A simple piece of clothesline hangs between some environmentally friendly Americans and their neighbors．
On one side stand those who see clothes dryers （干衣机） as a waste of energy and a major polluter of the environment．As a result, they are turning to clotheslines as part of the “what-I-can-do environmentalism．”
On the other side are people who are against drying clothes outside, arguing that clotheslines are unpleasant to look at．They have persuaded Homeowners Associations （HOAs） access the U．S．to ban outdoor clotheslines, because clothesline drying also tends to lower home value in the neighborhood．
This has led to a Right-to-Dry Movement that is calling for laws to be passed to protect people’s right to use clotheslines．So far, only three states have laws to protect clothesline．Right-to-Dry supporters argue that there should be more．
Matt Reck, 37, is the kind of eco-conscious（有生态意识的）person who feeds his trees with bathwater and reuses water drops from his air conditioners to water plants．His family also uses a clothesline．But on July 9, 2007, the HOA in Wake Forest, North Carolina, told him that a dissatisfied neighbor had telephoned them about his clothesline．The Recks paid no attention to the warning and still dried their clothes on a line in the yard．“Many people say they are environmentally friendly but they don’t take matters into their own hands,” says Reck．The local HOA has decided not to take any action, unless more neighbors come to them．
North Carolina lawmakers are saying that banning clotheslines is not the right thing to do．But HOAs and housing businesses believe that clothesline drying reminds people of poor neighborhoods．They worry that if buyers think their future neighbors can’t even afford dryers, housing prices will fall．
Environmentalists say such worries are not necessary, and in view of global warming, that idea needs to change．As they say, “The clothesline is beautiful．Hanging clothes outside should be encouraged．We all have to do at least something to slow down the process of global warming．” One of the reasons why supporters of clothes dryers are trying to ban clothesline drying is that ______．
| A．clothes dryers are more efficient |
| B．clothesline drying reduces home value |
| C．clothes dryers are energy-saving |
| D．clothesline drying is not allowed in most U．S．states |
Who are in favor of clothesline drying?
| A．Housing businesses. |
| B．Environmentalists． |
| C．Homeowners Associations． |
| D．Reck’s dissatisfied neighbors． |
What is mainly discussed in the text?
| A．Clothesline drying: a way to save energy and money． |
| B．Clothesline drying: a lost art rediscovered． |
| C．Opposite opinions on clothesline drying． |
| D．Different varieties of clotheslines． |
| School is over and it’s time for the family to get your children moving and have fun. Choose a suitable one from the following family activities. |
| Gymnastics Gymnastics helps to improve flexibility, strength, and teaches self-discipline. Although Olympic-level gymnastics take years of practice to master, more simple moves are easy to learn in a day and can be practiced at home. Suitable for: 4+ Cost: £6 an hour Contact: British Gymnastics; 084 512 97129; www.british-gymnastics.org |
| Surfing What is required to learn the art of surfing is to combine balance, coordination and patience, which means that it’s not easy to learning that, but the excitement of jumping to your feet on the board for the first time and riding a wave into the shore is an excellent experience. Suitable for: 8+ Cost: £30 an hour Contact: www.nationalsurfingcentre.com, 016 378 50737 |
| Sailing Sailing is beneficial for developing confidence and provides a pure mental and physical challenge from the beginning. It can be done alone, and picking up the basics is not difficult. Suitable for: 8+ Cost: Free Contact: Royal Yachting Association; 084 534 50400; www.rya.org.uk |
| Diving This is a great way to make swimming even more fun. High board diving needs muscle control. Lessons begin at the poolside, where you will learn some basic skills before moving on to the boards, Try a saltwater pool, on warmer days, and enjoy the fresh air, high boards and water games. Suitable for: 13+ Cost: The first lesson, which lasts one hour, is usually free if you decide to carry on. £10/£20 an hour. Contact: Find your local swimming pool at www. britishswimming.org; 015 096 18700 |
If you have a child of seven, you would like to choose ______ for him/her.
| A．Diving | B．Sailing | C．Surfing | D．Gymnastics |
Taking a 10-hour course in diving needs at least .
| A．£200 | B．£100 | C．£90 | D．£30 |
In order to build up your children’s confidence, you can call .
| A．015 096 18700 |
| B．084 534 50400 |
| C．016 378 50737 |
| D．084 512 97129 |
According to the passage, we know that .
| A．it is very difficult to learn basic sailing skills. |
| B．it is impossible to practice gymnastics at home |
| C．self-discipline is needed to do high board diving |
| D．surfing needs qualities of patience and balance |
I do desire to help my Chinese students to find a better way of learning. I once divided my Chinese MBA students into six groups and set them an assignment: brainstorming on “two-hour business plans”, for example: a restaurant chain. Originality would be valued most. As a result, five groups proposed projects for restaurant chains. The sixth showed a catering service. I couldn’t help expressing my disappointment, though the time limit had been rather challenging.
Those middle managers and financial analysts from state-owned enterprises and global companies were not untalented or without opinions, but they had been accustomed to an educational system that rarely rewarded critical thinking or Originality. Papers were often copied from the Internet and the Harvard Business Review. Students insisted that copying was a superior business strategy, better than inventing and creating.
In China, you can see almost all kinds of products you can imagine have been made and sold, but so few well developed marketing and management minds have been produced that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand!
