Work Your Mind
Here’s something to think about the next time you ask your teacher for help: struggling with schoolwork on your own can help you learn. According to a recent study, the more you struggle while you are learning new information, the better you can remember it later.
This theory might surprise you. When teachers are presenting new information, they often give students lots of help. But a new study shows this may not be the best way to support learning. “Don't be too quick to get help when learning something new,” education expert Manu Kapur told TFK. “Try to work on it yourself even if it means trying different ways.”
Kapur came up with the idea that struggling can lead to better learning. Then he tested it out on students in Singapore. He separated students into two groups. In the first group, students were asked to solve math problems with the teacher’s help. In the second group, students were asked to solve the same problems by helping one another, instead of getting help from the teacher.
With the teacher’s help, students in the first group were able to find the correct answers. Students in the second group did not solve the problems correctly. But they did come up with a lot of good ideas. The students were then tested on what they had learned. The group without any help from a teacher scored much higher than the group who had help. Kapur said working to find the answers helped students understand the process, not just the solution.
Kapur’s advice for kids is to put a lot of effort into learning something new rather than going to your teacher for help. “Simply doing a little work or nothing at all won’t work,” says Kapur. “The struggle needs to be a genuine attempt to figure out or solve a problem in as many ways as possible.” 
小題1:When you have doubt on schoolwork, you’d better ____________.

A．a(chǎn)sk your teacher for help

B．make it clear by yourself

C．a(chǎn)sk your classmates to help you

D．a(chǎn)sk your parents for help

小題2:What’s Manu Kapur educational idea on learning new knowledge?

A．Give students much help as soon as possible.

B．Let students learn it on themselves in one way.

C．Let students learn it by themselves in the same way.

D．Let students learn it for themselves in different ways.

小題3:How did Kapur check his idea on better learning?

A．By asking questions.

B．By solving art problems.

C．By group comparations.

D．By solving science problems.

小題4:What is most important in learning knowledge?

A．Getting the teacher’s help.

B．Getting the student’s help.

C．Grasping the learning course.

D．Receiving the final solution.

Baby girls make their way directly for dolls as soon as they can crawl, while boys will head for cars, a study has shown. The findings, the first to show differences in very young babies, suggest there is a biological basis to their preferences.
Psychologists Dr Brenda Todd from City University London carried out an experiment involving 90 babies aged 9 months to 36 months. The babies were allowed to choose from seven toys. Some were typically boys’ toys ---- a car, a digger, a ball and a blue teddy. The rest were girls’ toys: a pink teddy, a doll and a cooking set. They were placed a meter away from the toys；and could pick whichever toy they liked their choice and the amount of time they spent playing with each toy were recorded.
Of the youngest children (9 to 14 months), girls spent significantly longer playing with the doll than boys, and boys spent much more time with the car and ball than the girls did. Among the two and three-year-olds, girls spent 50 percent of the time playing with the doll while only two boys briefly touched it. The boys spent almost 90 percent of their time playing with cars, which the girls barely touched. There was no link between the parents’ view on which toys were more appropriate for boys or girls, and the children’s choice.
Dr Brenda Todd said, “Children of this age are already exposed to much socialization. Boys may be given ‘toys that go’ while girls get toys they can care for, which may help shape their preference. But these findings agree with the former idea that children show natural interests in particular kinds of toys. There could be a biological basis for their choices. Males through evolution have been adapted to prefer: moving objects, probably through hunting instincts（本能）, while girls prefer warmer colors such as pink, the colour of a newborn baby.”                                
小題1:Baby boys and girls have different toy preferences probably because ________.

A．baby boys are much more active

B．baby girls like bright colours more

C．their parents treat them differently

D．there is a natural difference between them

小題2:Both baby boys and baby girls like to play with ________ according to the study.

A．a(chǎn) ball

B．a(chǎn) teddy

C．a(chǎn) car

D．a(chǎn) doll

小題3:What can we infer from Paragraph 3?

A．Nine-month-old baby boys don’t play with dolls at all.

