Rowena and Billy Wrangler are model high school students. They study hard and do extremely well on achievement tests. And next year，Rowena will be attending Harvard University．Billy，her younger brother，hopes to go to Cornell．What makes Rowena and Billy different from most students is that they don't go to school．In fact，they've never been to school．Since kindergarten，they've studied at home．Like many of more than one million people who receive home schooling in the United States, they feel as if they've gotten a good education．
The home-schooling trend began in the U.S．in the 1980s with parents keeping their children out of public schools so they could provide religious education at home. Today，as the home-schooling trend continues to grow，parents are more likely to consider home schooling as an option because they believe schools don't do a very good job of teaching and are occasionally dangerous places．But can parents really do a better job?
The answer in many cases is yes．In many studies，students taught at home ranked average or above average when compared to students who went to public schools．More importantly，these students were often more self-directed and have a greater depth of knowledge．They were well prepared for academic challenges．
One such student，Robert Conrad, now a sophomore at university, claims he really learned how to study and schedule his time during his eight years of home schooling．Still, not every student is as successful as Robert．“For every home-schooling success story，there are an equal number of failures．”states Henry Lipscomb，an educational researcher．“There are just so many disadvantages that students taught at home have to overcome．”For example，they have fewer chances to get in touch with others of their own age．Consequently，they sometimes lack the usual social skills．“No matter what，though，”states Lipscomb，“home-schooling is a growing trend．I think we'll be seeing more and more of this．”Compared with other students, Rowena and Billy are most different in the fact that .
| A．they preferred to teach themselves |
| B．they do extremely well on achievement tests |
| C．they don't go to school as other teenagers |
| D．they feel they have gotten a good education |
．At first in the 1980s parents gave home-schooling to children for .
| A．better education | B．religious education | C．safety | D．good behavior |
．According to the article, what is NOT the advantage of being educated at home?
| A．Home is a safer place for children． |
| B．Students taught at home are more self-directed． |
| C．Students taught at home have a greater depth of knowledge． |
| D．Students taught at home can go to good universities． |
．The writer thinks .
| A．parents can do a better job than schools |
| B．home-schooling will be more and more useful |
| C．home-schooling is good in some aspects |
| D．students taught at home make greater achievements |
．The best title of this text might be .
| A．Home-schooling：A Growing Trend |
| B．Home-schooling：A Better Choice |
| C．Home-schooling：A Way to Success |
| D．Home-schooling：A New Method of Education |
Would you like to be an actor, but aren’t the right age or physical type for the part? Don’t give up: there may be a place for you in the world of voice-acting.
Twenty-year-old Rickey Collins brings Tucker Foley to life in the cartoon Danny Phantom. In addition to many appearances on television and in movies, Rickey is a voice-over actor, someone we hear but don’t see. Rickey has acted since he was 6, both on and off camera. After school, his grandmother-- a manager and acting coach--helped him develop his skills by doing voice exercises and reading aloud.
Voice-over actors do many kinds of acting. They are the voices of cartoon characters on television, in movies and video games, and for communicating toys. In films, they replace the foreign language conversation with English version. They create crowd noises, make commercials, act in radio plays, and record telephone instructions and public announcements. They read books on tape and even record museum tours.
Like other actors, voice-over actors need to understand scripts, interpret characters, and breathe correctly. They have to master voice techniques, such as pacing, volume, and range. Sometimes they use their normal voices; other times they change their voices to create different characters or noises. Rickey receives his Danny Phantom scripts only a few days before he tapes each episode(集). He writes helpful notes on the script to guide himself on speaking his part.
Rickey practices, then tapes at the recording studio. He and the other cast members sit in a soundproof booth, acting out their characters as they read their lines into the microphones. “The cartoon gets created after we record the words, so we have to imagine everything in our mind,” says Rickey. Later, the recorded words, music, and sound effects are combined with the cartoon art to create the cartoon we enjoy on TV. Sound interesting? Maybe you can have a “voice” in acting after all!The underlined sentence in paragraph 2 means _______.
| A．Rickey draws the character |
| B．Rickey names Tucker Foley |
| C．Rickey makes the character seem real |
| D．Rickey decides the future of Tucker Foley |
From the passage we can infer that _______.
| A．it’s very complex to become a cartoon film voice-over actor |
| B．Rickey has been involved with acting most of his life |
| C．Rickey’s mother helped him a lot with acting |
| D．many people have nice voices |
Paragraph 4 mainly tells us that _______.
| A．a voice-over actor works very hard |
| B．being a voice-over actor needs talents |
| C．being a voice-over actor requires skills |
| D．voice-over actors have more techniques than other actors |
The information in this article would be most valuable to people _______.
| A．who want to build a career around their voices |
| B．who need to develop their stage-acting skills |
| C．who want to understand scriptwriting |
| D．who need to practice voice exercises |
Which is true about voice-over actors?
| A．They usually create characters according to the films. |
| B．They act as a guide on the museum tours. |
| C．They have to act both on and off camera. |
| D．They must use different voices for different characters and situations. |
Tragedy struck for brothers Rob and Paul Forkan when they lost their parents in the 2004 Asian tsunami. Now, over ten years later, they're using their flip flop business to help other orphans.
