In a room at Texas Children Cancer Cente...

FreeRice.com is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP). It aims to provide education to everyone for free and help end world hunger. Join us and have fun with our vocabulary game. For each vocabulary word you get right, we donate free rice through UNWFP to those hungry people.

How do you play the vocabulary game?

Click on the answer that is closest in meaning to the word. If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word. For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to UNWFP.

How does the vocabulary game help you?

This game may make you smarter. While learning new vocabulary, it can help you:

★Present your ideas better

★Write better papers, e-mails and business letters

★Speak more accurately and influentially

★Read faster because you understand better

★Get better grades in high school and college

★Perform better at job interviews

★Be more effective and successful at your job

After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice a phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words.

How does the FreeRice vocabulary program work?

FreeRice has a database containing thousands of words at different levels of difficulty. There are words proper for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most learned professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, doctors, truck drivers… everyone!

FreeRice adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, designs a proper starting level for you. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. There are 60 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above Level 50.

Sign up now and you will have fun as well as help end world hunger.

1.According to the passage, the purpose of the vocabulary game is to ______.

2.Playing the vocabulary game enables you to ______.

3.People of different vocabulary levels can play the game because ______.

It was a Sunday and the heavy storm had lasted all night. The morning after the storm, though, was beautiful： blue skies, warm air and a calm, inviting sea touching the shore gently.

My father realized it was a good day for fishing and invited my sister and me to go with him. I was only 14 and fishing had never been my thing, but I decided to go all the same. I’m so glad I did.

On the road to the harbour we could see the terrible destruction on the coast, but the harbour itself was in fairly good shape. After all， it was protected by the arms of a bay that had only one tiny channel to the sea. As we got on board, we noticed two big humps(脊背) in the distance.

On approaching them, we saw it was a mother whale with her baby. We couldn’t believe it ——there aren’t any whales along the coast here. The storm must have driven them across the ocean into the bay, in which the still water was so badly polluted that nothing could survive.

The little baby whale——actually as big as our boat——was obviously stuck and could not move. The mother dived under the water and came up suddenly, making big whirlpools(漩涡) and waves. ”She’s trying to help her baby, but on the wrong side, ”my father said. At this point, my father moved our boat in a semicircle to the other side and, heading the boat towards the baby whale, pushed it gently. With our several gentle pushes the big hump turned over and disappeared under water. Then it swam up right beside its mum. They struggled in their desperate attempts to escape but missed the exit and started heading in the wrong direction. We hurried up to the whales and tried to lead them towards the bay channel. Slowly, they let us lead them, some-times rising from the water right beside us to breathe——and to give us a trusting look with those huge eyes. Once they hit their first part of clean water flowing straight from the sea, the mum gave us a wave with her tail and off they swam into the distance.

In the excitement it had felt like only a few minutes, but we had been with those wonderful animals for almost an hour and a half. That was the simple and lasting beauty of the day, Nearly four decades later, I still look back fondly to that golden day at sea.     

1.The author says “I’m so glad I did ” (in Para. 2)because ______.

2.The harbour survived the storm owing to____________.

3.The mother whale failed to help her baby because__________.

4.what is the theme of the story?

Someone said that encouragement is simply reminding a person of the “shoulders” he’s standing on, the heritage he’s been given. That’s what happened   36   a young man, the son of a(n)   37   baseball player, was chosen by one of the minor league teams. Hard as he tried, his first season was   38   , and by midseason he expected to be removed   39   day. The coaches were    40   by his failure because he possessed all the characteristics of a superb athlete, but he seemed to have become   41   from his potential.

His   42   seemed darkest one day when he had already struck out his first time at bat. Then he stepped up to the batter’s box again and quickly ran up two strikes. The catcher called a   43   and ran for a conference to discuss strategies. While they were busy, the   44  , standing behind him, spoke casually to the boy.

Then play   45  , the next pitch was thrown and the young man knocked it out of the park. That was the turning   46  . From then on, he played the game with a new confidence and power that quickly   47   the attention of the parent team, and he was called   48   to the majors.

On the day he was leaving for the city, one of his coaches asked him what had caused such a turnaround. The young man replied it was the   49   remark the judge had   50   that day when his baseball career had seemed   51  .

“He told me I reminded him of all the times he had stood   52   my dad in the batter’s box,” the boy explained. “He said I was holding the bat just the way Dad had held it.   53   he told me, ‘I can see his genes in you; you have your father’s   54   .’ After that, whenever I swung the bat, I just   55   I was using Dad’s arms instead of my own.”

---- When did you last hear _____Jay?

---- He phoned me this morning, and we agreed _____ a time and place to meet.

Teachers recommend parents ______their children under 12 to ride bicycles to school for safety.