My mother is a diligent and kind woman. She is very busy from morning till night. As a teacher, she works hard. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Both my brother and I love her dearly as she loves us.

    My mother has been teaching math at a middle school in my hometown. She goes to work early in the morning and does not return home until late in the afternoon. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} She treats them with patience and teaches them well. For her excellent quality and very good teaching results, she has been elected as a model teacher several times.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Every day, when she comes back home from work, she sets about doing housework, sweeping the living room and bedrooms or cleaning the furniture, and putting everything in good order. She seems to be busy all the time. As she has been very busy working every day, she looks older than her age. But she looks as cheerful and happy as ever. Mother never buys expensive dresses for herself, but she often buys some inexpensive but high quality clothes for us. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} She just eats a plain meal outside when she is too busy to cook herself. She lives a busy yet simple life, without any complaints.

    Often she says to us, “work while you work, and play while you play. That is the way to be happy and gay. If you do not work, you will become lazy and be of no use to society”. What a piece of good advice this is! {#blank#}5{#/blank#} This advice of hers will always serve as a guide to my behavior. My mother is great indeed, and I always feel proud of her.

A. She enjoys listening to classic music.

B. As a mother, she takes good care of us and gives us every comfort.

C. She loves her students and cares for them.

D. She never goes to expensive restaurants to enjoy meals.

E. My mother is hard-working and never wastes money.

F. I never forget it and always bear it in my mind.

G. Can you tell us something about your mother?

The Winner's Guide to Success

    Do you know what makes people successful? To find out the answers, an American reporter recently visited some of the most successful people around the world.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Be responsible for yourself

    Sometimes you may want to blame others for your failure to get ahead. In fact, when you say someone or something outside of yourself is stopping you from making success, you're giving away your own power.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Write a plan.

    It's very difficult to try to get what you want without a good plan. It's just like trying to drive through strange roads to a city far away.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Without this “map”, you may waste your time, money and also your energy; while with the “map”, you will enjoy the “trip” and get what you want in the shortest possible time.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

Nothing great is easy to get. So you must be ready to work hard—even harder than you have ever done. If you are not willing to pay the price, you won't get anything valuable.

Never give up.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}When you are doing something, you must tell yourself again and again: Giving up is worse than failure because failure can be the mother of success, but giving up means the death of hope.

A. A good plan is like a map to you.

B. It seems to us that everyone knows this, but it is easier said than done.

C. Some people achieve success much later in life because they don't work hard earlier.

D. You're saying, "You have more control over my life than I do."

E. Someone else's opinions of you don't have to become your reality.

F. Be willing to pay the price.

G. Here are some keys to success that they give.

    Everyone can benefit a lot from reading books. The following is about various benefits of reading books.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Whenever you read something, you learn information that you wouldn't have known. If you want to learn new words, reading books is a great way to enlarge your vocabulary.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Similar to solving puzzles, reading books allows your mind to practice its processing skills. Going without books for too long will turn your mind into mess.

    One of the primary benefits of reading books is its ability to develop your thinking skills.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Wherever you are faced with a similar problem in real life, your mind is able to put its mystery solving skills to a test.

    The information in books can be referred to over and over again. For example, reading a cookbook allows you the chance to review the cooking steps whenever you need to.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Don't even think about writing the information down because you may lose the paper sooner or later.

    These are just some of the wonderful benefits of reading books.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} If you can't even go outside, you can download free e­books online and read them on your computer. That way, you can see how useful reading can be for yourself.

A. You can improve your memory by reading.

B. Reading keeps your mind in good condition.

C. Reading books can make you become confident.

D. Reading books provides you with new knowledge.

E. Reading mystery novels, for example, trains your mind.

F. Following the steps from a cooking video will be difficult.

G. Why don't you drop into a bookstore and pick a book up?

    Entering a university is an important part of a person's life. Today, many people go to a university to study and train for a future job in subjects like law, medicine or education. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} An important one started in Egypt over one thousand years ago.

