I have been consistently opposed to feeding a baby regularly. As a doctor, mother and scientist in child development, I believe there is nothing to recommend it, from the baby’s point of view.

Mothers, doctors and nurse alike have no idea of where a baby’s blood sugar level lies. All we know is that a low level is harmful to brain development and makes a baby easily annoyed. In this state, the baby is difficult to calm down and sleep is impossible. The baby asks for attention by crying and searching for food with its mouth.

It is not just unkind but also dangerous to say a four-hourly feeding schedule will make a baby satisfied. The first of the experts to advocate a strict clock-watching schedule was Dr Frederic Truby King who was against feeding in the night. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. Baby feeding shouldn’t follow a timetable set by the mum. What is important is feeding a baby in the best way, though it may cause some inconvenience in the first few weeks.

Well, at last we have copper-bottomed research that supports demand feeding and points out the weaknesses of strictly timed feeding. The research finds out that babies who are fed on demand do better at school at age 5, 7, 11 and 14, than babies fed according to the clock. By the age of 8, their IQ scores are four to five percent higher than babies fed by a rigid timetable. This research comes from Oxford and Essex University using a sample（样本）of 10,419 children born in the early 1990s, taking account of parental education, family income, a child’s sex and age, the mother’s health and feeding style. These results don’t surprise me. Feeding according to schedule runs the risk of harming the rapidly growing brain by taking no account of sinking blood sugar levels.

I hope this research will put an end to advocating strictly timed baby feeding practices.

1.What does the author think about Dr King?

2.The word copper-bottomed in Paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to __________.

3.What does the research tell us about feeding a baby on demand?

4.The author supports feeding the baby __________.

As many as one in five US teenagers have some degree of hearing loss, according to researchers. They say the problem is growing.

“Teenagers really don’t pay attention to how much noise they are exposed to(接触),” Josef Shargorodsky of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston told Reuters. “Often people won’t notice it, but even very little hearing loss may influence language development,” said Shargorodsky, one of the researchers.

The study compared surveys from the early 1990s and the mid-2000s. Each included a few thousand teenagers. In the first survey, about 15 percent of teenagers had some degree of hearing loss. Some 15 years later, that number had risen by a third, to nearly 20 percent.

“This certainly is big news,” said Alison Grimes, an ear doctor. “Hearing loss is very common in old people,” Grimes said, but she added that it was worrying to see it happen in the younger age group.

In babies and young children, hearing problems are known to slow language development. The science is less clear for teenagers, but it is easy to imagine how being hard of hearing could influence learning, said Grimes.

The reasons for the rise are still unclear. When researchers asked teenagers about noise exposure – on the job, at school or from activities, for example – the teenagers didn’t report any change. But Shargorodsky said that might not be true. “We know from before that it is difficult to ask this age group about noise exposure – they underestimate it.” Few people would call it noise when they listen to music on their MP3 player, for example. “There is a difference between what we think is loud and what is harmful to the ear,” said Grimes.

Although it’s not clear that the MP3 players cause teenagers’ hearing loss, Grimes said it was still a good idea to turn down the sound and take short breaks from listening.

1.The writer advises teenagers __________.

2.The underlined sentence “they underestimate it” means __________.

3.Which of the following is true according to the passage?

4.What is the best title for the passage?

South Asia heatwave kills nearly 100

DHAKA - A heat wave sweeping India, Bangladesh and Nepal has killed nearly 100 people over the past two weeks, officials said on June 3, 2005.

A third of the people died in northern Bangladesh, mostly women and children from dehydration(脱水), heat stroke and diarrhoea(腹泻).

"We are getting reports of several deaths due to heat wave and related diseases almost every day," an official said, as temperatures touched 43℃.

The weather office in Dhaka said the hot weather will last for another week until the monsoon(季风) rains which are normally due by the middle of June.

Severe heat conditions in the southern Indian have killed at least 55 people, officials in the two states said.

