Most people think of zoos as safe heavens for animals, where problems such as difficulty finding food and avoiding predators (食肉动物) don’t exist. Therefore, animals in zoos should live to a ripe old age.
But that may not be true for the largest land animals on earth. Scientists have known that elephants in zoos often suffer from poor health. They develop diseases and they are even unable to have babies.
To learn more about how captivity (圈养) affects elephants, a team of international scientists compared the lifespans (寿命) of the zoo-born elephants with the lifespans of thousands of wild elephants. They also compared some Asian elephants living in zoos with some Asian elephants which work in logging camp (伐木场), over almost the same time period.
The team found that elephants born in zoos lived an average of 16.9 years, but elephants that died of natural causes lived an average of 56 years. Asian elephants followed a similar pattern. In zoos, they lived 18.9 years, while those in the logging camp lived 41.7 years.
Scientists don’t yet know why wild elephants seem to live so much better than their zoo-raised counterparts (同类). Georgia Mason, a biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, who led the study, thinks stress and obesity (肥胖) may be to blame. Zoo elephants don’t get the same kind of exercise they would in the wild. Elephants’ social lives are also much different in zoos than in the wild, where they live in large family groups.Most people believe that________.
| A．animals in zoos should live a longer life |
| B．zoos are not good for animals to live in |
| C．zoos are not suitable for large animals |
| D．captivity can affect animals in many ways |
The purpose of the international scientists is_________.
| A．to compare the lifespans of different animals |
| B．to find out how captivity affects elephants |
| C．to learn the lifespans of male and female elephants |
| D．to compare the lifespans of elephants in different places |
Which elephants live the longest according to the study?
| A．Elephants born in zoos. |
| B．Elephants that live in the wild. |
| C．Elephants that work in logging camps. |
| D．Female Asian elephants in logging camps. |
We can infer from the passage that_________.
| A．elephants in zoos suffer less stress than those in the wild |
| B．elephants in zoos live an easy life |
| C．social lives are not important to elephants |
| D．zoo life can be stressful to elephants |
What are the advantages to elephants in the wild according to the passage?
| A．They face fewer problems. | B．They can find food more easily. |
| C．They live in large social groups. | D．They are freer to move. |
As prices and building costs keep rising, the do-it-yourself (DIY) trend (趋势) in the U.S. continues to grow.
“We needed furniture (家具) for our living room,” says John Ross, “And we just didn't have enough money to buy it. So we decide to try making a few tables and chairs.” John got married six months ago, and like many young people these days, they are struggling to make a home at a time when the cost of living is very high. The Rosses took a 2-week course for $280 at a night school. Now they build all their furniture and make repairs around the house.
Jim Hatfield has three boys and his wife died. He has a full-time job at home as well as in a shoe making factory. Last month, he received a car repair bill for $420. “I was deeply upset about it. Now I've finished a car repair course, I should be able to fix the car by myself.”
John and Jim are not unusual people. Most families in the country are doing everything they can to save money so they can fight the high cost of living. If you want to become a “do-it -yourselfer”, you can go to DIY classes. And for those who don't have time to take a course, there are books that tell you how you can do things yourself.We can learn from the text that many newly married people _______.
| A．find it hard to pay for what they need |
| B．have to learn to make their own furniture |
| C．take DIY courses run by the government |
| D．seldom go to a department store to buy things |
John and his wife went to evening classes to learn how to _______.
| A．run a DIY shop |
| B．make it repair things |
| C．save time and money |
| D．improve the quality of life |
When the writer says that Jim has a full-time at home, he means Jim _______.
| A．makes shoes in his home |
| B．does extra work at night |
| C．does his own car and home repairs |
| D．keeps house and looks after his children |
Jim Hatfield decided to become a do-it-yourselfer when _______.
| A．his car repairs cost too much |
| B．the car repair class was not helpful |
| C．he could not possibly do two jobs |
| D．he had to raise the children all by himself |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．The Joy of DIY. |
| B．You Can Do It too! |
| C．Welcome to Our DIY course! |
| D．Ross and Hatfield: Believe in DIY. |
I would like to talk to you about one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I was born and raised there and now I visit it from time to time. My family moved to the city, so I only go back to see friends or to camp and fish.
I grew up in a small town called Antonito Co. It is surrounded by mountains. So camping is a big source of happiness in the valley. There are so many beautiful places to hike.
