【推荐1】How to Overcome Shyness and Make Friends

When you are shy，making friends can be difficult.    1    Try taking these four steps if you want to overcome shyness and make friends.

Practice silence and deep breathing exercises. You do not need to get into a personal conversation with every person you meet.    2    If you are asked a question，do not be afraid to answer.

    3    Network sites like Facebook and Myspace are good options，or you can try local forums and chats on topics you are interested in. Because these are low－pressure environments，you can practice starting conversations without feeling too pressured or self－conscious.

Get a dog. According to Belief Net，dogs are people magnets(磁铁). Adopt a dog from a shelter and then take him for walks around busy areas. Head to the dog run if you have one near your home. Conversation is natural while you are sitting with other watching your dogs run and play.    4    

Return to the same place and activity regularly. If you do not feel comfortable talking to strangers，chances are that you will not share much the first you meet. Go back for a second or third visit and look for the same people you have seen there before.    5    So you will need to work at connecting with others.

These steps can help you overcome the shyness that is holding you back.

A．Act as if you are not shy.

B．Make friends over the Internet.

C．Friendships are built over time.

D．Shyness can be an obstacle to making new friends.

E．Simply smile and nod when you cross eyes with somebody.

F．Or you can start your own chat by asking others for advice on anything dog－related.

G．Remember，the real goal is to find someone who will like you for who you are.

【推荐2】Two biggest wealth in life: your talent and your time. Talent increases and time decreases. Our life, in a way, is trading time with talents. Wasting time means our time decreases while our talents do not increase.     1    .

•Get to know how you use your usual time and make improvements

Take a week and write down what you do every 30 minutes every day and make it into categories. After a week's recording, you'll see which part consumes most of the time.     2    . And you could come up with a revised timetable for your next week.

•Use fragment time and “dead time”

By time recording, you'll be amazed how much time you've wasted in waiting for the bus, queuing, walking, etc. You could really put that time to better use,     3    . Use your fragment time for insignificant matters so that you could have more time for things that really matter.

•    4    

There're always things to be done every day, and the thing we could do is to identify whether they're urgent or important. The things you need to do for the day rest only on the urgent as well as important things. Don't become slaves to urgent but unimportant things.

•Use the 20%－80% principle

At the most efficient time, 20% of time could generate 80% of efficiency and on the contrary, at the least efficient time, 80% of time could only generate 20% of efficiency. We should be doing important work at the most efficient time. That time period differs from person to person,     5    . Yet generally speaking, it's round 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon.

After being familiar with those tips, the next thing would be to implement and hold on to it. Do the right thing at the right time, and we shall make our time to its fullest!

A．but everyone has a peak effect time

B．Make an analysis about the ways you could improve your efficiency

C．like memorizing English words or making necessary phone calls

D．depending on your mentality and physical condition

E．That is why we shall save every second and make it count

F．Pick three things you must finish today

G．Finish as many tasks as possible

【推荐3】There are so many people who are struggling with insomnia (失眠). Now a major publisher has come up with a novel idea — audiobooks with such soothing sounds as soft rainfall and lapping water to relax the listener and send them off to sleep.

In a project to be launched this week, Penguin Random House has cooperated with the Sleep Council and the Children’s Sleep Charity in creating collections of “Sleep Tales” for adults and children. These audiobooks are part soundscape, part descriptive narrative, with softly spoken voices to calm anxieties and take listeners to sleep. Each story lasts about 15 minutes,enabling listeners to set their sleep timer.

The stories draw on the Sleep Council’s research into sounds that help people wind down, such as waves lapping on a shore , soft rainfall and birdsong.

Richard Lennon, publisher at Penguin Audio, told The Guardian the project was inspired partly by the realization that increasing numbers of people were listening to audiobooks as they were going to sleep or as part of their bedtime routine. He said both adults and children respond to something comforting and familiar as they are nodding off. These are tales without a beginning, a middle or an end. He added, “It’s something that’s being described to you, rather than a story that’s being told to you.” There are no authors’names. He said, “We’re launching them as simply Penguin, Puffin and Ladybird Sleep Tales, rather than mentioning the writers by name because the focus isn’t just on the words. The combination of the words, the voice and the sound design all contribute to the relaxing atmosphere.”

“Audience research had been very positive.” Lennon said. One listener reported, “The story made my mind stop racing.”

The phrase “sleep like a baby” does not apply to a lot of children, with four in ten having sleep problems. But Lennon said the children’s sleep tales were not intended to replace a bedtime story, only to become part of a bedtime routine.

Lisa Artis of the Sleep Council said not everyone liked the same sounds. “Some people love thunder and lightning or bird tweeting. That’s why we came up with different stories with different effects. For some people, listening to rain just makes them want to go to the toilet.”

She added that listening to “non-stimulating” stories was about switching off before bedtime. “It is the sort of thing you need to be doing before bed to feel more relaxed, rather than scrolling through Facebook and checking work emails. We need to forget about everything that’s going on because we will not get a good night’s sleep otherwise.”

1. What does the underlined word “novel” mean in paragraph 1?

A．Original.

