This time last year I entered two long-distance mass-participation swimming events, including the Jubilee River 10 km swim. At the last minute, just before both swims, I decided to pull out.

The reality is, I live in fear of coming last.

When you have swum the English Channel, people think you are somehow superhuman and fearless. Many years have passed since my Channel swimming days, but my expectations are still high.

Last year, in the run-up to the two events, I realized that I couldn’t cope with coming last. I had looked at the swim times of those who had completed the previous year and calculated that, at my current swim pace, I would probably have come last.

But when January 2016 came around, I decided to enter those same events again.

For a few months, I trained hard, but I didn’t get any faster. Then it was June 5，the day of the Jubilee River 10 km. The event started at 9:30 am, and the swimmers anxiously hovered, eager to start. As I swam along, the river was quiet and clean and everything was peaceful. The sun shone, Meadows (草地）rolled by and every now and again someone would wave or peer at the scene unfolding in the water.

As the day wore on, somehow I didn’t mind that, predictably, almost everyone was ahead. There were at least some swimmers still near me, and although we shared the same fiver we quietly occupied our own spaces. As I concentrated on doing my own thing, watching the sky, the bank, the other swimming caps passing or not passing, I realized I was enjoying myself.

In the end，four hours and 29 minutes after I ’ d started，I staggered out of the water and was greeted with a smile and a “well done” from the race organizer. I glanced back over my shoulder toward the water and noticed that there were a small handful of swimmers who were still to finish, behind me, out of a field of around 300. But it didn’t matter. I was just relieved, proud and happy to finish.

As I drove away, my thoughts turned to my next long race of the season and how much I was looking forward to it, my fears of coming last gently receding.

28. What caused the author to give up the swimming events last year?

A. The lack of time for training. B. The high expectations from other people.

C. The pressure from other competitors. D. The fear of being the last.

29. how did the author feel when she competed in the Jubilee River 10 km race?

A. Patient. B. Discouraged. C. Delighted. D. Anxious.

30. What does the word “receding” in the last paragraph refer to?

A. Arising. B. Quitting. C. Fading. D. Strengthening.

31. What message does this article mainly convey?

A. Never should we give up.

B. Constant dripping water wears away the stone.

C. The process is more important than the result.

D. A good beginning is half done.
D

Why do we cry? The main reason, say scientists, is because we are human.

As far as they can tell, no other creature cries emotional tears the way we humans do, despite a number of reports of an elephant or gorilla not just making sad sounds but actually flowing tears.

Interested by one such report of an Indian elephant crying after being caught, Charles Darwin sent;a co-worker to check it out, but he couldn’t confirm it.

If emotional tears are indeed a uniquely human act, there must be an evolutionary advantage to crying, possibly a big one, but what?

Psychologist Robert R. Provine at the US’s university of Maryland carried out some research. In a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, he reported that tears may have evolved to giv蛟 more charms to facial expressions of emotions, including sadness.

In an experiment, Provine * s team asked 80 college students to rate the intensity of facial expressions of sadness. Half of the pictures showed a person with tears flowing down his or her face, while the other half were the same pictures but with the tears digitally removed. These pictures were shown to the students with “distractor” pictures of people with other facial expressions.

The students overwhelmingly ranked the pictures showing tears as revealing more sadness than the same faces without tears.

The fact that animals probably don, t cry emotional tears and the fact that it takes newborns several months to add tears to their crying support the researchers' belief that emotional crying is a recent evolutionary development.

And in a paper published in Evolutionary Psychology in response to Provine，s work, Israeli evolutionary biologist Oren Hasson at Tel Aviv University said that emotional tears may also act as a call for help and for bonding.

But there’s another reason why emotional tears may have evolved, said William H. Frey, a US biochemist. MHumans evolved the ability to shed tears as a means to reduce stress, and evolution favors this because it has survival value. ’，says Frey.

Viewing tears not just as communication signals but also as stress relievers may help explain why people don’t just cry when there’s an audience, but also cry alone when there’s nobody around to receive the communication.

24. Robert R. Provine’s study shows that people cry to •

A. reduce emotional stress

B. get help more easily

C. draw more attention to facial expressions of emotions

D. distinguish human beings from other creatures

25. The underlined word“ it ’，in the last paragraph but one refers to .

A. ability B. stress C. favor D. means

26. According to the article, which of the following is NOT true?

A. Crying can help people feel less stressful.

B. Newborns do not have tears when crying in their first few months.

C. Faces with tears make people think they are sadder than those without tears.

D. People only want to be left alone while they are crying.

27. The article is intended to inform us that .

A. emotional crying is important in building deep relationships

B. crying means people are emotionally weak

C. emotional crying is beneficial to humans

D. we need to find out why animals don’t cry
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