Two students started quarreling at school. One student shouted dirty words at the other, and a fight began. What can be done to stop fights like this at school? In some schools, the disputants sit down with peer mediators(同龄调解者). Peer mediators are students with special training in this kind of problems.
Peer mediators help the disputants to talk in a friendly way. Here are some of the ways they use:
1) Put what you think clearly but don’t say anything to hurt the other. Begin with “I feel…” instead of “You always…”
2) Listen carefully to what the other person is saying. Don’t stop the other person’s words.
3) Keep looking at the other person’s eyes when he or she talks.
4) Try to see the other person’s side of the problem.
5) Never put anyone down. Saying things like “You are foolish” makes the talk difficult.
6) Try to find a result that makes both people happy.
Peer mediators never decide the result or the winner. They don’t decide who is right and who is wrong. Instead, they help the two students to find their own “win-win” result.
The underlined word “disputants” refers to the students ________.
| A．who make peace | B．who give in |
| C．who are lazy | D．who quarrel |
My day began on a definitely sour note when I saw my six-year-old wrestling with a limb of my azalea（杜鹃花）bush. By the time I got outside, he’d broken it. “Can I take this to school today?” he asked. With a wave of my hand, I sent him off. I turned my back so he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in my eyes.
The washing machine had leaked on my brand-new linoleum. If only my husband had just taken the time to fix it the night before when I asked him instead of playing checkers with Jonathan.
It was days like this that made me want to quit. I just wanted to drive up to the mountains, hide in a cave, and never come out.
Somehow I spent most of the day washing and drying clothes and thinking how love had disappeared from my life. As I finished hanging up the last of my husband’s shirts, I looked at the clock. 2:30. I was late. Jonathan’s class let out at 2:15 and I hurriedly drove to the school.
I was out of breath by the time I knocked on the teacher’s door and peered through the glass. She rustled through the door and took me aside. “I want to talk to you about Jonathan,” she said.
I prepared myself for the worst. Nothing would have surprised me. “Did you know Jonathan brought flowers to school today?” she asked. I nodded, thinking about my favorite bush and trying to hide the hurt in my eyes. “Let me tell you about yesterday,” the teacher insisted. “See that little girl?” I watched the bright-eyed child laugh and point to a colorful picture taped to the wall. I nodded.
“Well, yesterday she was almost hysterical. Her mother and father are going through a nasty divorce. She told me she didn’t want to live, she wished she could die. I watched that little girl bury her face in her hands and say loud enough for the class to hear, ‘Nobody loves me.’ I did all I could to comfort her, but it only seemed to make matters worse.” “I thought you wanted to talk to me about Jonathan,” I said.
“I do,” she said, touching the sleeve of my blouse. “Today your son walked straight over to that child. I watched him hand her some pretty pink flowers and whisper, ‘I love you.’“
I felt my heart swell with pride for what my son had done. I smiled at the teacher. “Thank you,” I said, reaching for Jonathan’s hand, “you’ve made my day.”
Later that evening, I began pulling weeds from around my azalea bush. As my mind wandered back to the love Jonathan showed the little girl, a biblical verse came to me: “...these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” While my son had put love into practice, I had only felt anger.
I heard the familiar squeak of my husband’s brakes as he pulled into the drive. I snapped a small limb bristling with hot pink azaleas off the bush. I felt the seed of love that God planted in my family beginning to bloom once again in me. My husband’s eyes widened in surprise as I handed him the flowers. “I love you,” I said.Why did the woman cry when seeing her son had broken the azalea bush?
| A．Because she could not tolerate the harm to it. |
| B．Because it made her bad mood even worse. |
| C．Because her son did not ask her for permission. |
| D．Because she wanted to hand it to her husband. |
The writer wanted to hide in the mountain cave probably for the reason of .
| A．feeling fed up with her endless daily housework |
| B．her husband’s failing to fix the machine in time |
| C．boring daily routine with a feeling of lack of love |
| D．her hoping to seek happiness in a brand new place |
We can infer from the passage that the writer expressed love to her husband in that .
| A．she was inspired by her son that love was supposed to be felt and practiced |
| B．she felt guilty that she misunderstood her husband and wanted to apologize |
| C．she felt it necessary to have a complete family for the happiness of herself |
| D．she wanted to prove her love and expected the same words from her husband |
Q: On Facebook, my friends are a mix of real-life pals, former classmates, professional colleagues, extended-family members, and … my mom. Mom is the first to like and comment on everything I post, which is annoying. I tried talking to her about it, but her feelings quickly got hurt, so I backed off. I know I can’t block her, but now I don’t want to post anything. How do I handle this?
A: This is about Facebook, not your mom. The often-shrugged-off truth about social media is that nothing is private. It’s easy to forget this, so in a way, you’re lucky that your mom is reminding you. Everything you post—comments, likes, photos—is freely available to future friends, employers, lovers etc unless blocked. That said, you can ask Mom again nicely to tone it down. You can also customize your controls so she can’t see everything you post.
