Students will need to use all of their skills in order to understand the reading selections in Reader's
Choice. 
     1_____ These selections provide practice on employing different reading skills to get the message
of the writer. They also give students practice in four basic reading skills: skimming, scanning, reading
for thorough comprehension, and critical reading.
     Skimming involves reading quickly through a text to get an overall idea of its contents. This kind of
rapid reading is suitable when you are trying to decide if careful reading is desirable or 2_____
     Like skimming, scanning is also quick reading. However, in this case the search is more concentrated.
3_____ When you read to find a particular date, or number you are scanning.
     Reading for thorough comprehension is carefully reading in order to understand the total meaning of
the passage. At this level of comprehension the reader is able to summarize the author's ideas 4_____
     Critical reading demands that a reader makes judgments about what he or she reads. This kind of read
requires posting arid answering questions such as "5_____", "Do I share the author's point of view?" and
"Am I convinced by the author's arguments and evidence?"

A. Does my own experience support that of the author?
B. Reader's Choice is one of the most popular magazines in the world.
C. but has not yet made a critical evaluation of those ideas.
D. The book contains many types of selections on a wide variety of topics.
E. To scan is to read quickly in order to find out specific information.
F. Do I know about the author? G. when there is no time to read something carefully.

     At age 61, identical twins Jeanne and Susan no longer look exactly alike. Susan smoked for many years
and is an admitted sun worshipper, whose habits Jeanne does not share. A new study of twins suggests you
can blame those coarse (粗糙的) wrinkles, brown or pink spots on too much time in the sun, smoking, and
being overweight.
     Because twins share genes, but may have different exposures to environmental factors, studying twins
allows an "opportunity to control for genetic susceptibility (易受影響性)," Dr. Elma D. Baron, at Case
Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and his colleagues explain in the Jatest issue of
Archives of Dermatology.
     Their analysis of environmental skin-damaging factors in 65 pairs of twins hints that skin aging is related
more to environment and lifestyle than genetic factors.
     But when it comes to skin cancer, the researchers say their findings support previous reports that both
environment and genes affect skin cancer risk.
     Baron's team examined facial skin of 130 twins, 18 to 77 years old, who lived mostly in the northern
Midwest and Eastern regions of the US, who were attending the Twins Days Festivalin Ohio in August 2002.
At this time, each of the twins also separately reported how their skin burned or tanned (曬黑) without
sunscreen, their weight, and their history of skin cancer, smoking, and alcohol drinking. The study group
consisted of 52 fraternal (異卵雙生) and 10 identical twin pairs, plus 3 pairs who were unsure of their twin
status.
     From these data, the researchers noted strong ties, outside of twin status, between smoking, older age,
and being overweight, and having facial skin with evidence of environmental damage. By contrast, sunscreen
use and drinking alcohol appeared related to less skin damage.
     Baron and his colleagues say the current findings, which highlight ties between facial aging and potentially
avoidable environmental factors-such as smoking, being overweight, and unprotected overexposure to the
sun's damaging rays-may help motivate people to minimize these risky behaviors.

1. Which of the following is true according to the passage?

A. Jeanne and Susan share all the habits including smoking.
B. Skin aging is related more to environment and lifestyle than genetic factors.
C. Only identical twins can take part in the research.
D. Sunscreen use cannot help people have less skin damage.

2. Why did Baron's team do the research on twins?

A. Twins are more likely to suffer from skin cancer.
B. It may guarantee the research is not influenced by genetic factors.
C. It gives others an opportunity to control twins' genes.
D. It helps find twins are exposed to different environments.

3. What can you infer from the last paragraph?

A. This research makes people aware of dangerous lifestyles.
B. The environmental factors are unavoidable.
C. Being exposed to the sun is absolutely damaging.
D. There is little relationship between skin aging and environment.

4. The passage is mainly concerned with _____.

A. skin cancer and environment 
B. identical twins research
C. aging skin and environmental factors
D. genes and lifestyles

     There were times when it was only schoolchildren who felt sick before they got their grades. 1_____
     Many teachers are opposed to it. They don't mind being evaluated. But they are upset because the results
are then being posted on the Internet and accessible to millions of Internet users. 2_____ The teachers are
graded on categories such as "motivated", "good instruction", "easy examinations", or even "sexy". 3_____
     The creators of the website say that the students are only being offered the chance to provide teachers
with some feedback (反饋) about their classroom instruction. Bemd Dicks founded the website with three
friends. 4_____ On a grading scale of one to six, the teachers' average grade is as high as 2.7 and it has been
improving lately. He often says the impression is that students are bullying (欺負(fù)) their teachers. But there is
also bullying of the students by teachers.
     "Teachers must also learn to live with criticism," he added. But still, the website is not totally prevented
from being manipulated (人為操縱), as one teacher near the northern city of Hanover recently proved. 5_____
Within a few days, seven of his colleagues were listed in the top 10 rankings of Germany's best teachers.

