I told my friend Graham that I often cycle two miles from my house to the town centre but unfortunately there is a big hill on the route. He replied, "You mean fortunately." He explained that I should be glad of the extra exercise that the hill provided.

    My attitude to the hill has now changed. I used to complain as I approached it but now I tell myself the following. This hill will exercise my heart and lungs. It will help me to lose weight and get fit. It will mean thatI live longer. This hill is my friend. Finally I comfort myself with the thought of all those silly people who pay money to go to a gym and sit on stationery exercise bicycles when I can get the same value for free. I have asmile of satisfaction as I reach the top of the hill.

Problems are there to be faced and overcome. We cannot achieve anything with an easy life. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person togain a university degree. Her activism and writing proved inspirational. She wrote, "Character cannot be developed in ease. Only through experiences of suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved."

    One of the main determinants of success in life is our attitude towards adversity (逆境). From time to time we all face hardships, problems, accidents and difficulties. Some are of our making but many are no fault of our own. While we cannot choose the adversity, we can choose our attitude towards it.

Douglas Bader was 21 when in 1931 he had both legs cut off following a flying accident. He was determined to fly again and went on to become one of the leading flyingaviators in the Battle of Britain with 22 aerial victories over the Germans. He was an inspiration to others during the war. He said, "Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches (拐杖) or a stick, and then have a go at everything. Go to school, and join in all the games youcan. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible."

    The biographies (传记) of greatpeople are full of examples of how they took steps to overcome the difficulties they faced. The common thread is that they did not become depressed. They chose their attitude. They chose to be positive. They took on the challenge. They won.

    Nevertheless, there is still the problem of how you change your attitude towards adversity.

    Max Vernon Mathews has been called the father of computer music. He created electronic tools so that people could use computers as musical instruments. He had a huge influence on the development of electronic music and how it is written, recorded and played.

    In 1957, Max Mathews wrote the first computer program that enabled a computer to create sound and play it back. At the time, he was working as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. His computer program was called Music. It enabled a large IBM computer to play a seventeen-second piece of music that he had written.

    The computer was so slow that it would have taken an hour to play the piece of music in seventeen seconds. For that reason, Mathews moved the work to a tape player, which could be sped up to play the music at a normal speed. He later said that the sound quality of the music notes was not great, but the technical importance of the music was huge.

    The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited Bell Laboratories in the 1960s. He heard a computer “sing” the song "Daisy Bell" on devices and programs developed by Max Mathews andother engineers. Clarke noted this technology in his book “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which was later made into a movie.

    Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios.

    Max Mathews had a long and productive career. He worked with composers like John Cage and Edgard Varese. He helped create a center for research in computer music in Paris. And he taught at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in Stanford University in California.

    Mathews believed modern musicians were not making full use of the power of computer music. He said a violin always sounds like a violin, but with a computer, the way a violin sounds is unlimited. He said he did not want computer sounds to replace live music. But he said he hoped laptop computers would one day be considered serious instruments

    City people usually think they are a lot smarter than country people. They often laugh at simple country ways. But people do not laugh at country music. It is one of the most popular kinds of music in the United States today.

    Perhaps it is so popular because it is about simple but strong human feelings and events—love, sadness, good times and bad times, it tells real life stories and sounds the way people really talk. As life becomes more and more complicated(复杂的), it is good to hear music about ordinary people.

    Country music, sometimes called country western, comes from two kinds of music. One is the traditional music of the people in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. The other is traditional cowboy music from the West. The singers usually play the guitars, and in the 1920s they started using electric guitars.

    At first city people said country music was low-class. It was popular mostly in the South. But during World War Ⅱ, thousands of Southerners went to the Northeast and Midwest to work in the factories. They took their music with them. Soldiers from the rest of the country went to army camps in the South. They learned to like country music. Slowly it became popular all over the country.

    Today country music is popular everywhere in the United States and Canada, in small towns and in New York City, among black and white, and among educated and uneducated people. About 1,200 radio stations broadcast country music twenty-four hours a day. People sing it in their languages. The music that started with cowboys and poor farmers is now popular all over the world.

