Read the article and select the best answer. Article: A young woman was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given three months to live. So as she was getting her things "in order", she asked her pastor to come to her house to discuss her final wishes. With everything in order, the pastor was ready to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. "What's that?" asked the pastor. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand." The pastor stood looking at the young woman, not knowing what to say. "That surprises you, doesn't it?" the young woman asked. "Well, to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request," said the pastor. The young woman explained, "In all my years of going to church meetings and dinners, I remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would always lean over and say, 'Keep your fork.' It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming, like chocolate cake or apple pie,some dessert like that. Something wonderful! I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork so that when they ask you why I have a fork, you can tell them: 'Keep your fork--the best is yet to come.'" The pastor hugged the young woman good-bye. He knew that the young woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She had a better grasp of what heaven would be like than many people twice her age, with twice as much experience and knowledge. At the funeral people were walking by the young woman's casket and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the pastor heard the question "Why does she have a fork?" And over and over again he smiled. So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it reminded you of this young woman gently. Send the message to everyone you consider a friend even if it means sending it back to the person who sent it to you. And, keep your fork!! Question: In the author's opinion, the woman in this passage is _ . Options: A: bored B: optimistic C: pessimistic D: crazy
B

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Recently, we've been talking about how we need better teachers. There's no doubt that a great teacher can help in a student's achievement but here's what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Every three years, the organization called O.E.C.D. organizes exams as part of the Program for International Student Assessment , or PISA, which tests 15-year-olds on their abilities to solve real problems. America's 15-year-olds have not done as well as students in Singapore, Finland and Shanghai in the PISA exams. To better understand the reasons, the PISA team, starting with four countries in 2006, and then adding 14 more in 2009, went to the parents of 5,000 students. They interviewed them about how they raised their kids and then compared it with the test results for each of those years. Two weeks ago, the PISA team published the main findings of its study: Fifteen-year-olds whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school get much higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents don't often read with them or not at all. Parents' concern for their children is strongly connected with better results in PISA. According to Schleicher, the leader of the team, just asking your children how their school day was and showing great interest in their learning can help a lot. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level. The study found that getting parents concerned about their children's learning at home is more powerful than parents attending parent-teacher meetings, volunteering in classrooms, taking part in money-raising, and showing up at back-to-school nights. To be sure, nothing can replace a good teacher. But let's stop putting the whole responsibility on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make teaching more effective . Question: The study was done in _ countries in total in 2009. Options: A: 4 B: 14 C: 18 D: 40
C

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Would you like to be an actor, but aren't the right age or physical type for the part? Don't give up: there may be a place for you in the world of voice-acting. _ . In addition to many appearances on television and in movies, Rickey is a voice-over actor, someone we hear but don't see. Rickey has acted since he was 6, both on and off camera. After school, his grandmother-- a manager and acting coach--helped him develop his skills by doing voice exercises and reading aloud. Voice-over actors do many kinds of acting. They are the voices of cartoon characters on television, in movies and video games, and for communicating toys. In films, they replace the foreign language conversation with English version. They create crowd noises, make commercials, act in radio plays, and record telephone instructions and public announcements. They read books on tape and even record museum tours. Like other actors, voice-over actors need to understand scripts, interpret characters, and breathe correctly. They have to master voice techniques, such as pacing, volume, and range. Sometimes they use their normal voices; other times they change their voices to create different characters or noises. Rickey receives his Danny Phantom scripts only a few days before he tapes each episode . He writes helpful notes on the script to guide himself on speaking his part. Rickey practices, then tapes at the recording studio. He and the other cast members sit in a soundproof booth, acting out their characters as they read their lines into the microphones. "The cartoon gets created after we record the words, so we have to imagine everything in our mind," says Rickey. Later, the recorded words, music, and sound effects are combined with the cartoon art to create the cartoon we enjoy on TV. Sound interesting? Maybe you can have a "voice" in acting after all! Question: From the passage we can infer that _ . Options: A: it's very complex to become a cartoon film voice-over actor B: Rickey has been involved with acting most of his life C: Rickey's mother helped him a lot with acting D: many people have nice voices
B