The green turtle is listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Under the U．S. Endangered Species Act of 1973, the green turtle was listed as threatened except for the breeding populations in Florida and on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where it is listed as endangered.
Green turtles continue to be caught for money by humans, and the destruction and loss of nesting and foraging(觅食)sites is a serious problem. Humans have already caused the decrease of large green turtle populations, including those that once nested in Bermuda and Cayman Islands. The situation of green turtle populations is difficult to determine because of our lack of knowledge about their life cycles. The number of nests in Florida appears to be increasing, but we don’t know whether this is due to an increase in the number of nests or because we have started to monitor(监控)nesting beaches more closely.
The green turtle is the largest hardshelled sea turtle. Adults of this species commonly reach 100 cm in length and 150 kg in mass. The average size of a female nesting in Florida is 101.5 cm straight in length, with an average body mass of 136 kg.
Growth rates of green turtles have not been measured under natural conditions. Green turtles grow slowly.
In the southern Bahamas, green turtles grow from 30 to 75 cm in 17 years, and according to Bjorndal and Bolten, growth rates decrease with increasing length. Growth rates measured in green turtles from Florida and Puerto Rico fall within the range of growth rates measured in the southern Bahamas. Based on growth rate studies of wild green turtles, the researchers Balazs, Frazer and Ehrhart estimate the age of sexual maturity(成熟)can range anywhere from 20 to 50 years.The main idea of the passage is to tell us________.
| A．something about an endangered animal |
| B．how green turtles got extinct |
| C．how heavy a green turtle is |
| D．how long a green turtle can live |
Which of the following is NOT a reason why green turtles are endangered?
| A．Humans catch them to get profit. |
| B．They lose their nests. |
| C．They have fewer places to find food. |
| D．People like to keep them as pets. |
According to the passage, the green turtle________.
| A．can reach 100 cm in length in 17 years |
| B．lives in the sea and grows very slowly |
| C．lives only in Florida and on the Pacific coast of Mexico |
| D．can grow from 30 to 75 cm in 17 years in southern Florida |
Why is it hard for us to know the number of green turtles?
| A．Because it is difficult for us to be close to them. |
| B．Because we have limited knowledge about them. |
| C．Because we haven’t measured their growth rates. |
| D．Because they grow too slowly. |
When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation (住所). I suggested that they should stay at ‘bed and breakfast’ houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.
“We didn’t stay at bed and breakfast houses,” they said, “because we found that most families were away on holiday.”
I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought ‘VACANCIES’ meant ‘holidays’, because the Spanish word for ‘holidays” is ‘vacaciones’. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said ‘VACANCLES’, which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said ‘NO VACANCLES’, because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!
We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word ‘DIVERSION’ means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word ‘DIVERSION’ on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hold.
English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris. when someone offered me some more. coffee, I said ‘Thank you’ in French. I meant that I would like some more, However , to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that ‘Thank you’ in French means ‘No, thank you.’My Spanish friends wanted advice about ______.
| A．learning English | B．finding places to stay in England |
| C．driving their car on English roads | D．going to England by car |
I suggested that they stay at bed and breakfast houses because ______.
| A．they would be able to practise their English |
| B．it would be much cheaper than staying in hotels |
| C．it would be convenient for them to have dinner |
| D．there would be no problem about finding accommodation there |
“NO VACANCIES” in English means ______.
| A．no free rooms | B．free rooms |
| C．not away on holiday | D．holidays |
If you see a road sign that says ‘Diversion’, you will ______.
| A．fall into a hole |
| B．have a lot of fun and enjoy yourself |
| C．find that the road is blocked by crowds of people |
| D．have to take a different road |
When someone offered me more coffee and I said ‘Thank you’ in French,
I ______.
A didn’t really want any more coffee B. wanted them to take the coffee pot away
C. really wanted some more coffee D. hadn’t finished drinking my coffee
It was early morning. Peter Corbett helped Mark Wellman out of his wheelchair and onto the ground. They stood before El Capitan, a huge mass of rock almost three-quarters of a mile high in California’s beautiful Yosemite Valley. It had been Mark’s dream to climb El Capitan for as long as he could remember. But how could a person without the use of his legs hope to try to climb it?