B．Two-year-old baby girls sometimes play with cars and balls.

C．The older the babies are, the more obvious their preference is.

D．Parents should teach their babies to share each other’s toys.

小題4:What conclusion did Dr. Brenda Todd draw from the results of the study?

A．Adults purposely influence their babies’ preference.

B．Babies’ preference isn’t affected by social surroundings.

C．Baby boys preferring to moving toys will be good at hunting.

D．Baby girls preferring warmer colors will be warm-hearted.

As computers become more popular in China, Chinese people are increasingly relying on computer keyboards to input Chinese characters. But if they use the computer too much, they may end up forgetting the exact strokes（筆畫）of each Chinese character when writing on paper. Experts suggest people, especially students, write by hand more.
Do you write by hand more or type more? In Beijing, students start using a computer as early as primary school. And computer dependence is more wide-spread among university students. Almost all their assignments and essays are typed on a computer.
All the students interviewed say they usually use a computer.
It's faster and easier to correct if using a computer. And that's why computers are being applied more and more often to modern education. But when people are taking stock in computers increasingly, problems appear.
“When I'm writing with a pen, I find I often can't remember how to write a character, though I feel I’m familiar with it.”
“I'm not in the mood to write when faced with a pen and paper.”
Many students don't feel this is something to worry about. Now that it's more convenient and efficient to write on a computer, why bother to handwrite?
Many educators think differently. Shi Liwei, the headmaster of a famous primary school in the capital said, “Chinese characters enjoy both practical and aesthetic (審美的) value. But those characters typed with computer keyboards only maintain their practical value. All the artistic beauty of the characters is lost. And handwriting contains the writer's emotion. Through one's handwriting, people can get to know one's thinking and personality. Beautiful writing will give people a better first impression of them.”
To encourage students to handwrite more, many primary schools in Beijing have made writing classes compulsory (必修的) and in universities, some professors are asking students to turn in their homework and essays written by hand.
小題1:Which of the following can best serve as the title of the passage?

A．The Importance of Handwriting and Typing

B．To Type or To Hand Write

C．Writing By Computer Will Replace Writing By Hand

D．Practical and Aesthetic Value of Chinese Characters

小題2:The students interviewed prefer to write using a computer mainly because ______.

A．they are usually asked to e-mail their Homework and Essays

B．they can correct the mistakes they make quickly and conveniently

C．they find it not easy to remember how to write a character

D．computers have become a trend and fashion in China

小題3:Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE of the advantages of handwriting?

A．Handwriting contains the writer's emotion.

B．The writer’s thinking and personality are shown in his or her handwriting.

C．Handwriting can impress people well and build one’s self-confidence.

D．Chinese characters enjoy both practical and aesthetic value.

小題4:The underlined expression “taking stock in” (Paragraph 4) probably means _____.

A．getting bored with	B．getting dependent on
C．becoming crazy about	D．getting curious about

小題5:We can draw the conclusion from the passage that _______.

A．more and more students will give up writing on a computer

B．writing by hand will give way to typing by computer one day

C．more and more students will pay attention to handwriting

D．the typing article better expresses one’s emotion and quality

It is always hard for a small fish to live in a big pond. Pluto's recent departure from the classical planet family clearly proves that size really matters.
Astronomers voted on August 24 to create the first scientific definition of the word planet, and Pluto obviously didn't make the cut. It turned out to be only a "dwarf planet" (矮行星). After weeks of heated debate, over 2,500 astronomers from 73 countries voted on the definition of a "planet" at a conference of the international Astronomical Union (IAU). According to the definition, a planet must have a clear neighborhood around its orbit. Pluto has widely been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930. Unfortunately, it has a special orbit which overlaps with Neptune's. It is all because, compared with Neptune, Pluto is very small. It is attracted by Neptune's gravity when the two planets get closer.
According to IAU, a "dwarf planet" should have an orbit around the Sun. It will not have a clear neighborhood around its orbit, and must not be a satellite. The new classification means that the science textbooks will have to be updated. The solar system is now made up of the eight "classical planets," together with a number of dwarf planets. The classical planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The debate over Pluto's status started in 1992. After an advanced telescope was sent into space, astronomers started find a belt of objects, which lies beyond Neptune. The belt contains nearly 1,000 objects, including Pluto. As they continued the exploration, scientists recently discovered at least 41 dwarf planets at the edges of the solar system. There are at least two objects of a similar size to Pluto.
It seems that even if the IAU had kept Pluto's status as a planet, the classical theory of nine planets in the solar system would have had to be changed, but the other way around. More dwarf, planets of a similar size to Pluto would join the family of planets. Scientists will probably find many more dwarf planets.
小題1:According to the passage, Pluto is          .

