Nathan Phillips, who will formally begin his freshman year at the University of San Diego(USD) on Aug. 31, will arrive on campus in an unusual and philanthropic manner.
Phillips is expected to arrive between 5 p．m. and 6 p．m. Thursday on his bicycle, having pedaled 1,450 miles from Astoria, Ore.
Phillips combined his desire to complete a long bike ride before entering college with his interest in helping the children of Uganda.
He is raising funds for Invisible Children, a San Diegobased organization seeking to end conflicts annoying northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic and stop the use of children as soldiers.
Phillips had raised $1,540 before embarking Aug.11 and hopes to reach $2,000.
Phillips, who is from Redmond, Washington, visited Uganda during high school and worked in an orphanage(孤儿院) there. He was also inspired by a presentation by Invisible Children at his high school.
“I have been to Uganda and personally gotten to know some of the kids affected by the war，” Phillips said in a statement released by the university.“I would do anything to help these kids.”
Phillips' new roommate, Kyle Sharp, has joined him for the last 600 miles of the trip. Students and other members of the USD community are expected to join him for the last 13 miles.
“Nathan's passionate commitment(恪守承诺) to improving the lives of children more than 8,000 miles away resonates(共鸣) with USD's mission to prepare future leaders to change the world for the better，” Pamela Gray Payton, assistant vice president of public affairs at USD, said in a prepared statement.“We are delighted to have Nathan as a member of our campus community.”
Supporters from USD and Invisible Children will greet Phillips and his followers when they arrive in front of Founders Hall on campus. The public is invited as well.Which of the following statements about Nathan Phillips is TRUE?
| A．Nathan Phillips has been a freshman at the university. |
| B．Nathan Phillips is an American. |
| C．Nathan Phillips is an African. |
| D．Nathan Phillips likes riding a bike. |
Why does Nathan Phillips finish riding a bike for a long way before going into college?
| A．He travels to Uganda. |
| B．He practises riding a bike. |
| C．He raises money to help the children of Uganda. |
| D．He wants to take exercise. |
How much more money does Nathan Phillips expect to collect?
| A．$1,540. | B．$460. |
| C．$1460. | D．$2,540. |
The Pacific island nation of Nauru used to be a beautiful place. Now it is an ecological disaster area. Nauru’s heartbreaking story could have one good consequence — other countries might learn from its mistakes.
For thousands of years, Polynesian people lived on the remote island of Nauru, far from western civilization. The first European to arrive was John Fearn in 1798. He was the British captain of the Hunter, a whaling ship. He called the island Pleasant Island.
However, because it was very remote, Nauru had little communication with Europeans at first. The whaling ships and other traders began to visit, bringing guns and alcohol. These elements destroyed the social balance of the twelve family groups on the island. A ten-year civil war started, which reduced the population from 1,400 to 900.
Nauru’s real troubles began in 1899 when a British mining company discovered phosphate (磷酸盐)on the island. In fact, it found that the island of Nauru was nearly all phosphate, which is a very important fertilizer for farming. The company began mining the phosphate.
A phosphate mine is not a hole in the ground; it is a strip mine. When a company strip-mines, it removes the top layer of soil. Then it takes away the material it wants. Strip mining totally destroys the land. Gradually, the lovely island of Nauru started to look like the moon.
In 1968, Nauru became one of the richest countries in the world. Every year the government received millions and millions of dollars for its phosphate.
Unfortunately, the leaders invested the money unwisely and lost millions of dollars. In addition, they used millions more dollars for personal expenses. Soon people realized that they had a terrible problem — their phosphate was running out. Ninety percent of their island was destroyed and they had nothing. By 2000, Nauru was financially ruined. Experts say that it would take approximately $433,600,000 and more than 20 years to repair the island. This will probably never happen. What might be the author’s purpose in writing the text?________.
| A．To seek help for Nauru’s problems. |
| B．To give a warning to other countries |
| C．To show the importance of money. |
| D．To tell a heartbreaking story of a war. |
What was Nauru like before the Europeans came? ________.
| A．Rich and powerful | B．Modern and open |
| C．Peaceful and attractive | D．Greedy and aggressive |
The ecological disaster in Nauru resulted from _______.
| A．soil pollution | B．phosphate overmining |
| C．farming activity | D．whale hunting |
Which of the following was a cause of Nauru’s financial problem? ________.
| A．Its leaders misused the money |
| B．It spent too much repairing the island |
| C．Its phosphate mining cost much money |
| D．It lost millions of dollars in the civil war. |
What can we learn about Nauru from the last paragraph?_ _______.
| A．The phosphate mines were destroyed |
| B．The ecological damage is difficult to repair. |
| C．The island was abandoned by the Nauruans |
| D．The leaders will take the experts’ words seriously. |
Everyone knows about straight-A students. We see them frequently in TV situation comedies and in movies like Revenge(报复)of the Nerds. They get high grades, all right, but only by becoming dull laborers, their noses always stuck in a book. They are not good at social communication and look clumsy while doing sports.
