The world’s population continues to grow. There are about five billion of us on earth now. It could reach six billion in 10 years’ time, and eleven billion in another 75 years. Experts have long been concerned about such growth. Where will we find the food, water, jobs, houses, schools and health care for all these people?
A major new study shows that situation may be changing. A large and rapid drop in the world’s birth rate has taken place during the past 10 years. Families generally are smaller now than they were a few years ago. This is happening in both developing and industrial nations. Scientists said they found a number of reasons for this. More men and women are waiting longer to get married. More women are going to school or working at jobs away from their home instead of having children. And more governments, especially in developing nations, now support family planning programs to reduce population growth.
China is one of the nations that have made great progress in reducing its population growth by about one half since 1970. China now urges each family to have no more than one child. And it hopes to reach zero population growth before long, that is, the number of birth equaling the number of death.
Several nations in Europe already have fewer births than deaths. Experts said that these nations could face a serious shortage of workers in the future.
1. In the sentence “Experts have long been concerned about such growth”, the phrase “concerned about” is similar in meaning to_____.
A. worried about B. related to C. busy working on D. made a study of
2. “Family planning programs” means______.
A. economic policy in a country B. economic policy in a family
C. TV programs for a family D. birth control in a country
3. The world’s birth rate has dropped because_____.
A. people marry at a much later time
B. women would rather go to study or work than have children
C. some countries are carrying out the family planning programs
D. all the above
4. We hope that soon the number of birth and the number of death in China will_____.
A. be greatly different B. be equal to each other
C. drop in great deal D. become much larger
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Without plants, people could not live. We eat plants. We take in oxygen that plants make. And we need plants for another reason: We need them because they are beautiful.
Imagine a world with no plants. Imagine no flowers with their sweet smells, their beautiful colours and their lovely shapes. Imagine, when the wind blows, we are not able to hear the leaves of the trees or watch the branches swing from side to side.
Everywhere people need beautiful plants. That is why we have parks full of trees and flowers. That is why people always like houses with room for some grass and a garden.
Do you talk to your plants? Do you give them love and take good care of them? Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, writers of a book called The Secret of Plants , tell of an experiment in which two seeds were planted in different places. While the plants were growing, one plant was given love and hopeful ideas. After six months, the beloved plant was bigger. Under the earth it had more and longer roots; above the earth, it had a thicker stem and more leaves.
68.In the experiment, the two plants were _____.
A.treated in two different ways
B. of different kinds
C. both given love and taken go
od care of
D. grown in the same place
69 At the end of six months________.
A. the plants were of the same size
B. one plant had longer roots than the other
C. one plant had longer roots; the other plant had a thicker stem
D. one plant had a thicker stem; the other plant had more leaves
70.Tompkings and Bird believe that plants________
A. can talk to each other
B. can take care of each other
C. should be grown in different places
D. need love and care
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Your friends might be in Australia or maybe just down the road , but they are all just a few clicks away. Life has changed for millions of teenagers across the world who now make friends online. Whether you use chat rooms, QQ, MSN or ICQ, you are part of a virtual community.
“I rarely talk with my parents or grandparents,but I talk a lot with my old friends on QQ,” said Fox’s Shadow, the online nickname used by a Senior 2 girl in China. “Eighty per cent of my classmates use QQ after school.”
QQ is the biggest messaging service in China. A record 4 million people used it one Saturday night in October, according to Tencent, the company which developed QQ.
And Fox’s Shadow might well have been one of them. “I log in on Friday nights, and Saturdays or Sundays when I feel bored. I usually spend about 10 hours chatting online every week,”she said. “But I rarely talk with strangers, especially boys or men.”
Even though she likes chatting, she is careful about making friends with strangers online. “You don’t know who you’re talking to. You should always be careful about who you trust online.”
64. According to Tencent, one Saturday night in October about four million people ________.
A. enjoyed themselves on QQ B. developed QQ
C. talked about QQ D. made friends on QQ
65. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. Perhaps the person you are chatting with lives just next door to you.
B. maybe the person you are talking with online is an overseas one.
C. No people online know the opposite’s real name or real address.
D. Four fifths of Fox’s Shadow’s classmates use QQ in their spare time.
66. Fox’s Shadow, according to the passage, is a online nickname of ____.
A. a boy B. a girl C. a QQ worker D. a mid-aged person
67. When you are chatting online, _____.
A. never believe everyone who is talking to you
B. never trust anyone who is talking to you
C. don’t make friends with the one who is talking to you
D. don’t talk too long with the one who is talking to you
.
School failure appears to trouble teenage girls more deeply than boys, US researchers said on Tuesday.
They said adolescent(青春期的)girls who are dismissed or drop out of high school before they graduate are more likely to have a serious depression by age 21 than boys with similar experiences.
“For girls it is more serious to be school failure,” said Carolyn McCarty, a University of Washington researcher whose study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
“We already know that it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public assistance and lower rates of job stability. And now this study shows it is having mental health implications for girls,” McCarty said in a statement.
The study was drawn from data on more than 800 people in Seattle, Washington, and included people from 18 schools in high-crime neighborhoods.
The group was separated evenly by gender(性别)and nearly half were white, 24 percent were black, 21 percent were Asian-American and the rest were from other groups.
