3 . Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. This outdoor activity gives us beautiful plants, pleasant smelling flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables. And it also does a lot of good to our health.

Gardening connects people. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect chance to meet and spend time with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and gardeners are no different. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most of them enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens almost as much as sharing flowers and vegetables from their gardens.

Gardening is a great activity for children. It gets them outdoors and off computers, televisions and cell phones. Gardening is also a great teacher. It can teach a child about where food comes from and healthy eating. It also helps them to understand that the natural resources (资源) are not inexhaustible and the importance of using them carefully.

Then, when you garden, you must move around. All the different movements needed for gardening, like bending and lifting, work small muscles (肌肉) in the body. And you can easily get good exercise when you are digging holes or pulling grass.

In a study, researches looked at more than 2,800 people over the age of 60. They studied their life habits, activities and health over a 16-year period. They found that gardening could lower the risk of future dementia (痴呆) by 36%. Gardening requires people to do many repeated actions, such as picking off dying flowers. These actions have a calming influence on the brain. The brain is still active but not in the same way when we use computers.

You'll feel wonderful when what you grow in a garden looks, smells, feels and tastes good.

1. What can be inferred from Paragraph 2?

A．Gardeners don't feel lonely.	B．Gardeners are fond of sharing.
C．Gardeners have many hobbies.	D．Gardeners care about the environment.

2. What does the underlined word "inexhaustible" in Paragraph 3 mean?

A．Useless.

B．Special.

C．Endless.

D．Cheap.

3. What is the purpose of introducing the study?

A．To tell us gardening is popular with the old.

B．To tell us gardening is good for health.

C．To tell us gardening can be a tiring activity.

D．To tell us gardening is better than playing computers.

4. What's the purpose of the text?

A．To show how to garden.	B．To encourage us to garden.
C．To show gardening is popular.	D．To encourage us to do outdoor activities.

4 . I travel a lot in my work, and what I dislike about my job is eating alone. It always makes me feel lonely to see others laughing and talking. So, room service for several nights was a better choice for me.

After having room service three nights at a hotel in Houston, however, I needed to get out of my room. Although the restaurant opened at 6:30, I arrived at 6:25. The waiter at the front desk made a comment(评论) about my “being there really early”. I explained my dislike of eating alone in restaurants. He then seated me at a lovely table and asked me whether I would mind if he sat down with me for a while.

I was glad! He sat and talked with me about his career goals and the difficulty of being at work on nights, weekends and holidays. He said he hadn’t enough time to be with his family. After 15 minutes, he saw some customers at the front desk and excused himself. I noticed that before he went to the front desk, he stopped in the kitchen for a moment.

Then another waiter came out of the kitchen and had a wonderful chat with me. Before I left that night, some other waiters, even the cook, had come out of the kitchen and sat with me!

When I asked for my bill about one hour later, all the people who had sat down with me came over in a big group to my table, and presented me with a red rose. And I cried! What had begun as a lonely night ended as a beautiful experience.

1. The author asked for room service because _______.

A．a lot of money would be saved in this way

B．he didn’t like to eat with other people around

C．he didn’t wanted to be recognized by the waiters

D．seeing people laughing and talking made him feel bad

2. How did the waiter feel when he saw the author come in at 6:25?

A．Dissatisfied.	B．Pleased.
C．Surprised.	D．Angry.

3. From the third paragraph, we can learn that the waiter at the front desk ______

A．knew how to attract more customers to his restaurant

B．found it hard to balance his work and his family

C．was getting tired of his present job

D．had never had such a chance to talk about his worries

4. The author wants to tell us that ______.

A．people are actually all lonely in their own way

B．restaurants should put the need of customers first

C．the kindness of strangers can make you less lonely

D．restaurants are full of surprises for lonely people