Berlin — Germany will allow entry 20,000 foreign high-tech workers, under a plan announced on May 31st. Chancellor(总理) Gerhard Schroreder sees this as a way to keep the country from falling behind in information technology.
The plan for this so-called ‘green cards’, not like the US work permit system, came in answer to industry demands that there were not enough qualified workers to fill positions.
Workers who came to Germany under the new rules, effective from August will be given a five-year work permit after proving they have completed studies in a related field or can promise to at least 100,000 marks (US$48 000).
Family members are also allowed, though they too will receive work permits. “They are strong competition in the rest of the world for these people,” Schroreder said mentioning not only the United States but also British and France. Germany would be making a mistake if it didn’t take part in this competition.
He said employers have already offered 11,000 jobs through a “green card hotline” and some 4,700 applications emailed information requests.
The Chancellor also said the number of workers and the time limits of their stay may be extended, possibly under current German law. Allowing the workers to stay longer means they could finally become citizens. Since the beginning of this year, foreigners who have lived in the country for eight years can ask for being naturalized.
53. From the first paragraph we can get to know that Germany______.
A. is a less-developed country B. used to be a developed country
C. is short of high-tech workers D. once lost interest in information technology
54. If a high-tech worker wants to work in Germany, he or she can enter Germany______.
A. in June B. after July C. before August D. at any time
55. It is mentioned in the passage that competition in high tech______.
A. is only in America，Britain and France
B. has nothing to do with small countries
C. is weak in Asian countries
D. will affect the future of a country
56. To be naturalized as a German, according to this passage, seems______.
A. difficult B. easy C. impossible D. popular
When an ice cube melts, it creates a puddle (水坑). When an ice sheet (冰盖)melts, it raises sea levels. It sounds simple, but scientists have debated for decades whether both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets actually were shrinking, and how much that melting contributed to rising sea levels.
Now, a new study has provided the best evidence of how the polar ice sheets are responding to our warming world. In the study, an international team of scientists looked at 20 years of' data in the ice sheets collected by 10 satellite missions. The team's conclusion: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets both are losing ice overall. The researchers also found that between 1992 and 2011, melt water from those shrinking ice sheets caused sea levels to rise by about 11 millimeters.
Over the 19 years studied, the Greenland ice sheet lost 2.7 trillion metric tons of ice. The Antarctic ice sheet also shrank by about l.3 trillion metric tons. Previously, some scientists disagreed whether the Antarctic sheet, the largest mass of ice in the world, was shrinking or growing or neither.
While the Earth is warming overall, the effect of climate change varies from region to region. Over the last 15 years, for example, scientists have something disagreed over how climate change has affected the polar ice sheets. Many studies found that the sheets lost a lot of ice and that not enough snow fell on the sheets to compensate for the loss. But other studies found that the loss of ice was balanced by the gain in snowfall.
Richard Alley, a glacier scientist at Penn State University, said that many of those studies looked at different areas, and over different time periods. In addition, the studies didn't all use the satellite data in the same way. Those differences made, it difficult to compare the results.
The data in the new study matched time periods and areas. The study also combined measurements from kinds of satellites.Why does the author use a common-sense phenomenon as the beginning?
| A．To present the reason for ice sheet melting. |
| B．To show us the result of a scientific experiment. |
| C．To give a simple example to introduce the topic. |
| D．To present a common daily finding obvious to the readers. |
The researchers reached their conclusion by_____.
| A．analyzing the findings of former studies |
| B．observing the Antarctic and Greenland |
| C．referring to the data from satellites |
| D．making measurements in the Antarctic and Greenland |
What does the underlined phrase "compensate for" in paragraph 4 refer to?
| A．Cut down. |
| B．Lead to． |
| C．Bring about. |
| D．Make up for. |
Which of the following might be the best conclusion for the passage?
| A．Ice sheets are shrinking due to global warming. |
| B．People are suffering from climate change. |
| C．Rising sea levels makes people live in danger. |
| D．Shrinking ice has nothing to do with sea levels. |
One evening, a man was on his way home when he saw a woman come by, hauling a cart full of flowers. The smell of her flowers perfumed the air with sweetness so easily that it seemed to lift his spirits. He had never experienced such wonder from the flowers of his own garden. "How much must I pay for your wonderful flowers?" he asked. "Take what you wish for." "What return must I make for them?" he asked again. "Your gratitude is enough." She said. So he filled his arms with flowers and hurried joyfully home. His wife and children also liked the remarkable flowers, for they, too, discovered that the sight of
them was a delight and the smell of them refreshed the soul.
