Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: More and more people think it necessary to study in an English-speaking country and it didn't take long at all for me to decide to come and study in UK. Having been in the school for 2 months, I'm getting used to school life, and I am starting to make the most of my time in here. School starts at 9 o'clock every morning, and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we have long days, in which we have 9 lessons and school finishes at 4 o'clock. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays we have short days, in which we have only 6 lessons and finish at 1 o'clock. After lessons, we have two hours of activity time, when you can choose from a wide range of activities, including all the major sports, such as rugby and football, and also the minor sports such as basketball and tennis. As a boarder( ),the quality of food is something I consider very important, and Merchiston has not _ . The school kitchens are run by a professional food company, and the quality of food is very excellent and also they take the healthy diet very seriously: I remember once I was once asked to take more salad for my meal by a member of the kitchen staff for I didn't have enough vegetables. This brings another point of being a boarder: you need to learn how to look after yourself and be responsible for yourself. One of the huge advantages of being a boarder is that we can have breakfast in the school, which means we don't have to pull ourselves out of bed as early as the day pupils! Question: How many lessons do the students have every week in this school? - 15 - 45 - 27 - 18
45
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: In any family with more than one child, children seem to naturally compete for their parents' love and attention. Parents say they love every child equally. But is that true? Susan, founder of a consulting firm in Chicago, interviewed 216 women and found that even though none of her questions asked directly about a parent favoring one child over another, about two-third of the women said there was a favored child. And they also remembered their experience when they were young. One of the women said, "My mother always liked my brother better, and he got to summer camp in 1968 and I didn't. Plumez, who interviewed parents with both biological children ( ) and adoptive children for an adoption book in 2008, found that what matters most is whether your temperaments ( ) are pleasing. "In some cases, parents would say they felt closer to their adopted children, "she says. "Some parents like the children with characters similar to theirs. Two people who are shy and withdrawn might get along well, unless the shy parent doesn't like that aspect of themselves and they try to push the naturally withdrawn child to be more _ ." It could be a result of gender, birth order or how easy or difficult a child's temperament may be, but a parent's different treatment has far-reaching effects. Studies have found that less-favored children may suffer emotionally, with decreased self-esteem and behavioral problems in children. Favoritism is a reason for the next generation not to like each other. Experts say it's not realistic to say everyone should be treated equally, because no two people are the same and they related differently to others. "It does not mean the parent loves or likes one child more. It has to do with which one of them is independent," says psychologist Lauriet Kramer of the University of Illinois. Question: The study carried out by Susan shows that _ . - showing favoritism is common in many families - most mothers like their sons better than their daughters - only two-thirds of the women interviewed have more than a child - it is favoritism that leads to absence of harmony in most families
showing favoritism is common in many families
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: We take it for granted that with memory we can remember most of things which happened in our life. But it is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The meanings of thousands of everyday perceptions , the basis for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory. Memory can be defined as the ability to keep information available for later use. It not only includes "remembering" things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves. Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because he has sniffed something suspicious in the grain pile. Memory exists not only in humans and animals but also in some physical objects and machines. Computers, for example, contain devices for storing data for later use. It is interesting to compare the memory storage capacity of a computer with that of a human being. The instant access memory of a large computer may hold up to 100,000 "words"--strings of alphabetic or numerical characters--ready for instant use. An average U.S. teenager probably recognizes the meaning of about 1000,000 words of English. However, this is but a part of the total amount of information that the teenager has stored. Consider, for example, the number of faces and places that the teenager can recognize on sight. The use of words is the basis of the advanced problem solving intelligence of human beings. A large part of a person's memory is in terms of words and combinations of words. But while language greatly expands the number and the kind of things a person can remember, it also requires a huge memory capacity. It may well be this capacity that distinguishes humans, setting them apart from other animals. Question: Which of the following is true about memory? - It helps us perceive things happening around us every day. - It is based on the decisions we made in the past. - It is rooted in our past habits and skills. - It connects our past experiences with the present.
It connects our past experiences with the present.
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Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Happiness is contagious , as researchers reported on Thursday. People with the most social connections -- spouses, friends, neighbors and relatives -- were also the happiest, the data showed. "Each additional happy person makes you happier," Christakis said. "Imagine that I am connected to you and you are connected to others and others are connected to still others. It is this fabric of humanity, like an American patch quilt." Each person sits on a different colored patch. "Imagine that these patches are happy and unhappy patches. Your happiness depends on what is going on in the patch around you," Christakis said. "It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on." And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered. "If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent, " Fowler said. "A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling , if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent," he added. A happy third degree friend -- the friend of a friend of a friend -- increases a person's chances of being happy by 6 percent. "But every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you'll be unhappy by 7 percent," Fowler said. The finding is interesting and it is useful, too, Fowler said. "Among other benefits, happiness has been shown to have an important effect on reduced mortality , pain reduction, and improved cardiac function. So better understanding of how happiness spreads can help us learn how to develop a healthier society," he said. The study also fits in with other data suggested in 1984 that having $ 5,000 extra increased a person's chances of becoming happier by about 2 percent. "A happy friend is worth about $ 20,000," Christakis said. Question: It can be inferred that _ . - happiness spreads as fast and widely as unhappiness - unhappiness spreads faster and more widely than happiness - happiness spreads faster and more widely than unhappiness - the spread of unhappiness has not been studied by researchers
happiness spreads faster and more widely than unhappiness
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