Most American students have to say goodbye to fancy (高档的) fruits these days. In school restaurants across the country, cheaper fruits like apples and oranges have taken their place.
“People are afraid to spend now.” said Linda Morrow, who owns a shoe and handbag store. “They don’t know what the future will bring”. During the financial crisis (金融危机), several of the country’s biggest banks have been forced to sell or close. This has made lots of Americans afraid to buy expensive things.
The crisis began last year. Experts (专家) think it was because US banks lend money too easily. Last year a lot of people and companies, who borrowed money, found themselves unable to pay it back. This left the banks, as well as the people who put their money in the banks, without money. Since the banks borrowed money between themselves and even across borders (国界), the whole world was in trouble.
This month the US government agreed on a $700 billion plan to try to save the financial market. But no one is sure whether it will help or not. Last week presidents from 20 countries promised to work together to find a way out of the money trouble. This passage is probably taken from ___________.
| A．a story book | B．a novel | C．a newspaper | D．an advertisement |
Why are people in the US afraid to spend?
| A．Because they think it’s unnecessary |
| B．Because they don’t have the habit of spending money |
| C．Because they worry about their future |
| D．Because they don’t have any money |
From the passage, we still don’t know ________.
| A．when the financial crisis began |
| B．when the financial crisis will end |
| C．why some of the US banks closed |
| D．whether the crisis has spread to other countries |
The best title for the passage is ___________.
| A．Ways to Save Money |
| B．Financial Crisis facing the World |
| C．Banks in the USA |
| D．The USA Becoming Poor |
I stepped into my hotel room to a pleasant surprise. Lots of room surrounded an inviting king-size bed, with armchairs nearby resting against sliding glass doors that opened onto a private yard. A small dining table sat next to a kitchen with a refrigerator and coffee machine. "Wow," I thought to myself. "Nice place."
I love hotels. I love to enter a clean room, hang my clothes and gaze out the window, walk out in the morning and when I return, someone else will have made the bed. I like in-room dining and the way they greet you so professionally. "Nice to have you with us again, Mr. Goldsborough." Very cool.
The problem is that unless Alison travels with me, I never sleep well in hotels. I miss my family, even though Linus and Camille, at ages 4 and almost 2, find a way to interrupt even the best night's sleep at home.
I'm deeply troubled by the number of parents who wake up too late with the realization:
"My children grew up too fast. In the busy career and corporate rat race（剧烈竞争）, I missed their childhood.” What they fail to say but too often think causes me even more pain: "...and I barely even know them."
A hundred years from now, no one will remember the size of your bank account, the car you drove or the size of your house. The world might differ greatly however, based on your impact in the life of a small child. If you pay attention to your significant others, make the choice to put them first.
Think of one specific action that you can take, and take it. Then think of another one and take that, too. Challenge yourself to find new ways to express your appreciation and love on a daily basis. It will pay off ten-fold（十倍）at home.We can infer from the passage that the author ____.
| A．often goes out on business | B．didn’t get along well with his/her family |
| C．has not grown into an adult | D．comes from a rich family |
According to the author, what is the most important for us is that ____.
| A．we should often miss our family | B．we should do what we can to benefit our family |
| C．we should often stay with our family | D．we must always be ready to face the rat race |
Through para.4 and para.5 what the author really means is that ____.
| A．he hates his parents’ constantly blaming him/her |
| B．his parents don’t care much about his/her growth |
| C．many parents worry about their children’s future |
| D．many parents can’t realize their children not preparing for the fierce social rat race |
Which of the fowling is the best title for this passage?
| A．East, west, home is the best | B．Different generations, different views |
| C．Value of a person at home | D．Nothing Beats Family |
For most students, school is over and summer fun is here. Even kids who are going to summer school don't need to be cooped up indoors during these bright sunny days. Why? Thanks to technology, many kids now have the option of attending "virtual" summer schools online.
These "virtual" classes are not new. Many colleges and universities offer online courses where the students never meet; they correspond with their teachers and classmates on the web. Even some traditional schools add to daily classes with internet-based assignments and feedback.
There are a lot of benefits to online schooling, and that's why public schools have started participating in this non-traditional type of education. Instead of students riding the bus, going to class, eating lunch at school, and going home in the early afternoon, they can now log on（登录）at any time of day or night and learn. This flexible online option requires just as much work and participation as normal summer school. However, the timing is different.
Online summer school is not for all students, just like it isn’t for all adults. The student needs to be an excellent reader in order to obtain as much information as possible from the lectures. In addition, students must understand computers and be self motivated（激发）in order to complete the class successfully.
If the students meet these requirements, then online summer school has many advantages. Written lectures can be read and reread until the student understands them. The students can email each other and the teacher if they need help. Students who participate in online summer school often earn higher grades because the teachers can answer more questions without slowing down the entire class progress. And because of this new technology, summer school students can still go to the beach, travel around the world, and take family vacations!Online schooling has the following advantages and benefits EXCEPT ____.
| A．Students needn’t have as much work or participation as in traditional schools. |
| B．Students don’t have to go to school in crowded buses. |
| C．Students can have more time to understand the lessons. |
| D．Teachers and students have more time to arrange their own things flexibly. |
What does the underlined word “option” probably mean?
| A．chance of expressing opinion | B．chance of expressing wishes |
| C．right of demanding | D．right of choosing |
Online summer school is not suitable for ____.
| A．adults or children who are too old |
| B．students who are poor in reading |
| C．those who don’t master good computer technology |
| D．students who can’t finish homework on their own |
Which of the following people is most supposed to choose online schooling?
| A．A child in the kindergarten. | B．A primary school student. |
| C．A government office clerk. | D．A child whose parents are working. |
Child labor — the employment of children in industry, often against their will — has been a problem for many years. Over a hundred years ago, Charles Dickens shocked many of his readers when he described the conditions under which young children worked in British factories. The conditions Dickens described continue almost unchanged today in many parts of the world. The only difference is that today employment of children is confined（limited）to small industries and family businesses, such as hotels, restaurants and particularly farms, rather than to large factories.
