BEIJING,Oct.14(Xinhua)——A total of 120 middle school students from 35 countries will attend the final of an international China language contest,to be held in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality from Oct.16 to 30.
The candidates,aged from 15 to 20,must be from foreign countries and not native Chinese speakers,said a statement issued by the Chinese language Council (CLC),the contest’s organizer,here Thursday.
All of the candidates have passed the preliminary contests(初赛)held in their own countries.
According to the organizer,the competition will have a top prize,five second prizes,10 third prizes and a dozen prizes for special talents.The organizer will also launch an online vote for“the most liked candidate.”
It was the third year China has held the contest.
“The competition not only tests the proficiency of Chinese language but also the candidates capability to communicate across different cultures.”the statement said.
All the candidates in the final will receive scholarships from the Chinese goverment.said Hu Hangyu,an official with the Education Bureau o
f the Chonqing Municipality,jointly organizing the contest.
They will also meet local Chinese students and live with Chinese families,Hu said.
“The competition is to meet the increasing demand for Chicese learning by foreign youngsters.”said Xu Lin.the CLC director.
The CLC has also hosted similar contest for foreign college students since 2002.
China has been working to promote Chinese language learning abroad over the past few years.According to the CLC,the.country had 282 Confucius Institutes and 272“Confucius Classrooms”in 88 countries and regions 
as of 2009 since the first one was established in 2004.The text is intended to .
| A．show the popularity of Chinese language learning in the world |
| B．introduce an international Chinese language learning test system |
| C．make readers aware of the importance of Chinese language learning |
| D．report an international Chinese language contest to be held |
The candidates must be .
| A．foreign college students | B．non—native middle school students |
| C．native Chinese students | D．students from Confucius Institutes |
According to the text,the competition is .
| A．organized by the Chongqing Municipality government |
| B．mainly to test the candidates’Chinese language competence |
| C．held every three years in Chongqing Municipality |
| D．to provide foreign students with a chance to know China |
What has China been doing to promote Chinese language learning abroad according to the text?
| A．Thousands of Chinese teacher are sent abroad to teach the language. |
| B．282 Confucius Institutes are established in China to teach Chinese. |
| C．The Chinese language contests for foreign students are regularly held. |
| D．Many Chinese students are sent abroad for culture exchanges every year. |
In which part of the newspaper is the text most likely to be found?
| A．Education | B．Advertisement | C．Business | D．Entertainment |
To what degree can a computer achieve intelligence? The answer to this question may lie in a newly-developed US computer program called Smarter Child and the Internet.
If you ran into Smarter Child online, you would be surprised at this kid’s huge memory. It can recite many facts. For example, Smarter Child knows every baseball player in every team this season.
He knows every word in the dictionary and the weather in every major city areas across the US. However, if you ask Smarter Child other questions, you get strange answers. A question about Smarter Child’s age returns. “One year, 11 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes, and 47 seconds!” Asking where he lives，you get, “In a clean room in a high-tech building in California.”
Smarter Child uses the vast information on the World Wide Web as his memory bank. To answer questions about spelling, for instance, Smarter Child goes to American Heritage Dictionary online. For the weather, he visits www.intellicast.com.
Some scientists believe that by joining the many systems of the Internet, an artificial being with the combined knowledge of, say, Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and Britney Spears can be born. However, if Smarter Child wants to think and learn on his own like the boy-computer David in the movie A. I. (Artificial Intelligence), he must overcome two problems.
The first is that computers find it difficult to read web pages because the files are labeled in different ways. That’s why programmers need to tell Smarter Child where to look for the weather. It would be a much more difficult task to let him find it himself.
Another problem is that while Smarter Child can process information more exactly and faster than any human, he lacks common sense—a basic grounding of knowledge that is obvious to any young child. From the text we can infer that www.intellicast.com is a website .
| A．which is specially designed to help Smarter Child |
| B．where we people can find Smarter Child |
| C．where weather forecasts are made |
| D．which is about artificial intelligence |
It is probably most difficult for Smarter Child to .
| A．tell us how to spell a difficult word |
| B．tell us how the American government is run |
| C．provide us with a famous poem by Shakespeare |
| D．learn the ability to tell right behaviors from wrong ones |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A. Smart Child has his own memory bank big enough for all kinds of information.
