【推荐1】Vacation in the U. S. usually means slower days, and no school teachers know, however, that vacation means students will likely fall behind, and forget things they learned during the year. Simon Vanderpool, a special education teacher in Lexington, Kentucky, decided to do something about it.

He started a program called Books and Barbers. Children go to the barber, choose a book and read out loud while the barber cuts their hair. The child gets a sticker and can take the book home. And there is an added bonus： money. The kids get paid to read.

Vanderpool says barber shops are places where kids can feel comfortable. “Once a student feels comfortable, that's whenever the brain opens up, and that they are able to start focusing on nothing but learning. ” Amir Shalash owns a barber shop. But he is doing more than cutting children's hair. He is listening to them read, and helping them with their reading.

Most of the children getting haircuts at barber shops are boys. Vanderpool's idea was to do more than just help them with reading and money. The teacher wants to help kids who are growing up in a home without a father liike he did. Also, I created the program in order to provide a positive mentor(指导者）for the kids that go into the barber shop, and are able to have someone that they can rely on and they can trust in, and just build a bond between the two of them. ” Shalash says he and his fellow barbers like being mentors.

“The biggest thing is that we try to influence as many kids as we can, and that was my whole intention of it. ”

1. Why did Simon Vanderpool start Books and Barbers ?

A．To help children kill time.

B．To bring children a fruitful vacation

C．To reduce teachers，pressure from work.

D．To improve children's communication skills.

2. What makes a barber shop suitable for Books and Barbers program?

A．Its collection of books.

B．Its quiet atmosphere.

C．Its relaxing environment.

D．Its friendly barbers.

3. What is Amir Shalash's purpose of taking part in the program?

A．To offer valuable guidance to children.

B．To show the importance of bonding.

C．To tell the necessity of trusting people.

D．To influence his fellow barbers positively.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．What It Takes to Be a Good Barber

B．What to Expect During the Vacation

C．How Important Reading Is to Children

D．How a Haircut Is Helping Students Read

【推荐3】According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.

Using Charles Dickens’s nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd. Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens’s own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.

Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary（孤独的）reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduce literature to their children, and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud. Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.

Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership. Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers. Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.

Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens’s readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus literacy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.

A working class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens’s popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.

Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously,” to use Walter Benjamin’s term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today’s world. Modern audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some characteristics of traditional reading aloud—such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.

1. What does the author want to convey in Paragraph 1?

A．The history of reading aloud.

B．The significance of reading aloud.

C．The development of reading practice.

D．The roles of readers in reading practice.

2. How did the practice of reading aloud influence Dickens’s works?

A．He started to write for a broader public crowd.

B．He included more readable contents in his novels.

C．Scenes of reading aloud became common in his works.

D．His works were intended to be both heard and read.

3. How many benefits did reading aloud bring to a Victorian family?

A．2.	B．3.
C．4.	D．5.

4. Where could a London steel worker possibly have gone to for reading?

A．Working place.	B．His/her own house.
C．Nearby bookstores.	D．Trafalgar Square.

5. What change did reading aloud bring to Victorian society?

A．Different classes started to appreciate and read literary works together.

B．People from lower social classes became accepted as middle-class.

C．The differences between classes grew less significant than before..

D．A non-class society in which everyone could read started to form.

6. What is likely to be discussed after the last paragraph?

A．New reading trends for individuals.

B．The harm of modern audiobooks.

C．The material for modern reading.

D．Reading aloud in contemporary societies.

【推荐3】People worry that developments in Artificial Intelligence, or A.I., will bring about a point in history when A. I. overtakes human intelligence, leading to an unimaginable revolution in human affairs. Or they wonder whether instead of our controlling artificial intelligence, it will control us.

The situation may not arise for hundreds of years to come, but this doesn’t mean we have nothing to worry about. On the contrary, The A. I. products that now exist are improving faster than most people realize and promise to fundamentally transform our world, not always for the better. They are only tools, not a competing form of intelligence. But they will reshape what work means and how wealth is created.

Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, the A. I. revolution is not taking certain jobs and replacing them with other jobs. Instead, it is believed to cause a wide - scale elimination of jobs -- mostly lower - paying jobs, but some higher - paying ones, too.

This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies that develop A.I., as well as for the companies that adopt it. We are thus facing two developments that do not sit easily together; enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands and enormous numbers of people out of work. What is to be done?

Part of the answer will involve educating or retraining people in tasks A.I. tools aren’t good at. Artificial intelligence is poorly suited for jobs involving creativity, planning and “cross - field” thinking. But these skills are typically required by high - paying jobs that may be hard to retrain displaced workers to do. More promising are lower - paying jobs involving the “people skills” that A.I. lacks: social workers, barmen, doormen -- professions requiring human interaction. But how many barmen does a society really need?

The solution to the problem of mass unemployment will involve “service jobs of love.” These are jobs that A. I. cannot do, that society needs and that give people a sense of purpose. Examples include accompanying an older person to visit a doctor, helping at an orphanage and serving as a sponsor at charity organization. The volunteer service jobs of today, in other words, may turn into the real jobs of the future.

Other volunteer jobs may be higher - paying and professional, such as compassionate medial service providers. In all cases, people will be able to choose to work fewer hours than they do now.

1. In what aspect is the

A．I. revolution different from the Industrial or the Computer revolution? A. The A.I. revolution will finally become one beyond human’s control.

B．A. I. is believed to lead to a point in history when it takes over human intelligence.

C．Higher - paying jobs will take the place of lower-paying ones in the A.I. revolution.

D．It may bring about mass unemployment to matter how much employees are paid.

2. The underlined word “promising” in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to _______.

A．promotional	B．demanding
C．guaranteed	D．potential

3. What does the author suggest in the face of the A.I. revolution?

A．It is sensible to encourage people to take volunteer jobs.

B．People should be instructed to do less demanding jobs.

C．The problem of job loss can be solved by creating lower-paying jobs.

D．Jobs requiring knowledge in different fields are suitable for displaced workers.

4. Which of the following may serve as the best title of the passage?

A．The A.I. Revolution Creates New Job Opportunities.

B．Challenges the A. I. Revolution Brings to Job Market.

C．A Double - edged Sword: the A.I. Revolution.

D．Interrelationship between A.I. and Unemployment.