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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Dr Wiseman started "the laugh lab" project in September 2001. It is the largest study of humour. Participants are invited to log on to the laugh lab website, give a few personal details, tell their favourite jokes and judge the jokes told by other people. The project will last for a year, and the organizers hope to finally discover the world's funniest joke. But there is also a serious purpose. The researches want to know what people from different nations and cultures find funny. And they want to find out the differences between the male and female sense of humour. The idea is that if we want to understand each other, we have to find out what makes us laugh. This is a subject that has long attracted psychologists and philosophers. Most of the time, people are not completely honest. We do things that society expects us to and say things that help us get what we want. But laughing cannot be controlled. When we laugh, we tell the truth about ourselves. By December 2001 over 10, 000 jokes had been submitted. This gave the scientists enough evidence to make early conclusions. It seems that men and women do have different senses of humour, for instance. "Our findings show the major differences in the ways in which males and females use humour, " said Dr. Wiseman. "Males use humour to appear superior to others, while women are more skilled in languages and prefer word play. " Researchers also found that there really is such a thing as a national sense of humour. The British enjoy what is usually called "toilet humour". But the French like their jokes short and sharp: "You're a high priced lawyer. Will you answer two questions for $500?" "Yes. What's the second question?" The Germans are famous for not having a sense of humour. But the survey found that German participants were more likely to find submitted jokes funny than any other nationality. Perhaps that proves the point. Is this joke funny? I don't know, but let's say yes, just to be safe. Dr Wiseman and his workmates also submitted jokes created by... Question: What is the best title for the passage? Options: A: Funny or not? B: Laugh louder! C: Men laugh better. D: Watch out for the trap in jokes!
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A

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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: If you want to help children develop language and speech skills, UCLA researchers say, listening to what they have to say is just as important as talking to them. The effect of a conversation between a child and an adult is about six times as great as the effect of adult speech input alone, the researchers found. "Adults speaking to children helps language develop, but what matters much more is the interaction," said the study' s lead author, Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers also found that TV viewing didn' t have much of an effect -- positively or negatively -- as long as it wasn' t displacing conversations between an adult and a child. The UCLA study included 275 families with children between 2 months and 48 months old. They represented a variety of incomes and education. The researchers found that, in an average day, children hear about 13,000 spoken words from adults and participated in about 400 adultchild conversations a day. Assessed separately, factors positively associated with language development included each additional 100 conversations a day and each 1,000 word increase in the number of words spoken by adults and heard by children. When looked at alone, TV was negatively associated with language development. But, when the three factors were analyzed together, the only one that stood out was conversation between adults and children. "The more a child speaks and interacts with an adult, the better idea a parent has about where the child is," Zimmerman said. "Although it' s mostly done unconsciously, parents will provide feedback and correct mistakes. They'll also _ their speech to the child. Parents can give a child words by talking to them about what they' re doing, such as, 'I'm putting on your pajamas now'. But give your child the opportunity to talk, hopefully without the rest of the noise in the environment," she added. "If parents can carve out some conversation time -- maybe at bath... Question: The researchers also found that TV viewing _ . Options: A: could have a positive effect on a child's language development B: had a little effect on a child' s language development C: affected a child's language development more negatively than positively D: affected a child's language development both negatively and positively
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B

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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: I knew I was all right now. Nobody else would come ahunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. I caught a catfish and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had supper. When it was dark I sat by my camp fire, feeling pretty satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, so I went and sat on the bank and listened to the current crashing along, and counted the stars and drift logs and rafts that came down, and then went to bed; there was no better way to when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, and you soon get it over. And so for three days and nights. No difference--just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, and I wanted to know all about it; but mainly I wanted to spend the time. I found plenty of strawberries and green summer grapes; and the green blackberries were just beginning to show. Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I wasn't far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I had shot nothing; it was for protection. About this time I almost stepped on a goodsized snake, and it moved quietly and smoothly through the grass and flowers, and I was after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up among my lungs. I never waited to look further, but unlocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as I could. Every now and then I stopped a second among the thick leaves and listened, but my breath came so hard that I couldn't hear anything else. I moved quietly along another piece further, then listened again; and so on. If I saw a stump , I took it for a man; if I stepped on a stick and broke it, it made me feel that a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too. Question: How did the boy feel when he saw the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking? Options: A: Surprised. B: Excited. C: Frightened. D: Puzzled.
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C