Growing up in Puerto Rico, our family was no different from so many others. My parents got married after my father came back when the war ended. Both of my parents were struggling with the hard economic realities of the time. But somehow, they found time to cherish those cultural values that shaped our everyday life. In our daily life, we celebrated together with our friends or family members every birthday, every graduation, and all holidays with music and dancing, typical foods. When we visited our family in the countryside -- a trip that took about two hours in a car, with five children fighting as to who would get a window or the front seat -- we would break into song, and somehow the trip would turn into one full of happiness and fun. We would sing not only interesting children's songs but also beautiful love songs -- songs about the love of the country though we didn't understand the meaning of the words many times. I came to Philadelphia for the first time in 1973 to do a residency in family medicine. I remember the many hours of work. I was facing issues of life and death and suffering the clearly social unfairness and issues of poverty and race. These were all aggravated by my feeling of cultural differences. An important turning point in my life happened one Saturday night when I attended a concert of Puerto Rican singer and composer Antonio Caban Vale. The music showed my familiar rhythms, and the words spoke to my heart. I had found a space to express, celebrate, and share my culture in Philadelphia. Therefore, I believe diversity is seen as an advantage and not as a disadvantage. As a Puerto Rican, I am a mixture of races and I believe in my strength because of this. What did the concert make the author aware of? A) The possibility of celebrating her own culture. B) The right to share one's culture with others. C) The happiness of possessing unique cultural values. D) The right of cultures to coexist in society.
D
When you are little, the whole world feels like a big playground.I was living in Conyers, Georgia the summer it all happened.I was a second grader, but my best friend Stephanie was only in the first grade.Both of our parents were at work and most of the time they let us go our own way. It was a hot afternoon and we decided to have an adventure in Stephanie's basement.As I opened the basement door, before us lay the biggest room, full of amazing things like guns, dolls, and old clothes.I ran downstairs, and spotted a red steel can.It was paint.I looked beyond it and there lay even more paint in bright colors like purple, orange, blue and green. "Stephanie, I just found us a project for the day. Get some paintbrushes.We are fixing to paint." She screamed with excitement as I told her of my secret plans and immediately we got to work.We gathered all the brushes we could find and moved all of our materials to my yard.There on the road in front of my house, we painted bit stripes of colors across the pavement.Stripe by stripe, our colors turned into a beautiful rainbow.It was fantastic! The sun was starting to sink.I saw a car in the distance and jumped up as I recognized the car.It was my mother.I couldn't wait to show her my masterpiece.The car pulled slowly into the driveway and from the look on my mother's face, I could tell that I was in deep trouble. My mother shut the car door and walked towards me.Her eyes glaring, she shouted, "What in the world were you thinking? I understood when you made castles out of leaves, and climbed the neighbors' trees, but this! Come inside right now!" I stood there glaring back at her for a minute, angry because she had insulted my art. "Now go clean it up!" Mother and I began cleaning the road.Tears ran down my checks as I saw my beautiful rainbow turn into black cement . Though years have now passed, I still wonder where my rainbow has gone.I wonder if, maybe when I get older, I can find my rainbow and never have to brush it away.I guess we all need sort of _ to... What did the writer want to do when his mother came home? A) To introduce Stephanie to her. B) To prevent her from seeing his painting. C) To put the material back in the yard. D) To show his artwork to her.
D
Q: Every kid wishes to be an adult. But now as grown-ups, some adults find they cannot leave childhood behind. They become "kidults" (kid+adult). Being a kidult has become a lifestyle-choice among young people across Asia. Some kidults collect toys they once played with. Hello Kitty, Garfield, and Snoopy have many adult fans around the world. It is not unusual to see a 20-something woman with a big, Garfield-shaped cushion on her sofa or a Hello Kitty mobile phone accessory. Other kidults still enjoy children's stories and fairy tales. For example, Bloomsbury even published the Harry Potter novels with an adult cover. That way, no one else on the subway will know that an adult is actually reading a children's book! "Kidults can be like vitamins to society. Adults who value their childhood and hold on to pure, child-like emotion may be needed in such a rough and dry society," said Lee Sojung, professor of Foreign Studies at Hankuk University. He added that kidult culture may fill the generation gap between adults and kids. It could give children and their parents books, movies, and cartoon shows to enjoy together. He may be right. Tim Greenhalgh, a professor, explained that some kidults just refuse to grow up. They cling to childhood because life in a busy and stressful city frightens them. Kidults would like to forget their age and openly show their fear of society and adulthood. " So, they can escape from increasingly complex and stressful lives that are hard to deal with." Greenhalgh said. In the opinion of the professor in a Korean University, kidults are _ . A) immature and weak. B) necessary to our society. C) bad to the development of society. D) getting more and more.
A: B
(Question)
Of the several films Hirokazu has made about childhood and children, this one is the most modest, but no less pleasing for its delicate style and small setting. This wise and funny film works small miracles in describing such a moment when kids turn from the wishfulness of childhood into shaping the world for themselves. The sweetly reflective hero, a sixth-grader named Koichi, starts out by wishing for a volcano to erupt. Not just any volcano, but the one that towers above his town, smoking heavily and giving off ash. An eruption would lead to a withdrawing, which would lead, at least in his mind, to a reunion with his father and kid brother, who've been living in Hakata while Koichi lives with his mother and retired grandparents in Kagoshima. The volcano, knowing nothing of this, refuses to erupt, but Koichi hears of another approach to realizing the desired miracle. One of the pleasures of I Wish is watching how kids behave -- how Koichi attacks his dinner, for example. Another pleasure is rediscovering how kids think. These kids can be logical and ever so tricky. But children's thought processes can also be fancy. A boy wishes he could play baseball like one of baseball stars, who eats curry for breakfast; so he, too, starts eating curry for breakfast, instead of practicing on the field. Another boy tries to wish his dead dog, Marble, back to life. And what does Koichi finally wish for? I wish you'd see this delightful film to find out. Which of the following statements is true of the film? A) It is set in a volcano eruption. B) It is a serious science fiction movie. C) It shows some dull and ridiculous behaviors. D) It shows a lively and thoughtful world of children.
(Answer)
D