While temperatures have fallen from a high of 45℃ in Andhra Pradesh to around 40℃, giving a respite（休息） to people, they are still on the rise in Orissa with Talcher town registering 48.5℃, a weather official said.

At least five people have died in Nepal from extreme heat, the government said.

1.We can infer that the heatwave can cause ______.

A．heat stoke         B．dehydration        C．diarrhoea         D．all above

2.When the monsoon rains come, the temperature will _______.

A．remain the same                        B．go on to rise sharply

C．begin to drop obviously                   D．rise a little

3.Which place is the hottest in the early June, 2005?

A．Dhaka            B．Talcher           C．Andhra Pradesh    D．Nepal

Tourism probably started in Roman times. Rich Romans visited friends and family who were working in another part of the Roman Empire. But when the empire broke down, this kind of tourism stopped.

In the early 17th century, the idea of the “Grand Tour” was born. Rich young English people sailed across the English Channel. They visited the most beautiful and important European cities of the time, including Paris in France, and Rome and Venice（威尼斯）in Italy. Their tours lasted for two to four years, and the tourists stayed a few weeks or months in each city. The “Grand Tour” was an important part of young people’s education-but only for the rich.

In the 18th century, tourism began to change. For example, people in the UK started to visit some towns, such as Bath to “take the waters”. They believed that the water there was good for their health. So large and expensive hotels were built in these towns.

In the 19th century, travel became much more popular and faster. When the first railways were built in the 1820s, it was easier for people to travel between towns, so they started to go for holidays by the sea. And some started to have holidays in the countryside as cities became larger, noisier and dirtier.

Traveling by sea also became faster and safer when the first steamships were built. People began to travel more to faraway countries.

The 20th century saw cars become more and more popular among ordinary people. Planes were made larger, so ticket prices dropped and more people used them.

Thus tourism grew, in 1949, Russian journalist Vladimir Raitz started a company called Horizon Holidays. The company organizes everything-plane tickets, hotel rooms, even food-and tourists pay for it all before they leave home. The package tour and modern tourist industry was born and began to take off.

1.When tourism first started in Roman times, people ______.

2.. In the early times, the travelers ______.

3. ______ played the most important role in the tourism development.

4. Package tour was born ______.

5. The underlined phrase “take off” means ______.

I began working in journalism when I was eight. It was my mother’s idea. She wanted me to “make something” of myself, and decided I had better start young if I was to have any chance of keeping up with the competition.

With my load of magazines I headed toward Belleville Avenue. The crowds were there. There were two gas stations on the corner of Belleville and Union. For several hours I made myself highly visible, making sure everyone could see me and the heavy black letters on the bag that said THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. When it was suppertime, I walked back home.

“ How many did you sell, my boy?” my mother asked.

“ None.”

“ Where did you go?”

“ The corner of Belleville and Union Avenues.”

“ What did you do?”

“ Stood on the corner waiting for somebody to buy a Saturday Evening Post.”

“ You just stood there?”

“ Didn’t sell a single one.”

“ My God, Russell!”

Uncle Allen put in, “ Well, I’ve decided to take the Post.” I handed him a copy and he paid me a nickel. It was the first nickel I earned.

Afterwards my mother taught me how to be a salesman. I would have to ring doorbells, address adults with self-confidence, and persuade them by saying that no one, no matter how poor, could afford to be without the Saturday Evening Post in the home.

One day, I told my mother I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want to make a success in the magazine business.

“ If you think you can change your mind like this,” she replied, “ you’ll become a good-for-nothing.” She insisted that, as soon as school was over, I should start ringing doorbells, selling magazines. Whenever I said no, she would scold me.

My mother and I had fought this battle almost as long as I could remember. My mother, dissatisfied with my father’s plain workman’s life, determined that I would not grow up like him and his people. But never did she expect that, forty years later, such a successful journalist as me would go back to her husband’s people for true life and love.

1.Why did the boy start his job young?

2.From the dialogue between the boy and his mother, we learn that the mother was _______.

3.What did the mother do when the boy wanted to give up?

4.What is the text mainly about?