1 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

The way that people sit in chairs is not just by chance. If you are sitting with your arms and legs swinging, it is probably a sign     1     you are relaxed and feeling comfortable. If you     2     (position) on the edge of the chair with your legs stretched before you and your feet crossed, it can signal lack of interest.

Here is an example: in a country where the rules of behavior in court were very strict, a witness in a trial sat as     3     (describe) above, with one of his huge boots put on top of     4     , wearing a big coat and his arms crossed in front of his body. The judge said: “ Sit up straight and take your coat off,       5     I’ll hold you in contempt of court.” The man sat up straight in no time when he realized that he risked       6    (fine).

When people go to the dentist or wait for a job interview, they might be seated on the edge of their chair with their feet together. If it’s a woman, she’ll probably be hugging her handbag. Body tension spreads and makes you feel short of breath. When you are in such a position, it is easy to lose your head and simply run away if things take a turn for the     7     (bad).

You don’t believe that people     8     learn to control their body language completely; they will lose control at some point or other.

2 . Notice: Medical Alert

Dear Reader,

Medical related emergencies are on the rise. More seniors are seeking an independent lifestyle and better quality of life. Over 1 in 3people over the age of 64 will fall this year. Nearly half will not be able to get up without support.

Medical expenses can escalate when a person is not given timely support. You can prevent a medical tragedy with our 24-hour emergency response system. Our solution is highly recommended bydoctors, healthcare professionals, and hospitals.

We are offering a FREE Medical Alert System to seniors or theirloved ones who call now. For a limited time, there will be no set-up fees and the medical monitoring starts at less than a dollar a day. The system is Top-ranked and easy-to-use. The pendant (挂件)is 100% waterproof and it can travel with you. Our new system can detect falls automatically.

Call Toll-free 1-800-360-0405 and gain peace of mind. There is no long-term contract. Our medical alert professionals can walk you through everything over the phone.

The first 100 callers to order will receive

●Free Medical Alert System ($300 value)

●24 Hours a Day/7 Days a Week LIVE Monitoring and Support

●Free Waterproof Necklace Pendant or Wristband

●No Long-term Contract

●Free Shipping (mention “Readers Digest”)

Don’t wait until after a fall to give us a call. Take advantage of this special offer now to protect yourself or a loved one.

Call Now Toll-free: 1-800-360-0405 and mention “Readers’ Digest”

Sincerely,

Geoff Gross

President

MedicalAlertnow. com

1. Which of the following statements is true about the medical alert system?

A．The users of it will be given timely support on the phone.

B．All medical serious events can be avoided after using it.

C．Its service runs in the daytime and suspends at night.

D．People can buy it from hospitals at the same price.

2. Which of the following is included in an early bird deal?

A．No set-up fees.	B．Long-term contract.
C．Shipping fee discount.	D．A water-proof necklace.

3. This advertisement aims to ______________.

A．urge the government to cut medical expenses for seniors

B．provide advice to old people on how to prevent falls

C．alert people to the high risk of falls

D．promote a medical alert system.

4. Who might make a call after reading the advertisement?

A．a father who cares for his young daughter

B．a doctor who specializes in heart disease

C．a teacher who worries about his elderly father

D．a student who makes troubles at school

3 . I have just finished my 23rd year of teaching at universities. And there have been several ___________ in the way students approach their classes. The most noticeable is that when I started teaching, students took notes in notebooks, but now every desk has a laptop on it when I give a lecture.

There seem to be a lot of obvious ___________ of taking notes on a computer. For one, it is easy to save the notes in a place where you can ___________ them later. For another, you will be able to read your notes later especially if your handwriting is poor.

Before we go out and encourage every student to bring a laptop to class, _________, it is worth checking out a study by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer. They compared college students’ _________ in tests following exposure to material. The students were assigned either to take notes by hand or using a laptop.

In the first study, students took notes while watching a lecture. Then, they engaged in other activities for about 30 minutes. Finally, they were given a quiz about the lecture. The quiz contained factual questions as well as conceptual questions that required some _________ of the subject matter.

Students did about equally well on the factual question ___________ how they took notes. However, the students did much ___________ on the conceptual questions when they took notes by hand than when they took them using the laptop.

The experiments ___________ the content of people’s notes to the lecture and found that when people typed their notes on a laptop, they were much more likely to __________ what people said directly rather than writing their impressions of it. That is, people writing out their notes had to think more __________ about the content of what they heard than those people who were just typing.

Then, in the second study, the experiments told people using the laptops to take good notes rather than just taking down what they heard. Even when people were given these ____________, they still had a greater tendency to type what they heard than people who were taking notes by hand. As before, the people who used the laptops did more poorly on a test of ____________ knowledge than those who took notes by hand.