Overall, 45 percent of the girls and 68 percent of the boys in the study experienced a major school failure, but 22 percent of the girls later became depressed compared with 17percent for the boys.
“This gender shows that while school failure is more typical for girls, it appears to have more severe consequences when it does occur,” McCarty said.
60. What is the purpose of writing this article?
A Taking good care of the school boys.
B Asking the US researchers to search more evidences.
C Giving help to the graduated students.
D Paying more attention to the girls experiencing school failure.
61. Carolyn McCarty is ______________
A a scientist B a researcher C a professor D a student
62. The underlined word”it” in para.4 means__________
A school failure B a adolescent girl C a school boy D a university
63.Which of the following could be the best title of this passage?
A School failure appears to trouble teen-age girls more deeply than boys
B Girls are more possible to experience school failure
C Gender has decided how much success you will win
D Adolescent girls are more easily depressed than boys
.
IV. 阅读理解
Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24,1897. In those days, airplanes were not nearly as common as they are today. Earhart was 12 years old before she ever saw an airplane, and she did not take her first flight until 1920. America Earhart was so thrilled by her first airplane ride that she quickly began to take flying lessons.
Her first instructor was Neta Snook, one of the first women to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation(飞行).Earhart borrowed mone from her mother to buy a two-seat plane. She got her US flying licence in December 1921, and in 1923, Earhart received her international pilot’s license—only the 16th woman to do so.
Amelia Earhart wasn’t afraid to break down barriers. After flying across the Atlantic as a passenger in 1928, Amelia Earhart’s next goal was to complete a transatlantic crossing(横跨大西洋)alone. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to make a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. In 1932, exactly five years after Lindbergh’s flight, Earhart became the first woman to repeat the feat(壮举).
She decided that her next trip would be to fly around the world. In March 1937, she flew to Hawaii with fellow pilot Paul Mantz to begin this flight. Earhart lost control of the plane on takeoff, however, and the plane had to be sent to the factory for repairs.
In June, she went to Miami to again begin a flight around the world, this time with Fred Noonan as her navigator(领航员).The pair made it to New Guinea in 21 days, even though Earhart was tired and ill. During the next leg of the trip, they departed New Guinea for Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. July 2, 1937, was the last time Earhart and Noonan communicated with a nearby Coast Guard ship. They were never heard from again.
56.What would be the best title for the passage?
A Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight
B Amelia Earhart—the First woman to Fly Around the World
C Amelia Earhart’s Life Story
D Amelia Earhart—a Woman pilot of Great Courage
57. What can we infer from the second paragraph?
A Amelia Earhart first took her flying cource before 1920
B Amelia Earhart’s mother supported her taking flight career
C Neta Snook was Amelia Earhart’s only instructor
D Amelia Earhart also graduated from the Curtiss School of Aviation.
58. The underlined sentence in the third paragraph suggests that________
A women were not allowed to fly a plane alone at that time
B a transatlantic crossing was not a great challenge for pilots at that time
C Amelia Earhart wanted to achieve as much as men pilots do
D Amelia Earhart wasn’t afraid to fly together with men pilots
59. What happened to Amelia Earhart in the end?
A She probably got lost and died
B She successfully complete her flight around the world
C She lost control of the plane and was saved by a Coast Guard ship
D She became ill during the trip and gave it up on Howland Island.
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That little “a” with a circle curling around it that is found in E – mail addresses is most commonly referred to as the “at” symbol.
Surprisingly though, there is no official, universal name for this sign. There are dozens of strange terms to describe the "@" symbol.
Before it became the standard symbol for electronic mail, the "@" symbol was used to represent the cost of something or how heavy something is. For instance, if you purchased 6 apples, you might write it as 6 apples "@" $1.10 each.
With the introduction of e-mail came the popularity of the "@" symbol. The "@" symbol or the "at sign" separates a person's online user name from his mail server(服务器) address. For instance, joe@uselessknowledge.com. Its widespread use on the Internet made it necessary to put this symbol on keyboards in other countries that have never seen or used the symbol before. As a result, there is really no official name for this symbol.
The actual origin of the symbol remains a mystery. History tells us that the @ symbol came from the tired hands of the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages before the invention of printing machines, every letter of a word had to be copied with great efforts by hand for each copy of a published book. The monks that performed these long, boring coping duties looked for ways to reduce the number of individual strokes (笔画) per word for common words. Although the word “at” is quite short to begin with, it was a common enough word in text and documents so that those monks thought it would be quicker and easier to shorten the word “at” even more. As a result, the monks changed the shape of “t” into a circle to surround “a”, thus leaving out two strokes in the spelling “t”.
58．Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
A．How “at” developed into @. B．How @ came into being.
C．How monks invented @. D．How people wrote the cost of something.
59．Which is NOT the reason for the monks to spell “at” as @?
A．Though “at” is short, it was used very often.
B．The monks wanted to be quicker and easier with their copying.
C．The monks wanted to invent a new word.
D．Copying work was long and boring for them.
60．According to paragraph 5, which is TRUE about the symbol of @ today?
A．When you are online, you must use the @ symbol.
B．Kittly 163.com@is an email address.
C．In countries where @ is used, governments have given it an official name.
D．It is likely to find the @ symbol on computer keyboards worldwide.
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