People diet to look more attractive．Fish diet to avoid being beaten up，thrown out of their social group，and getting eaten as a result．That is the fascinating conclusion of the latest research into fish behavior by a team of Australian scientists．
　　The research team have discovered that subordinate(低一等的) fish voluntarily diet to avoid challenging their larger competitors．"In studying gobies we noticed that only the largest two individuals，a male and female，had breeding（繁殖）rights within the group，" explains Marian Wong．"All other group members are nonbreeding females，each being 5-10% smaller than its next largest competitor．We wanted to find out how they maintain this precise size separation．"
　　The reason for the size difference was easy to see．Once a subordinate fish grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor，it causes a fight which usually ends in the smaller goby being driven away from the group．More often than not，the evicted fish is then eaten up．
　　It appeared that the smaller fish were keeping themselves small in order to avoid challenging the boss fish．Whether they did so voluntarily，by restraining how much they ate，was not clear．The research team decided to do an experiment．They tried to fatten up some of the subordinate gobies to see what happened．To their surprise，the gobies simply refused the extra food they were offered，clearly preferring to remain small and avoid fights，over having a feast．
　　The discovery challenges the traditional scientific view of how boss individuals keep their position in a group．Previously it was thought that large individuals simply used their weight and size to threaten their subordinates and take more of the food for themselves，so keeping their competitors small．
　　While the habits of gobies may seem a little mysterious，Dr．Wong explains that understanding the relationships between boss and subordinate animals is important to understand how hierarchical（等級的）societies remain stable．
　　The research has proved the fact that voluntary dieting is a habit far from exclusive to humans．"As yet，we lack a complete understanding of how widespread the voluntary reduction of food intake is in nature，" the researchers comment．"Data on human dieting suggests that，while humans generally diet to improve health or increase attractiveness，rarely does it improve long-term health and males regularly prefer females that are fatter than the females' own ideal．"
小題1:When a goby grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor，it _________．

A．leaves the group itself	B．has breeding rights
C．eats its competitor	D．faces danger

小題2:The underlined words "the evicted fish" in Paragraph 3 refer to _________．

A．the fish beaten up	B．the fish driven away
C．the fish found out	D．the fish fattened up

小題3:The experiment showed that the smaller fish _________．

A．fought over a feast	B．preferred some extra food
C．challenged the boss fish	D．went on diet willingly

小題4:What is the text mainly about?

A．Fish dieting and human dieting．	B．Dieting and health．
C．Human dieting．	D．Fish dieting．

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 （網孔、網眼）web using fewer strands（線）. 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（無脊推動物）. 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.
小題1: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

小題2: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.

小題3: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

小題4: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

It's not about how much money you make, and it's not about who your daddy is. We're talking about being attractive in general, whether it's on a job interview or just gaining the respect of your colleagues . . .
Ask lots of questions
If you come across as a know-it-all (even if you really do know it all!), it really pushes people away. Rather, asking lots and lots of questions makes people feel like you care, you can be trusted.
Great body language
Your body language says a lot about you - it says whether you have confidence, or simply if you really care. Talking physically, it is one of the most important physical characteristics you need!
Stay busy
Always have something to do. Have you ever seen someone just sitting around, doing nothing? How unattractive. Always be busy with something, even if for some reason you have to make something up.
Show your pearly whites (or just smile)
Smile more, no matter how ugly your teeth are. I'm not kidding about this one. It's not all about the teeth. If you are smiling genuinely, you can draw everyone for 100 meters around to you.
Wear what fits
Wear clothing that fits you. For women, wearing tight pants or shirts is not attractive. Things that just fit you and your shape are the best but not tight. Wear things that fit you nicely, please . . . And for goodness sake, both sexes, stay away from logos and printed shirts! Most people you may ask do not find this attractive. Stop being some company's billboard(廣告牌).
Be interested in other man
Be interested in the other person. Don't talk about. If you are truly interested in the person, it will come across. And if you want to talk about yourself, you'll find that putting the other person first actually opens him up to return the favor and ask you questions. See how fun this is?
小題1:It is your ________ that makes you attractive.

A．your family background

B．fashionable tight clothes

C．your appearance and your wealth

D．proper body language and behavior

小題2:According to the author, if you ________, you can be trusted.

