Why should I teach my children history? That sounds like a stupid question to even ask. But, as I hear different home schooling teachers discuss history, I get the idea that there may be different reasons for teaching history. Let me briefly explain the three good reasons for studying history and two bad reasons for studying history.

The major reason I see for studying history is that we can learn from the past. I am convinced that the world would be a much better place if more people understood the successes and failures of the past and the things that made these successes and failures. However, as the unfortunately true statement goes “the one thing we seem to learn from history is that we don’t seem to learn from history. ”Perhaps at least in teaching history, to my children I can do a small part in changing this.

A second major reason for studying history is that it is hard to understand the current political climate in the absence of an understanding of its historical context. We can not even understand who we are and where we are without history, much less try to figure out where we are going or how we should get where we want to be.

I teach my children history, for one more reason. I purchased a set of historical audio tapes for our children. My seven-year-old son listened to them over and over. It was my hope that he would become inspired by the accomplishments of people like the Wright brothers to accomplish things by himself. I think that it is good that we celebrate the accomplishments of people like Martin Luther King Jr. In doing so, young people are called on to stand for the principles that he stood for and accomplish what he accomplished. I also think that by studying people like Adolph Hitler, people can learn to stand against the things that he stood for.

1. What message can we get from the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2?

A. Many people aren’t clever enough to learn well from the past.

B. Many people fail to make good use of history and make the same mistakes.

C. Many people feel it hard to understand history.

D. Many people have no interest in studying history.

2. In Paragraph 3, the author shows that history is useful because

A. it makes the current political situation go smoothly

B. it helps us realize the importance of historical events

C. it helps us understand why things are the way they are

D. it helps people accept the present situation where they live

3. Some historical figures are mentioned in the last paragraph to show

A. people can be inspired to do good, while also learning to fight against evil

B. people may also learn from bad historical figures

C. more celebrations should be held to honor their achievements

D. today’s people can also achieve what they achieved

4. What would be talked about in the following paragraph?

A. How to teach history effectively.         

B. Some negative reasons for studying history.

C. How to get more people to study history.  

D. Some bad historical figures.

 

       Modern inventions have speeded up people’s lives amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts (吹嘘) of saving precious seconds in handling tasks.

       All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about.

       However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.

       There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.

1.The new products become more and more time-saving because          .

       A. time is limited                                            B. our love of speed seems never-ending     

       C. the prices are increasingly high                      D. the manufacturers boast a lot

2.What does “the days” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

       A. Simple life in the past.                                 B. Imaginary life.                              

       C. Times of inventions.                                     D. Time for constant activity.

3.What is the author’s attitude towards the modern technology?

       A. Objective.                B. Critical.                   C. Optimistic.               D. Negative.

4.What does the passage mainly discuss?

       A. Machinery and human beings.                       B. The present and past times.                    

C. Imaginations and inventions.                         D. Modern technology and its influence.

 

B

For a song to become popular, people need to bear it.  In order for people　to hear it, the program directors at radio stations have to play it on the air. A song’s popularity is directly related to how often it is played. That is a big responsibility for program directors. How do they decide what gets played and what doesn’t?

In the past, disc jockeys(音乐节目主持人) decided what music was played on the radio. These DJs had an ear for music and an understanding of what their audience wanted to hear. Today, that is all changing. Most major radio stations are owned by a few large national businesses. The decision of what gets played on the radio is made by executives(主管) who have little or no interest in music. They do, however, know how to run a business, and they know what sells. So, the music industry designs and creates pop entertainers, and executives in the radio industry make sure that their music is played on the radio. This explains why you do not often hear anything new and fresh on the radio. The executives do not want to give air time to music that has not been tested on the market. It is too risky. They prefer to go with music that they already know will sell. They know it will sell because it sold last week and last month and last year. They just have to change it a little.

One of the most criticized(批评) practices in the music industry is the practice of “payola”. This is when record companies pay radio stations to play the music of a given artist. This practice makes many people lose trust in the music industry and is therefore against the law. A radio station can accept money in exchange for air time of a song, but they have to make it clear that the song is being played because its air time was paid for. They cannot present the song as if it were part of the normal play schedule(时刻表).

Payola affects both artists and audiences. The artists who work with small record companies that cannot pay a lot of money to radio stations have a much harder time getting exposure. It creates an unfair playing field. Music lovers suffer because they are not able to hear all the music that is available.

60. According to the passage, most major radio stations belong to       .

A. national businesses                      B. program directors   

C. pop entertainers                         D. record companies

61. “Payola” is the practice of        .

A. artists paying radio stations to play their songs

B. record companies buying air time for certain music

C. radio station paying record company for new songs

D. program directors deciding what music gets played

62. Who can make the largest profits from payola?

A. Disc Jockeys.                               B. The given artists.

C.  Business executives.                        D. Program directors.

63. It can be concluded from the passage that the author        .

A. has a positive attitude towards the practice of “payola”

B. is dissatisfied with the present situation in music industry

C. is calling for a change in the normal play schedule

D. thinks that the radio stations are doing the right thing

 

All the wisdom of the ages and all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.

Reading is the pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

Every book stands by itself, like a one--family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something. They are connected with each other and with other cities. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families. Wherever you start reading, you connect yourself with one of the families or ideas, and in the long run, you not only find out about the world and the people in it but also you find out about yourself, too.

Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you "you ought" to read, you probably won't have fun. But if you put down a book you don’t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax yourself with it, you will almost certainly have a good time  and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won't have suffered during the process.

72. In the writer's opinion, in fact reading is a process of ________.

A. listening to the author                                   B. accepting the author's ideas

C. communicating with the author and yourself             D. judging the author's work

73. The writer thinks that the most unfortunate people are those _______.

A. who don't have any books                                  B. who can't enjoy reading books

C. who don’t like books                                     D. who read too many books

74. To find pleasure in reading, you should read the books _______.

A. written by famous writers                                             B. written in humor style

C. which you like to read                                     D. which are recommended by your friends

75. The author's purpose in writing the passage is to _______.

A. show the importance of reading                               B. tell us how to make reading more effective

C. tell us how to read                              D. show the pleasure of reading

72-75 CBCD

 

-- I'm not feeling very well, Barton. To tell you the truth, I'm tired of the present life.

-- I suggest you do some ____ exercise to keep fit.

A. normal          B. general           C. common       D. regular