Theyear2009istheYearofOx.Theox-优题课

Washington, D.C. is home to famous buildings, memorials and museums that visitors love. But it is also home to a large and beautiful green space. There are many arboretums in the city. Today, we take you to the United States National Arboretum, an active center for both scientific research and public education.
Many people who come to Washington are astonished when they first visit the National Arboretum. The Arboretum is only a short drive from the center of the city. However, visitors often feel like they are remote from the busy American capital. The Arboretum covers one hundred eighty hectares of green space in the northeast part of Washington. The area is famous for its beautiful flowers, tall trees and other plants. About nine thousand different kinds of plants grow there.
The National Arboretum was established by an act of Congress in 1927. Today, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service operates the Arboretum.
The goal of the Arboretum is to carry out studies and provide education in an effort to improve the environment. The goal includes protecting trees, flowers and other plants and showing them to the public. The National Arboretum is a popular stop for visitors to Washington. It is open every day of the year except December twenty-fifth, the Christmas holiday. Money is not necessary to visit the Arboretum.
As many as six hundred thousand people visit the Arboretum’s grounds each year. Hundreds of thousands of people also visit with the help of computers. They use the Arboretum’s Internet web site to learn about current research programmes and how to care for plants. Director Thomas Elias says Arboretum officials would like to see even more visitors. He says they believe that many people do not know it exists. Part of the problem might result from the fact that the Arboretum is about five kilometers from the closest train station. Many famous places in Washington are a short walk from Metrorail, the local train system.
The Arboretum is easy to reach by automobile or bus, however. About fifteen kilometers of roads have been built on the property. The roads connect to major collections and seasonal flowers. The Arboretum also welcomes people on bicycles. Disabled persons or those who want to walk only short distances may visit four beautiful areas that are close to each other.
The underlined word “arboretums” in Paragraph 1 means______.

A．memorials with trees and other plants around them

B．buildings with trees and other plants around them

C．museums with trees and other plants for scientific and educational purposes

D．places with trees and other plants for scientific and educational purposes

What do we learn about the National Arboretum according to the passage?

A．It lies to the northeast part of Washington, free to visit it.

B．In fact it is a short walk from Metrorail, the local train system.

C．It is surprising and attractive.

D．It is where the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service is.

Why was the National Arboretum established by an act of Congress?

A．To protect and study about nine thousand different kinds of plants there.

B．To make it a popular stop for visitors to Washington.

C．To grow trees for Christmas.

D．To improve the environment.

How many ways are there for visitors to choose if they visit the Arboretum?

A．Five.

B．Six.

C．Seven.

D．Eight.

Which of the following would be the best conclusion of this passage?
A．Washington, D.C. is home to famous buildings, memorials and museums.
B．The National Arboretum in Washington offers science of nature and public education.
C．The National Arboretum in Washington is an interest of green place.
D．The National Arboretum is a place where trees and other plants are grown.

As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000--7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations--UNESCO and National Geographic among them--have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials-including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes--which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded–the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project--Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
Many scholars are making efforts to ______.

A．promote global languages

B．set up language research organizations.

C．search for language communities

D．rescue disappearing languages

What does “that tradition’ in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Telling stories about language users

B．Writing books on language teaching.

C．Having full records of the languages

D．Living with the native speaker.

What is Turin’s book based on?

A．The cultual studies

B．The documents available at Yale.

C．His language research in Bhutan.

D．His personal experience in Nepal.

Which of the following best describe Turin’s work?

A．Write, sell and donate.

B．Collect, protect and reconnect.

C．Record, repair and reward.

D．Design, experiment and report.

Passenger pigeons(旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.
It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons--a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.
Sadly, the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.
By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by Americans’ need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and spring storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.
In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons, but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons________.

A．were the largest bird population in the Us

B．lived mainly in the south of America

C．did great harm to the natural environment

D．were the biggest bird in the world

The underlined word “ undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ ________.

A．escape	B．liberation
C．ruin	D．evolution

What was the main reason for people to kill passenger pigeons?

A．To seek pleasure.	B．To save other birds.
C．To make money.	D．To protect crops.

What can we infer about the law passed in Michigan?

A．It was ignored by the public.

B．It was declared too late.

C．It was unfair.

D．It was strict.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans have gotten a lot “greener” toward the environment. “We didn’t know at that time that there even was an environment, let alone that there was a problem with it,” says Bruce Anderson, president of Earth Day USA.
But what began as nothing important in public affairs has grown into a social movement. Business people, political leaders, university professors, and especially millions of grass-roots Americans are taking part in the movement. “The understanding has increased many, many times,” says Gaylord Nelson, the former governor from Wisconsin, who thought up the first Earth Day.
According to US government reports, emissions (排放)from cars and trucks have dropped from 10.3 million tons a year to 5.5 tons. The number of cities producing CO beyond the standard has been reduced from 40 to 9. Although serious problems still remain and need to be dealt with, the world is a safer and healthier place. A kind of “Green thinking ” has become part of practices.
Great improvement has been achieved. In 1988 there were only 600 recycling programs, today in 1995 there are about 6,600. Advanced lights, motors, and building designs have helped save a lot of energy and therefore prevented pollution.
Twenty–five years ago, there were hardly any education programs for environment. Today, it’s hard to find a public school, university, or law school that does not have such a kind of program. “Until we do that, nothing else will change!” says Bruce Anderson.
According to Anderson, before 1970, Americans had little idea about ________.

A．the social movement

B．environmental problems

C．recycling techniques

D．the importance of Earth Day

Where does the support for environmental protection mainly come from?

A．The business circle	B．Government officials
C．The grass–roots level	D．University professors

What have Americans achieved in environmental protection?
A. They have cut car emissions to the lowest.
B They have reduced pollution through effective measures.
C. They have lowered their CO levels in forty cities.
D. They have settled their environmental problems.
What is especially important for environmental protection according to the last paragraph?

A．Planning	B．Education
C．Green living	D．CO reduction

Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.
During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.
He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.
My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.
That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.
What did Rashid plan to do after his arrival in Sydney?

A．Go shopping	B．Take a vacation
C．Join his family	D．Find a house

What does the underlined word“restored”in the last paragraph mean?

A．Showed	B．Gave back
C．Delivered	D．Sent out

Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Turning Trash to Treasure.	B．Living in a a New Country.
C．From India to Australia.	D．In Search of New Friends.

A．animals for taking goods	B．creatures for pulling plows
C．treasures of the folk culture	D．tools in the farming economy