What is it that you love to do but never feel that you get it quite right? Perhaps you don't even try any more because you think what you do is not  1  enough．
Discouragement seems to follow us a good part of the time, because whatever it is that we work so hard doing, it seems that there is always someone else who can do it much    2．
I have always enjoyed music and it is    3  to me that every musician has a   4 of their own．My father__5  several instruments and when he played with others, it was not difficult to   6 his sound in a group．Whether it was guitar or another instrument, he had his own  7 sound．
I once read of a music teacher who commented to a discouraged student, “ Nobody else can make the sound that you make.” The sound that you make may not be the same as someone else's but who is   8  which is better. It is said that “   9  is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps it could be said that “A delightful sound is in the ear of the   10 .”
Every person has a different tone of voice that   11 only to them, and we all know people with an unforgettable laugh or a way of   12  that is unique to them．It might not be the sound of your music or your voice at all．It might be the way you whistle or the sound of your footsteps．
Each person has a（an）   13 on the world in some ways．Someone else can do what you do, but they cannot do it   14  the same way that you do it．The next time you feel   15 , remember "Nobody else can make the sound that you make．"

What is it that makes people laugh? More than two thousand years ago the ancient Greek philosopher (哲學(xué)家) Aristotle defined (定義) jokes as the pleasure that results from a feeling of triumph by showing we’re better than someone else in a certain way. According to Aristotle and many other philosophers，all jokes depend mainly on showing inferiority in another person or group of persons — that is，putting it clearly，on showing that they are worse off than ourselves. Jokes raise our good opinion of ourselves at someone else’s expense.
Showing how much better than other people we are is only one reason we like jokes. Someone may also use a joke to express their anger or their cruelty （殘酷）or any other kind of action that is not acceptable to us. We feel free to laugh when we hear about someone sliding on a banana skin. The joke lets us express those attitudes which are usually unacceptable to society. This is probably the reason why some of the jokes，especially those involving cruelty，are so popular with certain people.
Besides，all jokes depend on our enjoyment of laughing at something that is strange and out of place because it’s different from things which are happening around it. The same situation can be either sad or pleasant，depending entirely on how strange and out of place it is. If a girl in a bathing suit falls into a swimming pool，we don’t laugh because nothing unusual has happened. But if a man in a smart suit falls in，the situation is at once unusual in a pleasant way and we laugh. A good joke-teller will always try to build up a situation in which one thing is expected until something unexpected suddenly happens，and so we laugh.
【小題1】The underlined word “inferiority” (in Paragraph 1) means ______.

What is most likely to affect your success at school or at a job? The ability to read. And that goes for your kids too. The declining literacy(讀寫(xiě)能力的下降) of our society has been a main concern of educators for a while now, and yet things are not getting better.
In most cases, how well we learn to read will depend largely on our exposure（接觸） to language as children. If we hear people around us talking about all kinds of subjects as children, we naturally pick up the words and phrases they use. If we pick up a lot of words, we will learn to read better.
Much of the traditional advice to struggling readers, theses days, seems to include developing “cognitive strategies”（認(rèn)知策略）. In this way, readers are asked to centre more, to think, to be interested and ask questions, to analyze, to predict, to reason, and to check their understanding, or worse still to answer questions of what they have read. In other words they are asked to become self-conscious（有自我意識(shí)的） readers. I do not agree with this approach.
Here are my several strategies for reading improvement.
Read about things that interest you. If you are interested in what you are reading about, the words will come alive, and you will understand better. The more you read, the better you will become at reading. Just get started and it will become a habit, as long as you are interested in what you are reading.
Read material that is at your level or just a little difficult for you. Read material that you find easy to read, or just a little challenging. Looking up many unknown words in a dictionary is dull, and the results of the dictionary search are quickly forgotten.
_____ If you can hear the new words and phrases that you are reading, you will have an easier time understanding and remembering them. Hearing the rhythm of someone reading a text will help your own reading.
Don’t worry about what you don’t understand. Most of your reading should be for pleasure. You can still enjoy reading without understanding all of what you read. You may even understand some things in your own personal way.
Unfortunately not all reading is just for pleasure. When you are reading a textbook or report or other material for school, you may need to underline, take notes and read some parts over again. However, if you have developed the habit of reading for pleasure, you will find that the skills you need will come naturally, and that you will understand a lot better than before.
【小題1】In Paragraph 2, the author tells us the importance of _____.

What is it that you love to do but never feel that you get it quite right? Perhaps you don't even try any more because you think what you do is not  1  enough．

Discouragement seems to follow us a good part of the time, because whatever it is that we work so hard doing, it seems that there is always someone else who can do it much    2．

I have always enjoyed music and it is    3  to me that every musician has a   4 of their own．My father__5  several instruments and when he played with others, it was not difficult to   6 his sound in a group．Whether it was guitar or another instrument, he had his own  7 sound．

I once read of a music teacher who commented to a discouraged student, “ Nobody else can make the sound that you make.” The sound that you make may not be the same as someone else's but who is   8  which is better. It is said that “   9  is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps it could be said that “A delightful sound is in the ear of the   10 .”

Every person has a different tone of voice that   11 only to them, and we all know people with an unforgettable laugh or a way of   12  that is unique to them．It might not be the sound of your music or your voice at all．It might be the way you whistle or the sound of your footsteps．

Each person has a（an）   13 on the world in some ways．Someone else can do what you do, but they cannot do it   14  the same way that you do it．The next time you feel   15 , remember "Nobody else can make the sound that you make．"

1.                A．easy           B．good           C．simple    D．hard

2.                A．better          B．worse          C．more     D．less

3.                A．satisfying       B．convincing       C．inspiring D．interesting

4.                A．gift            B．sound          C．life D．song

5.                A．played         B．designed        C．created   D．checked

6.                A．turn down       B．call up          C．pick out   D．give off

7.                A．loud           B．powerful        C．perfect   D．special

8.                A．to talk          B．to say          C．to see    D．to hear

9.                A．Beauty         B．Interest         C．Patience D．Honesty

10.               A．speaker        B．receiver        C．listener    D．looker

11.               A．devotes        B．a(chǎn)dds           C．a(chǎn)dapts    D．belongs

12.               A．running        B．walking         C．jumping   D．speaking

13.               A．choice         B．opinion         C．duty D．effect

14.               A．exactly         B．carefully        C．cautiously D．seriously

15.               A．a(chǎn)nnoyed        B．puzzled         C．discouraged    D．bothered

What is your favorite color? Do you like yellow, orange, or red? If you do, you must be an active person who enjoys life. Do you like blue? Then you are probably quiet, shy, and would rather follow than lead.

Colors do influence our moods (情緒). A yellow room makes most people feel more cheerful and more relaxed than a dark green one; and a red dress brings warmth and cheer to the saddest winter day. On the other hand, black is depressing(令人壓抑的). There was a black bridge over the Thames River, near London. The number of people who killed themselves on that bridge used to be larger than on any other bridge in the area -- until it was repainted green.

Light and bright colors make people not only happier but also more active. In the factory, the workers will work better, harder, and have fewer accidents when their machines are painted orange rather than black.

1.An active person may like ____   

2.Most people feel more __ in a yellow room than in a dark green one.

3.More people killed themselves on the black bridge than on any other bridge probably because ____

4.In the factory, when the machines are painted orange, the workers will work __