Read the article and select the best answer. Article: In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. This is the only Ezra Pound poem that many people will read in their lives. Why? One obvious reason is that it's just two lines long. The poem, which can be understood as "A man sees a bunch of faces in the subway and thinks they look like flowers on a tree branch," is an exercise in shortness. Pound wrote it after having a spiritual experience in a Paris metro (subway) station. In 1916, the US poet originally thought he could best describe his vision in a painting. Unfortunately, he wasn't a painter. So he wrote a thirty-line poem, which he didn't like. He dropped the long version in the waste bin. Six months later, he wrote a shorter poem, but didn't like that one either. Finally, a full year after the experience, he had been reading short Japanese poems called haikus, and he figured he would try this style. The result, which was published in 1913, is one of the most famous and influential works in modern poetry. This poem is one of the monuments of the 20th-century artistic movement known as "Imagism". Basically, Pound and his friends thought that images weren't just decoration: they were the highest form of speech. By finding the right image, the poet can express the true, spiritual reality of a thing, which is more important than using a bunch of adjectives to describe its physical appearance. Thus, "In a Station of the Metro" is a poem that consists of one image expressed with absolute exactness and nothing else. To the imagists, the best way to describe an experience is not to use more and more words; the best way is to find exactly the right words. Have you ever told a beloved one that "words can't express" how much you love them? Well, Pound would say that you're just being lazy. In his view, words can express anything, even if it takes an entire year to find the right ones. Question: According to the text, "In a Station of the Metro" was _ . Options: A: based on one of Pound's paintings B: first discovered in a waste bin C: influenced by haikus D: completed in 1916
C

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Steve knew he'd been adopted as a baby, and when he turned 18, in 2003, he decided he'd try to track down his birth mother. The agency from which he'd been adopted gave him his mother's name: Tallady. But online searches didn't turn up any results about it, and Steve had to let it go. In 2007, though, he searched for the name again online. This time, the search results included a home address near the Lowe's store where Steve, then 22, worked as a deliveryman. When he mentioned the coincidence to his boss, his boss said, "You mean Tallady, who works here?" Steve and Tallady, a cashier, had said hello to each other a few times at the store, but they'd never really talked. He hadn't even known her name. Steve thought there was no possible way she was his mother though they shared the same name. For a few months, Steve avoided Tallady. "I wasn't sure how to approach her," he told a local reporter. Finally, the agency volunteered to arrange their reunion. When Tallady realized that the nice guy she'd been waving at was his son, she sobbed. She'd always hoped to meet her birth son one day. Later that day, mother and son talked for almost three hours at a nearby bar. She'd given him up for adoption in 1985, when she was 23. "I wasn't ready to be a mother," she told him. Married with two other children, Tallady says, "I have a complete family now." Question: Why Steve avoided Tallady for months? Options: A: Because she didn't want to talk to him. B: Because he wasn't fully prepared for the reunion. C: Because she was very difficult to approach. D: Because he didn't think she was his birth mother.
A

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Most recently, it's very common in students who need a parent present for job interviews. Naturally, it's easy to blame the students in these situations, but the bigger problem is us. We--as parents--are so eager to shelter our kids that we fail to realize that this in itself is harming them.As the mother of two young sons, I have to remind myself constantly that the biggest responsibility I have as a parent is to help them develop the skills needed to live in, to live without me.So, I'll let them fail. I'll let them fail because as long as they are safe and warm inside their comfort zones, they will never grow.And failure -- along with loss, heartbreak, disappointment, etc.-- will be part of growth for them.Call me the anti-tiger mom, but leaving them alone, is my way of helping them become equipped to fit in this world as we know it today.From terrorism and seemingly endless natural disasters, to our national debt and beyond, if we expect the next generation to stand up to the very real problems of our time, we need to stop feeding them and start teaching them how to fish. My children now are becoming little masters of compromise, but they try to negotiate everything now.It's a small price to help them learn a skill they'll use for the rest of their lives, including when I don't accompany them on job interviews. Question: According to the author, what is beneficial to kids' development? Options: A: Sheltering them. B: Keeping them safe. C: Leaving them alone. D: Blaming them.
C