Every day 25 million U.S. children ride school buses. The safety record for these buses is much better than for passenger cars; but nevertheless, about 10 children are killed each year riding on large school buses, and nearly four times that number are killed outside buses in the loading zones. By and large, however, the nation’s school children are transported to and from school safety.
Even though the number of school bus accidents is not large, the safety of children is always of intense public concern. While everyone wants to see children transported safely, people are divided about what needs to be done-particularly whether seat belts should be compulsory.
People in favour of seat belts on school buses-many of them parents and medical organizations-argue that seat belts are necessary not only to reduce fatality and injury, but also to teach children lessons about the importance of using them routinely in any moving vehicle. A side benefit, they point out, is that seat belts help keep children in their seats, away from the bus driver.
People who object to seat belt installation suggest that children are already well protected by the school buses that follow the Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) safety requirements set in 1977. They also believe that many children won’t wear seat belts anyway, and that may damage the belts or use them as weapons to hurt other children.
A new Research council report on school bus safety suggest that there are alternate safety devices and procedures that may be more effective and less expensive. For example, the study committee suggested that raising seat backs four inches may have the same safety effectiveness as seat belts.
The report sponsored by the Department of transportation at the request of Congress, re
views seat belts extensively while taking a broader look at safety in and around school buses.
1.According to the passage, the “school bus” is .
A.the bus offered by the school and different from the public bus
B.the bus that has no difference from the public bus
C.the bus that is driven by the students
D.the bus that is not safe
2.According to the passage, who has the greatest degree of control of the school buses “safety”?
A.A new Research Council. B.The Department of Transportation.
C.The Medical Organization. D.National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
3.It may be inferred from this passage that . .
A.many of the opponents(反对者) of seat belt installation are parents and officials of the Department of Transportation
B.proposals of seat belts on school buses would be seriously considered
C.an alternate safety device (raising seat backs four inches) may be taken into consideration
D.The Department of Transportation may either take the idea of seat belts or other measures when it reviews the whole situation
4.The title below which best expresses the idea of the passage is“”.
A.Making School Buses Even Safer for Children B.Seat Belts Needed on School Buses
C.Alternate Safety Devices and Procedures D.Safety in and around School Buses
Herbie Ricketts，52,lives in Thornton Heath，south London，and works as an electrician．He has been a listening volunteer with the Samaritans for 16 years.
Each caller is as individual as their circumstances and I didn’t realize so many people take their own lives until I became a Samaritan．And only then did the true nature of the work I was doing hit home.
I’ll always remember my first day on duty．The caller, stressed and depressed，told me he was suicidal(想自杀的)．He’d been too frightened to talk to the people around him，which is common．People are told they’ve got nothing to be upset about．Or, if they are already classified as having mental health issues，so they tell no one．How do you make sense of your feelings if you can’t tell someone? Just allowing people to say what they honestly feel helps them find a different perspective．I couldn’t offer him practical advice but I could support him emotionally．I helped him come to terms with his situation and make sense of some of the terrible emotions he was experiencing．Offering anonymity(匿名)and being nonjudgmental(无偏见的)allows people easily hurt to explore their thoughts without fear or worry．I left him in an emotionally safe place，ensuring he knew 1 wasn’t rejecting or abandoning him．I let him know we were still there if he needed us，explaining that it might not be me on the other end of the phone but another Samaritan who could also support．
Suicidal people will ring with issues like drug use or loneliness．If you look at it from the perspective of, “How can I solve this? ”you can become，like them，at a loss．Every cell in your body wants to offer solutions，but as a Samaritan I’m not there to sort their problems out．I listen and will support them when they can’t see any further than tomorrow．When the phone goes silent，we stay with that caller as long as we possibly can，which could be two or three hours．
The shifts are up to four hours long．When it doesn’t go so well，I offload to my colleague，so I don’t carry home a heavy heart．Being a Samaritan has greatly improved my life．I’m calmer and become a supportive listener, which has also improved my relationships．But being a wonderful Samaritan doesn’t make you a wonderful parent or wonderful partner—I wish it did．What does the underlined sentence in the passage probably mean?
| A．Those who called in had their unique nature． |
| B．I got to realize the value of being a Samaritan． |
| C．It was common that many people committed suicide． |
| D．I was determined to be a Samaritan at home． |
Some people choose not to tell others about their feelings mainly because they________.
| A．actually have nothing to worry about |
| B．are too shy to expose themselves to others |
| C．suffer from serious mental health problems |
| D．find no supportive listeners around them |
Samaritans usually help callers by________.
| A．sorting out their problems |
| B．providing practical advice for them |
| C．offering them emotional support |
| D．asking questions such as“How can I solve this? ” |
We may infer from the passage that________.
| A．being a good Samaritan takes patience |
| B．Samaritans are easily affected by callers |
| C．callers are always successfully comforted |
| D．people kill themselves for lack of listening volunteers |
Stanley Yelnats was given a choice. The judge said, “You may go to prison, or you may go to Camp Green Lake.” Stanley was from a poor family. He had never been to camp before. So, Stanley Yelnats seems set to serve an easy sentence, which is only fair because he is as innocent as you or me. But Stanley is not going where he thinks he is.
