Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Is it worth it to go to college? This has been questioned a lot recently in America. According to a new survey released by the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Americans felt that colleges provided a good value for the cost. At the same time, 86 percent of college graduates still felt it was good for them. There are a number of reasons for such dissatisfaction with college. First, there are plenty of problems with higher education -- poor quality and out-of-control costs are two of the biggest. Second, it is true that college is not for everyone. Plenty of rewarding and important careers do not require college. And due to the slow economy, there may in fact be more graduates than the current job market needs. Besides, anti-college feelings are nothing new. Today, Microsoft's Bill Gates or Apple's Steve Jobs -- both college dropouts -- is often held up as evidence of why all that time sitting in class is better spent elsewhere. However, getting a college education is still a good idea. College graduates earn more, and are more likely to have a job in the first place. According to the statistics last year, the average weekly earnings for someone with some college education but no degrees were $712, compared to $1,038 for a college graduate. That is almost $17,000 over the course of a year and there is an even bigger divide for those with less education. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate was 9.2 percent for those with only some college education and more than 10 percent for those with just a middle school degree, but it was 5.4 percent for college graduates. The economic gaps between college completers and those with less education are getting larger. Although most Americans surveyed by Pew feel doubtful about the value of a college degree, an overwhelming majority of parents Pew surveyed still expect their children to go to college. "It can be inferred that the increased doubt has not significantly influenced decision making." Pew's Taylor says, "Despite the concern about rising costs and other problems,... Question: What's the main idea of this passage? - Poor quality and high costs make college less popular among the Americans nowadays. - Despite the dissatisfactions with college, most Americans still favor college education - People with a college degree earn better money in America than those who don't - American students are getting tired of college education.
Despite the dissatisfactions with college, most Americans still favor college education

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: 1. Summer came early to Middlesbrough yesterday, as temperatures shot up to 22degC (71degF), a record for March. But local NFU agent Jim Wilkes says it could be bad news for farmers. "The crops will think it's summer," he told our reporter, "and start sprouting four weeks before time." 2. The death toll of the Burnside train crash rose to four yesterday when John Phillips, 32, of Petersville died in Wallsend Hospital. Another six people are still on the danger list. Mr. Phillips, an electrical engineer leaves a wife and two children. 3. China and the United States reached an agreement on the protection of intellectual property rights yesterday, after difficult marathon talks. The agreement is good news for all parties concerned. The Chinese Foreign Trade Minister described the agreement as a "turning point" in Sino-US trade relations that "promises further progress" in the future. The agreement will not only favorably influence trade relations between China and the United States. It may favorably influence the overall relations between the two countries. Question: How many people have died in the train crash in article 2 ? - Only John Phillips has died. - Ten people have died in the crash, including John Phillips. - Four people have died in the crash, including John Phillips. - John Phillips, his wife and children all died in the crash.
Four people have died in the crash, including John Phillips.

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Things are seldom what they seem.Skim milk masquerades as cream.Anil labor-saving household appliances often do not save labor.This is the surprising conclusion reached by a small army of historians, sociologists, and home economists who have undertaken, in recent years, to study the one form of work that has turned out to be most resistant to inquiry and analysis -?namely, housework. During the first half of the twentieth century, the average American household was transformed by the introduction of a group of machines that profoundly altered the daily lives of housewives.The forty years between 1920 and 1960 witnessed what might be called the "industrial revolution in the home".Where once there had been a wood or coal burning stove there now was a gas or electric range.The dryer replaced the clothes-line; the vacuum cleaner replaced the broom; the refrigerator replaced the icebox and the root cellar.No one had to chop wood any more. And yet American housewives in 1960, 1970, 1980 and even 1990 continued to log about the same number of hours at their work as their grandmothers and mothers had in 1910, 1920 and 1930.The earliest time studies of housewives date from the very same period in which time studies of other workers were becoming popular--the first three decades of the twentieth century.The sample sizes of these studies were usually quite small, and they did not always define housework in precisely the same way.but their results were more or less consistent; whether rural or urban, the average American housewife performed fifty to sixty hours of unpaid work in her home every week, and the only variable that significantly altered _ was the number of small children. A half-century later not much has changed.Survey research has become much more sophisticated, and sample sizes have grown considerably, but the results of the time remain consistent.The average American housewife, now armed with dozens of motors and thousands of electronic chips, still spends fifty to sixty hours a... Question: What has reduced the average amount of time American housewives spend on housework? - Dozens of motors and thousands of electronic chips. - Sophisticated survey research. - Larger sample sizes. - Housewives' full-time employment in the labor force.
A: Housewives' full-time employment in the labor force.

*Question*
Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Jiang Nan, a full-time mother in Beijing, keeps a dozen or so cloth bags at home, carefully selecting one or two before heading out to get groceries. "Most of them were giveaways from advertising marketing campaigns, but others had been handed out in the street by various environmental protection organizations," she explained. Since June 2008 China has forbidden the production, sale and usage of plastic bags thinner than 0.025 millimeter , and retailers are not allowed to provide free plastic bags to their customers, no matter how thick they are. Many Chinese consumers like Jiang have learned to refuse plastic bags whenever possible in their shopping. "A plastic bag may only cost a few jiao, but it's more about how bad they are for the environment," Jiang said. The plastic ban is for the most part well carried out in big cities, and has been obviously effective in reducing white waste. On the first anniversary of the plastic ban Global Village of Beijing, an NGO environmental organization, shows that during the year of the ban the consumption of plastic bags fell by about 40 billion pieces in chain supermarkets alone, saving more than 1.2 million tons of petrol. However, enforcement shows rather less muscle in smaller cities, towns and countryside. In a remote town like Lichuan, the awareness of environmental protection is not as strong as that in big cities. Street vendors worry that they are likely to lose customers if they charge them for plastic bags. Seeing no significance in the issue, local government often turn a blind eye to banned bag trade in the market. There are still those who don't have an interest in living green. Cui Lin, another Beijinger, often forgets to bring a cloth bag when shopping, and has to buy plastic bags. "Anyway I think plastic bags are neater and cleaner, and I don't mind paying a couple more jiao," he shrugged. Mrs Yu, a vegetable vendor in Lichuan County, Jiangxi Province, recalled that before plastic bags became popular in the early 1990s, Chinese people always... Question: How did Jiang Nan get her cloth bags? - She bought them at a low price. - She borrowed them from her relatives. - She got them for free. - She made them herself.
**Answer**
She got them for free.