Partnerships with institutions like Yale and MIT have been established so as to solve the problem mentioned above. And there’s also the “thousand talent scheme”: this new government program is designed to improve technological modernization by inviting top foreign trained scientists to the mainland with large sums of money. But there are concerns about China’s research environment, which is known for lacking in encouraging independent thinking and inventiveness, and even high salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.
If China wants to become a major world creator, it is no good just seeking partnerships with top Western universities or gathering a group of well-educated people and telling them to think creatively. It’s time to establish a rich learning environment for young minds. Yes, new way of learning is the key!The author feels disappointed when the students hand in their plans because_____
| A．there’s one group presenting a catering service. |
| B．all groups followed his idea of restaurant chains. |
| C．the students’ ideas were lacking in creativeness. |
| D．the time limit had been rather challenging. |
Which statement is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．China can make and sell all kinds of product all over the world |
| B．High pay can solve the problem of China’s research environment |
| C．Foreign trained scientists are expected to invent a Chinese brand |
| D．The new government program is aimed at encouraging imagination |
Which can serve as the best title of the passage?
| A．Look for a New Way of Learning |
| B．Develop MBA Students’ Creative Thinking |
| C．Help China to Become a Creator |
| D．Improve China’s Research Environment |
Emanuel’s father liked to declare he’d spent ages by the sea, breathing seawater. Now, away from the sea, in the hospital, his body just looked like a beached fish. His condition went from bad to worse. The doctor came from saying, “He’ll be home in a day,” “He’ll be home in a week,” to “He will be home in a month.”
When Emanuel was a teenager, if he ever seemed bored with the pier(码头), his father would shout, “What ? This isn’t good enough for you?” And later, when he suggested Emanuel take a job at the pier after high school, the boy almost laughed, and his father again said, “What? This isn’t good enough for you?” And before Emanuel went to war, when he talked of marrying Maggie and becoming an engineer, his father said, “What? This isn’t good enough for you?”
And now, here he was, Emanuel helped out at the pier, working evenings after his taxi job, doing his father’s labor.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. It is not until much later that children understand: their stories and all their accomplishments sit on top of the stories of their mothers and fathers.
One night his father, lying in hospital, was practically too weak to speak. Others comforted him. “Your old man will pull through. He’s the toughest man we’ve ever seen.”
When the news came that his father had died, Emanuel felt heart-broken.
In the following weeks, Emanuel’s mother lived in a confused state. She spoke to her husband as if he were still there .She yelled at him to turn down the radio. She cooked enough food for two .One night, when Emanuel offered to help with the dishes, she said. “Your father will put them away.” Emanuel put a hand on her shoulder. “Ma,” he said softly, “Dad’s gone.”
“Gone where?” murmured Mum.Which of the following shows the right order of the story?
a．Emanuel’s father fell ill.
b．Emanuel helped out at pier.
c．Emanuel went to the war.
d．Emanuel wished to be an engineer.
e. Emanuel’s mother lived in a confused state
| A．bacde | B．dcabe | C．bceda | D．decba |
In Paragraph 4, the writer inplies that .
| A．Children can never understand how much their parents have devoted to them |
| B．Children wouldn’t have achieved so much without their parents’ support |
| C．Children often feel regretful because they leave their parents |
| D．Children like moving away from their parents |
The underlined phrase “pull through” can probably be replaced by ________
| A．wake up | B．give up | C．pick up | D．get up |
The last paragraph mainly tells us that .
| A．Emanuel’s mother was at a loss at her husband’s death. |
| B．Emanuel often helped his mother to wash the dishes. |
| C．Emanuel lived with his mother and often comforted her. |
| D．Emanuel’s mother doesn’t like to listen to the radio. |
The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem (生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big planteater, it largely shapes the forestandsavanna (稀树草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat.
It is the elephant's great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches of big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas. In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other planteaters.
Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed planteaters to move around and for small planteaters to get their food as well.
What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Disappearance of African elephants. |
| B．Forests and savannas as habitats for African elephants. |
| C．The effect of African elephants' search for food. |
| D．The eating habit of African elephants. |
What does the underlined phrase “setting the terms” most probably mean?
| A．Fixing the time. | B．Worsening the state. |
| C．Improving the quality. | D．Deciding the conditions. |
What do we know about the open spaces in the passage?
| A．They result from the destruction of rain forests. |
| B．They provide food mainly for African elephants. |
| C．They are home to many endangered animals. |
| D．They are attractive to planteating animals of different kinds. |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．The African elephant is the largest animal on earth. |
| B．African elephants have 300 pounds of plants every day, including small trees and under bushes. |
| C．The African elephant is in a way the builder of the environment like other land animals. |
| D．If the African elephant disappears, the whole ecosystem won't be affected. |
The passage is developed mainly by ________.
| A．showing the effect and then explaining the causes |
| B．pointing out similarities and differences |
| C．describing the changes in space order |
| D．giving examples |
A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.
A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.
There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.
No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ____.
| A．repeated without any change | B．treated as a joke |
| C．made some changes by the parent | D．set in the present |
According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ____.
| A．in a realistic setting | B．heard for the first time |
| C．repeated too often | D．told in a different way |
The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it ____.
| A．makes them less fearful |
| B．develops their power of memory |
| C．makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of |
| D．encourages them not to have strange beliefs |
The author's mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that ______.
| A．fairy stories are still being made up |
| B．there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales |
| C．people try to modernize old fairy stories |
| D．there is more concern for children's fears nowadays |
One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.
| A．they are full of imagination |
| B．they just make up the stories which are far from the truth |
| C．they are not interesting |
| D．they make teachers of history difficult to teach |
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