A．always smile and show your pearly teeth

B．keep asking lots of questions

C．are interested in other people’s personal affairs

D．always wear clothes that fit you

小題3:The purpose of staying busy is to ________.

A．gain praises from your boss and colleagues

B．look attractive among people

C．show that you are interested in your job

D．get promoted in your company

小題4:If you are going to a job interview, which of the following is a proper behavior?

A．Wearing a shirt with printed logos

B．Keeping talking about your own experiences and talents

C．Staying still, not making any body language

D．Smiling truly toward the people you will meet

Why would an animal kill itself? It seems a strange question, and yet it is one that has made some scientists curious for a long time. For there is a kind of animal called lemming（旅鼠）, that periodically killed themselves together, and no one knows just why!
The small creatures which live in the Scandinavian mountains, feed on a diet of roots and special insects and live in nests they dig underground. When their food supply is large, the lemmings live a normal and undisturbed life. 
However, when the lemmings’ food supply becomes too low to support the population, a singular migration（遷徙）begins. The lemmings leave their nests in groups. Great numbers of them begin to travel across the Scandinavian plains, a journey that may last weeks. The lemmings eat everything in their path, continuing their long march until they reach the sea. 
The reason for what follows remains unbelievable to naturalists. Upon reaching the coast, the lemmings do not stop but swim by the thousands into the sea. Most stay afloat only a short time before they tire, sink and drown. 
A common theory for this mass self-killing is that the lemmings do not realize that the ocean is such a huge body of water in their cross-country journey, the animals must cross many smaller bodies of water, such as rivers and small lakes. They may think that the sea is just another such swimmable path to go through. But no final answer has been found to the strange happening. 
小題1:The passage is mainly about______. 

A．how lemmings find food

B．why animals kill themselves

C．the lemmings’ self-killing

D．the food supply in the Scandinavian mountains

小題2:A reason for the lemmings’ self-killing might be that they______. 

A．go mad from a lack of food

B．hope to find fish for food

C．decide to reduce the population

D．think they can cross the sea

小題3:Why are scientists curious about the lemmings’ behavior?

A．Because they are the only animals that live in Scandinavia.

B．Because it is very unusual for animals to kill themselves.

C．Because of the amount of food they can eat on their march to the sea.

D．Because they can gather together in such huge numbers.

小題4:The underlined word “singular” means______.

A．unusual

B．single

C．wonderful

D．common

You’ve bought what you need. The grocery cashier asks, “Will that be paper or plastic? You reply “Plastic, please.”
This seems like a simple question and there are plenty of reasons we choose plastic: easier to carry, lighter than paper bags, possibly less damaging to the environment, less expensive to the shop owners, able to be used as trash bag, and so on. There are different opinions on plastic and paper. Now let’s follow the travels of 3 plastic bags. It begins at the grocery store with the customer’s choice.
Plastic Bag 1: As the waste engineer come by and pick up the trash, the first plastic bag falls out. It sits on a small street for a couple of hours until a car comes along and takes it down to the road. Then a gust of wind blows it across the road, then another car, then another gust of wind finally makes its way to the beach. Water fills the plastic bag and makes it look like a jellyfish. A seal(海豹) swims by, thinking it looks very interesting, and swallowed it. The plastic bag may stay in the seal’s stomach for months, maybe years. You see, our lovely animals have been living thousands of years in a world where everything can be eaten.
Plastic Bag 2: This bag does make its way to landfill(垃圾場). Before they have a chance to cover up the thousands of pounds of daily waste, a strong wind comes up and blows these plastic bags out of the landfill. Once the wind stops, workers will be sent to collect thousands of bags around. But they can’t possibly get them all. So our little bag continues his adventure getting caught in trees, eaten by birds or making its way to our lakes or rivers.
Plastic Bag 3: The last bag also blows away but is caught in a landfill where it sits for many years, as all the trash is wrapped in a big plastic bag, making natural degradation(降解) impossible. Although workers do much work to make sure water and air system won’t be polluted, some do. Guess what, plastic bags are made from petrol, a harmful waste material, which in one way or another makes its way to the environment.
Another problem with putting plastic bags in out trash is that our landfills for most cities may be filled in about 20 years. More importantly, since we are running out of land to build homes, you might have the pleasure of one day living on top of your plastic bags!
One of the best suggestions is not to use a bag at all or bring your own cloth bags. If you must, please choose paper bags, which, though not suggested, can be eaten by animals. And there are more opportunities recycle paper bags. It does take a little extra effort. But please have a thought about the little seal next time you say, “Plastic please.”   
小題1:According to the passage, what is NOT the reason for a customer to choose plastic bags?

