Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: A lot of people say math is not their strong suit. One New Jersey parent wants to help change that. Laura Overdeck grew up with numbers. She always helped measure ingredients when her mother baked, and she learned about angles from her father. She went on to major in astrophysics in college. Overdeck knew she wanted her own children to be good at math, too. "And when our first child was about two, we just started giving her a math problem every night," Overdeck said. The problem was usually a story, involving animals, cars or candies that let the kid count. "Our third child started, at age two, yelling that he wanted his own math problem because he saw his brother and sister doing it. And we thought, 'Wow, we have a household where math is the popular thing at bedtime,'" Overdeck said. In February, Overdeck launched Bedtime Math, an Internet website where she posts daily puzzles for children. Overdeck is particularly keen to hook children on numbers before they go to school. So why introduce little ones to math so early? Sain Beilock, an expert on performance anxiety, says the more fun and familiar math is early on, the less likely children will feel nervous when they start to learn math in school. "My lab has shown recently that kids as early as first grade report feeling anxious about doing math," Beilock said. "You can hear totally educated adults say, 'You know I'm just not that good at math.' or 'I'm kind of afraid of math.' And that's a totally acceptable thing for a well-educated person to say, but you never hear them say, 'Well, you know, I'm just not that good at reading,'" Overdeck said. She wants children and their parents to become as fluent in numbers as they are in Harry Potter. Question: The unfavorable situation of the US in math ability is shown by _ . Options: A: the popularity of Bedtime Math B: children's performance anxiety in school C: people's response to math D: adults' great fondness for Harry Potter
Answer: C

Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Like many lovers of books, Mary and her husband, Richard Goldman, seldom walked past a bookstore without stopping to look inside. They often talked of opening their own store one day. When Mary was hospitalized with heart trouble in 1989, they decided it was time to get serious. Richard, who worked for a business company, was eager to work for himself, and Mary needed to slow down from her demanding job. They started by talking to bookstore owners and researching the industry. "We knew it had to be a specialty store because we couldn't match the big chains dollar for dollar," says Mary. One figure caught her attention: She'd read somewhere that roughly 20 percent of books sold were mysteries , and many buyers spent more $300 a year on books. She and Richard were themselves mystery readers. On Halloween 1992, they opened the Mystery Lovers Bookshop and Cafe near their home. With three children in college, the couple could not spend all the family's money to start a shop. To cover the $100,000 cost, they drew some of their savings, borrowed from relatives and from an bank. The store merely broke even in its first year, with only $120,000 in sales. But Mary was always coming up with new ways to attract customers. The shop had a coffee bar and it offered gifts to mystery lovers and served dinners for book clubs that met in the store. She also invited dozens of writers to discuss their stories. Today Mystery Lovers makes sales of about $420,000 a year. After paying taxes, business costs and the six part-time sales clerks, Richard and Mary together earn about $34,000. "The job you love may not go hand in hand with a million-dollar income," says Richard. "This has always been about an enjoyable life for ourselves, not about making a lot of money." Question: How did their bookstore do in the first year? Options: A: They had to borrow money to keep it going. B: They made just enough to cover all the costs. C: They succeeded in earning a lot of money. D: They failed though they worked hard.
Answer: B

Question: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: "Take your time," Mr. Ballou encouraged."Read, borrow, and keep.Find something you like.What do you read?" "Pick for me, then." I said. He looked up and down at me as though measuring me for a suit.After a moment, he nodded, and handed me a dark red book, fairly thick. "The Last of the Just," I read."By Andre Schwarz-Bart.What's it about?" "You tell me," he said."Next week." I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared.Translated from French, the language was beautiful, simple, impossible to resist.When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, read all through the night. To this day, thirty years later, I clearly remember the experience.It was my first meeting with world literature, and I was amazed by the strong power a novel contain.I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words, so the next week, when Mr. Ballou asked,"Well?"I only replied, "It was good." "Keep it, then,"he said."Shall I suggest another?" I nodded, and was presented with Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa. To make the story short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for helping cut his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthroplogy at Dartmouth College.That summer when I started to read became a turning point in my life which change the course of all that followed. Question: Mr. Ballou offered me books probably because he _ . Options: A: found that I had no money to buy books B: intended to sell some books to me C: wanted to five me something in return for my help D: wanted me to translate some books for him
Answer:
C