1 . Writing across Time

When students today need to take notes, they simply reach for their ballpoint pens. For students in the past, writing instruments were not so convenient.

Quill pens

Quill pens were made from large bird feathers. Students sharpened the quills with knives and then dipped them into pots of ink to write. The points needed constant re-sharpening and each dip of the quill provided only enough ink to write one word. Besides these problems, drops of ink often stained the page. Yet, people used quill pens for more than a thousand years. Can you imagine writing with a quill pen?

Brush pens

Chinese students traditionally used brush pens to practice writing characters. Unlike quill pens, brush pens had soft bristles that made smooth lines. Students dipped their brush pens in a pool of ink on an inkstone and then wrote.

Chalk

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when paper was not easily available, chalk was widely used in classrooms. Teachers wrote with chalk on blackboards while students practiced writing and maths on their own slates (石板).

Fountain pens

Fountain pens were the first pens that stored ink inside, from where it flowed through the metal tip or nib (笔尖) for writing. In the 19th century, they finally replaced quills on school desks. However, even with fountain pens, ink still often spilt out, leaving stains everywhere.

Ballpoint pens

Early ballpoint pens leaked and wrote poorly. Three inventors took almost sixty years to finally solve these problems in the early 1950s. Today two of them, Hungarian journalist Josef Laszlo Biro and French Baron Bich, are known for making the ballpoint pen cheap and reliable. Biro and Bic pens are still hugely popular and useful today.

1. The passage mainly talks about ______.

A．the origins of writing instruments	B．the quality of writing instruments
C．the development of writing instruments	D．the materials of writing instruments

2. What pens were the first to keep ink inside?

A．Quill pens.	B．Brush pens.
C．Ballpoint pens.	D．Fountain pens.

3. Biro and Bic pens ______.

A．save ink and paper	B．cost less and work well
C．leak when used	D．write poorly

4. The author writes the passage to ______.

A．provide information	B．give advice
C．offer an opinion	D．tell a story