C
The way people hold to the belief that a fun-filled, painfree life equals happiness actually reduces their chances of ever getting real happiness．If fun and pleasure are equal to happiness then pain must be equal to unhappiness．But in fact, the opposite is true: more often than not things that lead to happiness is connected with some pain．
As a result, many people avoid the very attempts（尝试）that are the source of true happiness They fear the pain brought by such things as marriage, raising children, professional achievement, religious commitment（承担的义务），self-improvement．
Ask a bachelor（单身汉）why he refuses marriages even though he finds dating to be less and less satisfying, if he’s honest he will tell you afraid of making a commitment．For commitment is in fact painful．The single life is filled with fun, adventure, excitement．Marriage has such moments, but they are not its most unusual features．
Couples with baby children are lucky to get a whole night’s sleep or a three-day vacation．I don’t know any parent who would choose the word fun to describe raising children．But couples who decide not to have children never know the joys of watching a child grow up or of playing with a grandchild．
Understanding and accepting that true happiness has noting to do with fun is one of the most liberating realizations．It liberates（解放）time; now we can devote more hours to activities that can increase our happiness．It liberates money: buying that new car or those fancy clothes that will do nothing to increase our happiness now seems pointless．And it liberates us from envy: we now understand that all those who are always having so much fun actually may not be happy at all．
48．Raising children, in the author’s opinion, is________．
A．a duty we should have to perform      B．a thankless job
C．a source of pain that can’t be avoided    D．a rewarding task
49．To understand what true happiness is one must________．
A．have as much fun as possible during ones lifetime
       B．make every effort to free oneself from pain
C．put up with pain in all conditions
D．be able to tell happiness from fun
50．What is the writer trying to tell us?
A．One must know how to get happiness
B．Happiness often goes hand in hand with pain
C．It is important to make commitments
D．Pain usually leads to happiness

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what is on the printed text in the actual situation, so much the better.

A charge (指责) made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises (出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.There are also people who are against fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two -- headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so strong that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men trying to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ___________ .

A．repeated without any change              B．treated as a joke

C．made some changes by the parent          D．set in the present time

2.According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ________ .

A．in a realistic setting (背景)                 B．heard for the first time

C．repeated too often                      D．told in a different way

3.The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.

A．makes them less fearful

B．develops their power of memory

C．makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

D．encourages them not to have strange beliefs

4.One of the reasons why some people are against fairy tales is that __________.

A．they are full of imagination

B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

C．they are not interesting

D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ____.

A．repeated without any change              B．treated as a joke

C．made some changes by the parent          D．set in the present

2.According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ____.

A．in a realistic setting                      B．heard for the first time

C．repeated too often                      D．told in a different way

3.The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it ____.

A．makes them less fearful

B．develops their power of memory

C．makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

D．encourages them not to have strange beliefs

4.The author's mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that ______.

A．fairy stories are still being made up

B．there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales

C．people try to modernize old fairy stories

D．there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

5.One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

A．they are full of imagination

B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

C．they are not interesting

D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two - headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ____ .

2.According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ____ .

3.The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it ____.

4.The author's mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that ______.

5.One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

  A new study in West Africa shows how farm irrigation systems powered by the sun can produce more food and money for villagers. The study in Benin found that solar-powered pumps are effective in supplying water, especially during the long dry season.

  Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world with the least food security. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than one billion of the world’s people faced hunger last year. Around two hundred sixty-five million of them live south of the Sahara Desert. Lack of rainfall is one of their main causes of food shortages.

  Jennifer Burney from Stanford University in California led the study. The research team helped build three solar-powered irrigation systems in northern Benin.

The solar-powered irrigation systems produced an average of nearly two metric tons of vegetables per month.

  They sold the surplus(过剩的) produce at local markets. The earnings greatly increased their ability to buy food during the dry season which can last six to nine months.

  People in the two villages with the systems were able to eat three to five more serving of vegetables per day. But making the surplus available at markets also had a wider effect.

  The study compared the villages with two others where women farmed with traditional methods like carrying water in buckets. The amount of vegetables eaten in those villages also increased, though not as much.

  The researchers note that only four percent of the cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated. Using solar power to pump water has higher costs at first. But the study says it can be more economical in the long term than using fuels like gasoline, diesel or kerosene. And solar power is environmentally friendly.

1.People living in sub-Saharan Africa are short of food mainly because______.

  A. it seldom rains there throughout the year   B. there is little farmland in the area

  C. people there lack experience in farming    D. people know nothing about irrigation techniques

2.Which of the following is an advantage of Jennifer’s irrigation systems?

  A. They are not affected by the weather.

B. They cost much less than traditional irrigation systems.

  C. They have no bad effects on the environment.

  D. They use less fuel than traditional irrigation systems.

3.We can learn from the last paragraph that______.

  A. people in South Africa will soon be provided with enough food

  B. the demand for fuels like gasoline will greatly decrease in Africa

  C. people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t take agriculture seriously

  D. it’s worthwhile to use the new irrigation systems on the while

4.People in the two villages owe all the following to Jennifer’s irrigation systems EXCEPT that ______.

  A. they could buy more food during the dry season

  B. they could eat more vegetables than usual every day

  C. they could supply local markets with vegetables

  D. they could provide people in other villages with food