MindovermatterisanEnglishsayin-优题课

Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? Recently a test was given in the United States. Those tested included people of different ages, from 12 to 83. During the experiment, these people were given all kinds of breakfasts, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Special tests were set up to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten a certain kind of breakfast. The results show that if a person eats a proper breakfast, he or she will work with better effect than if he or she has no breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person works with his brains. If a student eats fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he will learn more quickly and listen with more attention to class.
Opposite to what many people believe, if you don't eat breakfast, you will not lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch, and end up gaining weight instead of losing. You will probably lose more weight if you reduce your other meals.
60. During the test, those who were tested were given ________.
A. no breakfast at all B. very rich breakfast
C. little food for breakfast D. different breakfast or none
61. The results of the test show that ________.
A. breakfast has great effect on work and studies
B. breakfast has little to do with a person s work
C. a person will work better if he has a simple breakfast
D. those working with brains should have much for breakfast
62. The passage mentions that many people believe that if you don't eat breakfast, you will _________.
A. lose weight B. not lose weight
C. be healthierD. gain a lot of weight
63. According to the passage, if a student does not eat breakfast, ___________.
A. he will fall ill B. he will fail to listen to his teacher
C. he will not make progress in his study D. his mind will work more slowly

A young woman carrying a three-year-old child got on a bus. The conductor hurried to give her a warm welcome and then kindly asked the other passengers to make more room for the woman and her child. On seeing this, people began to talk. "You know this conductor used to be very rude. Now suddenly he has changed his bad behavior , "said a middle-aged man.
"Yes, he should be praised and we must write a letter to the company," said a second passenger. "That's right," another lady said, "I wish a newspaper reporter were here so that more people could learn from this conductor. "
Just then a gentleman who looked like a teacher turned to the conductor and said , "Excuse me, but can I know your name, please? Your excellent service must be praised..."
Before he could open his mouth, the three-year-old child sitting on the young woman's lap interrupted, "I know his name. I call him Dad."
56. One passenger suggested writing a letter to the company to ______ .
A. make a demand for more buses B. thank the conductor for his good service
C. criticize the conductor for his rude behavior
D. invite a newspaper reporter to write about the conductor
57. What was the gentleman?
A. A teacher. B. A newspaper reporter.
C. Not known from the story. D. The conductor's friend from his company.
58. The word "him" in the last paragraph refers to _______.
A. the gentleman B. the conductor C. the middle-aged man D. the three-year-old child
59. It is clear from the story that the conductor _______.
A. has changed his attitude towards his work B. has now been kind and polite to all passengers
C. has not changed his rude behavior to passengers
D. has now been kind and polite to women with children

As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friend’s house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone (语气) of airy acceptance. It’s similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.
We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though, seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.
Often we got “lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical; the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches, easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.
It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence（青春期. In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.
57. The author and his friends were often out in the woods to _______.
A. spend their free time B. play golf and other sports
C. avoid doing their schoolwork D. keep away from their parents
58. What can we infer from Paragraph 2?
A. The activities in the woods were well planned.
B. Human history is not the result of exploration.
C. Exploration should be a systematic activity.
D. The author explored in the woods aimlessly.
59. The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.
A. calm B. doubtful C. serious D. optimistic
60. How does the author feel about his childhood?
A. Happy but short. B. Lonely but memorable.
C. Boring and meaningless. D. Long and unforgettable.
57-60 ADBA

