Who wants to carry a bulky bag to school? No children. Nobody wants one shoulder to be lower than the other, and paining（疼痛）too. In India, most of us would look at the reduction（減少）of textbooks as a way out. But in a country like America, there are always more choices. A company called goReader has created a "school bag" which is the size of a laptop computer（筆記本電腦）, weighing about 2.5 kg. The goReader has a color screen and can "hold" all the textbooks that a student may need, says a report in 'The Asian Age' newspaper.

The company plans to work closely with the publishers（出版商） of textbooks so that these books can be supplied on the Internet. All the students will have to do is to download（下載） their textbooks. Making notes and marking important parts of a lesson can be done just as lots of students have done on their textbooks before.
At present, the plan is being tested out in a university. Richard Katzmann, the owner of the company is having his creation tested at Chicago's DePaul University, where he studied. Does that mean it is goodbye to the new paper, and the smell of the black ink?
【小題1】What does the underlined word “bulky” in the first line mean?

A．light

B．small

C．big and heavy

D．old

【小題2】What would Indians do to solve（解決）the problem?

A．They would reduce the textbooks.	B．They would tell the parents to help students.
C．They would tell the teachers to help students.	D．They would take students to school by bus.

【小題3】 The writer may think that Americans have a ________ way to solve the problem.

A．more stupid

B．worse

C．better

D．quicker

【小題4】The goReader may be a machine ________.

A．that can work as a teacher	B．that can be used as textbooks
C．that can cheat students	D．that can hurt students

【小題5】When the new machine is used, it is possible that ________.

A．students might study harder

B．students might study at home

C．students might not need teachers

D．students might study without paper textbooks

To most of us, school means classes, teachers, schedules, grades, and tests. But for the children at Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, school is very different.
Firstly, there are no lessons. All the children, aged between 4 and 19, do whatever they want. There are no teachers, only “staff members (職員)”. The idea behind this is that you do not need to make children learn, because children want to learn anyway. “You do not need to say to a three-year-old. ‘Go explore your environment.’ You can’t stop them!” says Daniel Greenberg, a founder of the school. “But if you make children do what you want all day, they will lose all taste for learning.”
At Sudbury Valley School, you will allow children to talk, read, paint, cook, work on computers, study French, play the piano, climb trees, or just run around. Two boys spent three years just fishing!
The other way that Sudbury Valley School is different is that the children can decide the rules. Every week, there is a school meeting where both children and staff have one vote each — even the four-year-olds. They decide the school rules, how to spend the school budget（預(yù)算）, and even which staff they want and do not want any more.
When the school first opened in 1968, people said it would never work. But today, the school has 200 students, and 80% of its students go on to college. Even the two boys who went fishing all time have successful careers today. One of them is a musician and the other is a computer scientist.
【小題1】What does the school believe?

A．Teachers cannot teach children well.

B．Children learn best when they do what they want to do.

C．Learning is for adults — children should only play.

D．Children should only learn about one thing at a time.

【小題2】What does Daniel Greenberg say about three-year-olds?

A．They love learning.

B．They are very naughty.

C．They want to be outside all the time.

D．They are too young to learn anything.

【小題3】What happens to the children after they leave this school?

A．They do the same things as children from other schools.

B．They have problems getting into college or getting a job.

C．They usually do very unusual jobs.

D．They are not successful in their business.

【小題4】What is the main topic of the article?

A．Children’s hobbies	B．Education in the US
C．A school without rules	D．An unusual school

