Q: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: Philip Pullman spent a great deal of his childhood traveling abroad because both his father and stepfather were pilots in the Royal Air Force . As a child, he went on several long ocean voyages, and he lived in Africa and in Australia. "Before I was 11 I had been to eight different schools." "In Australia, I made a great discovery. TV hadn't reached Australia yet, but everyone listened to the radio. I remember listening to gangster serials , and cowboy serials, and best of all--Superman! When I first saw a superman comic , it changed my life. I'd been reading books for a long time, but I'd never known comics before. Soon afterwards, I discovered Batman, too, whom I loved even more." Pullman started writing his first novel the day after he had finished his final exams at Oxford University. "I discovered after about an hour that it was much harder than I'd expected. It still is! I found that the amount I could write comfortably every day was about three pages, so that's what I've done ever since." Before he became a full-time writer, Pullman had been teaching for many years. "What I enjoyed most during that time was telling stories over and over, until I knew them as well as I knew my own life." He had always loved telling stories--as a schoolboy he had entertained his friends by reading stories to them, or by making up his own. One day he got a letter that had arrived at his door even though the writer of the letter didn't know his address. The envelope just said, "Philip Pullman, The Storyteller, Oxford." Question: What can we learn about Pullman? Options: A: He was a pilot in the Royal Air Force. B: He went to eight different schools in Africa. C: He was encouraged to write by his father and stepfather. D: He traveled a lot when he was a young child.
A: D

Q: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it. Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to _ their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships. The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality. Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: The person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell - phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents. " Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends," he says. If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. Consider that in 1987, there were only l million cell phones in use. Today, something like 300 million Americans carry them. They far outnumber wired phones in the United States. Question: Which of the following is the best title for the passage? Options: A: Cell phones Are the New Cigarettes B: Cell phones Are Harmful to the Society C: The New Report about the Cell phone D: The Disadvantages of the Cell phone
A: A

Q: I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: The research carried out by the University of Bari in Italy could help clarify hospitals who are charged with wasting money on art and decoration as it suggests a pleasant environment helps patients overcome discomfort and pain. A team headed by Professor Marina de Tommaso at the Neurophysiopathology Pain Unit asked a group of men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as Lenoardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli. They were then asked to watch either the beautiful paintings, or the ugly paintings, or a blank panel while the team struck a short laser pulse at their hand, creating a sensation as if they had been hurt by a pin. The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with when considering the ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's electrical activity also confirmed a reduced response to the pain when the subject looked at beautiful paintings. While distractions , such as music, are known to reduce pain in hospital, Prof de Tommaso says this is the first result to show that beauty plays a part. The findings, reported in New Scientist, also go a long way to show that beautiful surroundings could aid the healing process. "Hospitals have been designed to be functional, but we think that their aesthetic aspects should be taken into account too," said the neurologist. "Beauty obviously offers a distraction that ugly paintings do not. But at least there is no suggestion that ugly surroundings make the pain worse. I think these results show that more research is needed into how a beautiful environment can reduce suffering." Pictures they liked included Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh and Botticellis' Birth of Venus. Pictures they found ugly included works by Pablo Picasso, the Italian 20th century artist Anonino Bueno and Columbian Fernando Botero. "these people were not art experts so some of the pictures they found ugly would... Question: According to the research, when designing a hospital, we should consider its _ . Options: A: convenient facilities B: functional operating room C: pleasing environment D: bright waiting room
A: C