【推荐2】Introduction

Cruising the Mediterranean is like embarking on a romantic odyssey. Warm breezes, sparkling blue water, fresh seafood, medieval towns and European culture combine to create a relaxing and enlightening vacation. The Mediterranean offers plenty of port choices, big and small. Because Mediterranean destinations are so close together, you can visit a large number of countries.

Highlights

The most popular attraction in Barcelona, Spain, is La Sagrada Familia (The Church of the Holy Family). The famed architect Antonio Gaudi began work on the building in 1883 and improvements continue today.

Although it’s an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, Malta is not a beach destination. Instead, stick to visiting the capital city of Valletta or the medieval town of Mdina.

While Monte Carlo, Monaco, is tiny, it is also very hilly. Luckily, elevators help take you up and down some of the steepest hills. For a peek inside the world of the royal Grimaldis, visit Place du Palais, and for a window on the world of the rich and famous, check out the Monte Carlo Casino. (You must be 21, and there’s a dress code at night.)

A stop in the port of Sorrento, Italy, puts you within an hour of the ancient ruins of Pompeii, which was destroyed in A D. 79 during a massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Your ship’s shore excursion should include a knowledgeable guide.

To get away from it all on the Greek island of Santorini, visit the town of Oia on the northern tip of the island. The little town is filled with white-washed houses, art galleries and small restaurants.

1. What is special about cruising the Mediterranean?

A．It is an exploration of wilderness.

B．It is an adventurous journey.

C．It provides access to many a country.

D．It consists of medieval towns and thrilling games.

2. Which Place you’d better pay a visit to in Malta?

A．The beach.	B．The church.
C．The art galleries.	D．The capital city

3. On which trip it is suggested that a well-informed guide be included?

A．A trip to Barcelona, Spain	B．A trip to Monte Carlo, Monaco
C．A trip to Sorrento, Italy	D．A trip to the Greek island of Santonin

【推荐3】How can teenagers keep themselves from suffering from loneliness? Here are some suggestions for speeding a recovery from loneliness.

    1     A smile and a friendly greeting for the student behind you in line at the cafeteria won’t make you best friends. But it will make you both feel good. It can also make it easier to interact the next time and the time after that.

Find a safe place to make connections. If going to the dancing party makes you feel like you just don’t belong, try joining a special-interest group.     2     Just because you feel left out in one group doesn’t mean you will feel like an outsider in every other one. Look for a group that allows you to feel comfortable gradually.

Find other ways of making connections. Lonely people hunger for friendship. Sometimes feeling accepted and liked comes more easily when you do something for others rather than wait for them to make you feel better.     3    . Teach a child for reading. Take notes for a disabled classmate. You might be surprised at the connections you make.

    4     Loneliness is an absence of quality friendship, not of a particular quantity of friends. That is why it’s important to know how to select a friend. The best friendships are those based on similar values and attitudes.

You get what you expect, so expect the best. If you expect others to be friendly, you will behave in proper ways that encourage people to be friendlier to you. Loneliness won’t last long.     5    

A．Choose the right people.

B．So consider becoming a volunteer.

C．Reach out to others but start small.

D．It can be hard work to be positive towards others.

E．Maybe it is the drama club or the marching band.

F．This harmful attitude can continue into adulthood.

G．But starting the first step of positive expectations can make all the difference.

【推荐1】As a child grows up, you may wonder how you can teach him to become a respectful adult.

    1     A child who learns to respect not only learns to receive respect from others in kind, but also learns to respect himself.

Show him respect.

This is the best way to teach your child how to respect others. Listen to your child attentively and he will learn to listen to you, understanding how important this is in communication.

    2    

The more you say “please” and “thank you” to your child, the more likely he will learn to use them. Politeness then becomes a normal part of any conversation.

Agree to disagree.

    3     Explain your decision so that he will understand you and expect respectful responses. Disagreeing with you doesn’t necessarily mean rudeness.

Control your anger.

When a situation arises, stay calm and keep in mind that you are supposed to be modeling correct behavior.     4    

Praise, praise, praise!

So much is focused on what a child does wrong and how to correct it that his achievements are not celebrated enough.     5    

A．Teach manners by using polite requests and responses．

B．Respect is necessary for a meaningful and successful life.

