Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: The fourth round of heavy smog to hit Beijing in four weeks has sent more people to the hospital with respiratory illnesses and led to calls for laws to control the pollution. Pan Shiyi, a celebrity real estate developer said he is planning to propose a Clean Air Act to the local government. As a representative to the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, he started an online survey at 9:20 a.m. Within three hours, more than 25,000 web users, or 99 percent of total respondents , welcomed his proposal on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter. They have good reasons to stand alongside Pan. The latest round of haze reduced visibility to under 500 meters in many parts of the city. The smog has also led to a great increase in respiratory illnesses, particularly among children and the elderly. Anxious parents and doctors almost all blame the smoggy air for the illnesses. Though most schoolchildren are home for the winter holidays, the bad air can easily move indoors. Besides, ordinary medical masks fail to provide adequate protection, so some people have turned to gas masks and respirators . The causes of the scary smog are rather mysterious, though experts blame excessive emissions and the mountains around Beijing that trap pollution in winter, unless there is adequate wind to clear it away. Some critics have pointed fingers at China's top two oil firms, China National Petroleum Corp and China Petrochemical Corporation, saying the companies' outdated production technologies produce large quantities of substandard, high-polluting gas fuel. Meanwhile, concerned Beijingers have moved their brainstorming sessions to cyberspace. If Pan's proposal for a Clean Air Act is adopted, netizens say the new law should include items providing for "car-free days" in times of smog, higher standards for vehicle fuel, stricter restrictions on industrial and exhaust gas emissions, and more effective protection for the public. Beijing is not the only city that has ever lost the blue sky. Five days of thick fog caused thousands of deaths in... Question: What can we learn from the passage? - People are clear about the causes of the smoggy weather. - Children staying indoors will not get respiratory illnesses. - Smog is worse for people with lower resistance to diseases. - Masks can give people protection against the smoggy weather.
A: Smog is worse for people with lower resistance to diseases.

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: A beautiful and very successful actress was the star for a new musical show. Her home was in the countryside, but she did not want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the centre of the city, got some beautiful furniture and got a man to paint the rooms in new colours. It was very difficult to get tickets for her show, because everybody wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter's bill . At the bottom of it were these words: " Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance : 3 pounds," with this note: " After 5 p.m. I get 15 shillings an hour instead of 10 shillings." Question: . The actress got the painter's bill _ . - to ask for the money of his painting work. - to ask her to pay for his watching her show - in which he showed his thanks for the tickets - in which he expressed his dissatisfaction
A: to ask her to pay for his watching her show

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: There used to be four common life phases : childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age.Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage.They're delaying having children.They're delaying permanent employment.People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain achievements moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family. In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things.By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same. Yet with a little imagination it's possible even for baby boomers to understand what it's like to be in the middle of the odyssey years.It's possible to see that this period is a sensible response to modern conditions. Two of the American best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life period.Through their work, you can see uncertainty that now characterizes this stage.Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Robert Wuthnow of Princeton observes, but then graduate into a world of uncertainty.Old success recipes don't apply, new systems have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up.Newspaper reading gives way to blogging.For example, in 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper, now it's at 21 percent. The job market is changeable.Graduating seniors don't find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement.Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for. Question: By 2000, most of the 30-year-olds _ . - were financially dependent - got well-prepared for the employment - got married early and started their family - preferred blog writing to newspaper reading
A: preferred blog writing to newspaper reading

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: How to Become Cleverer? Once a boy came to ask a fisherman how to become cleverer, because his mother always called him "foolish boy". "That's easy," answered the fisherman. "I know one way to make you become cleverer." "Really?" "Of course. It is said a fish head is good for brain. If you eat one, you'll become cleverer indeed. Pay only three pounds for one fish head." The boy paid him three pounds and the fisherman cut off a fish head and handed it to him. A raw fish head is not good--not even for a hungry boy to eat but the boy ate it up in two gulps. "Do you feel anything?" asked the fisherman. "Not in my head," said the boy. The boy lay on the ground and thought. "One whole fish costs only two pounds. I had paid him three pounds for the fish head. Why couldn't I have the whole fish for soup, a head for brain and one pound left over?" He jumped up and shouted at the fisherman. "You thief! You are fooling me!" The fisherman laughed, saying, "The fish head works now, you see. " Question: The boy came to the fisherman in order to _ . - buy a fish head - ask the fisherman a question - buy a whole fish - A and C
A: ask the fisherman a question