B. A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is probably the name of a film about a boy-computer.
C. Smart Child can recognize different files and find information needed on his own.
D. We have similar product now which has the knowledge of Einstein, Nixon and Spears.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
| A．A New Web Child | B．Smarter Child |
| C．The Future of Internet | D．Intelligence Development |
People in the United States honor their parents with two special days: Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May, and Father’s Day, on the third Sunday in June. These days are set aside to show love and respect for parents. They raise their children and educate them to be responsible citizens. They give love and care. These two days offer a chance to think about the changing roles of mothers and fathers. More mothers now work outside the home. More fathers must help with child-care.
These two special days are celebrated in many different ways. On Mother’s Day people wear carnations. A red one stands for a living mother. A white one shows that the mother is dead. Many people attend religious services to honor parents. It is also a day when people whose parents are dead visit their graves. On these days, families get together at home and in restaurants. They often have outdoor BBQs for Father’s Day. These are days of fun and good feelings and memories.
Another tradition is to give cards and gifts. Children make them in school. Many people make their own presents. These are valued more than the ones bought in stores. It is not the value of the gift that is important, but it is “the thought that counts”. Greeting card stores, florists, candy makers, bakeries, telephones companies and other stores do a lot of business during these holidays. Which is NOT a reason for children to show love and respect for parents?
| A．Parents bring up children. |
| B．Parents give love and care to children. |
| C．Parents pass away before children grow up. |
| D．Parents educate children to be good persons. |
What do you know from the passage?
| A．Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are both in May. |
| B．Not all the children respect their parents. |
| C．Fewer women worked outside the home in the past. |
| D．Fathers are not as important as mothers at home. |
Which do you think is right about “carnation”?
| A．It only has two kinds of color. |
| B．It is a special kind of clothes people wear on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. |
| C．People can wear carnations only on the second Sunday in June. |
| D．It’s a kind of flower showing love and best wishes. |
What do you think “florists” do?
| A．They sell flowers. |
| B．They made bread. |
| C．They offer enough room for having family parties. |
| D．They sell special clothes for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. |
Another man-made wonder of the United States was built long before the nation was established. About 900 years ago, the Ancestral Puebloan people built villages high in the walls of canyons in Colorado, where 600 cliff dwellings are now part of the Mesa Verde National Park. 
Visitors can stand at the top of the mesas and look into the dwellings almost hidden in openings of the rock walls. The Puebloan people cut small steps into the rock, which connected buildings containing hundreds of rooms.
The rock walls have protected the buildings from severe weather in the area; therefore, they remain mostly unchanged in the hundreds of years since they were built.
Our final man-made wonder is in the northwestern city of Seattle, Washington. The Space Needle was built as the central structure for the 1962 World's Fair.
The 184-meter-tall structure was designed by Edward Carlson, which has a wide base on the ground, with its middle narrow and a large ring-like structure on top. The structure was meant to look like a "flying saucer," a vehicle that was popular in science fiction space travel stories. The saucer includes an observation area and eating place. The restaurant slowly turns to provide visitors with a 360 degree view of Seattle.
The Space Needle, only costing about $4,500,000, was not very costly, and was designed and completed in about a year and opened on the first day of the World's Fair.
Today, the Space Needle is the most popular place for visitors to Seattle. And it remains the internationally known symbol of the city. What the passage before this one can be about?
| A．Some natural wonders in the world. |
| B．Sightseeing in the US. |
| C．Some other artificial wonders in the US. |
| D．American geography. |
What does the underlined word “dwelling” mean?
| A．village | B．house | C．canyon | D．step |
Which of the following descriptions about the Space Needle is TRUE?