How, then, do we account for Domenica Roman or Paul Melendres?
Roman is on the tennis team at Fairmont Senior High School. She also sings in the choral group, serves on the student council and is a member of the mathematics society. For two years she has maintained A’s in every subject. Melendres, a freshman at the University of New Mexico, was student-body president at Valley High School in Albuquerque. He played soccer and basketball well, exhibited at the science fair, and meanwhile worked as a reporter on a local television station. Being a speech giver at the graduation ceremony, he achieved straight A’s in his regular classes, plus bonus points for A’s in two college-level courses.
How do super-achievers like Roman and Melendres do it? Brains aren’t the only answer. “Top grades don’t always go to the brightest students, ” declares Herbert Walberg, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has conducted major studies on super-achieving students.“Knowing how to make the most of your innate(天生的)abilities counts for more. Much more.”
In fact, Walberg says, students with high IQ sometimes don’t do as well as classmates with lower IQ. For them, learning comes too easily and they never find out how to get down.
Hard work isn’t the whole story, either.“It’s not how long you sit there with the books open, ” said one of the many-A students we interviewed.“It’s what you do while you’re sitting.”Indeed, some of these students actually put in fewer hours of homework time than their lower-scoring classmates.
The kids at the top of the class get there by mastering a few basic techniques that others can readily learn.The underlined word “nerds” can probably be________ .
| A．dull bookworms lacking sports and social skills |
| B．successful top students popular with their peers |
| C．students with certain learning difficulties |
| D．born leaders crazy about social activities |
What can we conclude from the first paragraph?
| A．Most TV programs and films are about straight-A students. |
| B．People have unfavorable impression on straight-A students. |
| C．Everyone knows about straight-A students from TV or films. |
| D．Straight-A students are well admired by people in the society. |
Some students become super-achievers mainly because_________ .
| A．they are born cleverer than others |
| B．they work longer hours at study |
| C．they make full use of their abilities |
| D．they know the shortcut to success |
What will be talked about after the last paragraph?
| A．The interviews with more students. |
| B．The role IQ plays in learning well. |
| C．The techniques to be better learners. |
| D．The achievements top students make. |
What can we infer from the passage?
| A．IQ is more important than hard work in study. |
| B．The brightest students can never get low grades. |
| C．Top students certainly achieve all-around developments. |
| D．Students with average IQ can become super-achievers. |
As a senior, my future is always on my mind. To be exact, thoughts of the future have kept me up countless nights and made me worry enough to do poorly on more than one test. Because of this, words of wisdom are a source of comfort. Steve Jobs gave a speech to Stanford’s graduating class in 2005 and his words resound repeatedly in my mind whenever I think about my future.
It wasn’t always like that, though. It started when I became a junior, when college came into view. It’s the first big step to making your life your own. So when Jobs discussed his life as a student, some fears were eased. He, too, felt the need to attend college to make something of himself. He faced what many are extremely afraid of: uncertainty. His lack of understanding caused him to stop attending college and focus on what he felt was important. His story had a happy ending, of course, since he certainly turned out well.
This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t attend college, but rather that they shouldn’t worry so much. You’ll get where you need to go, even if your path is a bit more winding（蜿蜒的）than you’d like.
Jobs talked about the hardships in his work. His love of his work helped him carry on and he got where he was meant to be, which restates the point: don’t panic.
One particular part of his speech stayed with me. Steve Jobs quoted（引用）the saying “Stay hungry, stay foolish” and it has become my motto. Staying foolish is realizing that you are still a fool, no matter how much you’ve learned or experienced. There is always more to explore. Staying hungry is wanting to find those things about which you are still uneducated.
Steve Jobs’s level of success is attainable, and I aim to prove that. With the will power to go into the world living every day like it’s my last and allowing the future to take care of itself, I will do great things. In the last moments of my life, I’ll be proud of what I have done and hope to have all the wisdom a person could wish for.The author felt worried when _________.
| A．he had to take tests at school |
| B．he thought about his future |
| C．he had lots of sleepless nights |
| D．he searched for words of wisdom |
It is suggested in Paragraphs 1 and 2 that _________.
| A．Steve Jobs didn’t attend college |
| B．Steve Jobs failed because of his decision |
| C．the author is a college student |
| D．the author cares much about his future |
What did the author gain from Jobs’s speech?
| A．Courage to drop out of school. |
| B．Confidence in defeating Jobs. |
| C．Interest in computer industry. |
| D．Bravery to face uncertainties. |
What did NOT Steve Jobs encourage students to do in his speech?
| A．Have the desire to learn more. |
| B．Be content with what they know. |
| C．Stay calm in the face of hardships. |
| D．Be modest so as to learn more. |
The passage is mainly about _________.