C．Try to remember that a child won’t always agree with you.

D．A child may act as he pleases, and he will live a happy life.

E．Respectful behavior always comes with bad behavior as a child.

F．If he sees your anger beyond control, he is more likely to respond that way in future.

G．Seeing a child exhibit respectful behavior, make sure he knows how proud you are of him.

【推荐3】Everyone knows the advantages of using e-mail. It's much faster than ordinary mail. It's much cheaper than the telephone.     1    However, it is not always good to use e-mail at work. Some companies are limiting the use of e-mail in their offices for several reasons.

    2    You send out your message and then you have to wait for an answer. This is not a problem if you need to send simple information. But if the message is more complicated, e-mail is not so good.

There is another problem with e-mail: You don't get much information from the message. You have only the words themselves. This doesn't matter if the message is just about facts or if it is not important.     3    You can't tell much about what the e-mail sender was thinking or feeling. You may put your own feelings into the message. And this can lead to communication problems in a company.

Psychologists from England studied office workers opening their e-mail.     4    They found that certain kinds of messages made blood pressure go up. It went up if the messages seemed angry or negative. It also went up if the messages were from the boss. It went up the highest when the messages were both negative and from the boss.

The psychologists said that people should be careful how they use e-mail at work. This is especially true for the people with top jobs in a company.     5     They should never send important news by e-mail. They should always meet face to face with the person.

A．One reason is that e-mail is only one-way.

B．Sometimes, their blood pressure went down.

C．Their messages can easily hurt or upset people.

D．And it's easier than trying to meet with someone in person.

E．The psychologists measured the blood pressure of the workers.

F．It can help to avoid misunderstanding and strengthen relationships.

G．But it might cause trouble if the message is about something important.

【推荐1】I was born and raised in England in a culture where privacy and “keeping yourself to yourself” were valued traditions. Speaking to strangers was not encouraged. People were most hospitable (好客的) and friendly — but only once they had been introduced to new people.

However, I have been lucky enough to spend some time in both Italy and the US, where I found traditions of hospitality and politeness to be very different.

I experienced Italian hospitality first-hand on a crowded railway carriage traveling, one afternoon, from Genoa to Florence. Sinking gratefully into an empty seat, I was berated (斥责) in rapid Italian by a gentleman who was returning to this seat — it had not been “spare” after all. I apologized in English, and got up to allow him back into the seat. The gentleman obviously had no understanding of the English language, but he, too, realized my genuine mistake. He smiled and gestured for me to remain in the seat, and he himself remained standing in the corridor for the rest of the journey. The other passengers of the carriage smiled and nodded at me and made me feel quite welcome amongst them. I feel that if this had been in England, a foreigner who made a mistake would not always be so kindly treated.

Transport was also obvious in the differences I noticed between English and American culture. I flew to New York on a plane with mainly English passengers. We sat together in near silence. Nobody spoke to me nor, as I expected, to anyone else they did not know. They felt it was not polite to disturb someone else’s privacy. However, when I traveled across the United States, whether by plane or Greyhound bus, I was never short of conversation. Conversation was going on all around me and whoever sat next to me was happy to introduce themselves and ask me about myself, which was usually a pleasant way to kill time. They obviously felt it would have been rude not to speak to another person, whether they were strangers or not.

1. What do we know about the passengers of the carriage when the author was travelling in Italy?

A．They were all on the side of the gentleman.

B．They all laughed at the author for this mistake.

C．They all showed their understanding of the author’s mistake.

D．They would not bear a mistake like the author’s in public.

2. According to the last paragraph, English passengers sat in near silence because________.

A．they were too tired to speak	B．they are short of topics to talk about
C．they were all strangers to each other	D．privacy was a valued tradition in England

3. The purpose of the author is to tell us ________.

A．his traveling experiences

B．how to adapt ourselves to a new culture

C．the culture shock he experienced in Italy and the US

D．cultural differences in hospitality and politeness

4. What is the author’s attitude towards American’s traditions of hospitality and politeness?

A．Approving.

B．Confused.

C．Negative.

D．Disapproving.

