Ques: As a newspaper reporter, Inez' s father traveled around the world. He wrote stories about the interesting people he met. On her fifteenth birthday, Inez could hardly believe it when her father announced that she was old enough to go with him on one of his trips! He said his next story would be about salt mining in Europe. Inez had never thought much about salt,she didn' t know what to expect,but she knew she would love being with her father. Months later, when Inez and her father arrived at the salt mine ,they found themselves walking into the middle of a busy workday. Mrs. Walker, the owner, said she would not be available to talk until the workday was over. She suggested that Inez and her father should help out so Inez ' s father would have first-hand experience for his story. Before Inez realized what was happening, she was in the factory. This was not what she had imagined her trip would be like. People rushed past her carrying hammers, nails, and wood to make boxes for the salt. Everyone seemed to be in such a hurry. As another newly constructed box was pushed at her, Inez spread a label with glue and stuck it on the side of the box. When she had agreed to go with her father on his newspaper assignment, she had pictured an adventure, not hard labor. Inez looked at the salt covering her father' s once-blue pants and sighed. She could taste the salt in her mouth and smell it in the air. Inez had been using salt all her life, but she had never imagined that it existed in such quantities or that it was so hard to package. Inez' s father rubbed his hands together and grinned at her. ''I know this probably isn't what you had in mind," he said, "but sometimes the best days are the ones that don' t go as planned. Best? she wondered. She had learned two lessons today. One was to value every grain of salt to fall from a shaker. The other was to hear the details before agreeing to go on a job with her father! Why does the author most likely write this story? A) To discuss what it is like when a child travels with a parent. B) To describe how places around the world are different. C) To explain which tools are used when packaging salt. D) To show that sometimes events turn out differently than expected.
Ans: D

Ques: Where Are We Going, Dad? presents a new generation of men, in a break from Chinese tradition, now take an active role in their children's lives. Five star fathers and their children travel around China, riding camels through the western deserts, fishing off the east coast, and selling vegetables for their bus fare home in remote southwestern Yunnan province. One dad doesn't know how to do his daughter's hair, but give him a couple of days -- he'll figure it out. Another one must survive with his son for three days in the desert, where, because neither can cook, the two only eat instant noodles. These story lines are part of Where Are We Going, Dad? which, since its first show in October, has become one of China's most popular television shows, covering more than 600 million viewers each week. And searches for Where Are We Going, Dad? turn up over 40 million hits on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter. "In traditional Chinese culture, the common conception of parenthood is that the father is strict and the mother is kind. But on the show, we see fathers who are much gentler on their kids and more concerned with their upbringing," said Li Minyi, an associate professor of early childhood education at the leading Beijing Normal University. "An important question arises in this show for modern Chinese society -- what is the role of fathers in today's China?" "As they raise their children, parents are growing up at the same time," said Wang Renping, a popular education expert, in an interview with the Qianjiang Evening News. "They cannot use parenting styles from 20 years ago to guide the development of children born 20 years later." The attraction of Where Are We Going, Dad? lies in the chance to have a close look at the lives of popular Chinese stars and their children. Audiences fancy watching the failed attempts of star dads making dinner, braiding hair , and disciplining children -- tasks often left to mothers in a society still influenced by the opinion that "men rule outside and women rule inside." In Where Are We Going, Dad, we can probably learn about  _  . A) how the fathers do housework at home B) how the children study in their spare time C) how the fathers look after and guide their children D) how the children help their father with their travel around China
Ans: C

Ques: "Blogging is helping students to think and write more critically ,"says an Australian researcher, "and can help draw out people who would otherwise not engage in debate." These are the preliminary findings of PHD research by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, who has been using weblogs or blogs in her own teaching since 2001. "The students are thinking more critically." she says, "They are learning to be responsible and they're communicating outside the boundaries of the classroom and the institution, and they like that. "Bartlett-Bragg says in conventional teaching, students often rely on the lecturer as the main source of ideas and critique  for their work. "I'm a bit over listening to my students giving me back in an essay what I've told them in class." she says. "I want them to think for themselves and get different perspectives." "What makes blogs useful is their interactive nature." she says. These web-based forums for discussing ideas, experiences or opinions allow students to discuss publicly what they are studying with other students and experts outside their own university. "I really encourage them to put their personal opinion in there, provided they are informed and backed up with evidence." Bartlett-Bragg says because a lot of academics in her field of electronic or e-learning now have their own blogs, students can engage directly with them. She says one of the most powerful facilities in weblogs is pinging, which involves a person positing a comment about someone else's work on their own blog. They use the "Trackback" tool to notify the author when they have published the comment, basically inviting them to discuss it. "They get such a buzz when they make a comment on another person outside the boundaries of the institution and that person responds, or even gives them some further reading." she says. "They are getting new perspectives that I can't give them in a normal lecture." What Bartlett-Bragg likes most is that blogs can help students to   _  . A) think for themselves B) have stronger sense of responsibility C) know more about the world outside D) finish an essay assignment easily
Ans:
A