Camp Green Lake is like no other camp anywhere. It is a place that has no lake and nothing green. Nor is it a camp, at least not the kind of camp kids look forward to in the summertime. It is only a desert wasteland, dotted with countless holes dug by the boys who live at the camp.
The trouble started when Stanley was accused of stealing a pair of shoes donated by basketball great Clyde “Sweetfeet” Livingston to a celebrity auction (名流拍卖会). In court, the judge doesn’t believe Stanley’s explanation that the shoes fell from the sky onto his head. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. Strangely, though, Stanley doesn’t blame the judge for falsely convicting (宣告有罪) him. Instead, he blames the whole thing on his “no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-
stealing-great-great-grandfather.” Thanks to this distant relative, the Yelnats family had been cursed (诅咒) for generations. For Stanley, his current troubles are just a natural part of being a Yelnats.
At Camp Green Lake, the warden (看守) makes the boys “build character” by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is searching for something, and before long Stanley begins his own search — for the truth. Fate is to find a solution to it all — the family curse, the mystery of the holes. The great wheel of justice has ground slowly for generations, but now it is about to reveal its verdict (裁决).Stanley Yelnats went to Camp Green Lake to__________________.
| A．enjoy the summertime | B．show his innocence |
| C．Serve his sentence | D．make a choice |
We can learn from the passage that Stanley__________________.
| A．stole the shoes for his relative |
| B．got the shoes by accident |
| C．donated the shoes to an auction |
| D．blamed the judge for the sentence |
In fact，the warden made the boys dig holes to________________.
| A．kill the time | B．build character |
| C．break the family curse | D．look for something |
In which section of a newspaper does this passage probably appear?
| A．Law． | B．Geography． |
| C．News． | D．Literature． |
As a public school superintendent(督导), I believe the best way to prepare students for colleges and careers is to focus on providing instructional programs and opportunities that help them become good thinkers. To do this, teachers and actually everyone else in a community, should play a role as a “cognitive coach” to students, helping develop good thinkers among our youth.
The best way for you to become a cognitive coach is to seek out and engage school children and adolescents in meaningful conversations. The objective here is to get kids talking about what they think, how they feel, and what they believe whenever and wherever you may find them. It may be in a classroom. It may be at the grocery store. It may be at a basketball game. It doesn’t matter where as long as you engage students in a topical conversation and, hopefully, even a debate. Mainly, you want to encourage students to voice their opinion about things. Get them to take a position on “this thing, or that thing,” and ask them to support their position with evidence. Curiously enough, the simple process of engaging students in real life conversations and debates will serve to strengthen what they have learned in the classroom, and help them create their own knowledge about a subject or a topic.
Learning indicates that a student has been exposed to material, understands the material, and can recall the information. Knowledge, on the other hand, goes beyond recall and includes information processing, application to other situations, consideration of meaning, and contrasting with other concepts. Naturally, the topic of conversation you engage in with one of your learners will differ from student to student, and in the level of complexity based on child’s age and developmental level. Even a kindergartener has an opinion about things that are going on in his or her life. Engaging in conversation with any members of your learning community in ways that get at what they have learned and what they know will help them develop higher order reasoning skills.
A student’s synthetic thinking(综合思维) process occurs when a respected adult asks a question, particularly a question that requires reflection. I think all adults in a community have a responsibility to help children with this process, with the goal of producing independent thinkers.According to writer, what most helps develop students’ thinking?
| A．Enlarging one’s knowledge. |
| B．Learning from respected adults. |
| C．Attending instructional programs. |
| D．Making evidence-based arguments. |
Which is the best question raised by a cognitive coach?
| A．What have you learnt recently? |
| B．Will you pay by the credit card? |
| C．Where are you going this weekend? |
| D．How do you like this basketball team? |
The writer mentions a kindergartener in Paragraph 3 in order to _____.
| A．emphasize the importance of being a good thinker |
| B．suggest that education should start at an early age |
| C．prove that even children have their own ways of thinking |
| D．explain the necessity of choosing proper conversation topics |
What is the main purpose of the passage?
| A．To state an education idea. |
| B．To assess a teaching strategy. |
| C．To introduce a learning method. |
| D．To compare different education methods. |
When Barbra Streisand discovered in 2003 that a photograph of her California beach house was among 12,000 photos on theInternetas part of a collection by photographer Kenneth Adelman, she did what any famous person would do:hit him with a $50 million lawsuit. But in trying to hold back the images, she caused a different outcome. Her legal actions led to almost half a million people visiting the website, viewing and copying the photos within a month.