Mark knew he couldn’t finish the climb alone, but his friend Peter, an expert rock climber, would be there to lend a helping hand. He and Mark thought that it would take seven days to reach the top.
Peter climbed about 100 feet up and hammered
a piton(岩钉) into the rock. Fastening one end of a 165-foot rope to the piton, he let one end of the rope fall down. Mark caught the rope and fastened it to his belt with a special instrument. This instrument would allow Mark to move upward, but would prevent him from falling even as much as a single inch. He next reached above his head and fastened a T-shaped bar to the rope, using the same kind of instrument.
Mark took a deep breath, pushed the T-bar up almost as far as his arms could reach, and began the first of the 7, 000 pull-ups needed to reach the top. High above, Peter let out a cheer. “You’re on your way.”
Seven years before, at the age of twenty-one, Mark
had fallen while mountain climbing, injuring his backbone. The fall cost him the use of his legs, but he never lost his love of adventure or his joyful spirit.
For the first four days the two men progressed steadily upward without incident. But on the fifth day an unbearably hot wind began to blow, and as time went by, it became stronger and stronger, causing Mark to sway(摇摆) violently on his rope. But Mark kept on de
terminedly pushing up the T-bar and pulling himself up. In spite of that, he had to admit that he felt a lot better when the wind finally died down and his body touched solid rock again.
It took them one day more than they had expected, but on July 26 at 1:45 in the afternoon, the crowd of people waiting on the top went wild with joy as the two heads appeared. Mark Wellman had shown that if you set your heart and mind on a goal, no
wall is too high, no dream impossible.What had Mark Wellman long desired to do?
| A．To finish one of the most difficult rock climbs in the world. |
| B．To be the first to climb El Capitan. |
| C．To climb the highest mountain in California. |
| D．To help his friend Peter climb El Capitan. |
How did Mark climb the mountain?
| A．He fastened the rope to his wheelchair. |
| B．He hammered in pitons so that he had something to hold on to. |
| C．He held on to the T-bar and Peter pulled him up. |
| D．He pulled himself up using a T-bar and special equipment. |
How did Mark lose the use of his legs?
| A．He lost his footing and fell from the side of a mountain. |
| B．He fell during his first attempt on El Capitan. |
| C．His legs were broken by falling rocks. |
| D．While working out in the gym, he injured his backbone. |
What was the worst problem Mark had during the climb?
| A．He struck against the rock and hurt his arms. |
| B．A strong wind blew him away from the rock. |
| C．He kept falling several inches. |
| D．While swaying in space, he became terrified. |
How did Mark react to difficulties during the climb?
| A．He admitted that he was frightened. |
B．He often worried about his friend’ s condition. |
| C．He was able to remain clam and determined. |
| D．He was joking to cheer himself up. |
The fiddler crab (蟹) is a living clock. It shows the time of day by the colour of its skin, which is dark by day and pale by night. The crab’s changing colour follows a regular twenty—four hour plan that exactly matches the daily rhythm of the sun.
Does the crab actually keep time, or does its skin simply answer to the sun’s rays, changing colour according to the amount of light strikes it? To find out, biologists kept crabs in a dark room for two months. Even without daylight, the crab’s skin colour continued to change exactly on time.
This characteristic probably developed gradually in answer to the daily rising and setting of the sun, to help protect the crab from sunlight and enemies. After millions of years it has become completely regulated (受控制) inside the living body of the crab.
The biologists noticed that once each day th
e colour of the fiddler crab is especially dark, and that each day this happens fifty minutes later than on the day before. Fro
m this they discovered that each crab follows not only the rhythm of the sun but also that of the tides (潮水). The crab’s period of greatest darkening is exactly the time of low tide on the beach where it was caught!The fiddler crab is like a clock because it changes colour ______.
A in a regular 24—hour rhythm B. in answer to the sun’s rays
C.
at low tideD. every fifty minutesThe crab’s changing colour ______.
| A．tells the crab what time it is | B．protects the crab from the sunlight and enemies |
| C．keeps the crab warm | D．is of no real use |
When the fiddler crabs were kept in the dark , they ______.
| A．did not change colour | B．changed colour more quickly |
| C．changed colour more slowly | D．changed colour on the same timetable |
The crab’s colour—changing ability was probably developed ______.
| A．in the process of evolution (进化) | B．over millions of years |
| C．by the work of biologists | D．both A and B |
The best title for this selection would be ______.
| A．The Sun and the Tides | B．Discoveries in Biology |
| C．A scientific Study | D．A Living Clock |
Shu Pulong has helped at least 1000 people bitten (咬) by snakes. 
