A public high school in the rural town of Boonsboro,Maryland,offers a special program recently. Top students in the ninth and tenth grades can attend single-sex classes for math,science,English and social studies. The aim is to help teenagers keep their mind on their work by keeping males and females apart. Rebecca Brown chooses the students for what Boonsboro High School calls the Academy. "What we really want to do is take that top group of kids and take them to the very highest level they can achieve here,so that they're prepared for college," she said. They need high marks and test scores and strong teacher recommendations. They also need to be involved in activities. Michael Bair has been at Boonsboro High School for twenty years and directs the Academy. His ninth-grade English class for boys centers on books that he believes boys find interesting. "The novels they're reading now,are very manly novels. They're novels that deal with the arrogance of man and the pride of man." One of those books,for example,is "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London. This classic story tells of a dog stolen from his home and sold to work as a sled dog in Canada's Klondike Gold Rush. On this day,the students are working in small groups. Vincent and Logan explain why they're drawing pictures that relate to the story. Vincent said,"The main character,Buck,gets abducted , and they send him off to the Yukon in a train. So I'm drawing part of the story where he's in the train. It gets you to _ the setting of the story and gets you to think more about what's going on in the story,the important events of the story."" Instead of just doing work sheets about it,this is a lot more fun," Logan added happily. Morgan Van Fleet likes being in the Academy. She says boys and girls act differently when they are together in a classroom. "To me,it almost seems like it's hindering your chances at developing yourself because you're more focused on 'Oh,I wish they'd shut up. Oh,what do they think of me?' instead of focusing on what's the homework... What can we conclude from the text? _ . A) Michael Bair considers it unsuitable for boys to read the book "The Call of the Wild". B) Vincent thinks that his drawings can help understand the novel better. C) Jack London is a main character in the book "The Call of the Wild". D) Morgan Van Fleet thinks the program does no good to her.
B
(Question)
We chat with our colleagues all the time when we have lunch, gossip in the tearoom, or leave work together. Sharing your personal life brings you closer to your coworkers and builds trust within your team. But revealing too much about yourself to colleagues, managers or human resources staff can cause difficulties and even endanger your work. It's important to keep the right balance between getting along with colleagues and maintaining your privacy. "Communication in the office is tricky and complicated. You can neither spread chatter, nor be too silent and shut yourself off from others," said Yang Yudan, deputy HR director at P&G. According to her, there are several safe topics to talk about with colleagues during the break, such as the weather or movies. Women like to talk about makeup and clothing, while men are fond of sports and online games. But discussing your private life, such as relationship, habits or health conditions, is a potential minefield. Liang Kun, 26, had to resign from his job at a trading company in Guangzhou last week after discussing his income with colleagues during a lunch break. "I didn't realize it was such a serious issue until a senior member of staff went to find the boss, asking why I got a higher salary than her," said Liang. "Then our HR told me that according to the employee handbook it is forbidden to talk about salary in the office." HR expert Yang also reminds us that paychecks are your own business. It is unwise to share this information with others, no matter how close you are. To summarize, Yang advises office workers to be more aware of the image they project when talking to colleagues, "When you share your personal life, it will be recorded on your invisible resume and may slow down your career progressing." What can be inferred from the fact that Liang Kun had to resign his job according to the text? A) It was unwise for him to share information with others. B) He broke the rules made by the company. C) He was such an honest person that he told the truth. D) He treated his colleagues as family members.
(Answer)
B
Ques: A good modern newspaper is an extraordinary piece of reading. It is unusual for what it contains: the news from local crime to international politics, from sports to business to fashion to science, and the comments and special features as well, from editorial page to feature articles, from interviews to criticism of books, art, theatre, and music. A newspaper is even more unusual for the way one reads it never completely, never straight through, but always by jumping from here to there, in and out, glancing at one piece, reading another article all the way through, reading just a few paragraphs of the next. A good modern newspaper offers a variety to attract many different readers, but far more than any one reader is interested in. What brings this variety together in one place is its _ , that is, its immediate relation to what is happening in your world and your locality now. But this immediacy and the speed of production that goes with it also mean that much of what appears in a newspaper has no more than temporary value. For all these reasons, no two people really read the same paper: what each person does is to put together, out of the pages of that day's paper, his own selection and order, his own newspaper. For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and self-awareness as you change and apply the techniques of reading. A good newspaper offers "a variety" to readers because _ . A) readers like to read different newspapers B) it has to cover things that happen in a certain locality C) readers are difficult to please D) it tries to serve different readers
Ans: D
Ques:I'm Evan Ducker. I'm just like every other 15-year-old boy, except I was born with a red birthmark . Some birthmarks are signs of serious medical conditions. I'm very fortunate--mine isn't. I pretty much live a regular life, except for people asking me about it all the time, which can get annoying sometimes. When I was about 4 years old, I asked my mom why there weren't any characters with birthmarks in the books she would read to me. When we went to the library, we realized there weren't any available for little kids. Worse than that, the books available to older kids and adults described characters with birthmarks as unattractive. So I decided to write my own. I based the story on all the real things that happened in my life. But instead of people, the characters in the book are real animals from the Galapagos Islands, including red-footed booby birds . I picked a booby bird as the main character because the birds have red feet due to a vascular condition, similar to a human birthmark! It was really tough to get my book published. It took a long time because a lot of publishers refused to publish it. They would say there wasn't a big enough market for a book about birthmarks. But my mom never gave up trying to help make my dream come true. And in 2005, she finally took her own money and self-published "Buddy Booby's Birthmark". After it was published, I got letters from readers all over the world. They all shared their stories and thanked me for sharing mine. Teachers wrote to tell me that my book changed the way classmates treated each other and that my book was helping kids to accept and appreciate their differences. Then, as more teachers started reading my book, I created a free global reading event, the "International Buddy Booby's Birthmark Read--Along for Tolerance and Awareness." What did the publishers think of the author's book? A) It wouldn't sell well. B) It was rather uninteresting. C) It was poorly written. D) It wasn't fit for kids to read.

Ans:
A