Girls suffer more from child labor practices than boys. Many of them are forced to start work when they are only ten years old. Although the work they are given to do is often light, it is often harmful to the health. Recently, children as young as six years were found to be working in Asian factories, and the children were working from eight to fourteen hours a day in overcrowded and unhealthy working conditions. Sometimes a whole family group is employed, with the payment going to a parent or older relative. The children not only receive nothing or very little for their long hours of work, but also they are prevented from attending school. Therefore, when they become older they are unable to do any other kind of work.
The solution to the problem of child labor is clearly better laws to protect young children, greater supervision（监督）of industry and heavier fines for those who break the laws. Only in this way can young boys and girls be allowed to enjoy the most valuable time of their lives—childhood.Which’s the main idea of the first paragraph?
| A．Children are often willing to work in large factories. |
| B．Most children are working in British factories. |
| C．The poor working conditions of child labor in Dickens’ novel. |
| D．The working conditions for children are similar to those a hundred years ago. |
Girls’ work is ____.
| A．not harmful to the health though it is heavy |
| B．not harmful to the health because it is light |
| C．harmful to the health though it is light. |
| D．harmful to the health because it is heavy |
Young children go to work ____.
| A．because they are forced to | B．in order to be skillful in a certain kind of work |
| C．in order to be paid well | D．in order to earn money for education |
To solve the problem of child labor, the writer suggests the following BUT ____.
| A．looking over factories more closely |
| B．raising their payment and improving the system of education |
| C．improving laws of protecting children’s interests |
| D．punishing lawbreakers with severer fines |
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history show, hasn’t meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures（圈地运动）of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by taking them away from the use of the land, and thus from the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people traveled longer distances to their place of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm（准则）today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were kept out — a problem now, as more teenagers disappointed and annoyed at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some efforts and resources away from the utopian（乌托邦）goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs. From the passage we can learn that ____.
| A．jobs have existed since human came into being |
| B．the industrial age brought jobs to everyone |
| C．the industrial age brought the work patterns most people’s work has taken |
| D．in the future more and more people could get jobs as the industry is developing |
Before the enclosures of the 17th and 18th, people lived mainly on ____.
| A．paid work | B．unpaid work | C．taxes and benefits | D．land |
Before the industrial age women played ____.
| A．more important roles in making a life | B．less important roles in making a life |
| C．roles as weak as after in raising their children | D．roles as important as men in supporting a family |
From the passage we can infer that ____.
| A．creating jobs for all must be changed |
| B．enough jobs must be created by our society |
| C．more and more jobs are being created |
| D．industrial age has made many people unable to live without full-time jobs |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A line of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes marched across the South on Friday, peeling away roofs, overturning cars and killing at least 11 people in Tennessee, officials said.
It was the second wave of violent weather to hit the state in less than a week. Last weekend, tornadoes killed 24 people in the western part of the state and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and buildings.
The storms crossed an area from northern Mississippi to northern Virginia as they moved to the northeast late Friday after developing from a low-pressure system in the central Plains.
The Nashville suburbs were the hardest hit, with at least eight deaths happening northeast of the city. Three more people were killed in a rural area about 65 miles southeast of Nashville.
Tornadoes were also reported in some other places. The storms pulled up trees, knocked down power lines and damaged buildings. What’s worse, phone lines and most businesses were out of service. Hospitals admitted at least 60 people with storm-related injuries and transferred at least nine badly injured patients to Nashville hospitals.
In southern Indiana, the storms damaged some areas with golf ball-sized hail. High winds blew the roof off a country club and overthrew a semitrailer（拖车）. As the storms moved farther east, parts of West Virginia were lashed with heavy rain and winds, great damages caused.
The number of tornadoes in the US has jumped through the first part of 2006 compared with the past few years. Through the end of March, an estimated 286 tornadoes had hit the US, compared with an average of 70 for the same three-month period in each of the past three years.
The number of tornado-related deaths was 38 before Friday's storms. The average number of deaths from 2003 to 2005 was 45 a year, the prediction center said. How many deaths have the thunderstorms and tornadoes on Friday caused?
| A．Three. | B．Eight. | C．Eleven. | D．Twenty-two. |
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
| A．Tennessee was hit twice by tornadoes within a week. |
| B．The latest tornado might start in northern Mississippi. |
| C．At least four states were hit by the tornado. |
| D．In the tornadoes of the first 3 months 38 people were killed. |
In the first 3 months of last 3 years, about ____ tornadoes happened each month in the US.
| A．About 23. | B．About 70. | C．About 98. | D．About 210. |
We can infer from the report more deaths and injuries were caused because ____.
| A．the phone lines were destroyed | B．there were enough hospitals |
| C．the people hid in their houses | D．there was also a hail in Tennessee |
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