A．He can use plastic bags to carry trash later.

B．He finds paper bags heavier than plastic bags.

C．He finds plastic bags more convenient to carry.

D．He can save money for plastic bags are cheaper.

小題2:The author describes the travel of Plastic Bag 1 to show ______.

A．seals like eating plastic bags around them.

B．seals really have a good stomach.

C．seals are potential victims of plastic bags.

D．seals are not able to differ plastic from food.

小題3:Wrapped in a big plastic bag, Plastic Bag3_____.

A．still does harm to the environment

B．can hardly be harmful to the environment

C．is much safer than Plastic Bag2

D．will end up being eaten by seals or some fish

小題4:What will the following part of this passage talk about?

A．Suggestions on reducing harm of plastic bags.

B．Disadvantages of using too many plastic bags.

C．Persuading people into using paper bags.

D．Other potential victims of plastic bags.

小題5:What is the overall tone of this passage?

A．Excited

B．Serious

C．Ironical

D．Casual

Legends about the development of coffee are varied and interesting, involving chance occurrences, political tricks, and the pursuit of wealth and power.
According to one story, a sheepherder named Kaldi, as he tended his sheep, noticed the effect of coffee beans. He noticed that the sheep became excited after eating the red “cherries" from a certain plant when they changed pastures (牧場). He tried it himself, and was soon as overactive as his sheep. Another story relates that a monk happened to discover that this fruit from the shiny green plant could help him stay awake.
Another legend gives us the name for coffee, “mocha”. Omar, an Arabian was thrown to the desert with his followers to die of starvation. In desperation, Omar had his friends boil and eat the fruit from an unknown plant. Not only did the soup save the group, but the residents of the nearest town, Mocha, took their survival as a religious sign. The plant and its beverage (飲料) were named Mocha to honor this event.
Coffee was introduced much later to countries beyond Arabia, whose inhabitants believed it to be a tasty thing and guarded its secret as if they were top secret military plans. The government forbade transportation of the plant out of the Moslem nations. The actual spread of coffee was started illegally. One Arab named Baba Budan smuggled (走私) beans to some mountains near Mysore, India, and started a farm there. Early in this century, some of those original plants were found still growing fruitfully in the region.
Coffee today is grown and enjoyed worldwide, and is one of the few crops that small farmers in third-world countries can profitably export.
小題1:What does the second paragraph mainly talk about?

A．A sheepherder used coffee beans to keep sheep excited.

B．Coffee was a special kind of red cherry from a certain plant.

C．A sheepherder and a monk accidently discovered coffee’s effect.

D．Sheep ate a lot of coffee beans while they changed pastures.

小題2:Which of the following involves political tricks?

A．Kaldi’s story.	B．The monk’s story.
C．Omar’s story.	D．Baba Budan’s story.

小題3:Mocha is originally the name of ______.

A．a town

B．an Arabian

C．a kind of coffee

D．a sheepherder

小題4:What can be the best title for the text?

A．The Secret of Coffee	B．The Tales of Coffee
C．People’s Love for Coffee	D．The Function of Coffee

We know that sugary sodas aren’t good for our bodies. Now it turns out that they may not be good for our minds, either. A new study of more than 260,000 people has found a link between sweetened soft-drinks and depression, and diet sodas may be making matters worse.
Americans drink far more sodas than people in other countries— as much as 170 liters per person per year. But the impact of this study isn’t limited to the United States. “Sweetened drinks, coffee and tea are commonly consumed worldwide and have important physical consequences. And they may have important mental-health consequences as well,” study author Dr Honglei Chen said in a statement.
The study studied 263,925 people between the ages of 50 and 71. Researchers followed their consumption of drinks like soda, tea coffee, and other soft drinks from 1995 to 1996 and then. 10 years later, asked them if they had been diagnosed with depression since the year 2000. More than 11,3000 of them had.
Participants who drank more than four servings of sodas per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression than participants who did not drink sodas at all. People who stuck with fruit punch(雞尾酒), had a 38 percent higher risk than people who didn’t drink sweetened drinks. And all that extra sugar isn’t the actual problem. Researchers say that the artificial sweetener aspartame may be to blame.
The study found a link but could not surely determine whether sodas and other sweet soft drinks cause depression. Still, the results “are consistent with a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages may be linked to poor health outcomes.”
But there’s a bright side for those who can’t live without their daily sodas. Adults who drank coffee had a 10 percent lower risk of depression compared to people who didn’t drink any coffee, according to the study. “Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk,” said Chen.
小題1:What has the new study of more than 260,000 people found?

