(Q).
Are _ born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I hardly went to bed before midnight, and I would always get up late the next morning. But after a while I couldn't ignore the high relationship between success and rising early. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity   was always higher. So I set out to become a habitual early riser. But whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that noise and go back to sleep. Eventually some sleep research showed that my strategy was wrong. The most common wrong strategy is this: supposing you're going to get up earlier, you'd better go to bed earlier. It sounds very reasonable, but will usually fail. There are two main schools   of thought on sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same time every day. The second school says you should go to bed when you're tired and get up when you naturally wake up. However, I have found both are wrong if you care about productivity. If you sleep at fixed hours, you'll sometimes go to bed when you aren't sleepy enough. You're wasting time lying in bed awake. My solution is to combine both methods. I go to bed when I'm sleepy and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time. So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5 a.m.), but I go to bed at different times every night. However, going to bed only when I'm sleepy, and getting up at a fixed time every morning are my ways. If you want to become an early riser, you can try your own. What's the author's sleep pattern? A) Going to bed early and getting up early. B) Going to bed late and getting up late. C) Going to bed when sleepy and getting up at a fixed early time. D) Going to bed early and getting up late.
(A).
C


(Q).
When Dekalb Walcott III was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him _ on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the 1990s. Not him. "I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr.," he says of his father. So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. "I'm jumping up and down, saying, "Mom, can I go? Can I go?' " The experience changed Dekalb's life, he tells his dad on a visit to StoryCorps. "My eyes got big from the moment the alarm went off." the younger Dekalb says. " This is the life that I want to live someday. " Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together -- father supervising  son. "You know, it's everything for me to watch you grow," his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced. "I received a phone call that night. And they said, 'Well, your son was at this fire.' I said, 'OK, which way is this conversation going to go?' " Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls. "And they said, 'But he's OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him.' "And the word went around, 'Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that's Walcott! That's Walcott up there!' So, you know, moments like that, it's heaven on Earth for a dad." Dekalb Walcott Jr. retired in 2009. The younger Dekalb says he's proud of being a second-generation firefighter. "You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I'm definitely looking forward to passing that torch down to my son." Which of the following is the best title of the passage? A) Passing The Torch: A Firefighter Dad's Legacy B) Putting Out Fire: A Challenging Job for Father and son C) Dekalb Walcott III: A Second-generation Firefighter D) Dekalb Walcott Jr.: A Chicago Fire Chief
(A).
A


(Q).
Imagine a house that keeps itself warm in the wintertime. Think of the savings in terms of fuel bills and unfriendly emissions. Such houses in fact exist, called "passive houses". The concept of these highly energy-efficient buildings took root in the 1990s, before slowly consolidating as a niche construction   concept in the 2000s. Are passive houses now actively moving into the mainstream as sustainable buildings? For Brian McGarry, an economics lecturer who built a family house based on passive housing criteria in the Pyrenees this year, the arguments look convincing. As his first full winter in the low energy house draws in, we asked him to keep us informed. Do passive houses work? I had never heard of a passive house in February 2012, when I purchased a plot of land. Nor did I expect that I would be persuaded to build a pre-constructed, custom-designed house based on energy-efficient passive house criteria. It promised to be easier and quicker to build, cheaper to run, and more comfortable to live in. The objective was to incorporate the fundamental concepts of passive energy management into my project: an airtight and highly insulated building envelope; large southfacing double or triple-glazed windows (if possible, filled with argon gas) that passively capture the energy of the sun; a heat recovery ventilation system to provide fresh air; and a simple, low-cost heating system consisting of a modern wood-burning stove, a bathroom heater and a portable radiator backup for when the sun doesn't shine and temperatures decline. No significant limitations were placed on the design, and it had excellent environmental credentials. Moreover, the cost was no more than a conventional build. After six months in use, the house is proving to be both cheap to run and remarkably comfortable-staying cool in the hot summer was effortless, as long as the windows were shuttered or shaded from the sun. Nowstaying warm in the cold, high-altitude December climate also seems easy, so far. Winter arrived in force in the... How did Brian McGarry find his self-built passive house? A) very unaffordable B) Energy-consuming C) comfortable to live in D) Awkward to use
(A).

C