【推荐1】Five Ways to Improve Reading Comprehension

Help your child keep what he reads—a crucial skill, especially as he gets older and needs to gain important information from textbooks.

Have him read aloud. This forces him to go slower, which gives him more time to process what he reads.     1     Provide the right kinds of books. Make sure your child gets lots of practice reading books that aren’t too hard.     2     Stopping any more often than that to figure out a word makes it tough for him to focus on the overall meaning of the story.

    3     To gain meaning from text, your child needs to read quickly and smoothly—a skill known as fluency. Rereading familiar, simple books gives your child practice at decoding words quickly, so he’ll become more fluent.

Supplement class reading. If his class is studying a particular theme, look for easy-to-read books or magazines on the topic.     4    

Talk about what he’s reading.     5     Ask questions before, during, and after a reading session.

For example:

•Before: “What interests you in this book? What doesn’t?”

•During: “What’s going on in the book? Is it turning out the way you thought it would?”

•After: “Can you summarize the book? What did you like about it?”

A．He should recognize at least 90 percent of the words without any help.

B．Select books that are appealing to your child but not too challenging.

C．Some prior knowledge will help him get better prepared and make his way through tougher classroom texts.

D．This “verbal processing” helps him remember and think through the themes of the book.

E．Plus, he’s not only seeing the words, he’s hearing them, too.

F．Have him reread to build fluency.

G．Increase the speed of reading.

【推荐2】If you want to improve yourself, you have to do something that challenges you, and then it doesn’t change you.     1     So challenge the following limits:

Figure out what you’re scared of and do it continuously. If you’re a salesman, and you’re scared of talking to people personally or over the phone, now, instead of being scared and thinking you’ll fail, spend at least five minutes a day making a call.     2     But don’t stop on the first try! Eventually, you can look at fear in the eyes and say, “Go on, I’m not scared!”

    3     Make sure this hobby is not linked to your career, you have to relax and relieve your stress while performing it. Some examples might be cooking, sewing, painting and so on. Apart from helping you challenge yourself, taking a class for your hobby may also give you extra income.

Set aside at least nine minutes a day for physical exercise.     4     A simple 9-minute run around your neighborhood can do wonders for yourself. Exercise can not only help you maintain your regular weight, but also make you feel better about yourself.

Travel and allow yourself to be interested in new people. Don’t just limit yourself to your fellow travelers, try to connect with service staff. You never know what kind of people they’re going to be. Get out of your house or go online right now to book your class.     5    

A．You should do it continuously.

B．Someone may hang up to the gym.

C．You don’t need to go to the gym.

D．Running in the gym may be a better choice.

E．Take a class for a hobby you’ve been wanting to develop.

F．Start now and learn to challenge yourself from time to time.

G．You can never see any improvement if you stick to your comfort zone.

【推荐3】Science fiction writers create imaginary worlds. The way things work in your imaginary worlds will be based on actual science. So it’s important for you to be familiar with the scientific principles and inventions that are related to your creation. For example, if you’re writing about humans living on a planet with zero gravity, then you need to know the effects of zero gravity on the human body.

Then you have to figure out the exact rules of your imaginary worlds. And you have to follow them. If humans have evolved (进化) to breathe underwater in Chapter 1, your character can’t drown in a swimming pool in Chapter 3. If your robots write poetry but not fiction, then you can’t throw a novelist robot into Chapter 8. The issue here is maintaining your readers’ trust. That means the reader is willing to pretend along with you. If you start out with an ordinary detective novel (侦探小说) and then throw in someone breathing underwater in the 6th chapter, your readers’ reaction might be, “What the h……?” The imaginative spell is broken. You’ve pulled the readers out of their imagination. The same thing happens if you change the rules halfway.

Part of your preparation work for the novel is to map out its worlds for yourself in great detail. Decide: the history of the world, the geography, what possibilities it offers, how everything works in this new reality, and how all of these factors affect the way your characters think, feel, and react to things. You don’t have to tell your readers all the rules in the first chapter. But you have to let your readers know enough to understand what’s going on. This also allows you to work out logical problems and contradictions (矛盾) before you start writing.

When you are writing, remember to make it feel real. You are inviting readers to visit a new world. They will want to be able to see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste what it’s like. Whether your novel is about a world without disease or an undiscovered planet, help your readers feel like they’re actually there.

1. What’s the relationship between actual science and science fiction?

A．Science fiction promotes the development of actual science.

B．Science fiction often reflects the development of actual science.

C．Actual science limits the imagination described in science fiction.

D．Actual science provides basic principles for science fiction.

2. The second paragraph is mainly developed by ________.

A．making comparisons	B．giving examples
C．following the time order	D．analyzing causes

3. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．It is necessary to do some scientific experiments before writing science fiction.

B．It is more difficult to write science fiction than ordinary detective novels.

C．Readers of science fiction actually pretend the writers’ rules are true.

D．It is great to leave some contradictions in your science fiction.

4. The target (目标) readers of the passage are ________.

A．young scientists	B．science fiction writers
C．college students	D．professional journalists

5. The passage is mainly about ________.

A．how to do scientific research	B．how to raise interest in science
C．what to expect from science fiction	D．how to write science fiction