(Question)
Mother managed to buy me some more paint brushes, along with one or two drawing books and a pencil. This, of course, broadened my range of expression and allowed me to have a greater choice of subjects. After the first few weeks of uncertainty and awkwardness, I settled down contentedly with my new pastime. I painted every day upstairs in the back bedroom, completely by myself. I was changing. I didn't know it then, but I had found a way to be happy again and to forget some of the things that had made me unhappy. Above all I learned to forget myself. I didn't miss going out with my brothers, for I had something to keep my mind active, something to make each day a thing to look forward to. I would sit on the floor for hours, holding the brush between my toes, my right leg curled up under my left, my arms held tightly at my sides, hands clenched. All my paint and brushes were around me, and I would get Mother or Father to pin the drawing paper to the floor with tacks to keep it keep it steady. It looked like a very awkward position, with my head almost between my knees and my back crooked, but I painted all my best pictures this way, with the wooden floor as my only easel .  Slowly I began to recover from my earlier depression. I had a feeling of pure joy while I painted, a feeling I had never experienced before and which seemed almost to lift me above myself. What can we infer from the passage? A) .The writer has become a famous painter now. B) The writer felt depressed when he first started painting. C) The writer couldn't express himself well without painting. D) Before learning painting, the writer enjoyed out with his brothers.
(Answer)
D


(Question)
LONDON, Feb. 18,2014 (Xinhua News agency) --Britain will send experts to East China's Shanghai to learn from the city's experience in maths teaching in an attempt to raise the teaching standards. British Education Minister Elizabeth Truss is to lead a delegation of experts on a fact-finding mission to Shanghai's schools next week to see how children there have become the best in the world at maths, to get a first-hand look at maths classes and teaching methods there, and particularly to investigate why the performance of almost all children in Shanghai is high, regardless of gender or income. Britain was last year placed 50th out of 148 countries and regions in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness ranking in quality of maths and science education. Two years ago, Shanghai topped the 2012 international PISA tables for maths, while England was ranked in 26th place. The top five were all in Southeast Asia, with 15-year-olds in Shanghai judged to be three years ahead of their peers in maths. The education department said: "England's performance in maths has lagged behind while other countries have improved and overtaken us, including Poland and Germany." Actually, it is the latest step in the government's drive to raise standards in maths, looking at what has made schools in the far East the most successful in the world in teaching the subject. "Shanghai is the top-performing part of the world for maths--their children are streets ahead. Shanghai and Singapore have teaching practices and a positive mind that make the difference. They have a belief that diligence makes up for lack of ability," Truss said. "Our new curriculum has borrowed from theirs because we know it works--early learning of key arithmetic, and a focus on times tables and long division , for instance." She was determined to change the situation as performance in maths is weakening the country's skills base and threatening the productivity and growth. The government is emphasizing maths because of the importance of good grades in the subject... Which of the following statements is true according to the two international competition results? A) British students performed better in 2013 than in 2012. B) British students did better than the students from Poland in 2013. C) The students from Singapore did better than the students from Germany. D) The students from Germany did better than the students from Poland.
(Answer)
C


(Question)
Many people will remember the flight of the space shuttle  Challenger , in June, 1993.The achievement of Sally Ride, America's first woman astronaut to fly into space, made this flight especially memorable.Students from two high schools in Camden, New Jersey, however, are likely to remember Norma rather than Sally whenever they think about the flight. Norma didn't travel alone.She brought about 100 companions along with her.Norma was an ant, a queen ant who, with her subjects, made up the first ant colony   to travel into space.The ants were part of a science experiment designed by the students to test the effects of weightlessness on insects. The equipment designed by the students for their colony functioned perfectly throughout the long space trip.The young scientists and their teachers were very sad to find that their insect astronauts had all died at some point before the container was returned to the school and opened.The problem did not occur in space, but on the ground after Challenger had landed.The container remained in the desert for nearly a week before the ant colony was removed.The hot, dry desert air dried out the colony's container and the ants died from lack of moisture  . The project was termed a success because it did provide useful information.Students will continue their efforts to find out exactly what went wrong.They will try to prevent the same difficulties from recurring   on future missions .They don't want to be discouraged either by the death of the ants or by the $10,000 shuttle fare they will have to pay to send the next colony of ants into space. The project wasn't a failure because_. A) some important things were learned B) dead ants are better C) everything went as expected D) students wrote about it
(Answer)