A．Sugary sodas aren’t good for the physical health of old people.

B．Americans have a special tooth for sweet foods.

C．Sweetened soft-drinks may increase the risk of depression.

D．Sweetened soft-drinks have important physical consequences.

小題2:What do we know about the process of the study?

A．About twenty-six thousand people participated in it.

B．The oldest participants were below 80 when the study was over.

C．Most of the participants had depression when the study was over.

D．The study lasted more than ten years from the beginning to the end.

小題3:We infer that the underlined word “aspartame” in Paragraph 4 refers to something that _____.

A．can reduce the harm of sweetened drinks

B．is used to reduce the risk of depression

C．is mainly used to make fruit punch

D．is used to make something .sweet

小題4:It is implied in the passage that ______.

A．more research is needed to confirm the new findings

B．the new findings aren’t consistent with any previous findings

C．cutting one’s sodas intake will surely reduce one’s depression

D．the new findings won’t have an impact on people’s drinking habits

小題5:What should you drink in order to reduce the risk of depression?

A．Sodas.

B．Unsweetened coffee.

C．Sugary coffee.

D．Fruit punch.

Another day begins with the call of the phone’s alarm, Where are you? Open your eyes. Turn the alarm off and you will start working out on your apps（應用軟件）.
First stop, weather: Sunny day. Look outside the window. Oh, no, it isn’t. Second stop, Air Quality Index: 344, dangerous, Level 6 Severely Polluted. Mental recheck required: It really is a sunny day and the weather app isn’t lying or in need of being replaced, it’s just that you can’t see the sun through the thick fog. Note to self: Cycling to work is out, face mask is in.
Has the world stopped turning? News app merely confirms that it’s business as usual. Another government has fallen, your soccer team has lost again, and China’s economy is still increasing steadily.
Diary app informs you of all the things you failed to do the previous day and loads you up with another half-dozen tasks. Next, browse a couple of social networking apps to determine the status updates of friends.
Another sound from the phone, it’s a message from your significant friend who is already at work, saying the Taobao. com order for Italian cheese is about to arrive.
Apps have become part of our “every-moment” lives. Apps provide so much information. But the dark side to all this connectivity would be lack of privacy, being a slave to the app. The only real problem is that once you lose your smartphone, you lose your life.
Some friends and family do not have smartphones, but prefer the old-fashioned Nokia that merely makes phone calls and sends instant messages. While I respect their purity and desire to be free of the control of technology, it’s obvious they are outsiders, and their lives are loaded up with paper and old devices. They’re still buying books at stores, complaining the lack of CDs on the market, watching TV and missing out on complete news cycles. Though I would add, they have lives that aren’t spent inside small screens.
My phone is a palm-sized one-stop shop and about the only thing it doesn’t do is teleport（心靈運輸）. What’s not to like?
小題1:The functions of apps mentioned in the passage can be listed as follows EXCEPT that _______.

A．the apps can show you weather forecast

B．the apps can tell you how to work directly

C．the apps can inform you the latest news

D．the apps can tell you what you failed to do

小題2: According to the passage, the author thinks that _______.

A．people’s life is governed by apps

B．people feel bored about the use of apps

C．people can’t live without apps

D．people hate apps with powerful functions

小題3:It can be inferred from the last paragraph but one that _______.

