During her junior year of high school, Diane Ray's teacher handed her a worksheet and instructed the 17-year-old to map out her future financial life. Ray pretended to buy a car, rent an apartment, and apply for a credit card. Then, she and her classmates played the "stock market game", investing the hypothetical earnings from their hypothetical jobs in the market in the disastrous fall of 2008. "Our pretend investments crashed," Ray says, still frightened. "We got to know how it felt to lose money." That pain of earning and losing money is a feeling that public schools increasingly want to teach. Forty states now offer some type of financial instruction at the high-school level, teaching students how to balance checkbooks and buy stock in math and social-studies classes. Though it's too early to measure the full influence of the Great Recession , the interest in personal-finance classes has risen since 2007 when bank failures started to occur regularly. Now, many states including Missouri, Utah, and Tennessee require teenagers to take financial classes to graduate from high school. School districts such as Chicago are encouraging money-management classes for kids as young as primary school, and about 300 colleges or universities now offer online personal-finance classes for incoming students. "These classes really say, 'This is how you live independently,' " says Ted Beck, president of National Endowment for Financial Education. Rather than teach investment methods or financial skills, these courses offer a back-to-the-basics approach to handling money: Don't spend what you don't have. Put part of your monthly salary into a savings account, and invest in the stock market for the long-term rather than short-term gains. For Ray, this means dividing her earnings from her part-time job at a fast-food restaurant into separate envelopes for paying bills, spending and saving. "Money is so hard to make but so easy to spend," she says one weekday after school. "That is the big takeaway." Teaching kids about the... After completing the financial class, Diane Ray is likely to _ . A) pay off all her debts. B) handle her money better C) find a job in a bank. D) manage the family income
B
Sally Donovan is cooking when a paper plane flies across the kitchen and lands at her feet. She picks it up, unfolds it and finds a child's sketch of a tear-stained face with a speech bubble saying: "I'm sorry I was naughty--I'm a bad person." Sally, 42, draws a big smiley face on the back of the paper with "I love you, Rose, and we're always going to look after you." Then she folds it up and launches the plane back into the living room where her nine-year-old daughter is watching TV with brother Jamie, 13 and dad Rod, 40. Jamie often makes pictures for his parents too--like the one showing a swift river with them on one side and him trapped on the other side. It's one of the many unusual ways that Sally and Rob have learned to communicate emotionally with their abused children in an astonishing eight-year journey of hope, healing and love. Jamie was just four and half--sister Rose one when they were adopted by the Donovans in 2005. The youngsters had been taken from their natural mother and placed in foster care after a series of cruelty and neglect. They were left alone, hungry, and witnessed home violence on a regular basis. Sally and Rob spent three years trying for a baby before deciding to adopt, and were well aware of the youngsters' poor background. But they were still unprepared for raising a child permanently scared by abuse or the lack of support on offer. But now Sally has written a brilliant and heart-touching account of their family struggle in a book called "No Matter What". Sally said: "These kids come to you with a story that what happened to them was their fault--because they are bad and unlovable. To show them they are loveable and none of it was their fault takes a lot of time. They both still say "I'm bad". Jamie is less stuck on it now but whenever life deals him a knock, he will fall back into 'that happened because I am stupid, I'm rubbish, I'm bad'." Sally's book is humorous, heart-touching and so wildly honest that academics, charity bosses, parents and adoptees are praising it as... Why did the two adopted children still say "I'm bad" ? A) They know clearly they are not lovable enough. B) They often put the situation in an embarrassment. C) What they suffered rooted deep in their minds. D) They are honest of what they have done.
C
Q: Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions to the text and gets answers. In the light of these he puts further questions, etc. For most of the time this "conversation" goes on below the level of consciousness. At times, however, we become aware of it. This is usually when we are running into difficulties, when mismatch is occurring between our expectations and meaning of the text. When successful matching is being experienced, our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level. Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the pages; others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension which is written in the text. The latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for the advanced readers. There is another conversation which from our point of view is equally important, and that has nothing to do with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a "process" conversation as opposed to "content" conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are advanced reader our ability to hold a content conversation with text is usually well developed but not so our ability to hold a process conversation. It is just this kind of conversation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level. As a kind of conversation between the reader and the text, it becomes conscious only when _ . A) the reader has trouble understanding what the author says B) the reader's expectations agree with what is said in the text C) the reader asks questions and gets answers D) the reader understands a text very well ks5u
A: A
(Question)
I told my friend Graham, "I often walk two miles from my house to the town centre. Unfortunately, there is a big hill on the way." He replied, "You should say 'fortunately'." He explained that I should be glad for the extra exercise that the hill gave. I thought he was right. My attitude to the hill has now changed. As I _ the foot of the hill and prepare to climb, I tell myself that this hill will help me lose weight and get fit. This hill is my friend. I have a smile of satisfaction as I reach the top of the hill. Problems are to be faced. We cannot achieve anything with an easy life. Helen Keller once wrote that "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened ..." Our attitude towards difficulties is of importance in life. From time to time, we all face problems, accidents and difficulties. We cannot choose the situation but we can choose our attitude toward the situation. How can you change your attitude towards difficulties? Try these steps:1. Face the problem. Do not avoid it. 2. Take a positive attitude. 3. Imagine how you will feel when you solve the problem. 4. Develop an action plan for how to deal with it. 5. Smile. Many great people like Helen Keller, took these steps to deal with their problems. They chose their attitude. They chose to be positive. They accepted the challenge. They won. The author used Helen Keller's words to _ . A) tell us to learn from successful people B) tell us to do more exercise to keep fit C) prove that we should choose a hard life D) prove that difficulties make a man great
(Answer)
D