Last April, on a visit to the new Mall of America near Minneapolis, I carried with me a small book provided for the reporters by the public relations office.It included a variety of " _ " about the mall, for example, 140,000 hot dogs are sold each week, there are 10,000 full time' jobs, 44 sets of moving stairs and 17 lifts, 12,750 parking places, 13,000 tons of steel and $ 1 million is drawn weekly from 8 ATMs. Opened in the summer of 1992, the mall was built where the former Minneapolis Stadium had been.It was only a five - minute drive from the Minneapolis St.Paul International Airport.With 4.2 million square feet of floor space - twenty - two times the size of the average American shopping center - the Mail of America was the largest shopping and family recreation center under one roof in the United States. I know already that the Mall of America had been imagined by its designers, not only as a marketplace , but as a national tourist attraction.Eleven thousand articles, the small book informed me, had been written about the mall.Four hundred trees had been planted in its gardens, $ 625 million had been spent building it, and 350 stores were already in business.Three thousand bus tours were expected each year along with a half - million Canadian visitors and 200,000 Japanese tourists. Sales was at $ 650 million for 2008 and at $ 1 billion for 2009.Pop singers and film stars such as Janet Jackson and Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the mall.It was five times larger than Red Square and it included 2.3 miles of hallways and used almost twice as Knott' s Camp Snoopy. We can infer from the text that _ . A) Japanese visitors are most welcome to the mall B) Canadian visitors would spend $ 1 billion at the mail C) Knott's Camp Snoopy was next to the Mall of America D) the Mall of America was designed to serve more than one purpose
D
(Question)
Look at the keyboard of any standard typewriter or computer."Q,""W,""E,""R""T"and"Y"are the first six letters.Who decided on this arrangement of the letters? And why? People tried for centuries to invent the typewriter.In 1714 in England,Henry Mill filed a patent for a machine called An Artificial Machine Or Method for the Impressing or Transcribing of Letters,Singly or Progressively one after another, as in Writing,whereby all Writing whatsoever may be Engrossed in Paper or Parchment so Neat and Exact as not to be distinguished from Print.That machine probably didn't sell because no one could remember its name! The first practical typewriter was patented in the United States in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes.His machine was known as the type-writer.It had a movable carriage,a lever for turning paper from line to line,and a keyboard on which the letters were arranged in alphabetical order. But Sholes had a problem.On his first model,his"ABC"key arrangement caused the keys to jam when the typist worked quickly.Sholes didn't know how to keep the keys from sticking,so his solution was to keep the typist from typing too fast.Sholes asked his brother-in-1aw to rearrange the keyboard so that the commonest letters were not so close together and the type bars would come from opposite directions.Thus they would not clash together and jam the machine.The new arrangement was the QWERTY arrangement typists use today.Of course,Sholes claimed that the new arrangement was scientific and would add speed and efficiency.The only efficiency it added was to slow the typist down,since almost any word in the English language required the typist's fingers to cover more distance on the keyboard. The advantages of the typewriter outweighed the disadvantages of the keyboard.Typists memorized the crazy letter arrangement,and the typewriter became a huge success.By the time typists had memorized the new arrangement of letters and built their speed,typewriter technology had improved,and the keys didn't stick as badly as they had at first. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage? A) The Arrangement of The Letters on Keyboard B) The Story of Christopher Latham Sholes C) How to Invent The Typewriter D) The First Practical Typewriter
(Answer)
A
Ques: What time of day can you think most quickly? Are you a morning person? Or does it take you a few hours to get your brain going? A lot of recent research suggests that we should pay attention to our body clock. It can tell us what time of day we can perform best at. Many people work best later in the morning. This is because the body's temperature takes time to rise through the day. Taking a warm shower when you wake up can help your body's temperature rise quickly. But everyone's body clock is different and some are special. Morning people will get up early and work better early in the day. Evening people will work later but work better towards the end of the day. Research shows that we're better at some activities at certain times of the day. Physical performance is at its best between 3 pm and 6 pm, so it's better to exercise later in the day. Between noon and 4 pm, people begin to pay less attention. This is because we think less quickly after a big meal. Research also shows we become sleepy around 2 pm. This is why people in Spain take a short sleep in early afternoon. Finally, it is best to eat when we're active. This allows our body to burn calories better and stops our blood sugar levels from getting too high. A morning people will _ . A) get later but work better B) work better early in the day. C) only work in the morning D) go to bed late every night.
Ans: B
Ques: Young children whose mothers talk with them more frequently and in more detail about people's thoughts and feelings tend to be better at taking another person's perspective than other children of the same age. That's what researchers from the University of Western Australia found in a new study published in the journal Child Development. "Parents who frequently put themselves in someone else's shoes in conversations with their children make it more likely their children will be able to do the same," said lead author Brad Farrant. Researchers of the UWA's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research looked at the influence of how parents interact with their children to learn more about how people develop the ability to take another's perspective. The two-year study involved more than 120 Australian children aged between four and six, including children with typically developing language and others delayed in language acquisition . The children completed tasks which were designed to assess their language skills, ability to infer others' beliefs and use these to predict others' behavior, and their ability to shift flexibly between different perspectives. Among children with typically developing language, the researchers found that mothers who talked more often and in greater detail about people's thoughts and feelings -- commenting on how another person might react to a particular situation as well as their own feelings about the topic -- had children with better language skills and better perspective-taking skills. Children with delayed language acquisition were also delayed in their development of perspective-taking skills. This displays the role played by language as children develop the ability to take another's perspective. "Solving the many challenges that the world faces today requires us all to get better at taking the perspective of other people," said Brad Farrant. According to the text, we can learn _ . A) parents should talk to their children frequently no matter how old their children are B) it was Brad Farrant who wrote the study in Child Development herself C) the only way to improve language skill is talking to children more often D) parents who are always thinking about others will help their children do the same way
Ans:
D