A．more and more people like Nokia more than apps

B．using Nokia can be free of the control of technology

C．all people don’t like the advanced smartphones

D．ordinary people don’t like shopping online

An Ofsted (英國教育標準辦公室）study reports that teachers are discouraging students who want to leave school and work as apprentices (學徒）in beauty salons (美容中心）or hair dressers.
　　Inspectors questioned 105 young people for a report on apprenticeships published on Wednesday. They found several examples of young people who felt they had been laughed at by their teachers for wanting to progress to work-based learning, particularly in care or hairdressing, rather than stay on at school.
　　Right or wrong, is it any surprise that this is happening? From 2014，the government will measure schools according to the rate of their pupils who go to university. Brian Lightman , general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says the government has already put teachers under “very great pressure to focus on academic subjects”
　　On the other hand, the Education Act 2011，which came into force in November, places schools under a duty to give fair career advice to pupils. This advice must include information on all post-16 education and training choices, including apprenticeships. This doesn’t appear to be happening in several schools, according to Ofsted9S report. Many of the young people the inspectors talked to said the advice they had received on apprenticeships was “unsatisfactory”.
　　Schools were also blamed for lack of work experience courses, which are particularly important for teenagers considering an apprenticeship. They help students decide whether they enjoy a line of work and enable employers to see whether those on work experience have the potential to be hired as apprentices in future years.
　　But there is a good reason why they can’t do this: they’d be unable to adapt to GCSE (英國齊通中等教育證書）exams if they did. Sometimes, it seems, schools just can’t win.
小題1:Why do teachers oppose the students’ leaving school and working as apprentices?

A．The government urges teachers to concentrate on academic subjects.

B．The students are only wasting time working as apprentices.

C．Employers are under great pressure of taking GCSE exams.

D．Employers don’t give students chances to work as apprentices

小題2:Pressure for schools to provide pupils with career advice comes from ______. 

A．Association of School and College Leaders

B．Education Act 2011

C．GCSE exams

D．OFSTED

小題3:The underlined word “They” in Paragraph 5 refers to _____.

A．schools

B．employers

C．work experience courses

D．teenagers considering an apprenticeship

小題4:What does the author think of teachers’ discouraging students working as apprentices?

A．Surprising	B．Understandable
C．Wrong	D．Right

Exhausted and unhappy, you still have to squeeze a smile to your friends, or teachers. That’s just life, you may think. But new research suggests that putting on a fake smile can worsen people’s mood and even lower work efficiency.
Lead researcher Brent Scott with other researchers studied a group of bus drivers for two weeks. They tried to find out what happened when the drivers were involved in “surface acting” or fake smiling, and the opposite, “deep acting” which means people put on real smiles by recalling pleasant memories or thinking about their current situation more positively.
The results showed that on days when drivers were forced to smile, they felt depressed and didn’t want to work. On days when they smiled due to positive thoughts, their mood improved a lot as well as their work efficiency.
The research goes against the popular belief among companies that employees should be cheerful to customers at all times. They include employees of shops, banks, call center workers and others who have face-to-face contact with members of the public. “Smiling for the sake of(為了) smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and coldness, and that’s bad for the organization,” Scott told the Daily Mail.
The study also showed that women were harmed more by fake smiling than men. Their mood and work performance both worsened more. But they were helped more by deep acting — their mood became better and they worked more efficiently.
However, while deep acting seemed to improve mood in the short term, Scott says it’s not a long-term solution for unhappiness.
“There have been some suggestions that if you do this over a long period that you start to feel inauthentic(不真實的),” Scott said. “You may be trying to cultivate positive emotions, but at the end of the day you may not feel like yourself anymore.”
小題1:Brent Scott and others’ experiments on bus drivers suggest that ______.

A．depression among bus drivers is common

B．thinking in a positive way helps with work efficiency

C．bus drivers with pleasant memories tend to be less efficient

D．the bus drivers’ work efficiency is determined by their mood

小題2:According to the article, which of the following statements about “fake smiling” is TRUE?

A．It is good for the business but bad for the employees.

B．It doesn’t work on people who are emotionally expressive.

C．It is a widely accepted cultural practice in the US.

D．It causes more harm to women than men.

小題3:We can conclude from the article that the researchers think that ______.

A．people should be true to their feelings

B．smiling helps to put people in a good mood and become more efficient

C．it is unnecessary to cultivate positive emotions

D．deep acting can improve mood in the long run

小題4:The article is mainly about ______.

A．the importance of smiling during face-to-face contact

B．a new study on fake smiling and its influence on people

C．suggestions on improving work efficiency

D．how to cheer up when you are exhausted