When I was about 14, I decided to make money, so I got a part-time job at a local restaurant. With my first paycheck, I realized that I would have to work awfully hard to make very little money. My boss had been making just above minimum wage for 20 years, and I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working to death. Around the same time, my godparents took me to an investment(投资) workshop. Immediately, my eyes were opened to the power of compound growth in investing. I knew that this was a way to financial freedom. I left the workshop, determined to make my money work for me instead of just me working for money.
Honoring what my mother had taught me, to share whatever I had, I donated part of my paychecks to raise money for breast cancer, and saved everything else to build up a large enough nest egg to open a brokerage account (经纪人账户). Too excited to wait, I began reading everything I could about investing. With most of my life savings (which wasn't very much money), I invested in DuPont, AT&T, Caterpillar, and International Paper. The pride in being a shareholder (股东)in a company, along with watching my stocks increase in value, fueled my desire to learn more. I went to three more investment workshops with my godparents and browsed(浏览) books at the library.
I began with $4,000 in my account and have added about $2,000 since then. My portfolio is now worth roughly $12,000, five years later, having grown about 18% per year, on average. My favorite holdings are biotechnology companies that I know a fair amount about because they're based near me.
In the years since then, I have experienced many moments of gratitude for discovering investing so early in my life. I'm in college now, and plan to go on to medical school and become a family practice physician. And I know that, thanks to investing, my road will be much easier. Not only have I taken an active step towards improving my long-term financial future, but I am confident that I will also be able to generously support the causes I believe in with more ease than I otherwise would have imagined.What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A.The working condition in the local restaurant was awful. |
| B.The writer didn’t make much money because he took a temporary job. |
| C.People can’t make a lot of money unless they work hard as hard work always pays. |
| D.The investment workshop taught the writer that he could make money through investment. |
The writer was eager to learn more about investing because ________.
| A.he had invested all his life savings in stocks |
| B.he was too excited to wait to open a brokerage account |
| C.he wanted to donate more to raise money for breast cancer |
| D.he felt proud of being a shareholder with his stocks increasing in value |
Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE according to the passage?
| A.Investing made his wealth grow effectively. |
| B.Investing enabled him to achieve his life goals. |
| C.Investing allowed him to pay off all his debts. |
| D.Investing helped him to reach financial independence. |
The best title of the passage should be __________.
| A.The Rewards of Investing |
| B.My Dream Career |
| C.The Key to Successful Investment |
| D.Thank You, My Godparents |
To many web-building spiders, most of whom are nearly blind, the web is their essential window on the world: their means of communicating, capturing prey, meeting mates and protecting themselves. A web-building spider without its web is like a men cast away on an island of solid rock,totally out of touch and destined to starve to death. So important is the web to an orb-web spider's survival that the animal will continue to construct new webs daily even if it is being starved. For 16 days the starving spider builds completely normal webs. Then, as the animal gets scrawnier, it constructs a wider-meshed (网孔、网眼)web using fewer strands(线). Such webs would only trap larger prey, which is more economical from the perspective of a starving spider. The spider stores energy by recycling web protein. It simply eats its own web each evening and reuses it to produce new silk. In studies with radioactivity, labeled materials, it was found that 95 percent of web protein reappears in the next day web. Most of the energy needed for web-building is used in walking over the strands as they are laid down. Scientists are impressed by the adaptability of the spider's highly preprogrammed brain, which is larger for its size than the brain of any other invertebrate(无脊推动物). If web-building is interrupted, or if some of the existing strands are destroyed, the spider simply goes back to see where the web is left off and then finishes building a normal web. One spider will finish building the incomplete web of another.Which of the following best expresses the main ideas of the passage?
| A.Secrets of Spiders' Adaptability |
| B.Importance of Webs to Spiders |
| C.Secrets of the Spiders' Life |
| D.Spiders' Highly Preprogrammed Brain |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A.Most spiders will stop conducting webs when hungry. |
| B.One Web-building spider usually conducts one web. |
| C.Web-building spiders will probably die without their webs. |
| D.Web-building spiders have good eyesight. |
The underlined word “scrawnier” in the second paragraph probably means ______.