A. It is a man-made wonder in Washington, D.C..
B. Edward Carlson built the structure.
C. It has a ring-like structure on top.
D. It remains the internationally known symbol of the US.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Visiting the US | B．Man-made wonders in the US |
| C．Wonders in the world | D．Famous places in the US |
Why play games? Because they are fun, and a 1ot more besides. Following the rules…planning your next move...acting as a team member…these are all “game” ideas that you will come across throughout your life.
Think about some off the games you played as a young child, such as rope-jumping and hide-and-seek. Such games are entertaining and fun. But perhaps more importantly, they translate life into exciting dramas that teach children some of the basic rules they will be expected to follow the rest of their lives, such as taking turns and cooperating (合作) .
Many children’s games have a practical side Children around the world play games that prepare them for work they will do as grown-ups. For instance, some Saudi Arabian children play a game called bones. Which sharpens the hand-eye coordination（协调）needed in hunting.
Many sports encourage national or local pride. The most famous games of all, the Olympic Games, bring athletes from around the world together to take part in friendly competition. People who watch the event wave flags, knowing that a gold medal is a win for an entire country, not just the athlete who earned it. For countries experiencing natural disasters or war, an Olympic win can mean so much.
Sports are also an event that unites people. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. People on all continents play it — some for fun and some for a living. Nicolette Iribarne, a Californian soccer player, has discovered a way to spread hope through soccer. He created a foundation to provide poor children with not only soccer balls but also a promising future.
Next time you play your favorite game or sport, think about why you enjoy it, what skills are needed, and whether these skills will help you in other aspects of your life. Through playing hide-and-seek, children are expected to learn to ________.
| A．be a team leader | B．obey the basic rules |
| C．act as a grown-up | D．predict possible danger |
The underlined part in Paragraph 2 most probably means that games can________.
| A．describe life in an exciting way |
| B．turn real-life experiences into a play |
| C．make learning life skills more interesting |
| D．change people’s views of sporting event s |
According to the passage, why is winning Olympic medals so encouraging?
| A．It inspires people’s deep love for the country. |
| B．It proves the exceptional skills of the winners. |
| C．It helps the country out of natural disasters. |
| D．It earns the winners fame and fortune. |
Iribarne’s goal of forming the foundation is to _______.
| A．bring fun to poor kids | B．provide soccer balls for children |
| C．give poor kids a chance for a better life | |
| D．appeal to soccer players to help poor kids |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Games benefit people all their lives. |
| B．Sports can get all athletes together. |
| C．People are advised to play games for fun. |
| D．Sports increase a country’s competitiveness. |
Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri (MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.
“To provide enough power, we need certain methods with energy density (密度),” said Jae kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “The radioisotope (放射性同位素) battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries.”
Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, recently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/nano-electromechanical systems (M/NEWS). Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said they are safe.
“People hear the word ‘nuclear’ and think of something very dangerous,” he said. “However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems.”
His new idea is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor (半导体). Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor.
“The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure (晶格结构) of the solid semiconductor, ” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”
Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwon is working to build and test the battery. In the future, they hope to increase the battery’s power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that the battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.Which of the following is true of Jae Kwon?
| A．He teaches chemistry at MU. |
| B．He developed a chemical battery. |
| C．He is working on a nuclear energy source. |
| D．He made a breakthrough in computer engineering. |
Jae Kwon gave examples in Paragraph 4 ________.
| A．to show chemical batteries are widely applied |
| B．to indicate nuclear batteries can be safely used |
| C．to describe a nuclear-powered system |
| D．to introduce various energy sources. |
Liquid semiconductor is used to ________ .
| A．get rid of the radioactive waste |
| B．test the power of nuclear batteries |
| C．decrease the size of nuclear batteries |
| D．reduce the damage to lattice structure |
According to Jae Kwon, his nuclear battery ________.
| A．uses a solid semiconductor | B．will soon replace the present ones |
| C．could be extremely thin | D．has passed the final test |
The text is most probably a ________.
| A．science news report | B．book review |
| C．newspaper ad | D．science fiction story |
粤公网安备 44130202000953号