【推荐2】One of the most popular beliefs in parenting is the so﹣called Mozart effect， which says that listening to music by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart can increase a child's intelligence． Some pregnant women have even gone so far as to play Mozart recordings on headphones pressed against their bellies． And it's not hard to see how Mozart's name became associated with accelerated development． He was history's greatest child genius， performing astonishing music for kings and queens at an age when many of us were content with tuneless singing "I'm a Little Teapot"．

So， if you have kids or you're expecting to have them， how seriously should you take the Mozart effect？ Will the child who doesn't listen to Mozart in the cradle （摇篮） be limited to an ordinary life？ Are you a bad parent if your kids don't know about any works of Mozart？

Relax． There is no scientific evidence that listening to Mozart improves children's cognitive abilities． The whole idea comes from a small study done in 1993， which found that college students who listened to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major （K 448）showed some improvement in a test of spatial （空间的） skills． This finding was later described as something extremely amazing by a musician， Don Campbell， in a book． Campbell's claims about the super powers of Mozart's music were repeated endlessly in the media and fueled a craze for Mozart﹣based enrichment activities． In 1998， for example， the governor of Georgia in the USA requested funds to send classical﹣music CDs to all parents of newborns in the state．

Since then， scientists have examined the claim that Mozart increases intelligence and found no evidence for it． The original experiment with college students was reviewed in 1999， and the increase in the students' spatial skills was found to be negligible． In 2007 the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research asked a team of experts to examine the scientific literature regarding Mozart and child development， and they found no reason to believe that it increased intelligence．

1. People relate Mozart to children's intelligence development because he　 　．

A．owned extraordinary music talent.

B．could perform music as a child.

C．offered music to pregnant women.

D．was an royal Austrian composer.

2. What can we know about the small study in 1993？

A．It added to the popularity of Mozart's music．

B．It found no evidence for supporting Mozart effect．

C．It helped college students make academic progress．

D．It urged Georgia's governor to spread classical music．

3. What does the underlined word "negligible" probably mean？

A．Sudden．

B．Insignificant．

C．Average．

D．Steady．

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

A．New Findings： Mozart Effect to Be Proved.

B．Secrets Uncovered： History of Mozart Effect.

C．Does Listening to Mozart Make Kids Smarter？

D．How Does Mozart Improve Kids' Intelligence？

【推荐3】A characteristic of American culture that has become almost a tradition is to respect the self-made man —the man who has risen to the top through his own efforts, usually beginning by working with his hands. While the leader in business or industry or the college professor occupies a higher social position and commands greater respect m the community than the common laborer or even the skilled factory worker, he may take pains to point out that his father started life in America as a farmer or laborer of some sort.
This attitude toward manual (体力的) labor is now still seen in many aspects of American life. One is invited to dinner at a home that is not only comfortably but even luxuriously (豪华地) furnished and in which there is every evidence of the fact that the family has been able to afford foreign travel, expensive hobbies, and college education for the children; yet the hostess probably will cook the dinner herself, will serve it herself and will wash dishes afterward, furthermore the dinner will not consist merely of something quickly and easily assembled from contents of various cans and a cake or a pie bought at the nearby bakery. On the contrary, the hostess usually takes pride in careful preparation of special dishes. A professional man may talk about washing the car, digging in his flowerbeds, painting the house. His wife may even help with these things, just as he often helps her with the dishwashing. The son who is away at college may wait on table and wash dishes for his living, or during the summer he may work with a construction gang on a highway in order to pay for his education.
1. From paragraph 1, we can know that in America _____.

A．people tend to have a high opinion of the self-made man

B．people can always rise to the top through their own efforts

C．college professors win great respect from common workers

D．college professors feel it painful to mention their fathers as labors

2. According to the passage, the hostess cooks dinner herself mainly because ______.

A．servants in American are hard to get

B．she takes pride in what she can do herself

C．she can hardly afford servants

D．It is easy to prepare a meal with canned food

3. The expression “wait on table” in the second paragraph means “______”.

A．wait for others on a table	B．keep accounts in a restaurant
C．wait to lay the table	D．serve customers in a restaurant

4. How does the author support his opinion?

A．By analyzing causes and effects	B．By giving examples
C．By reasoning and concluding	D．By telling stories