Although most people believe that laughter is one of the nature’s great treatments for a whole range of mental and physical diseases, it is still a serious scientific subject that researchers are trying to figure out.
“Laughter above all else is a social thing,” says Baltimore neuroscientist(神经科学家), Robert Provine, who has studied laughter for many years. “All laughter groups laugh ‘ha-ha-ha’ basically the same way. Whether you speak Mandarin, French or English, everyone will understand laughter. There is a pattern generator(发生器) in our brain that produces this sound.”
Laughing is our first way of communicating. Babies laugh long before they speak. No one teaches them how to laugh. They just do. People may laugh at a prank(恶作剧) on April Fools’ Day. But surprisingly, only 10 to 15 percent of laughter is the result of someone making a joke. Laughter is mostly about social responses rather to a joke. Deaf people laugh without hearing and people on cell phones laugh without seeing, showing that laughter isn’t dependent on single sense but on social interactions.
And laughter is not just a people thing. Chimps tickle(挠痒) each other and even laugh when another chimp pretends to tickle them.
Jaak Panksepp, a Bowling Green University Psychology professor, studies rats that laugh when he tickles them. It turns out rats love to be tickled — they return again and again to the hands of researchers tickling them.
By studying rats, scientists can figure out what’s going on in the brain during laughter. Northwestern University biomedical engineering professor, Jeffrey Burgdorf has found that laughter in rats produces a chemical that acts as an antidepressant(抗抑郁药). He thinks the same thing probably happens in humans, too. This would give doctors a new chemical target to develop drugs that can fight depression.
Even so, laughter itself has not been proved to be the best medicine, experts said. Margaret Stuber, a professor at University of California, studied whether laugher helped patients. She found that distraction(分心) and mood improvement helped, but she could not find a benefit of laughter alone.
“No study has shown that laughter produces a direct health benefit,” Provine said, mainly because it’s hard to separate laughter from just feeling good. But he thinks it doesn’t really matter: “Isn’t the fact that laughter feels good when you do it enough?”
1.The underlined word “figure out” in Paragraph 6 means “________”.
A. deal with B. work out
C. look out of D. come up with
2.According to the passage, scientists studied rats in order to find ______.
A. how they laugh
B. if they like laughing
C. what laughter in rats produces
D. how rats react while being tickled
3.What can we know from Robert Provine’s research?
A．Laughter makes a person feel good.
B．Laughter produces a direct health benefit.
C．Laughter depends on all kinds of senses.
D．Laughter is a way of communicating.
4.What is probably the best title for this passage?
A. Why Rats Laugh
B. When Laughter Happens
C. How Laughter Works
D. Why Laughter Matters
Some people say that today, reading is not as important as it was. These days we have photographs, films, radio and television. Why read a description of something when you can look at a photograph? Why read a newspaper when the latest news is brought to us every hour on radio and TV?
Photography was certainly a wonderful invention. Photographs can give a very clear idea of places and of people that we have never seen. An encyclopedia (百科全书) , for example, is always better when it has good illustrations. But we also need words to explain the photographs and drawings. A photograph of an elephant may give us a very good idea of what an elephant looks like, but it tells us nothing about the different sorts of elephants there are and where they are found, their exact size and weight, how they can be useful to man and so on.
In the same way, a good film has action, movement, color, and maybe music. These are things we do not find on the printed page. But reading a novel has certain advantages over watching even an excellent feature film. Reading a novel requires imagination. Each of us imagines a story differently.
Watching news on television can certainly be exciting. But we need newspapers as well. Some important news stories happen when there are no cameras around. More importantly, a newspaper does not just report the news. It explains why something has been happening. It also contains interesting articles on different subjects. Newspapers are an important part of our lives, if we want to understand what is going on in the places we live as well as in other parts of the world.
Reading is very important for information and pleasure. We need to be good readers to enjoy a full life as human beings. Reading is a skill and like other skills, it needs practice. The more we read, the better readers we become. And the better readers we become, the more we enjoy reading! The secret is to get the reading habit. Read at least a little every day.
1.According to Paragraph 2, photographs can give us __________.
A. enough information about people and places
B. no information about things
C. some information about things but not enough
D. the wrong information about things
2.Newspapers contain __________.
A.more information than television
B. less information than television
C. more news from other countries
D. less information about important events than TV
3.What are the advantages of novel over a feature film?
A. There are more interesting subjects in novels.
B. We do not hear any music in a novel.
C. Novels always explain what is happening.
D. Novels make us use our imagination.
4.What does the author think about reading?
A. It is a wonderful invention.
B. It is an important part of our lives.
C. It requires no practices.
D. It is not as important as television.
A mother wanted to encourage her son to play the piano. She bought tickets to the concert of a great pianist. When the evening arrived，they found their seats near the front of the concert hall and looked at the big piano waiting on the stage(舞台). Soon the mother found a friend to talk to and her son ran off.
