The days of elderly women doing nothing but cooking huge meals on holidays are gone. Enter the Red Hat Society—a group holding the belief that old ladies should have fun.

  “My grandmother didn’t do anything but keep house and serve everybody. They were programmed to do that,” said Emily Cornette, head of a chapter of the 7-year-old Red Hat Society.

  While men have long spent their time fishing and playing golf, women have sometimes seemed to become unnoticed as they age. But the generation now turning 50 is the baby boomers (生育高峰期出生的人), and the same people who refused their parents’ way of being young are now trying a new way of growing old.

  If you take into consideration feminism (女权主义), a bit of spare money, and better health for most elderly, the Red Hat Society looks almost inevitable (必然的). In this society, women over 50 wear red hats and purple (紫色的) clothes, while the women under 50 wear pink hats and light purple clothing.

  “The organization took the idea from a poem by Jenny Joseph that begins: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn’t go,” said Ellen Cooper, who founded the Red Hat Society in 1998. When the ladies started to wear the red hats, they attracted lots of attention.

  “The point of this is that we need a rest from always doing something for someone else,” Cooper said. “Women feel so ashamed and sorry when they do something for themselves.” This is why chapters are discouraged from raising money or doing anything useful. “We’re a ladies’ play group. It couldn’t be more simple,” added Cooper’s assistant Joe Heywood.

1..  The unlined word “chapter” in Paragraph 2 means ___.

   A. one branch of an organization             B. a written agreement of a club

   C. one part of a collection of poems         D. a period in a society’s history

2..  From the text, we know that the “baby boomers” are a group of people who ___.

   A. have gradually become more noticeable     B. are worried about getting old too quickly

   C. are enjoying a good life with plenty of money to spend

   D. tried living a different life from their parents when they were young

3.. It could be inferred from the text that members of the Red Hat Society are ___.

   A. interested in raising money for social work   B. programmers who can plan well for their future

   C. believers in equality between men and women D. good at cooking big meals and taking care of others

4... Who set up the Red Hat Society?

   A. Emily Cornette        B. Ellen Cooper     C. Jenny Joseph     D. Joe Heywood

5... Women join the Red Hat Society because ___.

   A. they want to stay young                   B. they would like to appear more attractive

   C. they would like to have fun and live for themselves  D. they want to be more like their parents

　Language learning begins with listening. Children are greatly different in the amount of listening they do before they start speaking, and later starters are often long listeners. Most children will “obey” spoken instructions some time before they can speak, though the word“obey”is hardly exact as a description of the eager and delighted co- operation（合作） usually shown by the child. Before they can speak, many children will also ask questions by gestures and by making questioning noises.

　　Any attempt to study the development from the noises babies make to their first spoken words leads to considerable difficulties. It’s agreed that they enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves out as particular expression like delight, pain, friendliness and so on. But since these can’t be said to show the baby’s intention to communicate, they can hardly be regarded as early forms of language. It is agreed too, that from about three months they play with sounds for enjoyment, and that by six months they are able to add new words to their store. This self - imitation（自我模仿）leads out to deliberate（有意的）imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people. The problem then arises to the point at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech.

　　It is a problem we need to get our teeth into. The meaning of a word depends on what a particular person means by it in a particular situation and it is clear that what a child means by a word will. change as he gains more experience of the world. Thus the use, at seven months, of“ mama” as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as a meaningless sound simply because he also uses it at another time for his father, his dog, or anything else he likes. Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself. I doubt, however , whether anything is gained when parents take advantage of his ability in an attempt to teach new words.

　Children who start speaking late ________

　　A. may have problems with their listening

　　B. probably do not hear enough language spoken around them

　　C. usually pay close attention to what they hear

　　D. often take a long time in learning to listen properly

　　A baby’s first noises are ________ .

　　A. an expression of his moods and feelings

　　B. an early form of language

　　C. an imitation of the speech of adults

　　D. a sign that he means to tell you something

　　The problem of deciding at what point a baby’s imitation can be considered as speech ________ .

　　A. is important because words have different meanings for different people

　　B. is not especially important because the change takes place gradually

　　C. is one that should be ignored（忽略）because children’s use of words is often meaningless

　　D. is one that can never be properly understood because the meaning of words changes with age

　　The speaker implies that ________ .

　　A. even after they have learnt to speak, children still enjoy imitation

　　B. children who are good at imitating learn new words more quickly

　　C. children no longer imitate people after they begin to speak

　　D. patents can never hope to teach their children new sounds

Bringing Art into Hospitals

The medical world is gradually realizing that the quality of the environment in hospitals may play an important role in helping patients to get better.

As part of nationwide effort in Britain to bring art out of the museums and into public places,　some of the country’s best artists have been called in to change older hospitals and to soften the hard edges of modern buildings. Of the 2500 national health service hospitals in Britain, almost 100 now have very valuable collections of present art in passages, waiting areas and treatment rooms.

These recent movements first started by one artist, Peter Senior, who set up his studio at a Manchester hospital in northeastern England during the early 1970s.He felt the artist had lost his place in modern society,　and that art should be enjoyed by a wider audience(观众).

A common hospital waiting room might have as many as 5 000 visitors each week. What a better place to hold regular exhibitions of art!　Senior held the first exhibition of his own paintings in the out—patient’s waiting area of the Manchester Royal Hospital in 1975.Believed to be Britain’s first hospital artist. Senior was so much in demand that he was soon joined by a team of six young art school graduates.

The effect is striking. Now in the passages and waiting rooms the visitor experiences a full view of fresh colours, playful images(形象)and restful courtyards.

The quality of the environment may reduce the need for expensive drugs when a patient is recovering from an illness. A study has shown that patients who had a view onto gardens needed half the number of strong pain killers compared with patients who had no view at all or only a brick wall to look at.

1. Some best artists of Britain have been called in to__________.

2.After the improvement of the hospital environment,__________.

3.It can inferred from the passage that__________.