Q: In which situations am I required to make a phone call versus send a text message?
A: A text is for information—time, date, news. It’s for the stuff you can keep short and sweet. A phone call is for analysis, discussion, opinion, and, if you must, gossip.
Q: I’m always on Facebook, so I just send messages to friends through the site. But when should I log off and send an e-mail?
A: When you’re serious about anything. Think of it as chatting with someone on a bus versus asking her to meet you for coffee. The former is good for casual conversation; the latter is personal and requires attention.
Q: For which occasions should I mail paper invitations versus send e-mail ones? (E-cards are free and easy—what’s not to love?!)
A: Anything important needs a paper invitation. That’s your baseline. So ask yourself: “Do I want people to dress up for this event?” If the answer is yes, dress up your invitation by making it printed instead of virtual. For more casual events and gatherings, e-card away.
Q: Is using emoticons ever inappropriate to express a feeling or make a point in texts or e-mails?
A: Emoticons are for fun. Is the message you’re writing fun? Use an emoticon. Are you asking for a big favor? Skip it. Is the message to your boss or a colleague? Skip it. Avoid them if you want to be taken seriously about anything.
Q: I have a big, happy announcement to share with a lot of people. Is it appropriate to share it on my blog?
A: Yes, so you don’t have to go cc-ing everyone in an e-mail. Post away. But send a private message to those who should know first.
Q: I have a big, sad announcement. What should I do?
A: Respect your privacy—and yourself. Pick up the phone and call a trusted friend or family member to let her know, and then ask her to help spread the news offline.What do we learn about social media from the first Q and A?
| A．It is illegal to keep track of personal privacy on Facebook. |
| B．Personal privacy is inaccessible online with control customized. |
| C．People tend to ignore privacy provided it is blocked purposefully. |
| D．We need someone to remind us constantly of our privacy online. |
Which of the following is appropriate about using social media?
| A．Sending texts to consult a doctor for surgery |
| B．Carrying on casual conversations via emails. |
| C．Emailing your boss with emoticons for promotion. |
| D．Writing a formal invitation for a dress-up event. |
According to the passage, how would you make it known that you have won a scholarship to Harvard?
| A．Arranging for a social gathering to celebrate it. |
| B．Informing your teachers who may help you spread. |
| C．Telling your parents before posting it on your blog. |
| D．Sending everyone a message privately to share it. |
At the moment, there are two reliable ways to make electricity from sunlight. You can use a panel of solar cells to create the current directly, by liberating electrons from a semiconducting material such as silicon. Or you can concentrate the sun’s rays using mirrors, boil water with them, and employ the steam to drive a generator.
Both work. But both are expensive. Gang Chen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Zhifeng Ren of Boston College therefore propose an alternative. They suggest that a phenomenon called the thermoelectric（热电）effect might be used instead—and they have built a prototype（原型）to show that the idea is practical.
Thermoelectric devices are not new. They are used, for example, to capture waste heat from car engines. They work because certain materials generate an electrical potential difference within themselves if one part is hotter than another. That can be used to drive a current through an external circuit.
The reason thermoelectric materials have not, in the past, been applied successfully to the question of solar power is that to get a worthwhile current you have to have a significant temperature difference. (200℃ is considered a good starting point.) In a car engine, that is easy. For sunlight, however, it means concentrating the heat in some way. And if you are going to the trouble of building mirrors to do that, you might as well go down the steam-generation route, which is a much more efficient way of producing electricity. If the heat concentration could be done without all the equipment of mirrors, though, thermoelectricity’s inefficiency would be balanced by the cheapness of the equipment.
In their view, three things are needed to create a workable solar-thermoelectric device. The first is to make sure that most of the sunlight which falls on it is absorbed, rather than being reflected. The second is to choose a thermoelectric material which conducts heat badly but electricity well. The third is to be certain that the temperature gradient（梯度）which that badly conducting material creates is not wasted by poor design.The following methods can be adopted to make electricity from sunlight EXCEPT .
| A．putting a panel of solar cells into use |
| B．concentrating sun’s rays with mirrors |
| C．creating a solar-thermoelectric device |
| D．building a practical solar prototype |
Why was the application of thermoelectric materials a failure in the past?
| A．Because it’s hard for them to build enough mirrors to make it work. |
| B．Because 200℃ was hard to reach at that time even in a car engine. |
| C．Because of the failure of having a significant temperature difference. |
| D．Because it was hard to focus the sun’s rays with equipment of mirrors. |
Which of the following is the best title for this passage?
| A．Thermoelectric Device --- the Best Method of All |
| B．A New Method of Making Electricity from Sunlight |
| C．How to Create a Workable Thermoelectric Device |
| D．Solar Power --- a New Energy Trend in the Future |
Every electronic gadget (小玩意) needs good memory. A music player stores songs, albums and playlists. A computer holds schoolwork and programs and remembers how far a player has advanced in his or her favorite game. Mobile phones store names, numbers and hundreds of texts.