The boys had an unusual childhood. They were just 11 and 13 when their parents, Kevin and Sandra, took them out of the UK education system and moved the family to Goa in India. Their parents were of the philosophy that they would receive a healthier and fuller education by traveling the world and helping others. There they did lots of voluntary work and mixed with the local community. It was when the family were on holiday in Sri Lanka that the tsunami hit. Although the children managed to escape, their parents tragically couldn't. But Paul says their upbringing meant they were able to cope with this tough blow. "Our parents gave us this confidence that we could do anything, that nothing was hard to achieve," says Paul.
What the boys did was to start a business selling ethically-sourced sandals. They're called 'Gandys' after the father of India's independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi. "He was in all our schoolbooks as kids; he's on all the money over in India; he's famous for wearing his flip flops," says Paul. The entire project was inspired by their parents’ philosophy, their globetrotting childhoods and what happened to them in Sri Lanka. Their parents had previously worked in the fashion industry before quitting their jobs and focusing on humanitarian projects. Thus, Gandys is a very fitting tribute to their lives. Gandys sells flip-flops and donates 10 percent of the profits from every pair sold to orphans around the globe. In conjunction with Gandys, the Forkans also founded Orphans for Orphans, a charitable organization dedicated to helping orphans. They say they can make a profit and do good at the same time: they give 10% of their profit to charity, and have set up their own foundation through which they've been able to open a children's home in Sri Lanka.
This year alone, Gandys has sold 250,000 pairs of flip flops, which is only expected to increase. In 2013, the business made around 1.2 million pounds ($1.8 million). With more profits, more orphans will receive assistance. Hence, it’s safe to say that the Forkan brothers are making their parents very proud.The two brothers left the UK for India because _________.
| A．the UK education system is not so good as that of India |
| B．their parents had humanitarian projects in India |
| C．the voluntary work in Goa attracted them |
| D．their parents expected them to grow through travelling |
We can infer from the passage that _______.
| A．the parents had great influence on the two brothers |
| B．the two brothers were left hopeless after the tsunami |
| C．their parents died soon after they settled in India |
| D．the two brothers had a troubled childhood |
Why did the brothers name their sandals after Gandhi?
| A．Because Gandhi wears and sells flip flops. |
| B．Because Gandhi always helps orphans. |
| C．Because Gandhi is influential in India. |
| D．Because Gandhi fits into their lives in India. |
What can best describe the brothers?
| A．Unlucky. | B．Modest. | C．Generous. | D．Ambitious. |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Orphans for Orphans |
| B．Making Parents Proud |
| C．Gandys: Making Money and Doing Good |
| D．Rise Up from Tragedy to Success |
EVERY few hundred years, a sleeping giant in southern Italy awakens with a bang, spewing volcanic ash across the countryside. The volcano, called Mount Vesuvius, formed 25,000 years ago. During its most explosive eruptions, the volcano could blanket nearby cities with hot ash, sometimes also burying them with deadly flows of mud and rocks. One famous eruption occurred nearly 2,000 years ago, in the year AD 79. It lasted 18 hours and destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, killing thousands of people as they tried to escape.
Scientists and city officials had supposed that Naples, one of Italy's most populous cities, was far enough away that it would be safe from the volcano's wrath. New evidence suggests that this might not be the case.
Researchers recently discovered 4000-year-old layers of ash and mud under present-day Naples. Just outside the city, they also uncovered abandoned villages, as well as human and animal skeletons. Most surprising of all, the researchers say, was the discovery of thousands of footprints from the same time period, pressed into layers of wet ash that had rained from the sky. The footprints show that thousands of people were fleeing to the northwest, away from the volcano, as it erupted.