Ever since then, the effect of letting public know something you are trying to keep secret has been called the“Streisand effect”. The problem for anyone trying to suppress information is that the Internet is the world’s biggest and most efficient copying machine. Put a document on to a connected machine and it will spread. So when you want to be famous, you can’t, but if you find yourself in the spotlight and want to erase yourself, you cannot.
There is no shortage of examples of the Streisand effect. Nine-year-old Martha Payne created a simple blog, posting the meals her school served. She took a photo of what was barely a filling meal by anyone’s standards. With the photo, she filled a comment, “Now Dad understands why I am hungry when I get home.” The thing did not go too far, until the local authority banned little Martha from doing that again. Martha posted a supposedly final post called “Goodbye”, explaining everything. Once the media found this out, things went from bad to worse for the authority. Now the blog has more than 9.5 million page views. Martha has even expanded her blog by including pictures of school meals taken by other kids from all over the world, like Germany and Japan.
We can find similar examples throughout history, to be frank. Man has experienced the Streisand effect ever since the birth of mass communication. Why does it exist? Every time you are told not to see what’s in the secret shiny box wrapped in gift paper, you’re going to do everything in your power todo exactly that! Just realizing that knowing something about someone is harmful to their status, we will want to know that piece of information. This is exactly the human nature. This is what lawyers and authorities should be familiar with. Unfortunately, a few of them fail to grasp it.The underlined word “suppress” in Paragraph 2 probably means________.
| A．give away | B．look into |
| C．cover up | D．search for |
What speeded up the spread of Martha’s story?
| A．Parents’ complaints. |
| B．The authority’s order. |
| C．The photos of other kids. |
| D．Supporting from the school. |
What is the last paragraph mainly about?
| A．The root of Streisand effect. |
| B．The influence of Streisand effect. |
| C．People’s reaction to Streisand effect. |
| D．Historical examples of Streisand effect. |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Streisand effect benefits most famous people. |
| B．It’s not a good idea to argue against authorities. |
| C．The ban on something may have opposite effect. |
| D．Turning to the law is a perfect way to get one out of trouble. |
The girl was hanging by her hands from the railings of a balcony(阳台的栏杆). The balcony was on the twelfth floor of the high-rise block next to his. His flat was on the ninth floor and he had to look up to see her. It was half-past six in the morning. He had been awakened by the sound of an aircraft flying dangerously low overhead, and had got out of bed to look. His sleepy eyes, moved from the blue sky which was empty of cloud, empty of anything but the bright disappearing arrow of the aircraft, and then rested on the hanging figure.
He really thought he must be dreaming, for this sunrise time was the hour for dreams. Then, when he knew he wasn’t, he decided it must be a scene in a film. There were cameramen down there, a whole film unit, and all the correct safety precautions had been taken. Probably the girl wasn’t even a real girl, but a dummy(假人). He opened the window and looked down. The car park, paved courts, grass spaces between the blocks, all were deserted. On the balcony rail one of the dummy’s hands moved, desperately. He had to believe then what was obviously happening. The girl was trying to kill herself. She had lost her courage and now was trying to stay alive. All these thoughts and conclusions of his occupied about thirty seconds. Then he acted. He picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number for the police.
The arrival of the police cars and the rescue of the girl became the focus of talk for the people of the two blocks. Someone found out that it was he who had called the police and he became an unwilling hero. He was a modest, quiet young man, and was in relief when the talk began to die away. Again he was able to enter and leave his flat without being pointed at as a kind of St George and sometimes even congratulated.
About a fortnight after that morning, he was getting ready to go to the theatre, just putting on his overcoat, when the doorbell rang. He didn’t recognize the girl who stood outside. He had never seen her face. She said, “I’m Lydia Simpson. You saved my life. I’ve come to thank you.”What did the man do first after he got up?
| A．He looked down from the window. |
| B．He went to see the noisy aircraft. |
| C．He called the police to save the girl. |
| D．He hurried to check who was outside. |
The moment the man saw the girl hanging there, he felt it was _________.
| A．scaring | B．desperate |
| C．unbelievable | D．dangerous |
We can learn from the passage that __________.
| A．the man disliked to be talked about |
| B．the girl was unwilling to be rescued |
| C．the police arrived quickly on the scene |
| D．the girl was actually an actress in a film |