Ques: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: True to their reputation as leisure-loving gourmets ,the French spend more time sleeping and eating than anyone else among the world's wealthy nations,according to a study published on Monday. The average French person sleeps almost nine hours every night,more than an hour longer than Japanese and Korean,who sleep the least in a survey of 18 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).Despite their siesta habit,Spaniards rank only third in the poll after Americans,who sleep more than 8.5 hours. And while more and more French people grab a bite at fast-food chains these days or,wolf down a sandwich at their desk,they still spend more than two hour's a day eating. That means their meals are twice as long as those of the average Mexican,who dedicates just over an hour a day to food,the OECD's "Society at a Glance" report on work,health and leisure in Asia,Europe and North and South America found.The Japanese,scrimping on sleep and burdened with long working hours,still manage to spend close to two hours a day eating and drinking,placing them third behind New Zealanders. Despite the limited amount of time Americans spend eating each day---about an hour and a quarter--U.S.obesity) rates are the highest in the 30 members of OECD. The Japanese like to spend what remains of their rare free time watching television or listening to the radio.This takes up 47 percent of leisure time in Japan.Norwegians spend the most time at leisure,just over a quarter of their day,while at the low end,Mexicans spend just 16 percent of their time having fun. The OECD has 30 members.The survey covers only the countries for which appropriate figures were available. Question: In the 30 members of OECD,U.S ranks first at _ Options: A: leisure B: sleeping time C: eating time D: obesity-rates
Ans: D

Ques: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Dr. Julie Coulton, a British psychologist, focuses her research on the extraordinary function of the play in the physical and spiritual development of children and Martti Bergson from the University of Helsinki shows that playing outside, in the open air, contributes to a better development of the brain. Thus parents must encourage their children to spend as much time as possible in the open air, and at the same time, to ask schools and kindergartens to assure the small a playground outside. Recent statistics and studies show an alarming increase of the number of hours spent by children in front of the TV and the computer and a decrease of the time spent outside. As a consequence more and more children suffer from eye problems and have to wear glasses. Also the problem of fatness among children concerns many parents who don't know what to do anymore to make their children eat healthy and balanced. Children need a space where to develop their creativity mid parents should encourage them all the time. Too many rules hold back the child's personality and creativity and prevent them to develop the desire to know, to find out, to learn. If you tell your child so many times: "Don't do that, don't mess the room, don't go there ...", he will lose the desire to do something, anything. Parents must watch their children without suffocating them. Should you consider they mustn't do that or this, you have to logically explain them your reasons and they will understand. Through playing a child learns how to communicate, how to take decisions. Playing is connected to the intellectual, emotional and social progress of the child. Playing lets your children learn how to express his feelings. Question: What is worrying the scientists is that _ . Options: A: most parents pay no attention to their children's playing B: most schools and kindergartens have no playgrounds C: most parents encourage their children to watch TV or go surfing D: most children spend more time on TV or tile Internet than on playing outside
Ans: D

Ques: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: If prefix = st1 /U.S.software companies don't pay more attention to quality, they could kiss their business good-bye. BothIndiaandBrazilare developing a world-class software industry. Their weapon is quality and one of their jobs is to attract the topU.S.quality specialists whose voices are not listened to in their country. Already, of the world's 12 software houses that have earned the highest rating in the world, seven are in India. That's largely because they have used new methods rejected by American software specialists. For example, for decades, quality specialists, W. Edwards Deming and J. M. Juran had urgedU.S.software companies to change their attitudes to quality. But their quality call mainly fell on deaf ears in the U.S -- but not in Japan. By the 1970s and 1980s,Japanwas grabbing market share with better, cheaper products. They used Deming's and Juran's ideas to bring down the cost of good quality to as little as 5% of total production costs. InU.S.factories, the cost of quality then was 10 times as high: 50%. In software, it still is. Watts S. Humphrey spent 27 years at IBM heading up software production and then quality assurance. But his advice was seldom paid attention to. He retired from IBM in 1986. In 1987, he worked out a system for assessing(evaluating) and improving software quality. It has proved its value time and again. For example, in 1990 the cost of quality at Raytheon Electronics Systems was almost 60% of total software production costs. It fell to 15% in 1996 and has since further dropped to below 10%. Like Deming and Juran, Humphrey seems to be winning more praises overseas than at home. The Indian government and several companies have just founded the Watts Humphrey Software Quality Institute at the Software Technology Park in Chennai,India. Let's hope thatU.S.lead in software will not be eaten up by its quality problems. Question: What country has more highest-rating companies in the world than any other country has? Options: A: India. B: TheUS. C: Brazil. D: Germany.
Ans: A

Ques: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Old-Fashioned Play--For Pay Kids !Come have a ball! Or 60,000 of them! There's a new type of business franchise that is appearing in shopping malls and neighborhoods acrossprefix = st1 /Americaoffering pay-per-use indoor playgrounds ,which feature toys ,games ,supervised fun and a workout that doesn't break the family bank. As public playgrounds grow increasingly worn and dirty, the for-profit centers offer clean, safe supervised activity as well as a variety of challenging exercises to develop youngsters' physical fitness, usually for a fee of around 5$ an hour. "Playgrounds are dirty ,not supervised," says Dick Guggenheimer ,owner of the two-month-old Discovery Zone in Yonkers, N.Y., part of Kansas City-based chain, "We are indoors; we are padded ;parents can feel their child is safe". In order to satisfy the need of two-earner families ,the new franchise stayed open in the evenings ,long after traditional public playgrounds have grown dark and unusable .However these new playgrounds are not meant to be day-care centers .Parents are expected go stay and play with their kids rather than drop them off. But several also provide high-tech baby-sitting services. At some of the Discovery Zones, parents can register their children in special supervised programs, then leave them and slip away for a couple of hours to enjoy a movie or dinner. If there is a problem ,Mom and Dad are called. The most fun of all, though, is getting to do what parents used to do in the days before two-earner families and two-hour commutes; play with their kids. That ,at least ,is old-fashioned, even at per-hour rates. Question: What is this article mainly talking about? Options: A: The fast development of Discovery Zone. B: The disadvantages of outdoor playgrounds. C: A new type of business franchise for kids. D: Children can play in the public playgrounds without parents' care.
Ans:
C