A．a(chǎn) planet which has a clear neighborhood around its orbit

B．a(chǎn) satellite of Neptune which was discovered in 1930

C．the smallest planet in the solar system

D．a(chǎn) planet which has an orbit around the sun

小題2:The sentence "It is always hard for a small fish to live in a big pond" quoted in the beginning of the passage is used to           .

A．tell us a small fish can hardly survive in the big pond

B．tell us the size of an object really matters

C．mean that a small planet can hardly exist in the solar system

D．explain the disappearanee of Pluto in the solar system

小題3:From the last paragraph we can infer that if IAU kept Pluto's status as a planet, the number of planets in the solar system would be        .

A．eight

B．nine

C．less than nine

D．more than nine

小題4:Which of the following statements is NOT true aceording to the passage?

A．According to definition of a "planet", if Pluto were bigger it would not have left the classic planet family.

B．It's quite possible for dwarfs to lose if they compete with big men

C．Pluto has a special orbit which overlap with Neptune's, because it is so small as to be attraeted by Neptune's gravity when the two planets get closer

D．A "dwarf planet", which can not be a satellite without a clear neighborhood around its orbit, should have an orbit around the Sun.

Most of the flowers in nature are red, orange and yellow. If we have seen a black flower, it’s a chance in million. People have made a census ( 普查 ) to colors of more than four thousand kinds of flowers and discovered that only eight of them are black. As we know, sunlight is formed by seven different colored lights. The wave length of each light is different, so the quantity of heat in each light is also different. Flowers, especially their petals ( 花瓣 ) , are easy to be harmed by high temperature. Black flowers can take in all the light waves which cause the flowers to dry up in a high temperature. So black flowers can rarely survive sunlight. But red flowers, orange flowers and yellow flowers can protect themselves from sunlight by reflecting the red light, orange light and yellow light, each of which has a large quantity of heat.
小題1:It is _________ to see a black flower.

A．impossible

B．seldom

C．common

D．no chance

小題2:The passage tells us that ________________.

A．black flowers are so weak that it is difficult for them to grow up.

B．there is only eight black flowers in nature.

C．sunlight is formed by seven different colored lights, so the wave length of each light is different.

D．black flowers can take in the light of all the wave lengths which make them dry up because of high temperature.

小題3:Which of the following ideas is NOT true?

A．People have found that only a few kinds of flowers are black.

B．Flowers are easy to be harmed by very high temperature.

C．Red, orange and yellow flowers can also absorb the light of all wave lengths.

D．The black flowers cannot protect themselves from sunlight.

The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on the earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem(生態(tài)系統(tǒng)). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big plant-eater, it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna(大草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat.
It is the elephant’s great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas(熱帶草原). In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.
Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.
What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.
小題1:What is the passage mainly about?

A．Disappearance of African elephants.

B．Forests and savannas as habitats for African elephants.

C．The effect of African elephants’ search for food.

D．The eating habit of African elephants.

小題2:What does the underlined phrase “setting the terms” most probably mean?

A．Fixing the time.	B．Worsening the state.
C．Improving the quality.	D．Deciding the conditions.

小題3:According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．The African elephant is the largest animal on the earth.

B．African elephants have 300 pounds of plants every day, including small trees and underbushes.

C．The African elephant is in a way the builder of the environment like other land animals.