| A.weaker but good-looking |
| B.fatter and stronger |
| C.nice and healthier |
| D.thinner and bony |
A spider's ability to finish an incomplete web proves that ______.
| A.it has a highly preprogrammed brain |
| B.it reuses its web protein to reproduce new silk |
| C.the web is everything for a spider |
| D.it is able to rebuild a destroyed web |
Mr. Robinson had to travel somewhere on business and as he was in a hurry, he decided to go by air. He liked to sit beside a window when he was flying. So, when he got on to the plane, he looked for a window seat. He found all of them had already been taken except one. There was a soldier sitting in the seat beside this one and Mr. Robinson was happy that he had not taken the one by the window; but, anyhow, he at once went towards it. When he reached it, however, he saw there was a notice on it. It was written in ink and said “This seat is reserved for proper load balance. Thank you.” Mr. Robinson had never seen such a notice in a plane before, but he thought that the plane must be carrying something heavy in its baggage room which made it necessary to have the passengers properly balanced, so he walked on and found another empty seat, not beside a window, to sit in. Then, when the plane was quite full, a very beautiful girl stepped into the plane. The soldier quickly took the notice off the seat beside him and in this way succeeded in having the girl beside him during the whole trip. When he got on the plane he was happy to find that _______.
| A.a notice was put in a window seat |
| B.some of the seats were not occupied |
| C.there was a seat that he had hoped to have |
| D.the plane was not very crowded |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A.Mr. Robinson was the last passenger to get on board the plane. |
| B.Mr. Robinson was surprised to see the notice in the seat. |
| C.The window seats were all occupied when Mr. Robinson got on hoard the plane. |
| D.The plane Mr. Robinson took was heavily loaded with luggage. |
In the end Mr. Robinson found out that _________.
| A.the notice was put on the seat by the soldier. |
| B.the solider was waiting for his girl friend |
| C.the girl was the last passenger who got on the plane. |
| D.the seat by the window was kept for the last passenger. |
This short passage may be taken from a _____.
| A.novel | B.news report | C.science fiction | D.magazine. |
For years we have been told that encouraging a child’s self-respect is important to his or her success in life. But child experts are now learning that too much praise can lead to the opposite effect. Praise-aholic kids who expect it at every turn may become teens who seek the same kind of approval from their friends when asked if they want to go in the backseat of the car.
The implication(含义) of saying “You are the prettiest girl in class,” or talking about the goals she scored but not her overall effort, is that you love her only when she looks the best, scores the highest, achieves the most. And this carries over to the classroom.
Social psychologist Carol Dweck, PHD, tested the effects of over-praise on 400 fifth graders while she was at Columbia University. She found that kids praised for “trying hard” did better on tests and were more likely to take on difficult assignments than those praised for being “smart”.
“Praising attributes(品质) or abilities makes a false promise that success will come to you because you have that quality, and it devalues effort, so children are afraid to take on challenges,” says Dweck, now at Stanford University, “They figure they’d better quit while they’re ahead.”The underlined words “Praise-aholic kids” refer to kids who are ______.
| A.tired of being praised | B.worthy of being praised |
| C.very proud of being praised | D.extremely fond of being praised |
The author quoted Dr.Dweck’s words in the last paragraph in order to make the article ______.
| A.better-known | B.better-organized |
| C.more persuasive | D.more interesting |
We can infer from the passage that _______.
| A.praise for efforts should be more encouraged |
| B.praise for results works better than praise for efforts |
| C.praising a child’s achievements benefits his or her success in life |
| D.praising a child’s abilities encourages him or her to take on challenges |
Teachers and parents usually call attention to the pictures when they read storybooks to pre-school children. But a new study suggests that calling attention to the words and letters on the page may lead to better readers.
The two-year study compared children who were read in this way in class with children who were not. Those whose teachers most often discussed the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding. These results were found one year and even two years later.
Shayne Piasta, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, was an author of the study. She says most pre-school teachers would find this method manageable and would need only a small change in the way they teach. They already read story-books in class. The only difference would be increased attention to the printed text. “If you get children to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling.” But she says research suggests that very few parents and teachers do this in a systematic way.
