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I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: When dinning in restaurants, Americans usually order drinks first, then soup, salad, main course or entree , and dessert at last. This is somewhat a different order way from that in Europe. Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans didn't have to worry about whether the salad came before or after the main course since they didn't eat salad at all. Chomping on greens was once considered sissy , and Americans preferred to get their greens indirectly, after they had been processed by rabbits or deer. The shift of public taste toward the salad may be attributed to New York's Delmonico brothers, who originally introduced smorgasbord from Europe, and served it in their restaurant. Such novelties became so popular that by the end of the nineteenth century, the Waldorf salad has swept the country. Europeans still chomp on greens after the main course, as a way of clearing the palate , and being ready for the cheese. Why Americans eat their salad first is uncertain. The following joking suggestions might make sense: The custom may be related to the slimming craze, for "salad first" may fill you up without any worry about fattening; to avoid customers' impatience with waiting, the restaurant serves salad first to keep them busy while the main courses are being prepared; eating raw food while one is waiting for the cooked food may be a way of announcing that one is not wasting time, which is seen as a virtue; probably unfair to the restaurant, this custom has been encouraged by the merchant as trick-the meagerness of a meal is less noticeable if it comes after "free" salad-after all, rabbit food is much cheaper than the rabbit. Question: Before the middle of the nineteenth century, _ . Options: A: Americans ate the salad before the main course B: Americans ate the salad after the main course C: Americans ate the salad either before or after the main course D: Americans didn't eat salad at all
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D

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I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", saying the character best represents their love for the child, according to an official trying to standardize the national language. The unusual name stands out especially in Mandarin, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multistroke characters to represent words. "The whole world uses it to write emails, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming. While the @ symbol is familiar to Chinese email users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out. With a drawnout "t", this sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers. Li says the name is an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Mandarin, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions . Another couple tried to give their child a name that in English sounds like "King Osrina". Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals and foreign languages. Sixty million Chinese face the problem that their names use ancient characters so uncommon that computers cannot recognize them _ , said Li, according to a report on the government website. One of them is the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name has a rare "rong" character that gives newspaper editors headaches. Question: The former Premier Zhu Rongji is mentioned in the passage because _ . Options: A: people often mispronounce his name B: there is an uncommon character in his name C: he often made newspaper editors annoyed during his term in office D: he once stressed the importance of standardizing Chinese characters
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B

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I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: With the possible exception of equal rights, perhaps the most heated argument across the United States today is the death penalty . Many argue that it is an effective deterrent to murder , while others think there is no enough proof that the death penalty reduces the number of murders. The argument advanced by those who are against the death penalty is that it is cruel and inhuman punishment, that it is a mark of a bad society and finally that it is of questionable effectiveness as a deterrent to crime anyway. In our opinion, the death penalty is a necessary action. Throughout recorded history there have always been those peculiar persons in every society who made terrible crimes such as murder. But some are more dangerous than others. For example, it is one thing to take the life of another in time of blind anger, but quite another to coldly plan and carry out the murder of one or more people in the style of a butcher. Thus, murder, like all other crimes, is a matter of different degree. While it could be argued with some reason that the criminal in the first instance should be merely kept from society, such should not be the fate of the latter type murderer. The value of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime may be open to discussion. But the majority of people believe that the death penalty protects them. Their belief is proved by the fact that the death penalty prevents murder. For example, from 1954 to 1963, when the death penalty was carried out from time to time in California, the murder rate remained between three and four murders for each 100, 000 population. Since 1964 the death penalty has been done only once, and the murder rate has risen to10.4 murders for each 100, 000 population. The sharp climb in the state's murder rate, which began when killings stopped, does not happen by chance. It certainly shows that the death penalty does stop many murderers. If the law about death penalty is vetoed , some people will be murdered----some whose lives may have been saved if the death penalty... Question: It can be inferred that the writer thinks that _ . Options: A: the death penalty is the most important problem in the United States today B: the second type of murderers (in Paragraph 2) should be sentenced to death C: the veto of the law about death penalty is of little importance D: the value of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime is not to be discussed
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B