“It was seeing people with snake bites (伤口) that led me to this career,” he said.
In 1963, after his army service, Shu entered a medical school and later became a doctor of Chinese medicine. As part of his studies he had to work in the mountains. There he often heard of people who had their arms and legs cut off after a snake bite in order to save their lives.
“I was greatly upset by the story of an old farmer I met. It was a very hot afternoon. The old man was pulling grass in his fields when he felt a pain in his left hand. He at once realized he had been bitten by a poisonous snake. In no time he wrapped a cloth tightly around his arm to stop the poison spreading to his heart. Rushing home he shouted ‘Bring me the knife!’ Minutes later the man lost his arm forever.”
“The sad story touched me so much that I decided to devote myself to helping people bitten by snakes,” Shu said.The best headline (标题) for this newspaper article is ______ .
| A．Astonishing Medicine | B．Farmer Loses Arm |
| C．Dangerous Bites | D．Snake Doctor |
The farmer lost his arm because______.
| A．the cloth was wrapped too tightly | B．he cut it off to save his life |
| C．Shu wasn’t there to help him | D．he was alone in the fields |
She decided to devote himself to snake medicine because______.
| A．he wanted to save people’s arms and legs | B．he had studied it at a medical school |
| C．he had seen snakes biting people | D．his army service had finished |
Why did Shu go into the mountains? ______
| A．He wanted to study snake bites . | B．He wanted to help the farmers . |
| C．He was being trained to be a doctor . | D．He was expected to serve in the army . |
Which of the following words can take the place of the word career in the first paragraph(段)? ______
| A．conclusion | B．story | C．incident | D．job |
There have been great changes in the lives of women. During the twentieth century ,there was an unusual shortening of the time of a woman’s life spent in caring for children. A woman marrying at the end of the 19th century would probably have been in her middle twenties, and would be likely to hav
e about eight children, of whom about five lived till they were five years old. By the time the youngest was fifteen, the mother would have been in her early fifties and would expect to live a further twenty years, during which custom, chance and health made it unusual for her to get paid work. Today women marry younger and have fewer children. Usually a woman’s youngest child will be fifteen when she is forty-five and is likely to take paid work until retirement at sixty. Even while she has the care of children, her work is lightened by household appliances(家用电器) and convenience(方便) foods.
This important change in women’s way of life has only recently begun to have its full effect on women’s economic position. Even a few years ago most girls left school at the first opportunity and most of them took a full-time job. However, when they married, they usually left work at once and never returned to it. Today the school-leaving age is sixteen, many girls stay at school after that age, and though women tend to marry younger, more married women stay at work at least until shortly before their first child is born. Very many more afterwards, return to full or part-time work. Such changes have led to a new relationship in marriage, with both husband and wife accepting a greater share of the duties and satisfaction of family life, and with both husband and wife sharing more equally in providing the money and running the home, according to the abilities and interest of each them.Women marrying at the end of the 19th century ________.
| A．would have fewer children than those today. |
| B．would have more children than those today. |
C．lived as hard as those in the 20th century |
| D．lived more comfortably than those in the 20th century |
According to the passage, a woman in the 19th century would likely to have about eight children and _______.
| A．only about three of them could live more than five years old. |
| B．only about three of them could live for five years. |
| C．about eight children lived to be more than five years. |
| D．about eight children lived to be less than five years. |
From the second paragraph, we know _______.
| A．women today are not willing to run their home together with their husbands. |
| B．women today wouldn’t like to do any housework. |
| C．women today will return to work after they have their babies. |
| D．were unlikely to find jobs like the mothers before . |
According to the passage, which of the following is right ?
| A．in the past most women often stay at home after leaving school |
| B．women today like to marry men younger than themselves |
| C．women today are playing important parts in work and family life. |
| D．husbands today needn’t do any work at home. |