More than 300 children aged four and five were observed in classrooms. They came from poor families and were below average in their language skills. For thirty weeks, the children took part in a program called Project STAR--- Sit Together and Read. The project is based at Ohio State. It tests the short-term and long-term results of reading regularly to pre-school children in their classrooms.
There are different ways that adults can talk to children about print. They can point to a letter and discuss it, and even trace the shape with a finger. They can point out a word and discuss the meaning of the print or how the words tell the story. And they can talk about the organization of the print--- for instance, showing how words are written left to right in English. What do we know about the ways pre-school children are usually taught?
| A.More attention is paid to the pictures ,with words and letters being ignored. |
| B.Preference is given to the shape of letters and the organization of the print. |
| C.The focus of the teaching is on bringing them up to be good readers. |
| D.Equal attention is paid to the texts and the pictures. |
What does Shayne Piasta suggest pre-school teachers should do in class?
| A.Teach children how to draw pictures to get an idea of what they mean. |
| B.Change the way they teach and pay more attention to words and letters. |
| C.Adopt different methods according to the students’ difference in reading skills. |
| D.Read storybooks to children rather than explain the meaning of the pictures. |
Which of the following is TRUE about the study on language skills of pre-school children?
| A.Many teachers want to change their way of teaching pre-school children. |
| B.Attention on the pictures has made the children uninterested in reading. |
| C.Project STAR aims to research into the results of reading books to pre-school children in the classroom. |
| D.Teachers are often prevented from taking different approaches to language teaching. |
Which section of a magazine does the passage probably come from?
| A.Fashion. | B.Economy . | C.Entertainment. | D.Education. |
Online Money Earning
Yes you can earn money online without any investment or without anytime limit. I have many useful easy methods for earning easy money while we all spend our useful time on the Internet by surfing, chatting, downloading and other work. There is no need to stop any other work. We can earn with or without our daily routine. Here I tell you the complete method for online earning.
First Method
Earn money with “Bux. to”. You can earn money through “Bux.to” by clicking on ads on “Bux. to” site. First you need to open an account at “Bux. to”.
“Bux. To” is a new international and FREE English based service that allows advertisers to reach thousands of potential customers by displaying their ads on our “Surf Ads” page. An exact calculated percentage of all advertising income is paid to our members. “Bux. to” makes money through advertising.
How you make money
You view websites in 30 seconds through the “Surf Ads” page. Once the 30 seconds is up, you’ll either get a green tick(对号) sign or a red “x”. The green tick sign means you’ve earned $0.01and the “x” means you have not earned money for the visit. You’ll get red x’s when you have more than one websites from the “Surf Ads” page open. When this happens, you get no credit.
Earnings example
You click 10 ads per day =$0.10
20 referrals(转送) click 10 ads per day =$2.00
Your daily earnings =$2.10
Your weekly earnings =$14.70
Your monthly earnings =$63.00
How to get paid
If you have at least $10.00 accumulated, you can click on your account balance within your states area and it will meet your request. At present, it only makes payments through “AlertPay”. It will soon be using other methods of payment.
AlertPay is the payment processing solution that we use to pay members. Your AlertPay address is the e-mail address you use to register with AlertPay. You can get a free AlertPay account at http:// alertpay. com.
Method 2 will publish soon… What is the author’s purpose of writing this passage?
| A.To tell an interesting story. |
| B.To introduce a surprising way to earn money. |
| C.To solve a puzzling problem. |
| D.To present an exciting research. |
You can earn money by ________.
| A.chatting online | B.advertising some products |
| C.clicking on advertisement | D.choosing green ticks or x’s |
The underlined word “accumulated” can be replaced by “_________”.
| A.wasted | B.spent | C.lost | D.gathered |
What can we know from the passage?
| A.You’ll earn $0.10 if you click 1 ad. |
| B.You’ll get many green ticks if you have many websites open. |
| C.You can get your payments through AlertPay. |
| D.Your AlertPay account is not for free. |