How should one invest a sum of money in ...

Everyone is at it, even my neighbors. I thought I might be the only person left in the world who hadn’t done an eBay deal. So, I decided to try my hand at online auction (网上拍卖).

Buying for beginners: Sign up on www. ebay. co. uk. Most items（e.g. tables, computers, and books）ready for auction will come with a picture and a short description; others may be marked with “ Buy It Now ” and have a fixed price. You can buy these right away.

If the item is being auctioned, you offer the highest price you are prepared to pay and eBay bids（出价）for you. The bid will be increased little by little until it goes beyond your highest bid, then you are emailed and asked if you would like to bid again. Auctions last up to 10 days and when they finish you get an email telling you whether you have won the item.

How to pay: Sellers decide how they would like to be paid and you need to check this before placing a bid as you might not want to post a check or postal orders. The easiest way is through PayPal, an online payment system that takes the money away from your credit card (信用卡).

Selling made simple: If you plan to sell on eBay, it helps to include a picture of the item. I followed my friends’ advice and put up the items I wanted to sell for a 10-day auction, starting on a Thursday. This way buyers had two weekends to bid.

The big things in life: It’s easy to post a small item, but furniture is a big part of eBay and this has to be collected or sent by delivery men. Check the ways of delivery before you bid.

1.What is the passage mainly about?

2.After bidding for an item, a buyer __________.

3.The easiest way of making payment mentioned in the passage is __________.

Brownie and Spotty were neighbor dogs who met every day to play together. Like pairs of dogs you can find in any neighborhood, these two loved each other and played together so often that they had worn a path through the grass of the field between their houses.

One evening, Brownie’s family noticed that Brownie hadn’t returned home. They went looking for him with no success. Brownie didn’t show up the next day, and, although they made their efforts to find him, by the next week he was still missing, Curiously, Spotty showed up at Brownie’s house alone, barking and jumping. Busy with their own lives, they paid no attention to the nervous little neighbor dog.

Finally, one morning Spotty refused to take “no” for an answer. Ted, Brownie’s owner, was continuously disturbed by the angry, determined little dog. Spotty followed Ted about, barking all the time, then rushing toward a nearby empty lot and back, as if to say, “Follow me! It’s urgent!”

Eventually, Ted followed Spotty across the empty lot as Spotty stopped to race back and barked encouragingly. The little dog led the man to a deserted spot a half mile from the house. There Ted found his beloved Brownie alive, one of his legs crushed in a steel trap (圈套). Frightened, Ted now wished he had taken Spotty’s earlier appeals seriously.

Then Ted noticed something. Spotty had done something else besides leading Brownie’s human owner to his trapped friend. In a circle around the injured dog, Ted found some food remains of every meal. Brownie had been fed that week! Spotty had been visiting Brownie regularly, in the hope of keeping his friend alive. Spotty had actually stayed with Brownie to protect him from hunger and other dangers, and keep his spirits up.

Brownie’s leg was carefully treated and he soon got well again. For many years thereafter the two families watched the faithful friends chasing each other down that well-worn path between their houses.

1.At the very beginning, Ted paid little attention to Spotty because __________.

2.After Ted was brought where Brownie was trapped, he ___________.

3.The BEST title for this passage might be____________?

4.We can infer from the passage that ___________.

In the clinic, I asked if Michael could be retested, so the specialist tested him again. To my ___1___, it was the same score.

Later that evening, I ___2___ told Frank what I had learned that day. After talking it over, we agree that we knew our ___3___ much better than an IQ test. We ___4___ that Michael’s score must have been a ___5___ and we should treat him ___6___ as usual.

We moved to Indiana in 1962, and Michael studied at Concordia High School in the same year. He got ___7___ grades in the school, especially ___8___ biology and chemistry, which was a great comfort.

Michael ___9___ Indiana University in 1965 as a pre-medical student, soon afterwards, his teachers permitted him to take more courses than ___10___. In 1968, he was accepted by the School of Medicine, Yale University.

On graduation day in 1972, Frank and I ___11___ the ceremony at Yale. After the ceremony, we told Michael about the ___12___ IQ score he got when he was six. Since that day, Michael sometimes would look at us and say ___13___, “My dear mom and dad never told me that I couldn’t be a doctor, not until after I graduated from medical school!” It is his special way of thanking us for the ___14___ we had in him.

Interestingly, Michael then ___15___ another IQ test. We went to the same clinic where he had __16___ the test eighteen years before. This time Michael scored 126, an increase of 36 points. A result like that was supposed to be ___17___.

Children often do as ___18___ as what adults, particularly parents and teachers, ___19___ of them. That is, tell a child he is “ ___20___”, and he may play the role of a foolish child.

5.A. joke        B. mistake      C. warning      D wonder

- Mum, I failed to catch the train.

- If you __________ at the station ten minutes earlier, you could have caught it.

The construction of a highway will __________ the growth of the suburbs.