Six Ways to Improve Reading Comprehension

Help your child keep what he reads—a crucial skill, especially as he gets older and needs to gain important information from textbooks.

Have him read aloud. This forces him to go slower, which gives him more time to process what he reads.  71 

Provide the right kinds of books. Make sure your child gets lots of practice reading books that aren’t too hard.  72  Stopping any more often than that to figure out a word makes it tough for him to focus on the overall meaning of the story.

  73  To gain meaning from text, your child needs to read quickly and smoothly—a skill known as fluency. Rereading familiar, simple books gives your child practice at decoding words quickly so he'll become more fluent.

Talk to the teacher. If your child is struggling hard with comprehension, he may need more help with his reading—for example, building his vocabulary or practicing phonics skills.

Supplement class reading. If his class is studying a particular theme, look for easy-to-read books or magazines on the topic. Some prior knowledge will make his way through tougher classroom texts.

Talk about what he's reading. This “verbal processing” helps him remember and think through the themes of the book.  74 For example:

●Before: “What interests you in this book? What doesn't?”

●During: “  75 Is it turning out the way you thought it would? ”

●After: “Can you summarize the book? What did you like about it?”

E. Ask questions before, during, and after a reading session.

F. Plus, he's not only seeing the words, he's hearing them, too.

G. He should recognize at least 90 percent of the words without any help.

Madame de Stael says that only the people who can play with children are able to educate them. For success in training children, the first condition is to become a child oneself. It means to treat the child as really one’s equal, that is, to show him the same consideration, the same kind of confidence one shows to an adult. It means not to affect the child to be what we ourselves want him to become, but to be affected by the impression of what the child himself is; not to treat the child with cheating, or by force, but with the seriousness and true love suitable to his own character.

Not leaving the child in peace is the greatest problem of present methods of training children. Parents do not see that during the whole life, the need of peace is never greater than in the years of childhood, an inner peace under all outside liveliness.

But what does a child experience? Corrections, orders, interference（干涉）, the whole livelong day. The child is always required to leave something alone, or to do something different, to find something different, or want something different from what he does, or finds, or wants. He is always guided in another direction from the true inner will that is leading him. All of this is caused by our so-called enthusiasm in directing, advising, and helping the child to become the same model produced in one assembly line（流水线）. Understanding, the deepest characteristic of love, is almost always absent.

To bring up a child means carrying one’s soul in one’s hand; it means never placing ourselves in danger of meeting the cold look on the face of the child. It means the truth that the ways of injuring the child are limitless while the ways of being useful to him are few. How seldom does the educator remember that the child, even at four or five years of age, has already had a sharp feeling! The smallest mistrust and unkindness, the least act of injustice, leave wounds that last for life in the heart of the child. While, on the other hand, unexpected friendliness and kindness make quite as deep an impression on those soft senses.

1.The passage mainly talks about _______.

2.Children, according to the passage, are experiencing _______.

3.If you were a parent, which of the following methods is TRUE according to the text?

4.We may conclude that the author believes people should _______.

Fifty people died, over 11,000 were injured, and 100,000 houses were heavily damaged or destroyed in an earthquake that struck North China's Hebei Province.

The quake, measuring 6. 2 on the Richter scale (里氏6 .2级) , hit the area 220km northwest of Beijing at 11: 50 a. m. on January 10, 1998.

Scientists made a report of the recent quake. They said that the area of northwestern Beijing, the joint of Shanxi and Hebei Provinces and the Inner Mongolia (内蒙古) were most easily attacked by earthquakes measuring 6 to a bit over 7 on the Richter scale.

However, scientists did not see the recent earthquake earlier. Clouds covered a large area in the northern part of North China before the earthquake and experts say that this prevented satellites from correctly watching the temperature at the correct altitude (纬度).

Experts say that in the last ten years, about 305 earthquakes have taken place in China with 9 measuring over 7 on the Richter scale, 60 measuring over 6, and 236 measuring over 5.

Tens of thousands of people died or were injured. Loss(损失) valued over 10 billion yuan.

1.When the earthquake attacked the area, most people there were unlikely（不太可能的）to ____.