A. On the website www.spickmich.de during the past four months students have posted evaluations of 100 000
    teachers.
B. He registered himself on the website as a student and then rated his own teaching colleagues highly.
C. Many teachers think that their privacy has been disturbed.
D. But now teachers in Germany are scared, too, as they are being.graded by their students.
E. He says that the students are largely quite satisfied with their teachers.
F. He says a majority of the students expressed their dissatisfaction with their teachers.
G. He tried to make friends with students as many as possible.

     In this age of Internet chat, videogames and reality television, there is no shortage of mindless activities
to keep a child occupied. Yet, despite the competition, my 8-year-old daughter Rebecca wants to spend her
leisure time writing short stories. She wants to enter one of her stories into a writing contest, a competition
she won last year. 
     As a writer I know about winning contests, and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard
on a story only to receive a rejection slip from the publisher. I also know the pressure of trying to live up to
a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn't win the contest again? That's the strange thing
about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and dashed hopes can surface.
     A revelation (啟示) came last week when I asked her, "Don't you want to win again?" "No," she replied,
"I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade."
     I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously (自發(fā)地) told them. Telling myself that
I was merely an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for
characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first grade was quickly
"guided" by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her first music lesson. I had turned her
contest into my contest without even realizing it.
     Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm
animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting (借用) my
daughter's experience.
     While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with
more steps, putting myself far enough a way to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while
I will be reminding myself that children need room to experiment, grow and find their own voices.

1. What do we learn from the first paragraph?

A. A lot of entertainments compete for children's time nowadays.
B. Rebecca is much too occupied to enjoy her leisure time.
C. Children do find lots of fun in many mindless activities.
D. Rebecca draws on a lot of online materials for her writing.

2. What did the author say about her own writing experience?

A. She did not quite live up to her reputation as a writer.
B. Her way to success was full of pains and frustrations.
C. She was constantly under pressure of writing more.
D. Most of her stories had been rejected by publishers.

3. The author took great pains to correct her daughter's stories because _____.

A. she wanted to help Rebecca realize her dreams of becoming a writer
B. she was afraid Rebecca's imagination might run wild while writing
C. she did not want to disappoint Rebecca who needed her help so much
D. she believed she had the knowledge and experience to offer guidance

4. What's the author's advice for parents?

A. Children should be given every chance to voice their opinions.
B. Parents should keep an eye on the activities their kids engage in.
C. Children should be allowed freedom to grow through experience.
D. A writing career, though attractive, is not for every child to pursue.

     We may all have had the embarrassing moment: Getting half-way through a story only to realize that we've
told this exact tale before, to the same person. Why do we make such memory mistakes?
     According to research published in Psychological Science, it may have to do with the way our brains
process different types of memory.
     Researchers Nigel Gopie, of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, and Colin Macleod, of the University
of Waterloo, divided memory into two kinds. The first was source memory, or the ability to keep track of
where information is coming from. The second was destination memory, or the ability to recall who we have
given information to.
     They found that source memory functions better than destination memory, in part because of the direction
in which that information is travelling.
     To study the differences between source and destination memory, the researchers did an experiment on 60
university students, according to a New York Times report. The students were asked to associate (聯(lián)想) 50
random (隨意的) facts with the faces of 50 famous people. Half of the students "told" each fact to one of the
faces, reading it aloud when the celebrity's (名人的) picture appeared on a computer screen. The other half
read each fact silently and saw a different celebrity picture afterward.
     When later asked to recall which facts went with which faces, the students who were giving information
out (destination memory) scored about 16 percent lower on memory performance compared with the students
receiving information (source memory).
     The researchers concluded that out-going information was less associated with its environmental context
(背景) that is, the person-than was incoming information.
     This makes sense given what is known about attention. A person who is giving information, even little facts,
will devote some mental resources to thinking about what is being said. Because our attention is limited, we give
less attention to the person we are giving information to.
     After a second experiment with another group of 40 students, the researchers concluded that self-focus is
another factor that undermines destination memory.
     They asked half the students to continue giving out random information, while the other told things about
themselves. This time around, those who were talking about themselves did 15 percent worse than those giving
random information.
     "When you start telling these personal facts compared with non-self facts, suddenly destination memory
goes down more, suggesting that it is the self-focus component (成分) that's reducing the memory," Gopie
told Live Science.