Mount Vesuvius hasn't had a major eruption since 1631, but it's still very active. The discovery of the ancient ash layers, skeletons, and footprints is a warning that modern Naples, a city of 3 million people, isn't safe from the volcano, scientists say. So, when the volcano begins to rumble again, Naples should have an emergency evacuation plan ready - just in case.Which of the following is true with Mount Vesuvius?
| A．It formed 2,500 years ago. |
| B．Its latest eruption occurred 2,000 years ago. |
| C．It is an active, destructive volcano. |
| D．It is where the city Naples is located. |
What does the word underlined possibly mean?
| A．Path. | B．Heat. | C．Fear . | D．Eruption. |
The researchers found the new evidence EXCEPT _________.
| A．ancient layers of ash and mud |
| B．animal footprints |
| C．abandoned villages |
| D．human skeletons |
What can we conclude from the passage?
| A．City Pompeii has been rebuilt now. |
| B．City Naples isn’t suitable for living. |
| C．Mount Vesuvius will not erupt in a hundred years. |
| D．Mount Vesuvius is a potential danger to Naples. |
The author of the passage intends to ________.
| A．introduce Mount Vesuvius |
| B．describe the city Naples |
| C．present new discoveries by researchers |
| D．propose a plan for escape |
Everybody is happy as his pay rises. Yet pleasure of your own can disappear if you learn that a fellow worker has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he is known as being lazy, you might even be quite cross. Such behavior is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying belief that other animals would not be able to have this finely developed sense of sadness. But a study by Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well.
The researchers studied the behaviors of some kind of female brown monkeys. They look smart. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food happily. Above all, like female human beings, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males.
Such characteristics make them perfect subjects for Doctor Brosnan’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens (奖券) for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for pieces of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate and connected rooms so that each could observe what the other is getting in return for its rock, they became quite different.
In the world of monkeys, grapes are excellent goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was not willing to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either shook her own token at the researcher, or refused to accept the cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other room (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to bring about dissatisfaction in a female monkey.
The researches suggest that these monkeys, like humans, are guided by social senses. In the wild, they are co-operative and group-living. Such co-operation is likely to be firm only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of anger when unfairly treated, it seems, are not the nature of human beings alone. Refusing a smaller reward completely makes these feelings clear to other animals of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness developed independently in monkeys and humans, or whether it comes from the common roots that they had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.The underlined statement “it is all too monkey” means that ____________.
| A．monkeys are also angry with lazy fellows |
| B．feeling bitter at unfairness is also monkey’s nature |
| C．monkeys, like humans, tend to be envious of each other |
| D．no animals other than monkeys can develop such feelings |
It can be learned from the passage that ____________.
| A．only monkeys and humans can have the sense of fairness in the world |
| B．women will show more dissatisfaction than men when unfairly treated |
| C．in the wild, monkeys are unhappy to share their food with each other |
| D．monkeys can exchange cucumbers for grapes, for grapes are more attractive |
Which of the following conclusions is true according to the passage?
| A．Human beings’ feelings of anger developed from the monkeys. |
| B．In the research, male monkeys are less likely to exchange food with others. |
| C．Co-operation between monkeys stays firm before the realization of being cheated. |
| D．The sense of fairness among monkeys probably dates back to 35 million years ago. |
What do we know about the monkeys in Sarah’s study?
| A．The monkeys can be trained to develop social senses. |
| B．They usually show their feelings openly as humans do. |
| C．The monkeys may show their satisfaction with equal treatment. |
| D．Co-operation among the monkeys remains more effective in the wild. |
A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it be of books or of men.
A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness; amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.
Men often discover their affinity(亲密) to each other by the mutual love they have for a book just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which both entertain for a third. There is an old proverb, ‘Love me, love my dog.” But there is more wisdom in this:” Love me, love my book.” The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he in them.
A good book is often the best urn（瓮）of a life enshrining the best that life could think out; for the world of a man’s life is, for the most part, the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasuries of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforters.
Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their author’s minds, ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. The only effect of time have been to sift(筛) out the bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive but what is really good.
Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were, in a measure, actors with them in the scenes which they describe.
The great and good do not die, even in this world. Embalmed（加以防腐处理） in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.What’s the meaning of the underlined word “immortality”?
| A．difficult to find | B．last for a long time |
| C．very important | D．hard to destroy |
How do we get close to the greatest minds through reading?
| A．by talking to them about what we thought |
| B．by experiencing what they have gone through in life |
| C．by sharing their feeling and reading their minds |
| D．by acting with them on the stage |
What is the best title of this text?
| A．Companionship of books | B．Life without books |
| C．Unforgettable books | D．Sorting out books |
This passage is mainly developed by __________.
| A．analyzing causes |
| B．making comparisons |
| C．examining differences |
| D．following the order of importance |
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