In order not to lose his treasure. the man planted the flowers in his garden. Sunlight and water kept them amazingly beautiful and they still performed their powerful magic. When his children came to play in the yard, the man cautioned them against carelessness and wild play in case they damage the flowers. But the flowers remained hardy and strong as long as there are enough sun and moisture to nourish them.
As the family grew and more children came to play in the garden, the man was even more concerned about his remarkable flowers. He even built a high wall to protect them with the utmost care. Unfortunately, this began to cause consternation among the family members. If the children caused their father stress, he would refuse them access to the flowers. Later, he set up rules as to who could enter the garden and what they must do while they were there. He also established offices to determine accessibility. Eventually, it became necessary to have lawyers to defend, judges to weigh, guards to safeguard.
The man's family, however, saw less and less of the flowers and experienced less and less of their magical power. In the meantime, many of them went out in search of the flower lady. Well, she was still out there, still giving away her amazing flowers.The family found that the smell of the flowers could_____.
| A．remove their spirits |
| B．make them energetic |
| C．bring them what they want |
| D．make them smell sweet |
In order to protect the flowers, the man_____.
| A．asked the policemen to help him take care of the garden |
| B．built a high building to keep the children away from the garden |
| C．set up offices to decide, who can get close to the flowers |
| D．employed lawyers, judges and guards to protect the flowers |
What can we learn from the underlined sentence?
| A．The man began to prevent the, family members coming into his garden. |
| B．The man asked the family members to enjoy his flowers but no one wanted to. |
| C．What the man did made the family members less interested in flowers. |
| D．What the man did made the family members panic. |
What lesson can we get from the father's behavior?
| A．To give is more fruitful than to get. |
| B．Shared beauty is real beauty. |
| C．A problem shared is a problem halved. |
| D．Many hands make light work. |
The 16th Annual Our Own Words Teen Poetry & Fiction Writing Contest
Attention, teen writers!
Win cash, get published.
Entries will be accepted between March 8th and April 21st, 2015.
Awards ceremony at Lagerquist Hall, Pacific Lutheran University on December 27th, 2015.
Winning poems and stories will be published as written. Contest winners will read their work at the awards ceremony at Lagerquist Hall, Pacific Lutheran University on December 27th, 2015.
Your poems and stories will be judged on the basis of originality, style, general presentation, grammar and spelling. All entries will belong to Pierce Country Library System and will not be returned. Winners' names may appear in newspapers and on the Library's Website.
You may enter both the short story and poetry categories, but you can only offer one entry per category.To enter the contest, you should
| A．hand in a poem |
| B．be a teenage student from Pierce County |
| C．turn in published works |
| D．pay some entry fees |
Your poem or story will be judged on_____.
| A．how many words there are |
| B．when you hand it in |
| C．whether it is first written by yourself |
| D．what topic it is about. |
What information can we get from the passage?
| A．There will be 18 teenagers to be awarded in all. |
| B．Your work will be published in newspapers. |
| C．Your work will be returned to you if you fail. |
| D．Winners will be awarded prizes in more than half a year. |
The passage can be classified as______.
| A．a contest announcement |
| B．an official report |
| C．an art show review |
| D．an exhibition explanation |
After fighting cancer for 13 years, my grandfather became ill enough to be admitted to hospital. One morning, he was having trouble breathing, but continued to silently hold my hand. I kept forgetting his special request that grandpa wanted me to fetch a New Year card that my late grandmother had given him on their last anniversary together. He used the card as a bookmark in his Bible.