    The world's oldest surviving university, AL-Azhar, is in Cario, Egypt. It was first built as a mosque for religion (宗教寺院) in A.D.972. A few years later, learners and teachers began meeting in the mosque. They read and talked about the subject of religion and law. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Leaders in the city of Cario decided to create a school for higher learning and soon after that, and AL-Azhar University was founded.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} For these teachers at AL-Azhar, they needed to think about what courses to teach and how to teach them. The earliest courses were in law and religion. In a course, students read and studied with the teachers, but there was also free discussion. Often, students and teachers had interesting discussions, and there was no ‘right' answer. In the years that followed, the new university interested scholars from around the world. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} At AL-Azhar, people studied the past, but it was also a place for sharing new ideas.

    Over a thousand years later, AL-Azhar is still an important university in the world. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Today, many of the world's most important universities such as Oxford and Harvard still follow the same traditions as they do at AL-Azhar.

A. However, the university is not a modern invention.

B.There are many reasons to study in Egypt.

C.They came here to teach and do research.

D.Around the year 988, a new decision was made.

E. Its library contains many of the world's oldest and most valuable books.

F. The cost of university education is increasing year by year.

G. A university was a new idea at that time.

Ways to Fight and Overcome Laziness

    You read productivity tips, you've used a million to­do list apps, and you promise yourself every month that you're going to start being productive, but it never happens. Here's how to break the cycle when you feel like your problem is just laziness.

    Simple things first: It's important to get started with the task you're willing to perform in order to fight laziness. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Doing so will help you to break your inner resistance.

    Step­by­step: {#blank#}2{#/blank#} And it will keep us motivated to perform these tasks one after the other in a relaxed manner. Once you have completed one sub­task you can tell yourself that you're on a roll and that you will soon have finished the next sub­tasks as well.

    Remove distractions: Whatever it is that distracts you (TV, the Internet, etc.), remove it! {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Make sure that once you have started with one of your tasks, you will not get distracted from it by any means.

    Reward yourself: Every time you manage to overcome laziness and successfully complete a task you should reward yourself, as this will give you positive feeling about making efforts to get things done. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Little reward for small efforts and vice versa (反之亦然).

    Don't give up: It's one thing to find your motivation. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Rather than letting difficulties demotivate you, see them for what they are and refuse to be beaten by them. You're not alone and staying focused on working through challenges is one of the best ways to fight them.

A. Turn off distractions and focus on your goals.

B. Just make sure to adapt the reward to the efforts you made.

C. A list of weekly goals will help you stay focused and motivated.

D. A method that helps you do so is to start with the simple things first.

E. Occasional rewards will sweeten the tasks and help keep you on track.

F. But it's quite something else to keep it going when running into difficult problems.

G. Breaking down tasks into smaller tasks helps us to reduce the pressure of deadlines.

Unit the 1980s, scientists were trained to ignore animal pain, according to the belief that the ability to feel pain was associated only with higher consciousness. However, today, scientists view humans as a species of animals, and largely accept that many species are capable of some level of self-awareness. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

If you hit another person in the face, you can estimate their pain level by what they do or say in response. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Gradually, scientists have developed a set of indicators of pain response in non-human animals. Demonstrating a response to a negative stimulation and displaying protective behavior of injured areas are two major signs.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Some researchers argue lobsters (龙虾) are too dissimilar to vertebrates (脊椎动物) to feel pain. Nonetheless, lobsters do satisfy all of the standards for a pain response. Lobsters guard their injuries, and learn to avoid dangerous situations. They are even believed to possess some level of consciousness. In result, today most scientists agree that injuring a lobster causes physical pain.

Due to growing evidence that the lobsters may feel pain, it is now illegal to boil lobsters alive or keep them on ice in some countries. Even in locations where boiling lobsters remains legal, many restaurants prefer more humane methods. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} To satisfy picky diners, more restaurants rule out the cruel cooking methods.

Currently, the most humane tool for cooking a lobster is the CrustaStun. This device electrocutes (电击) a lobster. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} The following process of cooking is sure to cause no pain. In contrast, it takes about 2 minutes for a lobster to die from boiling water during which time pain lasts.

A. But huge disagreement exists.

B. The creature instantly loses consciousness in half a second.

C. It beats the former method by saving chefs' effort in cleaning the creature.

D. It's difficult to assess pain in other species because we cannot communicate as easily.

E. People are coming to realize that other species might also enjoy the luxury of emotion.

F. Except for moral consideration, many chefs believe stress negatively affects the flavor (味道) of the meat.

G. Legal prohibition becomes the major consideration for restaurants when choosing a cooking method.