I have never heard about a “Fashion Week” outside of New York, London or Milan. But then one just happens to turn up in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Actually, I’m ignorant of all those countries in Central Asia, whose names are always ending in “stan.” For decades, even centuries, Central Asia has been out of focus, a blank on the map of empires. Just as the introduction from Turusbek Mamashov, from the Tourism agency of the president of the Kyrgyz Republic, says, “Throughout this Fashion Week project, we need to create a revolution in the minds of our people, preparing the country for the international tourism market. It is an opportunity as well as an investment.” What he says is right. If you just give it a glimpse (一瞥), you’ll find out that the flavor (风情) of the Silk Road is still there.
As part of the route for Silk Road traders and migrating tribes through its epic(史诗的) history, Kyrgyzstan, like other Central Asian countries, is a vast place of desert, grassland and mountain ranges. It is not widely known that Kyrgyzstan is the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai’s birthplace.
Bishkek, the place holding Fashion Week, is the capital and industrial center of independent Kyrgyzstan. It is a relaxed, handsome place with wide streets and large amounts of greenery. Especially in the autumn of November, the yellow leaves falling everywhere make the whole city a legend in fall. The mountains are just at its rear, in that case a unique scene of picturesque beauty is composed by snow-white peaks, lakes and the urban Landscape.
Today, Ala-Too Square is the center of the poetic places worth seeing in Bishkek. The “White House,” the seat of the Kyrgyzstan Government, is just at the west of the square. Behind this is Panfilov Park, a great place to head for a national holiday. The State Museum of Fine Arts is opposite, which is also called the Gapar Aitiev Museum of Applied Arts, featuring Kyrgyz jewelry, rugs and works by local artists.
One of the joys besides the scenery is the openness of the people. Bishkek is a city without a big population but mainly good-natured people from many races, 47 percent are Russian and about a third are Kyrgyz. Most travelers vote Kyrgyzstan as the most appealing, accessible and welcoming of the former Soviet Central Asian republics. It is written by a tourist that Kyrgyzstan is the country Russians most desperately want to keep: hills always covered with grass and wild flowers. Kyrgyz men always ride a horse wearing a photogenic hat. According to the passage, Kyrgyzstan used to be ___________.
| A．an international fashion centre | B．an important part of Silk Road |
| C．the focus of the world | D．a vast desert land in Central Asia |
The Fashion Week in Bishkek is supposed to __________.
| A．start a revolution in Kyrgyzstan | B．attract foreign investment to Kyrgyzstan |
| C．promote tourism in Kyrgyzstan | D．celebrate the independence of Kyrgyzstan |
Which of the statements is NOT ture according to the passage?
| A．Bishkek is a crowded modern city surrounded by mountain ranges. |
| B．Panfilov Park is a popular destination for local people during holidays. |
| C．The majority of the population in Bishkek are Russian and Kyrgyz. |
| D．The famous poet Li Bai is thought to have been born in Kyrgyzstan. |
What is the most important message the author wants to convey in the passage?
| A．Reflections and thoughts on the glorious history of the Silk Road. |
B．Feelings about the ongoin g Fashion Week project in Bishkek. |
| C．The geographic features and imposing history of Kyrgyzstan. |
| D．The natural and cultural characteristics and attractions in Kyrgyzstan. |
Dave Bruno works as an online marketing manager. Several years ago, one weekend Bruno and his family did a major house cleanup and then donated several bags of unneeded items to the local Goodwill store. “After all were done, I looked around and realized that I still had too much stuff”, says Bruno, “It occurred to me that maybe I wanted to lead a simple life but in reality I behaved differently.” That realization prompted the 39-year-old father of three to try an experiment, “The 100Thing Challenge”.
With the goal of breaking free of what he calls a “bad habit of consumerism（消费主义）, Bruno was determined to live for one year with just 100 personal items. He cut down his possessions to 94 items, including a Bible, laptop, guitar, wedding ring, car and clothes. He created some guidelines for the experiment since his wife and daughters did not participate, familyshared and household items did not count as personal items. He also grouped together some basic things such as underwear and socks. Bruno began blogging about his new lifestyle and eventually wrote a book, The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul.