The town itself is very small. It is said that if you blink when you’re going through it, you’ll miss it. This has some truth in it considering the size of the town. We have one grocery store, a tiny post office, and a tiny bank. There are also a few gas stations, bars, some excellent restaurants, a small hospital and of course several schools. However, for clothing and shoes, you have to drive thirty miles to Alamosa to shop there.
Everyone in the town is nice and we all know each other. The crime rate is zero unless you count some weekend fights that break out because some people drink too much. The classes in school are small, so you get a lot of attention from the teacher.
You’re probably wondering why I don’t live there. Well, I can’t get a job there. A lot of the businesses are family-owned. And they never fire their employees. So the employees work there usually until they retire. Most people have to go to other places to get a job . What is this passage mainly about?
| A．An introduction to the writer’s hometown. |
| B．A travel guide of the writer’s hometown . |
| C．The history of the writer’s hometown . |
| D．The scenery of the writer’s hometown . |
By the underlined part in paragraph 3, the writer wants to show that the town is.
| A．beautiful | B．small | C．exciting | D．faraway |
What can you find in the writer’s hometown ?
a bank b. a post office c. some gas stations and bars d. a clothing store
e. a shoe shop f. some restaurants and a hospital
| A．abce | B．bdef | C．abcf | D．cdef |
What do we know about the classes given at the schools in the writer’s hometown ?
| A．The classes are usually very short . |
| B．Students usually don’t get much attention . |
| C．One teacher has to teach many classes |
| D．Each class has just a small number of students . |
We can learn from the last paragraph that in the writer’s hometown.
| A．not many job opportunities are provided |
| B．employees don’t make much money |
| C．most people live a very hard life |
| D．only the old still live there |
My boss’s daughter was studying in the Philippines. He asked me if my husband and I could take care of her. He thought his daughter would be able to improve her English communication skills in this way.
After days of thinking, we agreed. He then brought her here and left after 3 days. I thought that my boss’s daughter was well-mannered, but that was wrong.
After a month of staying in the Philippines, she started to show her true colors. When my husband asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she answered him in a rude way. From then on, we experienced fights at home. There was a time when we didn’t talk to her for a week as a punishment of not being good to us. What I hated most was that she didn’t care about other people’s feelings. She ate ahead of us when we were still working and didn’t leave anything for us. So we had to separate her food from ours to avoid such a problem.
The worst thing about her was that she shouted at us. I was wondering if she did this to her parents. We told this to her parents, but unfortunately I didn’t think that solved the problem. This situation lasted for almost 8 months. Our patience was tested during that time.
We tried to teach her everything we could to make her a better person, but I guess 8 months may not to be enough. We even tried to understand her and adjust for her, but it didn’t work. I just hope that she learned something from us and from other Filipinos. This passage is mainly about the writer’s experience of.
| A．trying to please her boss |
| B．changing a girl’s bad behavior |
| C．improving her communication skills |
| D．dealing with a teenage girl staying in her house |
Why did the boss want his daughter to stay with the writer ?
| A．Because he was too busy to take care of his daughter |
| B．Because he wanted his daughter to take a holiday there |
| C．Because he wanted his daughter to improve her English in this way |
| D．Because he wanted the writer to teach his daughter good manners . |
What do the examples in paragraph 3 tell us ?
| A．The daughter wasn’t behaving well. |
| B．The writer and her husband were careless. |
| C．The writer and her husband hated children. |
| D．The daughter tried her best to make others happy. |
The underlined word “that” in paragraph 4 refers to.
| A．being patient with her |
| B．her parents punishing her |
| C．asking her parents about her |
| D．telling her parents about her behavior |
After reading the passage , we learn that.
| A．the writer had known the daughter was hard to deal with |
| B．the daughter learnt to behave well in the end |
| C．the writer didn’t enjoy the daughter’s stay |
| D．the daughter hated dealing with others |
When Emily Beardmore first heard that a trip was being planned by the biology class at Windsor High School, she thought about how much fun it would be.
“I thought it would be a really good experience to go with other friends and teachers to another country in an environment other than a vacation environment,” the 17-year-old girl said.
A few months later, Emily got her chance when she and 14 of her classmates, along with biology teacher Tamara Pennington went to Costa Rica for eight days in late May.
