【推荐2】Saving Money on Holiday Travel

The holiday season isn’t just about shopping and gifts.     1     However, holiday travel can get very expensive. Fortunately, the following tips will help you keep your travelling expense under control.

Plan ahead. The earlier you book your travel, from tickets to hotels, the easier it is to find good deals.     2     In fact, you should book travel one to three months in advance so that you have more opportunities to find the best deals.

Book your air travel on cheaper days. Travelling by air on Tuesdays and Wednesdays often costs less than travelling on Fridays and Sundays. During the holidays, though, it’s not just about a specific day of the week.     3     Days right before and after a holiday can be more expensive. If you don’t travel on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day, you might be able to find an even better deal.

Consider travelling overnight. Early-morning flights often cost less than those at more convenient time.     4     Depending on where you are going, and the ways of getting there, overnight travel can help you avoid a night in the hotel, as well as save you money on travel to your destination.

    5     You can’t bring water or drink with you on the plane, but you can bring sandwiches and other food. When you’re on the road, you can buy food at local food stores to make your own meals.

A．Bring your own food.

B．Consider cheap hotels that provide food.

C．Besides, booking earlier can save you money.

D．If you are flying, consider airports that are farther away.

E．You also need to consider the days before and after the holiday.

F．A great deal of travel also takes place during this time of year.

G．Other choices include night trains and ships.

【推荐3】Directions: Read the following passage and choose the most suitable statement from A-F for each blank. There are two extra statements, which you do not need.

Life would be a lot sweeter if you were a memory athlete. Most of us however, are not wired that way. But don’t be discouraged: thanks to neuroplasticity, anyone can transcend their fallible memory.     1    

There are a few relatively simple things a person can do to help improve their memory function. First up, the basics: the foundation of good memory is good health.     2    

Then there are more deliberate approaches like practicing mnemonics. A mnemonic device is a trick designed to make remembering things easier. So instead of remembering to buy eggs, rice, apples and dog food, it might be easier to think of READ, which stands for rice, eggs, apples, and dog food. This is the acrostic method.

    3     Let’s use the same shopping list as an example. Instead of focusing on the word ‘rice,’ this technique works by focusing on the image of rice thrown on the ground in a yard. For eggs, picture a hen pecking at the rice, followed by a nearby tree of apple blossoms, the petals falling around the hen, falling on a sleeping dog. Once the interconnected scene is created it’s a simple visual to ease your way around the halls of the grocery store with no list needed. This technique, where you base a memory around visual images, is more formally called ‘method of loci’.

A recent study published in Neuron has unearthed some interesting insights about the brains of competitive memorizers. The researchers invited 23 of the world’s top 50 memory athletes to have their brains scanned in rest states, and while performing memory tests, and matched each champion to a control participant. Anatomically, the scans showed there was no difference in brain structure or region size between the groups.     4     And what’s more, after they gave the ‘naive’ control group training in     the method of loci, their neural connectivity began to look more like that of the pros.

A．What you're born with isn't what you're stuck with.

B．Where the difference was observed was in connectivity.

C．Another more complicated mnemonic technique is called a mind palace.

D．Training in method of loci can physically change the way a person remembers.

E．Eating and sleeping right will lead to optimal brain function, the flow-on effect of which is a better memory.

F．The improved memory observed after mnemonic training persists for as long as 4 months after training concludes.