Man’s life is often compared ______ a candle.

He began comparing himself _______ the other teammates and found he didn’t practice as hard as them.

【阅读理解】Some people told me that it was too late. Some told me that I was too old. Others told me that I would never be able to pull it off. I had to work full time and take care of my son. But inside I was told something different.The underlined sentence “But inside I was told something different” in the passage probably means ________.

【概括大意】It is not difficult to think of other messages we receive through the mass media. Every day we get hundreds of them. Think about advertisements, for example. We see and hear these messages almost everywhere we go. Advertisements are important messages, even though they are sometimes annoying. They help us compare and evaluate products. The main idea of this paragraph is __________.

【阅读理解】When it comes to translating basic research into industrial success, few nations can match Germany. Since the 1940s, the nation's vast industrial base has been fed with a constant stream of new ideas and expertise from science. And though German prosperity (繁荣) has faltered (衰退) over the past decade because of the huge cost of unifying east and west as well as the global economic decline, it still has an enviable record for turning ideas into profit.The word "expertise" in line 3 could be best replaced by _______.

【阅读理解】On the other hand, on the moon there will be an attraction between the butter and the moon; but the butter will weigh only about one-sixth as much as it does on the earth. This is because the moon is so much smaller than the earth. The amount of gravitational pull that a body produces depends on the amount of material in it. A packet of butter has a gravitational pull of its own; but this is very small in relation to the pull of something as large as the moon, or the earth, or the sun.We do not feel the gravitational pull of a packet of butter because _______.

【阅读理解】The ISU won’t finally approve the new system until it meets in June but already UK Sport, the British Government’s sports body, has expressed reservations. "I remain to be convinced that the random selection system would offer the guarantees that everyone concerned with ethical sport is looking for", says Jerry Bingham, UK Sport’s head of ethics(伦理).The attitude of those concerned in the UK to the new rules proposed by ISU can be best described as_____.

【阅读理解】Decibels(分贝) measured in water are different from those measured on land. A noise of one hundred-twenty decibels on land causes pain to human ears. In water, a decibel level of one-hundred ninety-five would have the same effect.Which of the following is discussed in the paragraph?

【阅读理解】I entered the hotel manager’s office and sat down. I had just lost ￡50 and I felt very upset. "I left the money in my room," I said, "and it’s not there now." The manager was sympathetic, but he could do nothing. "Everyone’s losing money these days." he said. He started to complain about this wicked world but was interrupted by a knock at the door. A girl came in and put an envelope on his desk. It contained ￡50. "I found this outside this gentleman’s room." she said. "Well," I said to the manager, "there is still some honesty in this world!"What did the writer believe had happened to his money?

【阅读理解】Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their intellectual ability. This is only one aspect of their total personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also value personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching contributes to all these aspects of learning.The author argues that a teacher’s chief concern should be the development of the student’s _______.