Recently a group of children in America poured some gasoline on a sleeping man and set him on fire. When caught, the children said they had done what they’d seen on TV.

The incidents make people angry who believe that American children are harmed by watching too much TV. They claim children can’t tell between the fiction of TV and reality, and TV distracts them from learning and makes them violent.

To estimate the impact of TV on young people, “Life” magazine hires a company to interview hundreds of school children in Nora Springs, Iowa and in Dallas, Texas. Although the two cities are very different, the company finds children in each city watch the same TV shows.

Many Iowa children, who watch an average of three hours of TV a day, recognizing that life on TV is rosier than what they experience. Their favourite shows are situation comedies about American families in trouble. Many boys like violent shows about police detectives or heroes, girls particularly soap operas-stories about families and friends.

On the whole, children find real violence on news programs hard to take. “If you see a bus crash on the news, it’s frightening,” one fifth grader says. By and large, the Iowa children agree that the best thing about TV is it makes you laugh.

Children in Dallas are savvier about programs of drug use on TV. “They don’t really show them doing it right. On TV they are not real.” A fifth grader says.

“Life” agrees with a 1988 study by the U. S Department of education that finds children are none the worse for watching TV. The study finds TV doesn’t have lasting effect on children. On the contrary, kids show good judgment about what they watch. “There are very few good shows on TV anymore,” a 10-year-old boy says.

While the debate about TV is so heated, the “Life” survey gives hope that American kids aren’t wasting three or four hours a day (what is worse, by the time young people enter college today, they will have devoted more time to watching television than they will spend in college). However, a child watching TV isn’t reading a good book or joining in healthful sports.

1.The main idea of the passage is       .

2.Children who see real violence on TV news programs        .

3.Children who enter college today        .

4.The “Life” survey of children’s TV habits        .

This year some twenty-three hundred teenagers (young people aged from 13-19) from all over the world will spend about ten months in U. S. homes. They will attend U.S. schools, meet U.S. teenagers, and form impressions of the real America. At the same time, about thirteen hundred American teenagers will go to other countries to learn new languages and gain a new understanding of the rest of the world.

Here is a two-way student exchange in action. Fred, nineteen, spent last year in Germany with George’s family. In turn, George’s son Mike spent a year in Fred’s home in America.

Fred, a lively young man, knew little German when he arrived, but after two months’ study, the language began to come to him. School was completely different from what he had expected-much harder. Students rose respectfully when the teacher entered the room. They took fourteen subjects instead of the six that are usual in the United States. There were almost no outside activities.

Family life, too, was different. The father’s word was law, and all activities were around the family rather than the individual(个人). Fred found the food too simple at first. Also, he missed having a car. “Back home, you pick up some friends in a car and go out and have a good time. In Germany, you walk, but you soon learn to like it.”

At the same time, in America, Mike, a friendly German boy, was also forming his idea. “I suppose I should criticize (批评) American schools”, he says. “It is far too easy by our level. But I have to say that I like it very much. In Germany we do nothing but study. Here we take part in many outside activities. I think that maybe you schools are better in training for citizens. There ought to be some middle ground between the two.”

1.This year _____ teenagers will take part in the exchange programme between America and other countries.

2.The whole exchange programme is mainly to _____.

3.Fred and Mike agreed that _____.

4.What is particular in American schools is that _____.

5.After experiencing the American school life, Mike thought _____.

Reading to oneself is modern activity which was almost unknown to the learned in the early days of the history, while during the fifteenth century the term “reading” undoubtedly meant reading aloud. Only during the nineteenth century did silent reading become popular.

One should be careful, however, of supposing that silent reading came about simply because reading aloud is distraction（分散注意力）to others. Examination of reasons connected with the historical development of silent reading shows that it became the usual mode of reading for most adult reading tasks mainly because the tasks themselves changed in character.

The last century saw a gradual increase in literacy（读写能力）and thus in the number of readers. As readers increased, so the number of listeners dropped, and thus there was some reduction in the need to read aloud. As reading for the benefit of listeners grew less common, so came the popularity of reading as a private activity in such public places as libraries, trains and offices, where reading aloud would disturb other readers in a way.

Towards the end of the century there was still heated argument over whether books should be used for information or treated respectfully, and over whether the reading of material such as newspapers was in some way mentally weakening. Indeed this argument remains with us still in education. However, whatever its advantages, the old shared literacy culture had gone and was replaced by the printed mass media on the one hand and by books and magazines for a specialized readership on the other.

By the end of the century students were being advised to have some new ideas of books and to use skill in reading them which were not proper, if not impossible, for the oral reader. The social, cultural, and technological developments in the century had greatly changed what the term “reading” referred to.

1.Why was reading aloud common before the nineteenth century?

2.The development of silent reading during the nineteenth century showed      .

3. Educations are still arguing about       .

4.What is the writer of this passage attempting to do?

In the city of Fujisawa, Japan, lives a woman named Atsuko Saeki. When she was a teenager, she  36  of going to the United States. Most of what she knew about American  37  was from the textbooks she had read. “I had a  38  in mind: Daddy watching TV in the living room, Mummy  39  cakes and their teenage daughter off to the cinema with her boyfriend.”

Atsuko  40  to attend college in California. When she arrived, however, she found it was not her  41  world. “People were struggling with problems and often seemed  42 ,” she said. “I felt very alone.”

One of her hardest  43  was physical education. “We played volleyball.” she said. “The other students were  44  it, but I wasn’t.”

One afternoon, the instructor asked Atsuko to  45  the ball to her teammates so they could knock it  46  the net. No problem for most people, but it terrified Atsuko. She was afraid of losing face  47  she failed.

A young man on her team  48  what she was going through. He walked up to her and  49 , “Come on. You can do that”

“You will never understand how those words of  50  made me feel…Four words: You can do that. I felt like crying with happiness.”

She made it through the class. Perhaps she thanked the young man; she is not  51 .

Six years have passed. Atsuko is back in Japan, working as a salesclerk. “I have  52 forgotten the words.” she said. “When things are not going so well, I think of them.”

She is sure the young man had no idea how much his kindness  53  to her.  “He probably doesn’t even remember it,” she said. That may be the lesson. Whenever you say something to a person cruel or kind—you have no idea how long the words will  54 . She’s all the way over in Japan, but still she hears those four  55  words: You can do that.

 Our school library can       all kinds of good books       the students.

 A good storyteller must be able to _____ his listeners’ attention _____ he reaches the end of the story.

—Lost and Found Department.

—I lost my suitcase this morning. I wonder if it _____.

 Lucy is a shy girl, but can you imagine ______ with the boss in Japanese?

Another type of pollution, ______ thermal pollution (热污染), is caused by fuel-burning.

They had great difficulty ____ the people ____ in the fire.