D．If the African elephant disappears, the whole ecosystem won’t be affected.

小題4:The passage is developed mainly by            .

A．showing the effect and then explaining the causes

B．pointing out similarities and differences

C．describing the changes in space order

D．giving examples

Memory is the ability to keep track of things that have happened in the past. Memory really is learning. One needs memory to ride a bicycle. A dog needs to remember if it is to come when called.
Memory is said to be stored in the brain as a “memory trace（記憶痕）.” What makes up this trace is not known. Some scientists believe that certain chemical substances may carry certain memories. For example, one substance, when given to rats, causes them to fear the dark.
Other research into memory has to do with how the brain works. Psychologists use three means to find out how a person remembers. For example, give a person a grocery list. Let the person memorize the list, then put it away. The most natural way to find out how much a person remembers of the grocery list is to ask what he or she remembers. This is called the method of recall. Another method is called recognition. Give the person another grocery list. Ask him or her to choose items on the first list from the items that are on only the second list. Often a person will be able to recognize things that he or she cannot recall. A third method of finding how much a person remembers is called relearning. Here the person is asked to read over the first list. The person will probably learn the list the second time faster than he did the first time. The difference in the time it takes to relearn the list is thought of as a measure of how much a person has remembered.
One way of remembering something is to repeat it many times. Interest is very important. Boring lists of facts are much more difficult to remember than something that we understand and are interested in. Motivation, or wanting to do something, is also important. Motivation is linked with reward. For example, a hungry animal quickly learns how to do something if that action gets the animal food. In humans, wanting to learn is often motivation. The praise of a teacher or the knowledge that an answer is correct is rewarding.
小題1:We can learn from the 2nd paragraph that ___________       .

A．bad memories may cause rats to fear the dark

B．it is hard to tell what a memory trace consists of

C．chemical substances carry certain memories

D．memory is stored in the brain as a substance

小題2:The way to pick out the items on the first list from the second is known as ________ .

A．recognition

B．recall

C．memorization

D．relearning

小題3:What is considered as a measure of how much one has remembered?

A．The length of the list.

B．The type of list items.

C．The time difference of relearning.

D．The time difference of brain working.

小題4:A good way to train an animal to do something quickly is to ________.

A．make the action easy	B．praise it in words
C．reward it with food	D．weaken its motivation

I credit my typing skill to so many hours of chatting online. Unfortunately, as my typing speed increased on the Internet, all grammatical rules went out of the window. You see instant messages have their own shorthand language and grammar isn’t important, of which even a newbie (新手) is aware. They can leave out articles, subjects (主語), pronouns, etc. They can misspell or “respell” almost any word. They often ask “A/S/L” when they first chat. Abbreviations (縮寫) and capitalizations (大寫) are particularly important. English-speaking instant messengers also refuse to burden themselves with punctuation and capitalization.
After I came back China, I discovered not one but two instant messaging crazes. The first, which brought back memories of my previous addiction to the computer, was QQ. I can see evidence that the Chinese have the same kind of separate instant messaging language, even when they chat in English. My first word in this language, for example, was “ft”. This abbreviation for “faint” is used whenever there is a need to express surprise. I also discovered that Chinese use the same kind of abbreviation for a laugh. And there is an extraordinary number of smileys (表情符) to the “vomit” and “army soldier” smileys. There is even a SARA smiley.
After QQ, there is another, perhaps more widespread messaging trend. You guessed it --- cell phone text messaging. I now understand how useful text messaging is and why it is so common. I admit that I have been guilty of sending text messages while walking outside or sitting on the subway. Who hasn’t ? No matter where I go, I see people on their cell phones, messaging. In fact, it’s rare to see someone actually talking on their phone!
So it looks as if there is no escape from the instant messaging crazes, no matter where in the world I go. And that’s plainly not going to change. In the end, though, I can’t complain: instant messaging is quick, it’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s extremely fun too. And after all, everyone’s doing it.
小題1:The underlined phrase “went out of the window” in Paragraph 1 probably means        .

