Q: When punctuation began, it was mainly to help people read out loud. Until a few hundred years ago, not many people were taught to read, so there was a lot more reading out loud by the few people who could. To help those reading out loud in the old days, sign known as "points" were added to pages of writing. Punctuation comes from the Latin word punctus, meaning "point". These points told readers when to pause or take a breath, and what to emphasize . In Europe from the early centuries AD, these points were widely used although not everybody used the same points for the same thing. When printing was invented, printers had to be made more clearly about what to put where, so that everyone was doing the same thing. Since that point, all sorts of punctuation rules have been discovered and invented. Speech marks "..." Speech marks or quotation marks are used to show that someone is speaking. The sort we have in English today began to be widely used during the 18th century. Before that readers simply understood from the way a sentence was written that someone was speaking although sometimes spoken words were underlined. Comma , colon: period(full stop). All three of these sorts of punctuation marks were given their Greek names by Aristophanes, a librarian who lived in Byzantium in the 2nd century BC. They were marks on the page, each with a message to the reader. Comma meant a short pause. Colon meant a medium sized pause. Period meant a long pause. Exclamation mark! In the early days of punctuation, if you saw this sign, you were supposed to pause. Some people think the exclamation mark began as what the Greek word IO looked like if it was turned 90 degrees. This word means "Oh, gosh!" With the I on the top and the O under it, the sign as we know it today was developed. Question mark? In the middle age, a squiggle above a full stop was sometimes used to show the sentence was a question and that a person's voice should go up at the end. By the 17th century it had turned into what we call a question mark. The... All punctuation rules were discovered and invented in order to _ . A) help people read out loud B) meet the need of printing C) guide the way of writing D) mention the spoken words
A: B

Q: My name is Linda. I'm a girl. I live in Canada .I have two big eyes. My eyes are green. I have long, red hair. I am 1.6 meters tall. I have long arms and long legs. I like black .Black is my favourite colour. I have a friend in China. Her name is Lin Na. She has two big eyes ,too. But her eyes are black. Lin Na is short. She is only 1.5 meters tall. She has long hair, too. But her hair is black. She likes yellow. She has many yellow clothes. Yellow is her favourite colour. Lin Na an d I look different, but we are good friends . Lin Na and I are good friends, but we look _ . A) nice B) different C) like D) same
A: B

Q: Every winter the Indians caught beavers .They sold these beaver furs to men from France. In the 1600s and 1700s,people in France wanted beaver furs for coats and hats. Other countries wanted these furs, too . Wearing a beaver fur hat became a sign .It said ,"Look at this man! This man is rich!" In the 1800s,men in this country began to wear beaver hats. They too, wanted to wear the sign that said," Look at those men! They are rich!" Soon it was hard to find beavers. To get more beaver furs, traders had to move West. Traders began to explore this new country. They came back with wonderful stories about the new land. Before long, many people wanted to go West to live. Where people go, towns grow. Soon there were new towns in the West. Men looking for beaver for fancy(,) hats helped the West grow. The main idea of the whole story is that _ . A) traders carried signs for rich men B) the search for beavers helped the West to grow C) many wonderful stories were told about the West D) the beavers were very foolish
A: B

Q: Will you trust your friends if you can't see anything? If you are falling, do you believe they will catch you and help you stand up? Our teacher helped us to get the answer. One day, Mr. Morrie came into the classroom and said he had a game for us to try. He divided us into two groups. One student from the first group, stood in front of us with his eyes closed, and then fell backwards . The second group stood behind him. Before he fell on the floor, they should catch him and not let him get hurt. Most of us were uncomfortable with this. We were afraid that they wouldn't catch us and we would hit the floor. So we didn't move. We just stood there and laughed in embarrassment. Finally, one student, a thin, quiet, dark-haired girl called Sarah, decided to move. She crossed her arms in front of her body, closed her eyes, and slowly fell backwards. She looked quiet but brave. For a moment, I was sure that she was going to fall on the floor. But before she hit the floor, the other students caught her, held her and finally helped her stand up. "Whoa!!" We were all surprised, and also encouraged . The girl was happy, too. Seeing this, Morrie smiled and said to the girl, "When you close your eyes, you can't see anything. You won't feel safe. When you are falling, the feeling gets stronger. You are not sure whether you will hit the cold, hard floor or the warm, soft hands of your friends. But if you are brave enough to trust them, they will not let you down ." What did the writer think of the girl? A) Careful. B) Active. C) Quiet but brave. D) Careless.
A: C