Now, scientists in California say they have come up with a way to turn a living cell into a memory device.
It can store only one tiny bit of information, but it’s a start. In the future, a cell-based gadget might travel through the body and record measurements. The benefit to human health could be big: the right tool, for example, might record the earliest signs of disease.
Doctors, scientists and other curious people want to know what is happening inside the body, even at levels that can’t be seen by the naked eye. So far, there is no device small enough to travel through the bloodstream.
If normal machines won’t do the trick, perhaps biology will. Scientists who work in the field of synthetic (合成的) biology are trying to find ways to turn living things into human tools. In the case of the new memory device, bioengineers from Stanford University used the genetic material inside living cells to record information.
This genetic material consists of DNA. Found in nearly every cell, DNA carries all of the information that keeps a living thing alive.
In the new experiment, the researchers turned DNA from bacteria(细菌) into a switch. They “flip (翻转)” a small section of DNA. Then, using the same procedure (过程) , the scientists flip the section again—returning it into its normal structure.
Using these DNA switches, “We can write and erase DNA in a living cell,” bioengineer, Jerome Bonnet, explained to Science News.
It might take years before his team or others identity whether a DNA-based memory device might be practical. Right now, it takes one hour to complete a flip. That is far too long to be useful. Plus, a flipped section has a very small little memory—less than what a computer uses to remember a single letter.
“This was an important proof that it was doable,” Bonnet told Science News. “Now we want to build a more complex system, something that other people can use.”What is the aim of listing the electronic things in the first paragraph?
| A．To make the passage more fashionable. |
| B．To show how electronic things have memory. |
| C．To discuss things in detail. |
| D．To make the subject of the text more understandable. |
What is possible future benefit of the cell-based gadget for people?
| A．To detect disease at the earliest point. |
| B．To help improve the memory. |
| C．To help people build a body. |
| D．To replace many electronic gadgets. |
What is the object being researched?
A. The cells of bacteria.
B. The DNA of bacteria.
C. A section of bacteria.
C. The nucleus of bacteria.What do we know about a flipped section of DNA?
| A．It has a very small memory. |
| B．It can function as a computer. |
| C．It has one letter in it. |
| D．It takes a day to complete it. |
As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But Venezuela, whose beauty queens have won Miss Universe and Miss World over six times, doesn’t leave it to chance. In Venezuela, girls as young as four can be found attending beauty schools, where they can learn a range of skills from how to walk to the correct way to hold a wine glass.
“Hair must always be completely clean, make-up should look natural, and you should always, always wear high-heels,” advises Andrea Reyes, a teacher in a school of Caracas with 160 students.
Beauty contests are treated in Venezuela much as sporting competitions are elsewhere. Many Venezuelan parents believe that if their daughters can succeed and get the beauty crown, their future as famous and public persons is sure to come. As a result, the girls are trained to compete at a young age.
Among former beauty queens are Irene Saez, who went on to compete for the country’s president, and Eva Ekvall, whose battle with cancer helped to make more people know about the illness in Venezuela.
However, voices against the trend can be heard all over the country. At one time, a feminist (男女平等主义者) group tried to stop the Miss Venezuela broadcast. President Hugo Chavez has spoken out against the culture of plastic surgery(整形手术)in Venezuela, calling it a “frightening thing”.
The BBC reporter Sarah Grainger says that acceptance of the contests is partly a result of the country’s “machista” (大男子主义的) view of the different roles that men and women should play, “Men are supposed to be strong and brave and women to be gentle and beautiful”.
Miss Universe 1996, Alicia Machado, knows the price to be paid when you’re no longer seen as attractive. After winning the beauty contest, she said all she wanted to do was “eat, eat and eat”. Her weight gain later and warning by the organizers of the contest to replace her as queen with the runner-up was among the hottest topics in the country, especially in Latin America.What’s the advice given by a teacher in Caracas to her students?
| A．Attending beauty schools as early as possible. |
| B．Wearing high-heels at times. |
| C．Washing your hair quite often. |
| D．Fighting against cancer bravely. |
Girls try to win in the beauty contest to__________.
| A．try plastic surgery |
| B．practice the country’s “machista” view |
| C．earn a good future |
| D．eat as much as one pleases |
We can learn from the passage that__________.
| A．Venezuela girls have won Miss Universe and Miss World over six times by chance |
| B．In Venezuela, people judge men and women in quite different ways |
| C．Eva Ekvall once competed for the country’s president |
| D．Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has spoken out against beauty contests |
What does the underlined word “runner-up” in the last paragraph mean?
| A．the news reporter covering the beauty contest |
| B．the organizer of the beauty contest |
| C．the girl who is slim |
| D．the person who comes in the second place |
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