A new school term begins, Is anything new at your school? Sichuan students are getting an extra (额外的)hour to sleep in the morning.
This year, Sichuan schools decided that students should start classes later. This should help them feel less tired, For Junior high schools, the first classes will begin no earlier than 8:30 am.
The changes have made students happy.
Liu Xian, 15, said his class was excited by the news on the first day of school. “It’s so good we can get up later!” said Liu.
Liu studies in Chengdu No.4 Middle School. He used to get up at 6:40 am. Now he can get up at 7:40 am because class doesn’t start until 8:40 am.
Wu Hongli, 15, said the new timetable is good for her health. “I used to drink coffee every night or I would feel to sleepy to finish my homework, ”said Wu. “Now I can finish it without coffee.”She used to get up at 6:30 am. Now she can get up at 7:30 am.
Wu Hongli’s mother was happy, too. She thought more sleep would help her daughter grow taller.
But some parents worried that more sleep would mean less learning. There used to be five classes in the morning. Now there are only four.
Many teachers, though, say the changes will help students learn better.
“Students used to doze(瞌睡)for the first two classes in the morning,”said Wu Zongping, an English teacher at Chendu No.12 Middle School. “But now they look fine and they learn much better than before.”
【小题1】What made the Sichuan middle school students happy?

Many textbooks are not written in the kind of English that we speak every day. In fact, sometimes the reading is so difficult that it almost seems like a foreign language. In a way, it is—the language of science. You should not expect to be able to read a difficult science passage the same way you read an interesting story; you should not expect to read it easily and all at once. Instead, you may have to read it several times through, catching on the meaning of difficult words, going back over difficult sentences, and finally putting the whole thing together. Do not be discourages if the whole passage don’t make sense to you at first. You need to pick it apart patiently until you can understand it.

         These are the steps to follow when you are reading something difficult:

1. Start to read normally until you run into a sentence that doesn’t make sense to you.

2. When a sentence doesn’t make sense, go back and read it again more slowly.

3. Look for any word you don’t know in the sentence. Try to understand their meanings using word parts and context clues(上下文线索). If necessary, look them up in the dictionary.

4. Look at the next few sentences to see if they explain more about the sentence you are working on. Do not read very much farther ahead until you understand what is being said.

5. Finally, read the sentence again. Try to put it into simpler words.

6. Read through the passage once. Try to understand all the hard parts well. Then read the whole passage once more at a usual speed. This helps you to put all ides together.

The stops sound a lot harder than they are. It is really just the normal way good readers understand anything that is difficult to read. After you have done the best you can this way, you should always feel free to ask for help from your teacher, if you have one.

1.The underlined phrase “run into” means ___________.

         A. work out                      B. come across                         C. look into              D. pass by

2. From the passage, we can know _________.

         A. we should look up new words before reading

         B. it is sometimes difficult to read a science passage

         C. the six steps are helpful in learning spoken English

         D. interesting stories help readers to improve their English

3.The massage is mainly about _________.

         A. steps of studying science                                B. difficulties in reading science

         C. ways of reading science passages                     D. researches on science and English

Many textbooks are not written in the kind of English that we speak every day. In fact, sometimes the reading is so difficult that it almost seems like a foreign language. In a way, it is—the language of science. You should not expect to be able to read a difficult science passage the same way you read an interesting story; you should not expect to read it easily and all at once. Instead, you may have to read it several times through, catching on the meaning of difficult words, going back over difficult sentences, and finally putting the whole thing together. Do not be discourages if the whole passage don’t make sense to you at first. You need to pick it apart patiently until you can understand it.

    These are the steps to follow when you are reading something difficult:

²  1. Start to read normally until you run into a sentence that doesn’t make sense to you.

²  2. When a sentence doesn’t make sense, go back and read it again more slowly.

²  3. Look for any word you don’t know in the sentence. Try to understand their meanings using word parts and context clues(上下文线索). If necessary, look them up in the dictionary.

²  4. Look at the next few sentences to see if they explain more about the sentence you are working on. Do not read very much farther ahead until you understand what is being said.

²  5. Finally, read the sentence again. Try to put it into simpler words.

²  6. Read through the passage once. Try to understand all the hard parts well. Then read the whole passage once more at a usual speed. This helps you to put all ides together.

The stops sound a lot harder than they are. It is really just the normal way good readers understand anything that is difficult to read. After you have done the best you can this way, you should always feel free to ask for help from your teacher, if you have one.

1. The underlined phrase “run into” means ___________.

    A. work out             B. come across  C. look into        D. pass by

2. From the passage, we can know _________.

    A. we should look up new words before reading

    B. it is sometimes difficult to read a science passage

    C. the six steps are helpful in learning spoken English

    D. interesting stories help readers to improve their English

3. The massage is mainly about _________.

    A. steps of studying science                B. difficulties in reading science

C. ways of reading science passages         D. researches on science and English

A lot of studends are having all kinds of spots on the spots field. A football game is going on just now____Class 3 and class 4. We don’t know which team will ______. Look at those people over there! Some students of class 1 are practicing  the _____jump. One of them is the best high jumper in the school. He practices hard every day. Many people think he will ____the school record（记录) in the sports meet next spring. Not far away from them，some girls are preparing for a race. They _____have a 600-meter race in ten minutes. Now in the corner of the field, you can see another group of students. Their teacher is telling them __to throw discus(铁饼).   In schools, _____students love sports now.  Sports help people to keep _____. They also help people to live happily. And____doing sports on the sports field , many people will  ______good friends, too. Do you think so?