So there is real value in having to ____________ the material in the process of taking notes. It is because handwriting is slow and ____________ that people have to think more clearly about what they want to write down rather than copying down what is being said.

1.

A．challenges

B．changes

C．problems

D．projects

2.

A．approaches

B．benefits

C．equivalents

D．guidelines

3.

A．find

B．give

C．take

D．use

4.

A．additionally

B．finally

C．otherwise

D．though

5.

A．confidence

B．competition

C．expectation

D．performance

6.

A．description

B．experience

C．understanding

D．memorization

7.

A．owing to

B．regardless of

C．in the form of

D．in relation to

8.

A．better

B．faster

C．more poorly

D．more slowly

9.

A．offered

B．devoted

C．led

D．compared

10.

A．copy

B．remember

C．summarize

D．grasp

11.

A．cheerfully

B．positively

C．deeply

D．quickly

12.

A．administrations

B．foundations

C．instructions

D．restrictions

13.

A．detailed

B．experimental

C．established

D．conceptual

14.

A．come across

B．think about

C．put away

D．take down

15.

A．effortful

B．quiet

C．steady

D．casual

4 . More than a decade ago, cognitive scientists John Bransford and Daniel Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called “preparation for future learning.” The researchers asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction. Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (although the college students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this outcome indicated that schooling had failed to help students think about ecosystems and extinction, major scientific ideas.

The researchers decided to go deeper, however. They asked both groups to generate questions about important issues needed to create recovery plans. On this task, they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues of interdependence between eagles and their habitats. Fifth graders tended to focus on features of individual eagles (“How big are they?” and “What do they eat?”). The college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the cornerstone (最重 要部分)of critical thinking. They had learned how to learn.

Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited to teach this skill than elementary and secondary schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people's scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask “What if?” and “How can?” questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark exploration，they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit-asking more questions, performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results. Specifically, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit. Rather than merely asking about something they wanted to try，they tended to include both cause and effect in their question. Asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry into the science content found in exhibits.

This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings. Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum. But people must acquire this skill somewhere, Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions about their own medical treatment, say, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that, we have an informal learning system that gives no grades, takes all comers，and is available even on holidays and weekends.

1. What is traditional educators interpretation of the research outcome mentioned in the first paragraph?

A．Students are not able to apply prior knowledge to new problems.

B．College students are no better than fifth grader in memorizing facts.

C．Education has not paid enough attention to major environmental issues.

D．Education has failed to lead students to think about major scientific ideas.

2. College students are different from children in that_____ ?

A．they have learned to think critically.

B．they are concerned about social issues.

C．they are curious about specific features.

D．they have learned to work independently.

3. What is the benefit of asking questions with no ready answers?

A．It arouses students’ interest in things around them.

B．It cultivates students’ ability to make scientific inquiries.

C．It trains students’ ability to design scientific experiments.

D．It helps students realize not every question has an answer.

4. At the end of the passage the author seems to encourage educators to ____.

A．train students to think about global issues

B．design more interactive classroom activities

C．make full use of informal learning resources

D．include collaborative inquiry in the curriculum

5 . Welcome to Adventureland!

Everyone loves Adventureland! The Parks and Exhibitions were built for you to explore (探索), enjoy, and admire their wonders. Every visit will be an unforgettable experience. You will go away enriched, longing to come back. What are you going to do this time?

The Travel Pavilion

Explore places you have never been to before, and experience different ways of life. Visit the Amazon jungle (丛林) village, the Turkish market, the Tai floating market, the Berber mountain house and others. Talk to the people there who will tell you about their lives, and things they make. You can try making a carpet, making nets, fishing ...

The Future Tower

This exhibition shows how progress will touch our lives. It allows us to look into the future and explore the cities of the next century and the way we’ll be living then. Spend some time in our space station and climb into our simulator (模拟装置) for the Journey to Mars.

The Nature Park

This is not really one park but several. In the Safari Park you can drive among African animals in one of our Range Cruisers: see lions, giraffes, elephants in the wild. Move on to the Ocean Park to watch the dolphins and whales. And then there is still the Aviary to see ...

The Pyramid

This is the center of Adventureland. Run out of film, need some postcards and stamps? For all these things and many more, visit our underground shopping center. Come here for information and ideas too.

1. The Travel Pavilion is built to help visitors ______.

A．realize the importance of travelling

B．become familiar with mountain countries

C．learn how to make things such as fishing nets

D．learn something about different places in the world

2. If you are interested in knowing about what people’s life will be, you may visit ______.

A．the Travel Pavilion	B．the Future Tower
C．the Safari Park	D．the Pyramid

3. If you want to get a toy lion to take home, where will you most likely go?

A．The Pyramid.	B．The Nature Park.
C．The Future Tower.	D．The Travel Pavilion.