B．Practical.

C．Fictional.

D．Functional.

2. What can we learn about the collections of “Sleep Tales”?

A．They are created for adults.

B．Each story lasts about thirty minutes.

C．They are both soundscape and descriptive narrative.

D．Each story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

3. What can we learn from Richard Lennon’s words?

A．Not many people prefer listening to audio books before sleep.

B．A boring story is more likely to make people sleepy.

C．The environment is very important for reading stories.

D．The audio books prove effective in helping people sleep in the research.

4. The passage is mainly about___________.

A．releasing audio books to send listeners to sleep

B．the new trend of people’s reading habit

C．audio books are becoming more and more popular

D．ways to help people sleep easily

【推荐1】Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbours, even pets, will all do the trick, but the biggest longevity(长寿) boost seems to come from marriage or an equivalent relationship. The effect was first noted in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers(鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than their married peers. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man’s life and two to a woman’s. The effect holds for all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

Even if the odds are stacked against you (the conditions are not favourable), marriage can more than compensate. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Likewise, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn’t smoke. There’s a flip side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their spouse’s death, and caring for a spouse with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the odds favour marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

So how does it work? The effects are complex, affected by socio-economic factors, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms (机制). For example, social contact can boost development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100. The best social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: “People are interconnected, so their health is interconnected.”

1. Which one of the following is TRUE according to the text?

A．The married men live seven years longer than the unmarried.

B．Marriage can help make up for ill health.

C．The unmarried are more likely to have heart disease than the married old men.

D．Unmarried people are likely to suffer in later life.

2. According to the context, what does the “flip side” in Paragraph 2 refer to?

A．The disadvantages of being married.

B．The emotional problems arising from marriage.

C．The responsibility of taking care of one’s family.

D．The consequence of a broken marriage.

3. What does the author say about social networks?

A．They contribute a great deal to longevity.

B．They help develop people’s community spirit.

C．They provide timely support for those in need.

D．They help relieve people of their life’s burden.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．It’s important that we develop a social network when young.

B．To stay healthy, one should have a proper social network.

C．Getting a divorce means risking a reduced life span.

D．We should share our social networks with each other.

【推荐2】Moving to a foreign country is an amazing, life-changing experience. There are some practical decisions that need to be made.     1     For me, choosing to live with a French with a French family was the best choice I made, and here is why.

    2     When you’re in anew environment with people you don’t know who are speaking a language you’re still not fluent in, you might feel lost, tired and homesick—I know I did.     3     They showed me which buses to take to get to work, cooked dinner for me so we could eat together, and took me with them on trips to the beach, the theatre and even a bullfight. These were great opportunities to experience French culture and build relationships. They helped me feel more comfortable and welcome.

Living with French people has improved my language skills. Being constantly exposed to real French conversation has allowed me to learn new phrases, widen my vocabulary and even improve my accent. My host family are happy to answer my questions and correct me when I say things wrong.     4    

The experience of living abroad is one that you will remember forever. Perhaps the friendships, like the memories, will also last.     5     You might return for their birthdays, weddings, holidays, and much more. I hope to remain in contact with my host family long after I leave France because when I was away from my friends and loves ones, they welcomed me and made me part of their family.

A．One such decision is choosing where to live.

B．You can stay in your own space and privacy.

C．Your host family might become your life-long friends.

D．It makes me a better and more confident French speaker.

E．However, my host family was wonderful and welcoming.

F．A family can help you settle in, stopping you from feeling lonely.

G．It’s an opportunity to meet new people, a different culture and another language.

【推荐3】I am Peter Hodes, a volunteer stem courier. Since March 2012, I've done 89 trips of those , 51 have been abroad, I have 42 hours to carry stem cells（干细胞）in my little box because I've got two ice packs and that's how long they last, in all, from the time the stem cells are harvested from a donor(捐献者) to the time they can be implanted in the patient, we’ve got 72 hours at most, So I am always conscious of time.

I had one trip last year where I was caught by a hurricane in America. I picked up the stem cells in Providence, Rhode Island, and was meant to fly to Washington then back to London. But when I arrived at the check-in desk at Providence, the lady on the desk said: “Well, I’m really sorry, I’ve got some bad news for you-there are no fights from Washington.” So I took my box and put it on the desk and I said: “In this box are some stem cells that are urgently needed for a patient-please, please, you’ve got to get me back to the United Kingdom.” She just dropped everything. She arranged for a flight on a small   plane to be held for mere-routed(改道)me through Newark and got me back to the UK even earlier than originally scheduled.

For this courier job, you’re consciously aware than that box you’re got something that is potentially going to save somebody’s life.

1. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “courier” in Paragraph 1?

A．provider	B．delivery man
C．collector	D．medical doctor

2. Why does Peter have to complete his trip within 42 hours?

A．He cannot stay away from his job too long.

B．The donor can only wait for that long.

C．The operation needs that very much.

D．The ice won’t last any longer.

3. Which flight did the woman put Peter on first?

A．To London	B．To Newark
C．To Providence	D．To Washington