Since completing the experiment, Bruno has continued to live by the motto: reduce, refuse, and rearrange and maintains just 110 personal things. “ Nearly three years of living with a minimal amount of personal possessions, I’m no longer in the habit of consuming for the sake of consumption (消费),” he wrote in his blog last week, “That has freed me up for all sorts of better endeavors (活动) than shopping—like spending time with family and writing a book and planning for business opportunities.”
Bruno’s project has also inspired others to live minimally, many of whom post their own 100 Thing Challenge updates on YouTube. “The reality is that the 100 Thing Challenge is surprisinglyeasy”, says Bruno, “I’m not saying there were no challenges or disappointments. I miss some things, but not that much. Frankly, it’s far easier to live with less stuff than with excessive trash.”What does the underlined sentence mean in Paragraph 1?
| A．Bruno regretted to have an easy life. |
| B．Bruno had a special behavior in reality, |
| C．Bruno and his family led a happy life. |
| D．Bruno would have liked a life with fewer items. |
The things were included in Bruno’s 94 items EXCEPT____________.
| A．socks | B．a Bible | C．cookers | D．a wedding ring |
What is the best title for the passage?
| A．Live with 100 Things |
| B．Defeat 100 Challenges in Life |
| C．Survive by Your Motto |
| D．Consume for Consumption’s Sake |
Love and Friendship
They are both so much related to each other. And both are so dissimilar! What are the differences between friendship and love? Is platonic(柏拉图式的) friendship possible between persons of the opposite sex? _______
What is friendship? Why do we call a person our friend? When do we call someone a very good friend? If we care for a person, if we are always ready to help that person and if we share most of our thoughts with a person, they are our good friends. We can always count upon our good friends in an emergency. We are always sure that our friends will understand why we acted in a certain way. ___ ___ The friendship is so deep and the relationship is so intimate, that most of the things are automatically understood by our friends.
______ In a relationship of deep love, all the sharing that we discussed above is taken for granted. But love transcends(超出) all this. During love, we are attached with a particular person, while in friendship, one may have many friends. A loving relationship makes one so much attached to the other that one gets pained if his/her beloved is hurt! Love also involves a physical element. ____
____ This is a vital difference. Nature gives us love so that the species can go forward. Nature does not give us friendship.
Your heart beats will never increase in anticipation of meeting your friend. ________ You will not feel totally lost, if you don’t meet your friend for a few days. You will not have dreams in your eyes thinking about your friend. But in love, you will do all this and much more. Indeed, there is no comparison between love and friendship.
| A．What about love? |
| B．My answer is “Yes”. |
| C．Let us try and understand. |
| D．Friendship does not have that. |
E.We need not explain anything to our very good friends.
F.You will not lie awake at night thinking about your friend.
G.The physical element may include hand in hand while walking.
For years we have been told that encouraging a child’s self-respect is important to his or her success in life. But child experts are now learning that too much praise can lead to the opposite effect. Praise-aholic kids who expect it at every turn may become teens who seek the same kind of approval from their friends when asked if they want to go in the backseat of the car.
The implication(含义) of saying “You are the prettiest girl in class,” or talking about the goals she scored but not her overall effort, is that you love her only when she looks the best, scores the highest, achieves the most. And this carries over to the classroom.
Social psychologist Carol Dweck, PHD, tested the effects of over-praise on 400 fifth graders while she was at Columbia University. She found that kids praised for “trying hard” did better on tests and were more likely to take on difficult assignments than those praised for being “smart”.
“Praising attributes(品质) or abilities makes a false promise that success will come to you because you have that quality, and it devalues effort, so children are afraid to take on challenges,” says Dweck, now at Stanford University, “They figure they’d better quit while they’re ahead.”The underlined words “Praise-aholic kids” refer to kids who are ______.
| A．tired of being praised | B．worthy of being praised |
| C．very proud of being praised | D．extremely fond of being praised |
The author quoted Dr.Dweck’s words in the last paragraph in order to make the article ______.
| A．better-known | B．better-organized |
| C．more persuasive | D．more interesting |
We can infer from the passage that _______.
| A．praise for efforts should be more encouraged |
| B．praise for results works better than praise for efforts |
| C．praising a child’s achievements benefits his or her success in life |
| D．praising a child’s abilities encourages him or her to take on challenges |
Teachers and parents usually call attention to the pictures when they read storybooks to pre-school children. But a new study suggests that calling attention to the words and letters on the page may lead to better readers.
