High school dropouts（辍学者）earn an average of $ 9,000 less per year than graduates. Now a new study dispels a common belief why they quit. It’s much more basic than flunking out（不及格）.
Society tends to think of high school dropouts as kids who just can’t cut it. They are lazy，and perhaps not two bright．So researchers were surprised when they asked more than 450 kids who quit school about why they left.
“The vast majority actually had passing grades and they were confident that they could have graduated from high school.” John Bridgeland, the executive researcher said. About 1 million teens leave school each year. Only about half of African-American and Hispanic（美籍西班牙的）students will receive a diploma（证书），and actually all dropouts come to regret their decision. So, if failing grades don’t explain why these kids quit, what does? Again，John Bridgeland："The most dependable finding was that they were bored.” “They found classes uninteresting; they weren’t inspired or motivated. They didn’t see any direct connection between what they were learning in the classroom to their own lives, or to their career aspirations.”
The study found that most teens who do drop out wait until they turn sixteen, which happens to be the age at which most states allow students to quit. In the US，only one state，New Mexico，has a law requiring teenagers to stay in high school until they graduate. Only four states: California, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, plus the District of Columbia, require school attendance until age 18, no exceptions, another researcher，says raising the compulsory attendance age may be one way to keep more kids in school．
“As these dropouts look back，they realize they’ve made a mistake. And anything that sort of gives these people an extra push to stick it out and it through to the end, is probably helpful measure.”
New Hampshire may be the next state to raise its school attendance age to 18. But critics say that forcing the students unwilling to continue their studies to stay in school misses the point－the need for reform. It's been called for to reinvent high school education to make it more challenging and relevant, and to ensure that kids who do stick it out receive a diploma that actually means something.
68. Most high school students drop out of school because .
| A．they have failing grades |
| B．they take no interest in classes |
| C．they are discriminated against |
| D．they are lazy and not intelligent |
69. The underlined words “stick it out” probably means“ ”．
| A．complete schooling | B．solve the problem |
| C．love having classes | D．believe in themselves |
70. In the last paragraph, the writer is trying to .
| A．analyze the reason why students quit school |
| B．suggest raising the compulsory attendance age |
| C．raise awareness of reforming high school education |
| D．wish to make laws to guarantee no education |
71. From the passage，we can infer the following EXCEPT that ．
| A．the grades of most dropouts at school were acceptable |
| B．about 500, 000 high school dropouts are black and Spanish |
| C．classes don't appeal to dropouts |
| D．on average dropouts cannot get good jobs |
It is difficult for parents of nearly every family to teach their children to be responsible for housework, but with one of the following suggestions, you really can get your children to help at home.
If you give your children the impression that they_____________________, then they will regard themselves as unfit or unable persons. Unless children believe they can succeed, they will never become totally independent （独立）.
My daughter Carla’s fifth-grade teacher made every child in her class feel special. When students received less than a perfect test score, she would point out what they had mastered and declared firmly they could learn what they had missed.
You can use the same technique when you evaluate （评价）your child’s work at home. Don’t always scold and give lots of praise instead. Talk about what he has done right, not about what he hasn’t done. If your child completes a difficult task, reward him with a Sunday trip or a ball game with Dad.
Learning is a process （过程）of trying and failing and trying and succeeding. If you teach your children not to fear a mistake of failure, they will learn faster and achieve success at last.
1.What’s the best title of the passage?
2.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
The process of learning is full of trying and failing ,and after trying again and again ,one will succeed.
3.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
4.What do you think parents should do to educate their children well according to the passage?(within 30 words)
5.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
Eating disorder is ve ry common now. "When I first wrote about this. the problem was pretty much hidden … I didn’t expect it to get as bad as it is." Susie Orbach, an international authority(权威)on eating disorders, said.
Orbach must at times think the anti-diet message of her book “fat is a Feminist Issue(女权主义问题)”has been lost since it was written more than 20 years ago.
Girls, boys, old people --even the famously well-rounded female population of Fiji are falling victims(牺牲品) to fat fear.
"If anything, the situation has got much, much worse. We now have kids as young as eight and women in old people’s homes worried about the way they look." Orbach said.
Even though it has been proved that repeated dieting results in a little more than regaining most of the lost weight, constant dieting has become a way of life for many women. 48 per cent of British women aged 25 to 35 were on some kind of diet and 20 per cent of young women dieted all or most of time. Some of them said they would pop a pill to give them their beautiful shape, even if it meant risking
their health. Worldwide, 70 million people have an eating disorder. Most are women, but men are increasingly affected, too.
More than half the women and two thirds of the men in Britain weigh too much. while in the United States more than one quarter of adults and about one in five children are overweight. The idea that female beauty is a very thin body could be changed, if clothing factories and magazines showed images(形象) of women of all shapes instead of selecting skeletal-like models and stick-thin actress.
But that is easier said than done.
To get the message across, Orbach is also considering talking to pop stars such as Victoria Beckham and Geri Halliwell, both of whom have admitted__________________.
1.What’s the best title of the passage?
2.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
Lots of women has chosen constant dieting as part of thir life despite the fact that constant dietting leads to the lost weight being regained.
3.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
4.Are you in favor of dieting ?And why?(within 30 words)
5.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
Americans think that travel is good for you, some even think it can help one of the country's worst problems-crime (犯罪).
