C

Chinese are very generous when it comes to educating their children. Not caring about the money, parents often send their children to the best schools or even abroad to England, the United States or Australia. They also want their children to take extra-course activities where they will learn a musical instrument or ballet or other classes which will give them a head start in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is, the better it is. So the parents will spend an unreasonable amount of money on education. Even poor couples will buy a computer for their son or daughter.

However, what most parents fail to see is that the best early education they can give their children is usually very cheap.

Parents can see that their children’s skills vary, skilled in some areas while poor in others. What most parents fail to realize though, is that today’s children lack (缺乏) self-respect and self-confidence.

The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents aren’t teaching them the most important skills they need to be confident, happy and clever.

Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing housework.

Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It’s an enjoyable but difficult experiment. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and gradually to finish his job successfully. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and a lot of self-confidence.

Some old machines , such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your children to play with will make him curious (好奇) and arouse his interest He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities aren’t merely teaching a child to read a book, but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important.

46. Parents in China, according to this passage, _________.

A. are too strict with their children

B. are too rich to educate their children

C have some problems in educating their children correctly

D. are too poor to educate their children

47. Generally speaking, children’s skills_______.

A. come from their parents

B. have nothing to do with their education

C. may be different

D. have something to do with their marks in the exams

48. The writer of this passage doesn’t seem to be satisfied with_______.

A. the parents’ idea of educating their children

B. the education system

C. children’s skills

D. children’s hobbies

49. Doing some cooking at home helps children_________.

A. learn how to serve their parents

B. learn how to become strong and fat

C. benefit from it and prepare themselves for the future

D. make their parents believe that they are clever

50. According to the last paragraph, we can conclude that_________.

A. broken radios and television sets are useful

B. one’s curiosity may be useful for his later life

C. an engineer must fix many broken radios

D. a good student should spend much time repairing radios

D

Doctors have known for a long time that extremely loud noises can cause hearing damage or loss. The noise can be the sound of a jet airplane or machines in factories of loud music or other common sound at home and at work. A person only needs to hear the noise for little more than one second to be affected.

An American scientist has found that using aspirin (阿斯匹林) increase the temporary (暂时的)hearing loss or damage from loud noise. He did an experiment using a number of students at a university who all had normal hearing. He gave them different amounts of aspirin for different periods of time, then he tested their hearing ability. He found that students who were given four grams of aspirin a day for two days suffered much greater temporary hearing loss than those who did not use aspirin. The hearing loss was about two times as great.

The scientist said millions of persons in the U.S. use much larger amounts of aspirin than were used in his experiment. He said these persons face a serious danger of suffering hearing loss from loud noise.

51. Doctors have long known that__________.

A. one may lose his hearing when he hears a terribly loud noise.

B. one may become deaf when he hears a loud noise.

C. loud noises can cause damage to the hearing of the young people only

D. common sounds at home are not harmful to the ear

52. This passage suggests that one’s hearing________.

A. will be damaged even if he has heard a loud noise for only little more than one second

B. will be damaged even if he has heard a loud noise less than one second

C. will not be damaged if he has heard a loud noise for only little more than one second

D. will not be damaged if he has little more than one second to get ready

53. One conclusion you can draw from the passage is that aspirin________.

A. makes hearing damage from loud noise worse

B. should never be taken more than four grams

C. can damage one’s hearing when it is given more than four grams daily

D. always increases hearing loss by two times

54. Millions of Americans are in danger of suffering hearing loss because they__________.

A. take too much aspirin B. often take air trips

C. like listening to loud music

D. have too much loud noises at home and at work

55. The American scientist did his experiment in order to find ________.

A. how much aspirin would affect a person’s hearing

B. how much aspirin should be given in the treatment of the patients with hearing damage from loud noise

C. whether aspirin would increase the temporary hearing damage from loud noises

D. whether the people who had hearing damage should use aspirin