The two-year study compared children who were read in this way in class with children who were not. Those whose teachers most often discussed the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding. These results were found one year and even two years later.
Shayne Piasta, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, was an author of the study. She says most pre-school teachers would find this method manageable and would need only a small change in the way they teach. They already read story-books in class. The only difference would be increased attention to the printed text. “If you get children to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling.” But she says research suggests that very few parents and teachers do this in a systematic way.
More than 300 children aged four and five were observed in classrooms. They came from poor families and were below average in their language skills. For thirty weeks, the children took part in a program called Project STAR--- Sit Together and Read. The project is based at Ohio State. It tests the short-term and long-term results of reading regularly to pre-school children in their classrooms.
There are different ways that adults can talk to children about print. They can point to a letter and discuss it, and even trace the shape with a finger. They can point out a word and discuss the meaning of the print or how the words tell the story. And they can talk about the organization of the print--- for instance, showing how words are written left to right in English.What do we know about the ways pre-school children are usually taught?
| A．More attention is paid to the pictures ,with words and letters being ignored. |
| B．Preference is given to the shape of letters and the organization of the print. |
| C．The focus of the teaching is on bringing them up to be good readers. |
| D．Equal attention is paid to the texts and the pictures. |
What does Shayne Piasta suggest pre-school teachers should do in class?
| A．Teach children how to draw pictures to get an idea of what they mean. |
| B．Change the way they teach and pay more attention to words and letters. |
| C．Adopt different methods according to the students’ difference in reading skills. |
| D．Read storybooks to children rather than explain the meaning of the pictures. |
Which of the following is TRUE about the study on language skills of pre-school children?
| A．Many teachers want to change their way of teaching pre-school children. |
| B．Attention on the pictures has made the children uninterested in reading. |
| C．Project STAR aims to research into the results of reading books to pre-school children in the classroom. |
| D．Teachers are often prevented from taking different approaches to language teaching. |
Which section of a magazine does the passage probably come from?
| A．Fashion. | B．Economy . | C．Entertainment. | D．Education. |
Online Money Earning
Yes you can earn money online without any investment or without anytime limit. I have many useful easy methods for earning easy money while we all spend our useful time on the Internet by surfing, chatting, downloading and other work. There is no need to stop any other work. We can earn with or without our daily routine. Here I tell you the complete method for online earning.
First Method
Earn money with “Bux. to”. You can earn money through “Bux.to” by clicking on ads on “Bux. to” site. First you need to open an account at “Bux. to”.
“Bux. To” is a new international and FREE English based service that allows advertisers to reach thousands of potential customers by displaying their ads on our “Surf Ads” page. An exact calculated percentage of all advertising income is paid to our members. “Bux. to” makes money through advertising.
How you make money
You view websites in 30 seconds through the “Surf Ads” page. Once the 30 seconds is up, you’ll either get a green tick(对号) sign or a red “x”. The green tick sign means you’ve earned $0.01and the “x” means you have not earned money for the visit. You’ll get red x’s when you have more than one websites from the “Surf Ads” page open. When this happens, you get no credit.
Earnings example
You click 10 ads per day =$0.10
20 referrals(转送) click 10 ads per day =$2.00
Your daily earnings =$2.10
Your weekly earnings =$14.70
Your monthly earnings =$63.00
How to get paid
If you have at least $10.00 accumulated, you can click on your account balance within your states area and it will meet your request. At present, it only makes payments through “AlertPay”. It will soon be using other methods of payment.
AlertPay is the payment processing solution that we use to pay members. Your AlertPay address is the e-mail address you use to register with AlertPay. You can get a free AlertPay account at http:// alertpay. com.
Method 2 will publish soon…What is the author’s purpose of writing this passage?
| A．To tell an interesting story. |
| B．To introduce a surprising way to earn money. |
| C．To solve a puzzling problem. |
| D．To present an exciting research. |
You can earn money by ________.
| A．chatting online | B．advertising some products |
| C．clicking on advertisement | D．choosing green ticks or x’s |
The underlined word “accumulated” can be replaced by “_________”.
| A．wasted | B．spent | C．lost | D．gathered |
What can we know from the passage?
| A．You’ll earn $0.10 if you click 1 ad. |
| B．You’ll get many green ticks if you have many websites open. |
| C．You can get your payments through AlertPay. |
| D．Your AlertPay account is not for free. |