“It was not just a tour,” said Pennington, who organized the trip. “You can go any place in the world on just a tour. This one was really working with the sea turtles (海龟) and practicing conservation(保护). It just seemed like the perfect science field trip for kids who think they want to get into science to see what it's really like to be out in the field and enjoy themselves.”
Emily said her time on the turtle program, which was the focus of the trip, was “crazy.” “We were walking on the beach at night and you can’t see anything—just see a big black dot.” She said with a laugh. “I was not expecting the turtles to be that big.” The turtles are leatherback turtles, which are becoming extinct (灭绝) because their eggs are used as food.
“When they would move their legs while laying their eggs they were really hard to control because they were a lot more powerful than you would imagine,” Emily said.
Once the eggs were collected, the students took them back to a hatchery(孵化场) and dug holes to copy the hole the mother turtle had made and then buried the eggs for the 60 days needed to hatch.
“The experience was so cool,” Emily said. “You go to another country to see what their culture is like and learn what their everyday lives are like. It made me really want to help out my mom a lot more than I do, and value what I have.”What did Pennington consider the trip to be?
| A．It was a common tour to a foreign country. |
| B．It was a journey to practice what students learned. |
| C．It was to attract students’ interest in science. |
| D．It was a trip to do practical science activities. |
From what Emily said on her turtle program, we know that.
| A．she was afraid of walking on the beach at night |
| B．she didn’t dare to catch the powerful turtles |
| C．she had thought turtles were small animals |
| D．she got crazy at the sight of turtles at night |
What did Emily learn from her experience?
| A．She learned to be grateful to her teachers. |
| B．She understood the importance of what she had. |
| C．She realized the beauty of foreign culture. |
| D．She knew the importance of everyday life |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Teens Help Fight Turtle Extinction. |
| B．Teens Take a tour to Costa Rica. |
| C．Teens Have a Research on Turtles. |
| D．Teens Learn to be Independent. |
I have been using the Internet since I was five years old, when my dad first sat me down in front of a computer and connected me the World Wide Web.
I’ve always felt like a master of the Internet world. AOL Instant Messaging, MSN, Gmail, Facebook, Myspace -- I’ve got it all under control. I thought there was nothing more to it besides checking my e-mail and wasting my time, until I was introduced to electronic commerce(e-commerce): business on the Internet.
Some online businesses are run from one-room home offices. Others have hundreds of employees (雇员) across the world. Have you ever heard of Amazon.com, Yahoo.com?
My friends often said they got cheap textbooks off Amazon.com, or had a good deal (交易) on Steve Madden shoes that were on sale at SteveMaden.com. Unfortunately for me, I continued my “e-commerceless” Web-surfing, not knowing about all the deals I was missing out on.
That is, of course, until my sister finally sold the idea to me.
“Why are all these packages arriving in the mail for you, Katy?” I asked her one day. Strange envelopes (信封) had been put on our doorstep for weeks now, each one always addressed to my sister; and we all know little sisters should never be getting more mail than their elders!
“Oh, it’s the things I ordered online!” she answered. I watched speechlessly as she opened them. There was no way our parents were letting her spend that much money- online or off!
“How much did all of this coat?”
“Oh, only about $15 in all!” She said excitedly. “Everything on eBay is on sale! It’s a way better than going to the mall.”
I felt as if there had been a store right in my backyard that I had never walked into! That week, I ordered a used Spanish textbook for my summer course online for 10 percent of the publishing price. A few days later, I bought an iPod protector and a book or two via the wonderful eBay.com.From the first two paragraph we can conclude that the author
| A．had no experience using computers |
| B．had no idea of what e-commerce is |
| C．only used the Internet to check e-mail |
| D．thought surfing the Internet was a waste of time |
The writer didn’t find out about e-commerce until
| A．he stopped web-surfing |
| B．he visited a store in his backyard |
| C．his sister explained the packages she got by mail |
| D．his friends told him about the online deals they made |
We can infer from the last paragraph that the author.
| A．never enjoyed shopping that much |
| B．loves the big store in her backyard |
| C．feels she is a true master of the Internet |
| D．has begun to enjoy online shopping |
What’s the purpose of the article?
| A．To tell the readers how he begins online shopping. |
| B．To do business on the Internet. |
| C．To make an online shopping ad. |
| D．To advise people not to do online shopping |