likely to appreciate the bill's consequence.
Once they're given away, some pens end up in museums; others are displayed proudly in recipients'(接受者) offices or homes. But they sometimes appear again, like in the 2008 presidential campaign（竞选活动）, when John Macain promised to use the same pen given to him by President Reagan to 
cut pork from the federal budget.
Not
every President goes for the multipen signature, however. President George W. Bush preferred signing bills with only one pen and then offering several unuse
d "gift" pens as souvenirs. .We can learn from paragraph 1 that the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .
| A．has been passed easily |
| B．was put forward one year ago |
| C．becomes law in the USA |
| D．is unimportant |
How are the pens dealt with after being used by President Obama?
| A．Supporters of the newly signed legislation are likely to get some of them. |
| B．Obama will keep them. |
| C．They will be just set aside |
| D．They will be sold to the public at a high price. |
What can we learn about John Macain?
A. He was ever President in the USA.
B. He took part in the 2008 presidential campaign.
C. He never used the pen given by Reagan.
D. He was only concerned about his own business.What does this passage mainly tell us ?
A. Obama signed the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
B. It is a practice to use multiple pens to sign important legislation in the USA.
C. Pens are necessary in the signature.
D. All the presidents like the multipen signature.
Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting creatures,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative meaning.
So it seems contradictory to talk about habits in the same context as innovation （创新）. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
Rather than dismissing ourselves as unch
angeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try, the more creative we become.
But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel path
ways that can bypass those old roads.
“The first thing needed for innovation is attraction to wonder,”says Dawna Markova, author of The Open Mind.“But we are taught instead to ‘decide’, just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider’．”She adds, however, that“to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
“All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware,”she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the ability to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, collaboratively （合作地） and innovatively. At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that ability, preserving only those ways of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.
The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us use our innovative and collaborative ways of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system—that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will…and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have preserved, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.”This is where developing new habits comes in.Brain researchers have discovered that .
| A．the forming of new habits can be guided |
| B．the development of habits can be predicted |
| C．the regulation of old habits can be transformed |
| D．the track of new habits can be created unconsciously |
The underlined word“ruts”in Paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to.
| A．zones | B．connections | C．situations | D．tracks |
Which of the following statements most probably agrees with Dawna Markova’s view?
| A．Decision makes no sense in choices. |
| B．Curiosity makes creative minds active. |
| C．Creative ideas are born of a relaxing mind. |
| D．Formation of innovation comes from fantastic ideas. |
The purpose of the author writing this article is to persuade us.
| A．to give up our traditional habits deliberately |
| B．to create and develop new habits consciously |
| C．to resist the application of standardized testing |
| D．to believe that old habits conflict with new habits |