【正文】 day, asking her what she was going to get me for Christmas. Her immediate and worried response was that she did not have any money. Amanda is a wonderful poet, so I told her to ―just write me a poem entitled, Aunt La Verne‖. Things, gifts, activities don’t have to involve money. A simple poem from Amanda’ heart will give me warm feelings for the rest of my life, and I hope Amanda learned a lesson from our little encounter as well. I focus on what I have instead of on what I don’t have in life. Houses, jobs, and health will e and go, but the love and enjoyment of family can support me through any kind of situation, including a rough . What can these rough economic times teach us? A. One or two useful skills. B. The very serious situation. C. One or two things about life. D. All the important things in life. 22. What lesson will Amanda learn from her encounter with her aunt? A. Her aunt was fond of presents. B. A simple poem will make a big gift. C. Her aunt liked her poem very much. D. Money is very important in life. 23. The passage mainly tells us _____. A. how serious the economic situation is B. how to choose a present C. what nature brings us D. what’s really important in life B Exactly five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, I was invited to a children’s ball by a man high up in the business world, who had his connections, his circle of acquaintances, and his close friends. So it seemed as though the children’s ball was merely an excuse for the parents to e together and discuss matters of interest to themselves, quite innocently and casually. I was an outsider, and , as I had no special matters to air, I was able to spend the evening independently of the others. There was another gentleman present who like me had just stumbled upon (偶然發(fā)現(xiàn) ) this affair of domestic happiness. He was the first to attract my attention. His appearance was not that of a man of noble birth. He was tall, rather thin, very serious, and well dressed. Obviously he had no heart for the family celebration. The instant he went off into a corner by himself the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick dark brows knitted into a frown(皺眉 ). He knew no one except the host and showed every sign of being bored to death, though bravely keeping the role of thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was a provincial, had e to the capital on some important business, had brought a letter of remendation to our host, and our host had taken him under his protection, not at all with love. It was merely out of politeness that he had invited him to the children’s ball. They did not play cards with him. They did not offer him cigars. No one entered into conversation with him. Possibly they recognized the bird by its feathers from a distance. Thus, my gentleman, not knowing what to do with his hands, was pelled(迫使 ) to spend the evening stroking (撫摸 ) his whiskers(胡須 ). His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so eagerly that one got the feeling that the whiskers had e into the world first and afterwards the man in order to stroke them. 24. According to the author, the real purpose of the children ball was that ______. A. the parents wanted to make their children happy B. the parents had a chance to meet and socialize C. the host hoped to make the guests happy D. the host wanted to give a wele to an important guest gentleman was unhappy because ______. A. he was one of the poor relatives of the host B. he was from the countryside C. he was trying to do some business with the host D. he was not really wele in the ball gentleman touched his whiskers eagerly just because ______. A. he liked his whiskers very much B. he had the habit of doing so C. he was embarrassed in the ball D. he felt uneasy wearing whiskers 27. When the author was telling the story, he was ______. A. humorous B. serious C. joking D. doubtful C Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of efficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visualprocessing area of the brain recognizes mon words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLOSONE, makes it known that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech. Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Geetown University in Washington, ., wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense(無(wú)意義的詞語(yǔ) )words to volunteers undergoing fMRI scans. The words differed inonly one letter, such as ―farm‖ and ―form‖ or ―soat‖ and ―poat‖, or were pletely different, such as ―farm‖ and ―coat‖or ―poat‖ and ―hime‖. The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words. Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons(神經(jīng)元 )in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “ farm” to “ form” , for example, produced as great a change in activity as changing “ farm” to“ coat” , the team reports in Neuron. The area responded slowly to singleletter changes in madeup words. The data suggests that readers grasp real words as whole objects, rather than focusing on letters or letter binations. And as a reader’s exposure to a word increases, the brain es to recognize the shape of the word. Meaning is passed on after reco