Crime worries a lot of people. Every year, the number of crimes goes up and up. And many criminals (罪犯)are young. They often come from sad homes, with only one parent or no parents at all.
There are many young criminals in prison. But prison doesn't change them. Six or seven in ten will go back to crime when they come out of prison.
One man, Bob Burton, thought of a new idea. In the old days, young men had to live a difficult life on the road. They learned to be strong and brave, and to help theft friends ill time of danger. This helped them to grow into men. So Bob Burton started" Vision Quest".
He takes young criminals on a long, long journey with horses and wagons(马车), 3,000 miles through seven states. They are on the road for more than a year.
The young people on Vision Quest all have bad problems. Most of them have already spent time in prison. This is their last chance.
It's hard work on the road. The work starts before the sun comes up. The boys and girls have to feed the horses. Some of them have never loved anyone before. But they can love their horse. That love can help them to a new life.
Not all the young people on Vision Quest will leave crime behind them. Three or four in ten will one day_____________. Bob Burton is right. Travel can be good for you. Even today. Americans still say, " Go west, young man."
1.What’s the main idea of the passage?
2.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
The criminals are very unfortunate ,because they have single parent or they are orphans
3.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
4.What do you think of the meaning of the travel to the young men in the old days according to the passage?(within 30 words)
5.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
Healthy knees aren't the main consideration in choosing high heels, but new research says chunky heels are just __________as spindly stilettos (细高跟鞋).
"It takes a long time to feel the effects of knee osteoarthritis (骨关节炎) — and once you do, it is too ]ate," said Dr. Casey Kerrigan, leading researcher of the study and associate professor at Harvard Medical School's department of physical medicine.
"I compare it to smoking — one cigarette is not painful, but over a lifetime it is. Wide-heeled shoes feel comfortable, so women wear them all day long, "Kerrigan said. "They are better for your feet than stiletto heels, but just as had for your knees."
The idea that high heels are bad for your health isn't new — scientists have warned women for years that they contribute to problems ranging from corns to hammer toes, tendonitis, knee pain, sprained (扭伤) ankles and back problems.
But in 1998,Kerdgan and a team of Harvard researchers were the first to link high heels and knee osteoarthritis, a painful joint disease that destroys cartilage (软骨) surrounding the knee.
The first study looked only at stiletto heels, and Kerrigan said she wanted to study the chunky high-heeled shoes she noticed many women wearing.
"This study confirms what we all intuitively (直觉地) know that high-heeled shoes of any kind are not good for our health," said Dr. Glenn Pfeifer, a San Francisco doctor and member of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons who was not connected to the study.
1.What’s the main idea of the passage?
2.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
In my opinion ,it is similar to smoking ,for smoking one cigarette does little harm but if you smoke all your life,it’ll be very painful.
3.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
4.What do you think of wearing the chunky heels according to the passage?(within 30 words)
5.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
Every year 2.2 million tons of oil are spilled ( 散落，溅出 ) into the ocean. Actually, this only amounts to a small percentage of the total 1.6 billion tons of oil shipped around the world each year.However, this spilled oil has terrible effects on ocean life, including the coastlines where the off washes up onto shore. Some of the largest spills in history were caused by oil tankers running into each other or by an oil tanker sailing into shallow water and hitting the bottom of the ocean.
After these spills, officials try to discover who or what was at fault to help prevent similar accidents in the future.
One of the worst oil spills in history occurred along the Alaskan coastline in 1989. In this accident, 42,000 tons of oil spilled from a tanker which resulted in terrible damage to this sensitive natural area. In this spill, the tanker's captain, who was tired from overwork and drinking alcohol, had gone to___________. He gave control of the ship to the third mate. The third mate was unfamiliar with the path the ship took, and he ran the ship onto Blighe Reef. Blighe Reef is a natural underwater rock wall near the Alaskan coast. Damaged by the reef, the ship leaked oil out into the ocean. More than 1,600 kilometers of coastline were affected by the oil spill. Some scientists who studied nature in the area guessed that 580,000 birds and 5,500 otters died when the oil from the spill covered their skin. As well, smaller shellfish and other sea creatures were later eaten by seals, whales, and other animals. The most oil ever spilled was actually dumped on purpose as an act of ecological warfare. The term ecological warfare means to fight by doing harm to nature in the area under attack. In 1990, Iraq sent soldiers into Kuwait and set off the Persian Gulf War. As part of the Iraq war plan,900,000 tons of oil were let out into the Persian Gulf Way Iraq. This oil covered 1,500 square kilometers of water in the Persian Gulf. The oil also damaged 650 kilometers of the coastline of both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In some places, oil floating on the water was measured to be 43 centimeters thick. Water birds, water plants, and baby fish were all seriously affected by the oil. The long-term effects of this act on the food chain in the area are bound to cause problems tar into the future.
71.What’s the best title of the passage?
_________________________________________________________________________
72.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?
Officials make efforts to do research into the oil spill accidents and don’t want to see the similar things happen again in the future
___________________________________________________________________________
73.Please fill in the blank in the passage with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence.(within ten words)
____________________________________________________________________________
74.What do you think of the oil spill accident happening in 1990 in the Persian Gulf ?(within 30 words)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
75.Translate the underlined sentence into Chinese.
___________________________________________________________________________