I just knew that I had to fetch his much-loved and much-requested gift. Leaving my grandpa at his bedside, I rushed home. Jumping back into my car with the card in my hand, was depressed when the car wouldn't start. I quickly ran to the nearest bus stop. As I waited there, out of breath, I looked in my purse only to find a $20 note and 50 cents in change.
A short while later, a bus appeared. I quickly got on and offered the driver the $20 note To my amazement, he told me that he had no change and that I had to get off and wait for the next bus. I was horrified.
A few minutes later, another bus came.<'Hey, where do you want to go?" asked another driver . I told him the hospital and about my lack of change. Although he was going to completely different destination, he shouted, "Hop aboard- - -let's see what we can do."
In exchange for my $20 note, he offered me two fives and a ten. Next, he picked up his phone and made a call. Just as we passed the corner, I could see the previous bus that I had tried to board waiting for me, at the next stop. My kind driver told me, to hop out and catch the, bus in front.
After less than 20 minutes, I was back at the hospital. By then, grandpa was pale and blue. When I handed him the card, he laughed and cried. As he looked at it, I knew I had done the right thing in getting it for him. It was like telling grandma that he was coming.Grandfather valued the New Year card because_____.
| A．it was a gift from his wife in memory of their marriage |
| B．he often used it as a bookmark in his Bible |
| C．he planned to send the card to his loved wife |
| D．there were requirements from his wife on the card |
We can infer from the passage that the second driver_____.
| A．would go by the hospital |
| B．knew how important the card was to a patient |
| C．was a person willing to help chose in need |
| D．would specially send the author to the hospital |
The passage is mainly about______.
| A．the relationship between grandparents |
| B．the kindness from bus drivers |
| C．the last moment in grandpa's life |
| D．the action to satisfy grandpa's request |
Every day we are exposed to images, videos, music and news. In this age of visual and aural hyper-stimulation, the medium of radio is making a great comeback.
“We’re at the beginning of a golden age of audio,” said US-based podcaster Alex Blumberg in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald. In the last month alone, 15 percent of US adults listened to a radio podcast (播客). These statistics, released by Edison Research, show the successful evolution of traditional radio broadcasts to the present day’s digital podcast format. The term “podcast” was invented in 2004, but the trend only started gaining mainstream popularity in recent years. With the sharp increase in consumer demand for smartphones and tablets, podcast sales have jumped.
The appeal of the podcast partly lies in its multiplatform delivery and on-demand capabilities (功能). You can listen during those extra minutes of the day when you’re walking to the shops, waiting in a queue or riding the subway. Similar to television shows, podcasts are generally free to download and most offer new content every week.
Donna Jackson, 22, Sydney University media graduate, listens to podcasts two or three times a week, via iTurns. “I listen while I’m wandering around the house doing something else. It makes completing a boring task much more enjoyable… And it’s an easy way of keeping in touch with what’s going on in the rest of the world,” she said, “I mainly listen to BBC podcasts, but recently I’ve also been listening to This American Life and Serial. They have a special skill to really draw you in.”
Unlike television and music, the audio format has the potential to create a deep impression on readers. Blumberg says this owes to the podcast’s ability “to create close relationship and emotional connection.” Sydney University undergraduate Hazel Proust, majoring in social work and arts, agrees. “When you’re listening, it feels as if the voice of the podcast’s storyteller is talking directly to you. It’s comforting, ” said Proust.
It seems the age-old tradition of verbal storytelling is very much alive and well. From the first two paragraphs, we can learn that ________.
| A．traditional broadcast has come back |
| B．Americans love listening to the radio |
| C．podcasts have become very popular today |
| D．smartphones sell well because of podcasts |
The writer mentions Donna Jackson mainly to ________.
| A．tell how young people relax themselves |
| B．explain why young people like podcasts |
| C．introduce what programs podcasts are presenting |
| D．show how popular podcasts are presenting |
Paragraph 5 is mainly about ________.
| A．the influence of radios |
| B．the advantage of podcasts |
| C．readers’ impression on radios |
| D．people’s reaction to the medium |
What is probably the best title of the passage?
| A．Return of Radio | B．Opinions of Podcast |
| C．Features of Radio | D．Technology of Podcast |
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