Over the last 70 years, researchers have been studying happy and unhappy people and finally found out ten factors that make a difference. Our feelings of well-being at any moment are determined to a certain degree by genes. However, of all the factors, wealth and age are the top two.
Money can buy a degree of happiness. But once you can afford to feed, clothe and house yourself, each extra dollar makes less and less difference.
Researchers find that, on average, wealthier people are happier. But the link between money and happiness is complex. In the past half-century, average income has sharply increased in developed countries, yet happiness levels have remained almost the same. Once your basic needs are met, money only seems to increase happiness if you have more than your friends, neighbors and colleagues.
“Dollars buy status, and status makes people feel better,” conclude some experts, which helps explain why people who can seek status in other ways—scientists or actors, for example—may happily accept relatively poorly-paid jobs.
In a research, Professor Alex Michalos found that the people whose desires—not just for money, but for friends, family, job, health—rose furthest beyond what they already had, tended to be less happy than those who felt a smaller gap (差距). Indeed, the size of the gap predicted happiness about five times better than income alone. “The gap measures just blow away the only measures of income.” says Michalos.
Another factor that has to do with happiness is age. Old age may not be so bad. “Given all the problems of aging, how could the elderly be more satisfied? ” asks Protessor Laura Carstensen.
In one survey, Carstensen interviewed 184 people between the ages of 18 and 94, and asked them to fill out an emotions questionnaire. She found that old people reported positive emotions just as often as young people, but negative emotions much less often.
Why are old people happier? Some scientists suggest older people may expect life to be harder and learn to live with it, or they’re more realistic abour their goals, only setting ones that they know they can achieve. But Carstensen thinks that with time running out, older people have learned to focus on things that make them happy and let go of those that don’t.
“People realize not only what they have, but also that what they have cannot last forever,” she says. “A goodbye kiss to a husband or wife at the age of 85, for example, may bring far more complex emotional responses than a similar kiss to a boy or girl friend at the age of 20.”
53. According to the passage, the feeling of happiness .
A. is determined partly by genes B. increases gradually with age
C. has little to do with wealth D. is measured by desires
54. Some actors would like to accept poorly-paid jobs because the jobs.
A. make them feel much better B. provide chances to make friends
C. improve their social position D. satisfy their professional interests
55. Aged people are more likely to feel happy because they are more .
A. optimistic B. successful C. practical D. emotional
56. Professor Alex Michalos found that people feel less happy if .
A. the gap between reality and desire is bigger
B. they have a stronger desire for friendship
C. their income is below their expectation
D. the hope for good health is greater

Tell a story and tell it well, and you may open wide the eyes of a child, open up lines of communication in a business, or even open people’s mind to another culture or race.
People in many places are digging up the old folk stories and the messages in them. For example, most American storytellers get their tales from a wide variety of sources, cultures, and times. They regard storytelling not only as a useful tool in child education, but also as a meaningful activity that helps adults understand themselves as well as those whose culture may be very different from their own.
“Most local stories are based on a larger theme,” American storyteller Opalanga Pugh says, “Cinderella (灰姑娘), or the central idea of a good child protected by her goodness, appears in various forms in almost every culture of the world.”
Working with students in schools, Pugh helps them understand their own cultures and the general messages of the stories. She works with prisoners too, helping them knowing who they are by telling stories that her listeners can write, direct, and act in their own lives. If they don’t like the story they are living, they can rewrite the story. Pugh also works to help open up lines of communication between managers and workers. “For every advance in business,” she says, “there is a greater need for communication.” Storytelling can have a great effect on either side of the manager-worker relationship, she says.
Pugh spent several years in Nigeria, where she learned how closely storytelling was linked to the everyday life of the people there. The benefits of storytelling are found everywhere, she says.
“I learned how people used stories to spread their culture,” she says, “What I do is to focus on the value of the stories that people can translate into their own daily world of affairs. We are all storytellers. We all have a story to tell. We tell everybody’s story.”
49. What do we learn about American storyteller from Paragraph 2?
A. They share the same way of storytelling.
B. They prefer to tell the stories from other cultures.
C. They learn their stories from the American natives.
D. They find storytelling useful for both children and adults.
50. The underlined sentence (Paragraph 4) suggests that prisoners can _____.
A. start a new life B. settle down in another place
C. direct films D. become good actors
51. Pugh has practised storytelling with _____ groups of people.
A. 2 B. 3 C. 4 D. 5
52. What is the main idea of the text?
A. Storytelling can influence the way people think.
B. Storytelling is necessary to the growth of business.
C. Storytelling is the best way to educate children in school.
D. Storytelling helps people understand themselves and others.

A．is dressed in white	B．has a physical exam
C．takes placebo pills	D．sees a doctor