1. The point of this article is to _____.

A. give advice on how to improve memory
B. say what causes the memory to worsen
C. explain why we repeat stories to those we've already told them to
D. discuss the differences between source and destination memory

2. What can we learn from the article?

A. Source memory helps us remember who we have told the information to.
B. One's limited attention is one of the reasons why those reading aloud to the celebrity's pictures perform 
    worse on the memory test.
C. Silent reading is a better way to remember information than reading aloud.
D. It tends to be more difficult for people to link incoming information with its environmental context than 
    outgoing information.

3. The underlined word "undermines" probably means _____.

A. weakens
B. benefits
C. explains
D. supports

4. What did the scientists conclude from the second experiment?

A. Destination memory is weaker than source memory.
B. Focusing attention on oneself leads to relatively poor source memory performance.
C. Associating personal experience with information helps people memorize better.
D. Self-focus is responsible for giving information twice or more to the same person.

     President Barack Obama shouldn't be surprised if his approval rating among students has plummeted
(陡然變差). In a recent speech about US education, he called for extending the school day and year. "The
challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. Why more time? Because US students
are falling behind students in other countries," he said.
     More school
     US schools need to lengthen school days and the school year. If we intend to stay competitive with
the rest of the world on test scores and in the job market, we need to add classroom hours and get rid of
summer break almost entirely. As President Obama said, South Korean students spend more than a month
longer in school-and achieve better results than us.
     The current two-term school year and the school days that form it were developed based on an old
system of agriculture. The long summer break allowed children to be home to help tend the fields. It is not
necessary anymore. It may not be popular to cut summer break or extend school days, but that's the only
way to improve US education and get back the American jobs lost to foreign countries.
     Home Time
     Adding school hours won't solve the problems with our school system. The USA is different from other
countries. US families have full schedules, with participation in sports, community groups, and other interests.
In places such as South Korea, where only several hours of a day aren't spent on school work, children don't
have time to participate in many of those activities.
     Giving kids time outside of school allows them to grow in other areas. That's just as important as learning
fractions (分?jǐn)?shù)). Fingers shouldn't be pointed at the school year for being too short, but at teachers and
schools that don't challenge their students and just pass kids along to the next grade. We do need to hold
ourselves accountable for an education system falling behind other countries, but we also need a solution that
actually works.

1______2______3______4______5______6______7______8______9______10______

     Two recent studies have found that punishment is not the best way to infIuence behavior.
     One showed that adults are much more cooperative if they work in a system based on rewards.
Researchers at Harvard University in the United States and the Stockholm School of Economics in
Sweden did the study.
     They had about two hundred college students play a version of the game known as the Prisoner's
Dilemma. The game is based on the tension between the interests of an individual and a group. The
students played in groups of four. Each player could win points for the group, so they would all gain
equally. But each player could also reward or punish each of the other three players, at a cost to the
punisher. Harvard researcher David Rand says the most successful behavior proved to be cooperation.
The groups that rewarded it the most earned about twice as much in the game as the groups that
rewarded it the least. The study appeared last month in the journal Science.
     The other study involved children. It was presented last month in California at a conference on
violence and abuse. Researchers used intelligence tests given to two groups. More than, eight hundred
children were ages two to four the first time they were tested. More than seven hundred children were
ages five to nine. The two groups were retested four years later, and the study compared the results
with the first test. Both groups contained children whose parents used physical punishment and children
whose parents did not.
     The study says the IQs of the younger children who were not spanked were five points higher than
those who were. In the older group, the difference was almost three points. The more they are spanked,
the slower their mental development.

1. According to the first study, we mainly infer that _____.

A. the game is called Prisoner's Dilemma
B. the less a group punished itself, the lower its earnings
C. adults are much more cooperative if rewarded
D. the game is introduced in the journal Science

2. Which of the following is TRUE according to the second study?

A. Children's IQs has much to do with physical punishment.
B. The study is about violence and abuse of children.
C. The children tested were divided into groups of four.
D. Children's mental development only relies on their IQs.

3. What does the underlined word "spanked" refer to?

A. punished.
B. blamed.
C. tested.
D. praised.

4. What might be the best title for the text?

A. The Best Way to Correct Misbehavior.
B. Punishment Is the Best Way of Education.
C. Cooperation Is the Most Successful Behavior.
D. Punishment or Reward: Which Works Better on Behavior?