Ⅳ、阅读与表达 (共5分，每小题1分)

阅读短文, 根据其内容回答问题。

Every year, 40 days before Easter, Brazil stops. It’s a time for the carnival! For four days from Saturday to Tuesday, Brazilians sing and dance in dance halls and clubs, on the streets and beaches, or anywhere else. The carnival takes place in towns and villages all over Brazil and other Catholic countries, but Rio de Janeiro is seen as the Carnival Capital of the world. Carnival is the last big event in the summer in Brazil. It may begin 40 days before Easter, but the city begins getting ready for the carnival several weeks before that.

Edinburgh Festival: The heart of Scottish culture.

The Edinburgh International Festival is a rich programme of classical music, theatre, opera and dance in theatres in Edinburgh, over a three-week period in August.

The festival began in 1947 to try to use the arts to encourage ‘the flowering of the human spirit’. From the start, ordinary people began to put on shows of their own that weren’t part of the official Festival, and soon this programme became the Edinburgh Festival ‘Fringe’, which is a separate programme of small shows.

Korean New Year: Solnal

Korean celebrate the lunar (农历)New Year， with other East Asia countries. Solnal is a time for families, so Koreans try to return to their homes.

On New Year’s Eve people put things on their walls and doors to protect their families from bad spirits arriving with the New Year. Then On New Year’s Day, people put on traditional clothes and put food on a special table for the dead members of their family.

Then the family sits down to a traditional breakfast of ‘took-guk’ —a thick beef soup with rice cakes and green onions. Everyone must eat in order of age, and everyone becomes one year older on New Year’s Day.

The rest of the day is for playing, especially for children. Families enjoy activities such as kite-flying, see-saw(跷跷板)and dancing.

The New Year is a time for Koreans to celebrate family and tradition.

1. Does the carnival begin after Easter?

2. Is the Edinburgh Festival in August or in January?

3. How do Brazilians celebrate the carnival?

4. Why do Koreans put things on their walls and doors on New Year’s Eve?

5. What is the passage mainly about?