At eight o’clock, the lights in the hall became weak, and the concert was set to start. The mother began to look for the boy. Then, she saw her 6-year-old son on stage. He was on the piano bench playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
The mother was very amazed. Before she could get her son back, the famous pianist himself was on the stage and quickly moved to the piano.
“Don’t stop. Keep playing,” he said kindly to the boy. The great pianist reached down with his left hand and began filling in the bass (低音部) part of the song. Soon, his right arm reached around the other side and played a beautiful piece of music. Together, the old pianist and the little boy impressed people with their beautiful music.
In all of our lives, we receive helping hands — some we notice, some we don’t. Equally we ourselves also have lots of chances to give a helping hand to others — sometimes we want people to know, sometimes we don’t. Little of what we all achieve comes without others’ help. What we receive we should give back.
1.The mother took her son to the piano concert because _____.
A. her friend sent them two tickets
B. the pianist invited them there
C. she wanted to develop his interest in piano
D. her son liked the pianist very much
2.When the mother found her son playing on stage, she felt _____.
A. happy B. encouraged
C. interested D. surprised
3.What did the pianist ask the boy to do?
A. To go back to his mother.
B. To keep playing the piano.
C. To play the bass part of the song.
D. To watch him play instead.
4.What does the story tell us?
A. It is good to give a helping hand to others.
B. Great people always like to help others.
C. It is important to give a child a lesson on stage.
D. A mother should take good care of her child.
Safety tips in different situation
When facing an accident, the first and most important rule is to stay calm. But different accidents mean different ways to deal with.
Stampede（踩踏） When students around you begin to push, stand still and try to hold onto something, or stay in a corner until the crowd leaves. If you fall down in a moving crowd, cover your head with both hands. Lean to one side, curl your body and bend your legs. |
Fire Stay calm and follow teacher’s instructions. Leave the classroom quickly and use a piece of cloth to cover your mouth and nose so that you don’t breathe in smoke. If your clothe catch fire, drop to the ground and roll from side to side to put out the fire. |
Traffic If you take a school bus on your way home or to school, remember to fasten(系紧) your seatbelt and not to walk around when the bus is moving. If you walk to school or go to school by bike, remember to wait for the green traffic light. Look left and right for cars before you cross the road. |
1.The passage is written for ______.
A．students B．teachers
C．adults D．doctors
2.When you are on a moving school bus, you mustn’t ______.
A. take your seat
B. walk around
C. fasten your seatbelt
D. cover your head with both hand s
3. When there is a fire in your school, you need to do the following EXCEPT______.
A. staying calm
B. following teacher’s instructions
C. using a piece of cloth to cover your mouth and nose
D. running to the lift
“Another bad day at school?” my father asked as I came into the room.
“How could you ? I didn’t shut the door heavily or anything,” I replied. Over the past two months I had either done this or thrown my backpack the room every time I came home from school. Papa thinks it has something to do with moving to a new house.
“I know this move has been hard on you. Leaving your friends and cousins behind is tough,” Papa said, as he put his arm around my shoulder. “ you must remember is that, with a lot of hard work and some time, you will make new friends.”
“You don’t know how hard it is. This year my baseball team would have won the championship. They won’t even give me a to pitch (投球) here. All I get to play is right field, and that’s the worst!”
Papa turned toward me. “Things will get , I promise you. Let me ask you, do you know why you were named David Lorenzo?”
“Yes, your name is David and grandfather’s name is Lorenzo.”
“Very good, and what makes your grandfather so ?”
“He was the first in the family to come to this country and all that,” I answered.
“That is only correct. Your grandfather was a very great man. In Mexico, he had been a teacher. When he came to America he could only get low-paid labor jobs because he didn’t speak the language. It took him two years before he spoke English well enough to be allowed to teach here, but he did it. He never complained because he knew could be difficult. Did he ever tell you that?” my father asked.
I looked down at my feet, ashamed at my behavior. “No. That must have been hard,” I said sheepishly（腼腆的）.
“Your grandfather taught me that if you let people see your talent, they will you for who you are. I want you to always remember what my father taught me, even if it a few years for people to see who you are,” said Papa.
All I could say was, “Okay.” Then I asked, “What should I do now?”
Laughing, Papa said, “How about you pitch a few to me? You need some work.”
1.A．spea B．tell C．talk D．look
2.A．in B．at C．across D．from
3.A．How B．Why C．What D．Which
4.A．chance B．hand C．help D．class
5.A．well B．better C．bad D．worse
6.A．famous B．proud C．clever D．important
7.A．half B．really C．partly D．completely
8.A．situation B．matter C．change D．thing
9.A．like B．accept C．receive D．know
10.A．spends B．costs C．pays D．Takes
— Could you tell me your grandparents?
— Every week.
A．how often you visit
B．how often do you visit
C．how often will you visit
D．how often you will visit
