Very few people can get college degree before 11, but Michael was an exception. He started high school when he was 5, finish in just nine months. He became the (1) ________ youngest college graduate when he was 10 years and 4 months old, earning an (2) ________ degree. Now at 11 Michael’s working on a master’s degree in (3) ________ intelligence.
But Michael’s (4) ________ hasn’t always come easy. (5) ________ his intelligence. He still lacks important life (6) ________.
    In one class, he had to struggle to understand (7) ________ novels, because, he says, “I’m 11. I’ve never been in love before.
    Another challenge was his size. (8) ________.
    He likes computers so much (9) ________.
    He wants to make robots do all the heavy tasks. (10) ________.

    In bringing up children, every parent watches eagerly the child’s acquisition (学会) of each new skill-the first spoken words, the first independent steps, or the beginning of reading and writing. It is often tempting to hurry the child beyond his natural learning rate, but this can set up dangerous feelings of failure and states of worry in the child: This might happen at any stage. A baby might be forced to use a toilet too early, a young child might be encouraged to learn to read before he knows the meaning of the words he reads. On the other hand, though, if a child is left alone too much, or without any learning opportunities, he loses his natural enthusiasm for life and his desire to find out new things for himself.
    Patents vary greatly in their degree of strictness towards their children. Some may be especially strict in money matters. Others are sever over times of coming home at night or punctuality for meals. In general, the controls imposed represent the needs of the parents and the values of the community as much as the child’s own happiness.
    As regards the development of moral standards in the growing child, consistency is very important in parental teaching. To forbid a thing one day and excuse it the next is no foundation for morality (道德). Also, parents should realize that “example is better than precept”. If they are not sincere and do not practise what they preach (说教), their children may grow confused, and emotionally insecure when they grow old enough to think for themselves, and realize they have been to some extent fooled.
    A sudden awareness of a marked difference between their parents’ principles and their morals can be a dangerous disappointment.

    A good modern newspaper is an extraordinary piece of reading. It is remarkable first for what it contains: the range of news from local crime to international politics, from sport to business to fashion to science, and the range of comment and special features (特写) as well, from editorial page to feature articles and interviews to criticism of books, art, theatre and music. A newspaper is even more remarkable for the way one reads it: never completely, never straight through, but always by jumping from here to there, in and not glancing at one piece, reading another article all the way through, reading just a few paragraphs of the next. A good modern newspaper offers variety to attract many different readers, but far more than nay one reader is interested in. What brings this variety together in one place is its topicality (时事性), its immediate relation to what is happening in your world and your locality now, but immediacy and the speed of production that goes with it mean also that much of what papers in a newspaper has no more than transient (短暂的) value. For all these reasons, no two people really read the same paper: what each person does is to put together out of the pages of that day’s paper, his own selection and sequence, his own newspaper. For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently, which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and self-awareness as you modify and apply the techniques of reading.

    American society is not nap (午睡) friendly. In fact, says David Dinges, a sleep specialist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “There’s even a prohibition against admitting we need sleep.” Nobody wants to be caught napping or found asleep at work. To quote proverb: “Some sleep five hours, nature requires seven, laziness nine and wickedness eleven.”
Wrong. The way not to fall asleep at work is to take naps when you need them. “We have to totally change our attitude toward napping”, says Dr. William Dement of Stanford University, the godfather of sleep research.
    Last year a national commission led by Dement identified an “American sleep debt” which one member said was as important as the national debt, the commission was concerned about the dangers of sleepiness: people causing industrial accidents or falling asleep while driving. This may be why we have a new sleep policy in the White House. According to recent reports, president Clinton is trying to take a half-hour snooze (打瞌睡) every afternoon.
About 60 percent of American adults nap when given the opportunity. We seem to have “a midafternoon quiet phase” also called “a secondary sleep gate.” Sleeping 15 minutes to two hours in the early afternoon can reduce stress and make us refreshed. Clearly, we were born to nap.
    We Superstars of Snooze don’t nap to replace lost shut-eye or to prepare for a night shift. Rather, we “snack” on sleep, whenever, wherever and at whatever time we feel like it. I myself have napped in buses, cars, planes and on boats; on floors and beds; and in libraries, offices and museums.

    Violin prodigies (神童), I learned, have come in distinct waves from distinct regions. Most of the great performers if the late 19th and early 20th centuries were born and brought up in Russia and Eastern Europe. I asked Isaac Stern, one of the world’s greatest violinists the reason for this phenomenon. “It is very clear,” he told me. “They were all Jews (犹太人) and Jews at the time were severely oppressed and ill-treated in that part of the world. They were not allowed into the professional fields, but they were allowed to achieve excellence on a concert stage.” As a result, every Jewish parent’s dream was to have a child in the music school because it was a passport to the West.
    Another element in the emergence of prodigies, I found, is a society that values excellence in a certain field to nurture (培育) talent. Nowadays, the most nurturing societies seem to be in the Far East. “In Japan, a most competitive society, with stronger discipline than ours,” says Isaac Stem, children are ready to test their limits every day in many fields, including music. When Western music came to Japan after World War II, that music not only became part of their daily lives, but it became a discipline as well. The Koreans and Chinese as we know, are just as highly motivated as the Japanese.
    That’s a good thing, because even prodigies must work hard. Next to hard work, biological inheritance plays an important role in the making of a prodigy. J. S. Bach, for example, was the top of several generations of musicians, and four of his sons had significant careers in music.

    During recent years we have heard much about “race”: how this race does certain things and that race believes certain things and so on. Yet, the (1)_____ phenomenon of race consists of a few surface indications.We judge race usually (2)_____ the colouring of the skin: a white race, a brown race, a yellow race and a black race. But (3)_____ you were to remove the skin you could not (4)_____ anything about the race to which the individual belonged. There is (5)_____ in physical structure, the brain or the internal organs to (6)_____ a difference.
    There are four types of blood. (7)_____ types are found in every race, and no type is distinct to any race. Human brains are the (8)_____. No scientists could examine a brain and tell you the race to which the individual belonged. Brains will (9)_____ in size, but this occurs within every race. (10)_____ does size have anything to do with intelligence. The largest brain (11)_____ examined belonged to a person of weak (12)_____. On the other hand, some of our most distinguished, people have had (13)_____ brains.
    Mental tests which are reasonably (14)_____ show no differences in intelligence between races. High and low test results both can be recorded by different members of any race. (15)_____ equal educational advantages, there will be no difference in average standings, either on account of race or geographical location.
    Individuals of every race (16)_____ civilization to go backward or forward. Training and education can change the response of a group of people (17)_____ enable them to behave in a (18)_____ way.
The behavior and ideals of people change according to circumstances, but they can always go back or go on to something new (19)_____ is better and higher than anything (20)_____ the past.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed thirty minutes to write a composition on the topic Harmfulness of Fake Commodities. You should write at least 100 words and you should base your composition on the outline (given in Chinese) below:
(1) 目前社会上有不少假冒伪劣商品(fake commodities)。为什么会有这种现象?
(2) 举例说明假冒伪劣商品对消费者个人、社会等的危害。

Harmfulness of Fake Commodities