A．increased

B．occurred

C．disappeared

D．changed

小題2:Which of the following is true according to the passage?

A．Grammar and correct spelling are very important while chatting online.

B．There are enough smileys and icons to express yourselves while chatting on line.

C．The writer is skilled at typing and once was addicted to online games.

D．It is impolite to leave out some unimportant words or letters while chatting online.

小題3:The writer believes that instant messaging is          .

A．full of fun but time-consuming

B．widespread but unnecessary

C．quick but difficult to do

D．common, used and cheap

小題4:Which might be the main idea of the passage?

A．Who can escape QQ and cell phone text messaging?

B．Why is instant messaging so popular?

C．Chatting online is good for your typing skill.

D．Chatting on QQ is natural for people.

Scientists at Harvard University and Bates College find female chimpanzees (黑猩猩) appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have children of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.
The new work by Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, described this week in the journal Current Biology, provides the first evidence of a wild non­human species playing with dolls, as well as the first known sex difference in a wild animal’s choice of playthings.
The two researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks. Doll play among humans could have its origins in object—carrying by earlier apes (猿類), they say, suggesting that toy selection is probably not due entirely to socialization.
“In humans, there are obvious sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role to play in activity preferences.”
In 14 years of data on chimpanzee behavior at the Kibale National Park in Uganda, Kahlenberg and Wrangham counted more than 100 examples of stick­carrying. Some young chimpanzees carried sticks into the nest to sleep with them and on one occasion built a separate nest for the stick. “We have seen juveniles occasionally carrying sticks for many years, and because they sometimes treated them rather like dolls, we wanted to know if in general this behavior tended to represent something like playing with dolls,” says Wrangham, a Professor at Harvard. “If the doll hypothesis (假設(shè)) was right, we thought that females should carry sticks more than males do, and that the chimpanzees should stop carrying sticks when they had their first child. We have now watched enough young chimpanzees to prove both points.”
小題1:What does a female chimpanzee do with sticks?

A．She gives them to her child to play with.

B．She treats them as dolls.

C．She makes useful tools from them.

D．She treats them as weapons.

小題2: What causes the different toy selection of chimpanzees, according to the passage?

A．Sex difference.	B．Socialization.
C．Environment.	D．Cultural difference.

小題3:We can infer from the fourth paragraph that ________.

A．socialization has nothing to do with human’s choice of playthings

B．sex difference is the only factor in human’s choice of playthings

C．the biology factor may also influence toy choice

D．people choose different toys in different cultures

小題4:It can be concluded from the passage that ________.

A．both humans and chimpanzees choose their playthings due to sex difference

B．different factors cause humans and chimpanzees to choose different playthings

C．only female chimpanzees have playthings

D．chimpanzees usually choose playthings for their children

閱讀下面短文，根據(jù)小題的具體要求，簡要回答問題。
UFO is short for Unidentified Flying Object. It’s also called Flying Saucer. It is one of the most popular topics in the 20^th century. With films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET in the 1970s came a rapid increase in reports of flying saucers and men from Mars. More than 20 countries said their people once saw the UFO and there were over 1,200 reports about the UFO. Some even said they saw aliens.
In July, 1916, Gaynor was a nine-year-old girl and lived in North Wales. One day, on her way home from school, she saw a silver object in a field not far from her home. The object looked like a saucer. Gaynor was very scared. She stayed in the tall grass and watched the door of the strange object open. She saw two aliens wearing silver suits get ou. Then they use something to examine the ground. They were short and had pink eyes. After about half an hour, the two aliens went back into the object. Then it took off. When Gaynor got home, she told her mother about her unusual experience, but her family decided to keep quiet about it. They didn’t want others to laugh at their daughter. However, 18 months later, Gaynor told her story to UFO scientists. They found out that Gaynor told the truth.
小題1:What does UFO stand for? (No more than 3 words)
小題2:How did Gaynor feel when she saw the silver object like a saucer? (No more than 4 words)
小題3:Why did Gaynor’s parents keep quiet about her experience ? (No more than 10 words)