1. 　In some countries, eating together at restaurants may make it easier for people to _______.

　　 A. develop closer relations　　　　　　 　　 B. share the same culture

　　 C. get to know each other　　　　　 　　　 D. keep each other company

8. What is the main idea of the text?

　 A. Storytelling can influence the way people think.

　 B. Storytelling is vital to the growth of business.

　 C. Storytelling is the best way to educate children in school.

　 D. Storytelling helps people understand themselves and others.

　 　第31天　　　　　　　　　　　　 A

Meeting people from another culture can be difficult. From the beginning, people may send the wrong signal (信号). Or they may pay no attention to signals from another person who is trying to develop a relationship.

Different cultures emphasize (强调) the importance of relationship building to a greater or lesser degree. For example, business in some countries is not possible until there is a relationship of trust. Even with people at work, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in "small talk", usually over a glass of tea, before they do any job. In many European countries -- like the UK or France -- people find it easier to build up a lasting working relationship at restaurants or caf6s rather than at the office.

Talk and silence may also be different in some cultures. I once made a speech in Thailand. I had expected my speech to be a success and start a lively discussion; instead there was an uncomfortable silence. The people present just stared at me and smiled. After getting to know their ways better, I realized that they thought I was talking too much. In my own culture, we express meaning mainly through words, but people there sometimes feel too many words are unnecessary.

Even within Northern Europe, cultural differences can cause serious problems. Certainly, English and German cultures share similar values; however, Germans prefer to get down to business more quickly. We think that they are rude. In fact, this is just because one culture starts discussions and makes decisions more quickly.

People from different parts of the world have different values, and sometimes these values are quite against each other. However, if we can understand them better, a multicultural environment (多元文化环境) will offer a wonderful chance for us to learn from each other. (07安徽卷)

7. Pugh has practised storytelling with _____ groups of people.

　 A. 2　　　　　　　 B. 3　　 　　　　　C. 4　　　　　　 D. 5

6. The underlined sentence (Paragraph 4) suggests that prisoners can _____.

　 A. start a new life　　　　　　　　　　　　 B. settle down in another place

　 C. direct films　　　　　　　　　　　　　 D. become good actors

5. What do we learn about American storyteller from Paragraph 2?

　 A. They share the same way of storytelling.

　 B. They prefer to tell the stories from other cultures.

　 C. They learn their stories from the American natives.

　 D. They find storytelling useful for both children and adults.

4. From the passage，we can infer the following EXCEPT that＿．

A. the grades of most dropouts at school were acceptable

B. about 500, 000 high school dropouts are black and Spanish

C. classes don't appeal to dropouts

D. on average dropouts cannot get good jobs

B

Tell a story and tell it well, and you may open wide the eyes of a child, open up lines of communication in a business, or even open people’s mind to another culture or race.

People in many places are digging up the old folk stories and the messages in them. For example, most American storytellers get their tales from a wide variety of sources, cultures, and times. They regard storytelling not only as a useful tool in child education, but also as a meaningful activity that helps adults understand themselves as well as those whose culture may be very different from their own.

“ Most local stories are based on a larger theme,” American storyteller Opalanga Pugh says, “ Cinderella(灰姑娘), or the central idea of a good child protected by her goodness, appears in various forms in almost every culture of the world.”

Working with students in schools, Pugh helps them understand their own cultures and the general messages of the stories. She works with prisoner too, helping them knowing who they are by telling stories that her listeners can write, direct, and act in their own lives. If they don’t like the story they are living, they can rewrite the story. Pugh also works to help open up lines of communication between managers and workers. “For every advance in business,” she says, “ there is a greater need for communication.” Storytelling can have a great effect on either side of the manager-worker relationship, she says.

Pugh spent several years in Nigeria, where she learned how closely storytelling was linked to the everyday life of the people there. The benefits of storytelling are found everywhere, she says.

“I learned how people used stories to spread their culture,” she says, “ What I do is to focus on the value of the stories that people can translate into their own daily world of affairs. We are all storytellers. We all have a story to tell. We tell everybody’s story.”　 (07浙江卷)

3. The underlined words “stick it out” probably means“＿＿”．

A. complete schooling　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 B. solve the problem

C. love having classes　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 D. believe in themselves

2. Acceding to the passage，which state has a law requiring school attendance until they graduate?

A. New Hampshire　　　　　 B. Utah　C. New Mexico　　 　D. The District of Columbia

1. Most high school students drop out of' school because＿＿．

A. they have failing grades　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 B. they take no interest in classes

C. they are discriminated against　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 D. they are lazy and not intelligent

8. 　A spider's ability to finish an incomplete web proves that___________.

　　 A. it has a highly preprogrammed brain　　 B. it reuses its web protein to reproduce new silk

　　 C. the web is everything for a spider　　D. it is able to rebuild a destroyed web

　 　第30天　　　　　　　　　　　　 A　

　　 High school dropouts(辍学者)earn an average of $ 9,000 less per year than graduates. Now a new study dispels a common belief why they quit. It’s much more basic than flunking out(不及格).

　　 Society tends to think of high school dropouts as kids who just can’t cut it. They are lazy，and perhaps not too bright．So researchers were surprised when they asked more than 450 kids who quit school about why they left.

　　 “The vast majority actually had passing grades and they were confident that they could have graduated from high school.” John Bridgeland, the executive researcher said. About 1 million teens leave school each year. Only about half of African-American and Hispanic(美籍西班牙的)student will receive a diploma(证书)，and actually all dropouts come to regret their decision. So， if failing grades don’t explain why these kids quit, what does? Again，John Bridgeland："The most dependable finding was that they were bored.” “They found classes uninteresting; they weren’t inspired or motivated. They didn’t see any direct connection between what they were learning in the classroom to their own lives, or to their career aspirations.”

　　 The study found that most teens who do drop out wait until they turn sixteen, which happens to be the age at which most states allow students to quit. In the US，only one state，New Mexico，has a law requiring teenagers to stay in high school until they graduate. Only four states: California, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, plus the District of Columbia, require school attendance until age 18, no exceptions, another researcher，says raising the compulsory(义务的)attendance age may be one way to keep more kids in school．

　“As these dropouts look back，they realize they’ve made a mistake. And anything that sort of gives these people an extra push to stick it out and it through to the end, is probably helpful measure.”

　　 New Hampshire may be the next state to raise its school attendance age to 18. But critics say that forcing the students unwilling to continue their studies to stay in school misses the point－the need for reform. It's been called for to reinvent high school education to make it more challenging and relevant, and to ensure that kids who do stick it out receive a diploma that actually means something.