| A．the wisdom drawn from a speech |
| B．the most impressive quote in life |
| C．a memorable meeting with Jobs |
| D．an experience of a speech |
Not all think laughter is the best medicine, but it seems to help．So scientists carried on a new study of diabetes （糖尿病） patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year to prove it．
Researchers divide 20 high-risk diabetic patients into two groups．Both groups were given standard diabetes medicine．Group L viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choice, while Group C, the control group, did not．This went on for a year of treatments．
By two months into the study, the patients in the laughter group had lower level of the hormones epinephrine （肾上腺素）, considered to cause stress, which is known to be deadly．After the 12 months, HDL cholesterol rises 26 percent in Group L but only 3 percent in Group C．In another measure, C-reactive proteins, a maker of heart disease, drop 66 percent in the laughter group but only 26 percent in the control group．
“The best doctors believe that there is a physical good brought about by the positive emotion, happy laughter,” said study leader Lee Berk of Loma Linda University．And other research has found that humor makes us more hopeful．Still, more study is needed, Berk said．The research by Berk found that humor can bring about similar changes in body chemistry, which was proved in the new study．The research result will be presented this month at the meeting in the US．Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine shows that laughter causes the inner lining of blood vessels to expand, increasing blood flow in a way thought to be healthy．
“Lifestyle choices have an important effect on health and these are choices which we and patients should pay attention to, rather than prevention and treatment,” Berk said in a statement this week．Why did the scientists carry on the new research?
| A．To find out if laughter was good to health． |
| B．To discover the best medicine to cure diabetes． |
| C．Because the number of diabetic patients is the largest in the world． |
| D．Because diabetic patients need more laughter than other patients． |
After 12 months into the study, ___________．
| A．C-reactive proteins increase 66 percent in Group C |
| B．the level of the hormones epinephrine stays the same in both groups |
| C．the level of the hormones epinephrine has dropped |
| D．C-reactive proteins reduced 66 percent in Group L |
The underlined part “HDL cholesterol” in Paragraph 3 must be _______．
| A．something bad to our health | B．something good to our health |
| C．a kind of wonderful medicine | D．a kind of dangerous disease |
In what way does laughter benefit people’s health?
| A．Blood is made thick by laughter． |
| B．Laughter makes blood vessels thin． |
| C．Laughter increases blood pressure． |
| D．Laughter makes blood flow fast． |
According to Berk, we should _________．
| A．choose lifestyles carefully |
| B．change our lifestyles |
| C．prevent our lifestyles in advance |
| D．pay less attention to the positive emotion |
The writer Margaret Mitchell is best known for writing Gone with the Wind, first published in 1936. Her book and the movie based on it, tell a story of love and survival during the American Civil War. Visitors to the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, Georgia, can go where she lived when she started composing the story and learn more about her life.
Our first stop at the Margaret Mitchell House is an exhibit area telling about the writer’s life. She was born in Atlanta in 1900. She started writing stories when she was a child. She started working as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper in 1922. One photograph of Ms. Mitchell, called Peggy, shows her talking to a group of young college boys. She was only about one and a half meters tall. The young men tower over her, but she seems very happy and sure of herself. The tour guide explains: “Now in this picture Peggy is interviewing some boys from Georgia Tech, asking them such questions as ‘Would you really marry a woman who works?’ And today it’d be ‘Would you marry one who doesn’t?’ ”
The Margaret Mitchell House is a building that once contained several apartments. Now we enter the first floor apartment where Ms. Mitchell lived with her husband, John Marsh. They made fun of the small apartment by calling it “The Dump ” .
Around 1926, Margaret Mitchell had stopped working as a reporter and was at home healing after an injury. Her husband brought her books to read from the library. She read so many books that he bought her a typewriter and said it was time for her to write her own book. Our guide says Gone with the Wind became a huge success. Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for the book. In 1939 the film version was released. It won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.The book Gone with the Wind was _________.
| A．first published on a newspaper |
| B．awarded ten Academy Awards |
| C．written in “The Dump” |
| D．adapted from a movie |
The underlined phrase “tower over” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to_________.
| A．be very pleased with |
| B．show great respect for |
| C．be much taller than |
| D．show little interest in |
Why did Ms. Mitchell stop working as a reporter according to the passage?
| A．Because she was rich enough. |
| B．Because she was injured then. |
| C．Because her husband didn’t like it. |
| D．Because she wanted to write books. |
We can know about Margaret Mitchell from the passage that _________.
| A．her height made her marriage unhappy |
| B．her interest in writing continued as an adult |
| C．writing stopped her working as a reporter |
| D．her life was full of hardship and sadness |
Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．A Trip to Know Margaret Mitchell. |
| B． Gone with the Wind: A Huge Success. |
| C．An Introduction of the Margaret Mitchell House. |
| D．Margaret Mitchell: A Great Female Writer. |
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