2.The report shows that about nine earthquakes in the past ten years are measured over ____ on the Richter scale.

3.It can be inferred（推断） from the report that the damage caused by the earthquakes could be much less heavy if ____.

4.Which of the following can be reasonable except ____.

When I first got an e-mail account ten years ago, I received communications only from family, friends, and colleagues. Now it seems that every time I check my e-mail，I have an endless series of advertisements and other correspondence that do not interest me at all. If we want e-mail to continue to be useful, we need specific laws that make spamming（发送垃圾邮件）a crime.

If lawmakers do not do something soon to prohibit spam, the problem will certainly get much worse. Computer programs allow spammers to send hundreds of millions of e-mails almost instantly. As more and more advertisers turn to spam to sell their products，individual e-mail boxes are often flooded with spam e-mails. Would people continue to use e-mail if they had to deal with an annoying amount of spam each time?

This problem is troubling individuals and companies as well. Many spam e-mails contain computer viruses that can shut down the entire network of a company. Companies rely on e-mail for their employees to communicate with each other. Spam frequently causes failures in their local communications networks, and their employees are thus unable to communicate effectively. Such a situation results in a loss of productivity and requires companies to repeatedly repair their networks. These computer problems raise production costs of companies, which are, in the end, passed on to the consumer.

For these reasons, I believe that lawmakers need to legislate（立法）against spare. Spammers should be fined, and perhaps sent to prison if they continue to disturb people. E-mail is a tool which helps people all over the world to communicate conveniently, but spam is destroying this convenience.

1.What does the underlined word “correspondence” in the Paragraph l probably mean?

2.According to the text, what is the major cause of the flooding spam?

3.According to Paragraph 3, who is the final victim of spam?

4.What is the purpose of the text?

Victor’s hobby was collecting stamps. He had stamps from many countries, like England, Canada and China. On his birthday, can you guess what people gave him? That’s right—stamps.

Victor’s favorite stamps came from France. He had almost every stamp from 1954 to 2004. He only needed one. That was a 1974 special edition*. It was very hard to find.

He looked for it everywhere. He asked his friends and relatives to help him. But nobody could find the stamp. It made Victor very sad.

“Don’t worry. Never give up,” his father said to him. “If you have enough patience, you’ll find it one day.”

“I hope so,” Victor said.

Victor also liked writing. He had a pen friend in France. They wrote to each other every month. Victor’s pen friend, Phillip, usually used new stamps to send letters. Sometimes, his mother gave him stamps to use. Once Phillip’s mother gave him a big, green stamp. It looked old. When Victor received the letter, he was very surprised. On the envelope, he looked carefully at the stamp. It was the 1974 special edition stamp. Victor was so happy. He told his sister, his mother and his father.

“You see,” his father said. “You did find your stamp. So, it’s good to have two things in life. ”

“What are they?” Victor asked.

“Friends and patience.” He answered.

1.It was very difficult for Victor to find a special French stamp of _________.

2.Who owned the special edition stamp at the very beginning?

3.The passage mainly tells us that ________ is（are）important to people.

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our  36 , and especially if it’s given from the  37 . When people are talking, there’s no need to do anything but  38 them. Just take them   39 . Listen to what they’re saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than  40 it.

One of my patients told me that when she  41  to tell her story, people often  42  to tell her that they had once had something just like that happen to her. Subtly her pain became a story about themselves.  43  she stopped talking to most people. It was just too  44 . We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the  45  of attention to ourselves. But when we listen, they know we care.

I have ever learned to  46  to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues(纸巾)  47  I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them  48 , to take them out of their  49   of sadness and pain. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there  50  them.

This  51  thing has not been that easy to learn. It certainly went against everything I had been  52  since I was very young at school. I thought people listened only because they were too  53  to speak or did not know the answer. A loving silence often has far more  54  to connect than the most well-intentioned  55  .

There are some students ______ to have known what they don’t really know, which is really harmful to them.

The _____ boy never dares to see the ____ film again.

--- We expected you yesterday．

--- I'm sorry, I       you to say that I couldn't be here until today．

He is ____our teacher; he is also our best friend.