Chris Jones 刚刚结束了一次不同寻常的印度之旅，记者就此对他进行了采访。以下是采访的部分内容。请根据Chris Jones的回答，从A, B, C, D四个选项中选择恰当的问题填入下面小题的空格处。并完成第（2）小题

    Reporter:    ① 

    Chris: Well, it all started two years ago when I was having a trip to India. I visited a photographic exhibition of elephants and I realized that the only way to travel around India was on an elephant.

    Reporter: What did you do next?

    Chris: I flew to New Delhi and started looking for an elephant. I needed an elephant trained to carry people. I asked an expert for help. He taught me how to ride an elephant. He also helped me find an elephant.

    Reporter:   ② 

    Chris: Not too long. I bought an elephant called Tara for about USD 6,000.

    Reporter:  ③ 

    Chris: Tara and I set off from New Delhi a week later. We were heading to Sonepur in northern India. And what a ride! Elephants can travel at about 6 miles an hour. It took us 64 days to complete the journey.

    Reporter:  ④ 

    Chris: Yes, a few. But nothing serious. On the third day, Tara hurt her foot. But that got better quickly. Also, there was a lot of heavy rain during the first week and we got very wet!

    Anne Zhang is a 21-year-old girl from Hangzhou, China. Now she studies in Britain. One day, when she was taking a train from London to Oxford, she heard loud noises on the train.

    Before, the train had been very quiet. Some people were resting while others were reading books or listening to music. Suddenly, a group of Chinese people laughed loudly as they played a game of cards.

    As it becomes easier for Chinese people to get visas(签证) to foreign countries, more and more of them are traveling abroad. However, their bad manners have given them a bad reputation (名声).

    Chinese always talk loudly in places like cafes and museums. They also spit (吐痰) and litter whenever they want and jump queues. Some Chinese tourists also like to write or draw pictures on famous buildings. In Singapore, Chinese tourists are fined(罚款) because they were smoking in Non-smoking areas.

    Some people may say that they can do everything that they want because they spend money in the country. In fact, this is not true. Besides enjoying ourselves, we should respect local customs and take care of the environment.

Information Card

    When it comes to the letter grade on your test or homework, you might notice that there is no letter E. Have you ever thought about why that is so?

    In the A. B. C. D and F grading system, the first four letter are typically considered passing grades. An F in this system simply stands for "fail". The word "fail" happens to start with the letter F, which seems to leave out the letter E, The fact of the matter is that any letter can mean "not-passing" or "fail". Some schools have U grade for unsatisfactory", or I grade for "incomplete."

    Even with all this said, we should also point out that E grade actually has been used pretty commonly throughout the history of letter grades in the US.

    The first college in the US to use a letter grading system like the ones we use today is Mount Holyoke College. In 1897, they began to use the following grading scale:

A: 95-100% (excellent)   B: 85-94%(good)   C: 76-84%(fair)

D: 75%(barely passed)   E: below 75%(failed)

    We can see the inclusion of E instead of F.

    Gradually, the letter grading system became more popular throughout the US. However, many schools decided to drop the E grade and go straight to F. There is no evidence(证据)to really support this, but one possible explanation is that teachers were worried that some students and parents might mistake E for "excellent".

    Why do we have letter grades? Well, part of the reason is that they made grading simpler during n time of great change for schools. As the 20th century began, growing cites and an increase in immigration led to larger school classrooms. Most teachers at that time thought this new letter grading system was an easy, fair and clear way to grade students.

    Today, more and more people argue that letter grades don' t fully reflect(反映)student learning. However, as teachers try to improve grading methods, many parents continue to favor the letter grades they got as kids. They are familiar(熟悉) and easy for parents to understand. So while they might not be perfect, the letter grades probably aren't going away any time soon.

    Jeff is a hard-working farmer. He grows very good corn (玉米), and he often wins the corn competitions.

    One day, a newspaper reporter found that Jeff shared his seed (种子) corn with his neighbors.

    Why do you share your best seed corn with your neighbors? They also take part in the competitions, the reporter asked.

    Jeff answered, "Didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen (花粉) from the corn and blows it from field to field. If my neighbors grow bad corn, my corn will be bad, too. If I want to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.

    This is the truth about life. You can't improve your corn if your neighbors' corn doesn't improve.

    If you want to live well, you should help others to live well. If you want to be at peace, you should help others to be at peace. If you want to be happy, you should help others to get happiness. Your happiness and the happiness of others go together.

    I used the new machine to wash the clothes. Everything worked well, but I found one of my husband's socks missing. I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

    The next morning I got ready for school as usual. When the bell rang, the students came in. We began the class. When I turned round to write on the black-board, the class broke out a roar! They laughed and laughed. They laughed so much that I was afraid that the headmaster would be in to see this. I asked the class to stop, but the more I asked, the more they laughed. I decided to go on with my lessons and I wrote on the blackboard. When I did this, they roared even more.

    At last the teacher who had the room next to mine came in to see what had happened. When he came in, he started to laugh, too.

    "Oh, dear!" I said. "Will someone please tell me what is so interesting?"

    "God," said the teacher, "You have a brown sock on the back of your skirt!"

    So that's how I found my husbands missing sock.

The story of the magazine

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    When you look at the different kinds of colorful magazines in the shops (and online) today, it's easy to think that they are a modern idea. However, magazines have been around since the 18th century and they have been an important part of people's daily lives for hundreds of years.

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    One of the earliest magazines was The Gentleman's Magazine which was started in London in 1731 by a man called Edward Cave. He was the first person to use the word "magazine" about a regular publication. The word comes from the Arabic makhzan or storehouse. His idea was that his magazine was a storehouse, or place that you could keep information about many different things.

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    Magazines became more popular in the 19th century. They gave people tips to help them with their daily lives, and they often had serialized (系列的) stories which gave the readers a new episode every week. Each part finished at a very exciting point in the story. Famous writers such as Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created serialized novels for magazines.

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    One very important serialized novel was Hard Times by Dickens. It came out in 20 weekly parts between 1 April and 12 August, 1854 in the magazine Household Words. This magazine was very good value and it was a cheap way for readers to buy a version of' a novel.

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Soap operas on TV today are often similar to the serialized novels. These old stories have often been made into modern films or TV series and they are still popular with modern audiences because they are so exciting.