The story goes that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped  the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "Today my best friend slapped me in the face."  They kept on walking until they found an oasis , where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning , but the friend saved him.  After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: "Today my best friend saved my life."  The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now you write on a stone. Why?" The other friend replied: _   can erase  it away. But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave  it in stone where no wind can ever erase it." You have to learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in the stone. Which of the following can be the proper title of the passage? A) True Friendship B) Sand and Stone C) Hurts and Benefits D) Forgiveness  and Gratitude
D
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It has been said that Lincoln was always ready to join in a laugh at himself. There is one particular story that he always told with great delight. In his early days as a lawyer, Lincoln went from town to town to hear and judge legal cases. During one of these trips, he was sitting in a train when a strange man came up to him. The stranger looked at the tall clumsy lawyer and said that he had something he believed belonging to Lincoln. Lincoln was a bit puzzled. He had never seen the man before. He didn't see how a total stranger could have something of his. Lincoln asked how this could be. The stranger pulled out a penknife and began to explain. Many years before, he had been given the pocketknife. He had been told to keep it until he was able to find a man uglier than himself. Lincoln's eyes always _ when he reached this part of the story. The story always brought smiles to the faces of those who heard it. The tale itself was funny. But even more delightful was the fact that a man as great as Lincoln could still laugh at himself. This passage is about  _ A) a stranger and his strange knife B) Lincoln's favorite story C) meeting stranger in a train D) Lincoln's favorite penknife
B
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Bamboo  is one of the nature's most surprising plants. Many people call this plant a tree, but it is a kind of grass. Like other kinds of grass, a bamboo plant may be cut very low to the ground, but it will grow back very quickly. A Japanese scientist recorded one bamboo plant that grew almost 1.5 meters in 24 hours! Bamboo grows almost everywhere in the world except Europe . There are more than 1,000 kinds of bamboo that grow around the world on both mountains and plains. Not all bamboo looks the same. Some bamboo plants are very thin. They may only grow to be a few centimeters wide while others may grow to more than 30 centimeters across. This plant also comes in different colors, from yellow to black to green. Many Asian countries have been using bamboo for hundreds of years. They often use bamboo for building new buildings. As a matter of fact, the cables  hold up the hanging bridge across the Min River in Sichuan are made of bamboo. The bridge has been in use for more than 1,000 years, and is still holding strong. In Africa, engineers are teaching poor farmers how to find water using bamboo. These African countries need cheap ways to find water because they have no money, and their fields often die from no rain and no water. It seems that bamboo is one of the best things they can use. Bamboo pipes and drills  can help to make the poor thirsty fields be watered. From the text we know    _   . A) All people call bamboo plant trees B) a bamboo plant may grow 4.5 meters in three days C) the bamboo plant changes its colors when it grows D) a bridge held by bamboo cable was built thousands of years ago
B
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Creative conservationist   Asher Jay is a designer, artist, writer, and activist who is trying to save the world's most threatened wildlife with an unusual weapon: Art.  "Today we need everyone's involvement, not just core conservationists," says Jay. " People with no previous interest in conservation tune in to my messages because they engage with my work aesthetically. It starts as an interest in art for art's sake and ends with making lifestyle changes." The New York-based artist has become a visual voice for a range of environmental causes. In Africa, screen savers glow with Jay's graphics of a Poached rhino horn dripping with blood. Jay's cartoons of elephants killed for their tusks have been shown in New York's Times Square, wild other works have spread worldwide on social media.  "The right image can overcome language and cultural barriers, connecting with people on a non-verbal, emotional level," she says. "It all starts with making an emotional impression on one person. Only then will someone change habits, speak out, or donate." In recent years, much of Jay's best known work has focused on the illegal ivory trade.  In 2012, she created a silk screen print, showing a stark image of an elephant's head silhouetted in black, dripping with red blood, and accented by a tusk decorated with images of elephants' families. "Every tusk costs a life," said accompanying text. "Stop poaching." "I wanted to visualize the scale and brutality of the crisis and use art to tell the blood ivory story," she says. "Every year, 35,000 elephants are slaughtered; that's one every 15 minutes." "Two-thirds of Africa's elephants have been killed for tusks in the last 35 years. If this continues, experts predict elephants in the wild will be extinct in less than ten years." Much of Jay's work around poaching aims simply to correct a widespread misunderstanding. "Many people think an elephant's tusk or a rhino's horn simply falls off, like losing a tooth. My goal," she says, "is to make them understand that elephants die painful... What does Jay say about the effect of art? A) It is a visual voice for animal protection. B) It needs words to illustrate its meaning. C) It can help more money to be donated to people in need. D) It makes an emotional impression on people.