It is easy for us to tell who our family members are, but do plants recognize(識別) their own family? Some do, scientists say, according to a report by Science News in early 2010.
Guillermo P. Murphy and Susan Dudley are two plant scientists from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. They did a few experiments with Jewelweeds, a kind of flower that grows in wet, shady spots. They found that the flowers seem to know their own flower family. In their experiments, Murphy and Dudley planted jewelweeds in pots with either siblings or strangers.
When jewelweeds were planted in pots with strangers, the plants started to grow more leaves than if they had been planted alone. This response(反應(yīng))suggests that plants are competing with strangers for sunlight, since a plant with more leaves can receive more light and make more food. Jewelweeds usually grow in the shade, where sunlight is not enough.
When jewelweed seedlings(幼苗)were planted with siblings, they grew a few more branches than they usually would if they were alone – but they did not start growing lots of extra leaves. This behavior suggests the plants are more likely to share resources, rather than compete.
According to the Science News report, Jewelweeds are not the first plants that plant scientists have studied for family recognition. In 2007, Dudley and her team studied the Great Lakes sea rocket, a plant that grows on the beach – where it may be hard to get fresh water. In that experiment, the scientists found that when sea rockets were planted with siblings, they tolerated each other. But when they were planted with strangers, the sea rockets reacted by working extra hard to grow lots of roots.
Dudley says this just because sea rockets, on the beach, get plenty of sun but struggle for water – so when they’re threatened, they compete for water. Jewelweeds have plenty of water but have to compete for sunshine, so they grow more leaves.
【小題1】 What does the underlined word siblings mean?

A．Flowers come from foreign countries.

B．Plants growing in different environments.

C．Flowers planted with lots of strangers.

D．Plants that are the same kind.

【小題2】 In the text, the writer mentioned the experiments of Jewelweeds to         .

A．make a comparison	B．introduce a topic
C．describe a pretty flower	D．build a new theory

【小題3】 According to the passage, flowers planted alone will         .

A．grow more leaves than those planted in groups

B．become taller than those with more branches

C．grow fewer leaves than those planted with strangers

D．become ill easily because they can’t get enough shade

【小題4】 What can be the best title for the passage?

A．New Discoveries about Plants

B．How Plants Compete with Each Other

C．Family Recognition among Plants

D．Jewelweeds and the Great Lakes Sea Rockets

Sunday is more like Monday than it used to be. Places of business that used to keep daytime “business hours” are now open late into the night. And on the Internet, the hour of the day and the day of the week have become irrelevant. A half century ago in the United states, most people experienced strong and precise dividing lines between days of rest and days of work, school time and summer time. Today the dividing lines are still there, but they seem not clear.
The law in almost all states used to require stores to close on Sunday; in most, it no longer does. It used to keep the schools open in all seasons except summer, in most, it still does. And whether the work week should strengthen its legal（法律的）limits, or whether it should become more changeable, is often debated（爭論）. How should we, as a society, organize our time? Should we go even further in relaxing the dividing lines of time until we live in a world in which every minute is much like every other?
These are not easy questions even to ask. Part of the difficulty is that we seldom recognize the “l(fā)aw of time” even when we meet it face to face. We know as children that we have to go to  school a certain number of hours, a certain number of days, a certain number of years – but unless we meet the truant officer（學(xué)監(jiān)）, we may well think that we should go to school because of social custom and parents’ requirement rather than to the law. As adults we know “extra pay for overtime working” very well, but less familiar with the fact that what constitutes（構(gòu)成）“overtime” is a matter of legal thing. When we turn the clock forward to start daylight – saving time, have we ever thought to ourselves: “Here is the law in action”? As we shall see, there is a lot of law that has great influence on how organize and use time: compulsory education law, overtime law, and daylight-saving law – as well as law about Sunday closing, holidays, being late to work, time zones, and so on. Once we begin to look for it, we will have no trouble finding a law of time to examine and assess.
【小題1】What does the underlined word “irrelevant” probably mean?

A．Impossible.

B．Unacceptable.

C．Unimportant.

D．Disagreeable.

【小題2】The writer raises the questions in Paragraph 2 to introduce the fact that people _____.

A．a(chǎn)re unknowing of the law of time

B．fail to make full use of their time

C．welcome changeable working hours

D．enjoy working overtime for more pay

【小題3】We can learn from the passage that most children go to school because they_____.

A．have to follow the law

B．need to find social customs

C．need to learn more knowledge

D．have to follow their parents’ requirement

【小題4】What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Our life is governed by the law of time.

B．How to use time is not worth debating.

C．New ways of using time change our society.

D．Our time table is decided by social customs.