    China dropped its decades-long, one-child policy last year to allow each family to have two children. This change has put 270 million married women of childbearing age in the position of choosing between family and work. The employers also face big challenges as more female workers will have two maternity leaves(产假) for a total of seven to eight months.

    In a survey published by classified advertising website Ganji.com, career women who might be considering having a second child were asked what kinds of pressure they might expect. More than 76 percent of the women who were questioned mentioned concerns about the financial burden of raising two children, while more than 71 percent said it would be difficult to balance career and family. In addition, nearly 56 percent said that having a second child would definitely have a negative effect on their career.

    Another survey conducted by Chongqing-based human resources website job.cq.qq.com found that over 70 percent of job seekers believe that having a second child would make females less popular in the job market, although two-thirds of the employers said the policy will make no difference in their employment of staff.

    Feng Lijuan, s senior expert on human resources at 51 job.com, a leading Chinese job finding platform, said she would not say “there is prejudice against career women.” Feng said Chinese women shoulder more family responsibility. “It is not only about maternity leave; a female employee might only fully get back to work after three to five years after having her first child.”

    Wang Yixin, a senior employment adviser, said the positive side is that more companies are trying to attract more talents by providing support to career women. “Different from before, it is not only employers choosing employees. Many talents, including professional career women, also choose employers.” said Wang. “According to our survey, many large companies are very open to their employees' choice of having a second child.”

    A couple had a son eleven years after they married. They were a loving couple and the boy was the apple of their eye. When the boy was around four years old, one day the father was very tired after work so he asked his wife to pick up their son. The mother, who was very busy in the kitchen, totally forgot about it.

    Later the boy lost his way on the street. When the son was found missing, the mother hurried to look for him, but she didn't find him. The mother felt very sad and didn't know how to face her husband.

    When the father went to the police station after hearing that the son was missing, he looked at his wife and said just four words. What do you think the four words were? The husband just said "I love you, darling."

    The son was missing. If he had picked him up earlier, this would not have happened. There is no point in blaming (责备) anyone. His wife had also lost her only child. What his wife needed at that moment was comfort and understanding from her husband. That is what the husband gave his wife. Several weeks later, with the help of the police, the couple finally found their lost son. The family's relationship became stronger over that time.

    Sometimes we spend lots of time asking who is to blame. We miss many chances to give each other support and let each other feel the warmth of human relationships. Get rid of all your unwillingness to forgive, selfishness, and fears and you will find the world is much more wonderful.

Polly Townsend

    PART THREE READING COMPREHENSION

Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by several questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are 4 choices marked A,B,C and D. Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage. (20%)

    "Mummy, I don't know what to play with. " Steve interrupts his mother, who is talking to a friend, for the fourth time. "You've got a room full of toys!" his mother says, impatiently, In fact it is the jumble of toys which is to blame for four -year-old Steve's lack of interest in his dolls, cars and stuffed （packed）animals. Each morning he tips out three washing baskets of toys all over his floor, listlessly pulls out something and shortly after is standing at his mother's desk or following her into the kitchen saying: "Mummy, I am bored."

    A family therapist(治疗专家)explains why children lose interest when they have a whole "toy shop" at home : "According to their brain development, little children are not in a position to judge the quality of a variety of things at once. There is always just one favorite toy for the moment. All the rest is left lying about." What can parents do to stop their children from being oversupplied with toys? Under no conditions simply make something disappear without the child's knowledge. If he/she takes no more notice of a toy, a parent can ask if it can be stored or given away. Be warned though the child will help. Lyn is the mother of four-year-old Jessie, and holds the toys and books that are the current（at present）favorites. When it seems to her that her daughter is tired from a cupboard in another room. The box of "old" toys goes into the cupboard. When her child says she is "bored", they also get something from her cupboard—it may be something she has had for some time but because she hasn't seen it for a while it is almost like a new toy.

    Some favorite toys stay out all the time, and there is collection of dolls which sits in the comer, but in this way Lyn has found that she has fewer toys to put away at the end of the day and her daughter always has something "fresh" to play with.