Because of the change in the American public school system over the last several years, now many parents choose to home-school their children. There are many reasons behind this. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
For some parents, they have religious (宗教的) reasons for home-schooling. The public school system does not have religious teachings, so these parents want to put religion into the children’s daily school activities. This might include teaching religion-based courses rather than coursework that is taught in public schools.
For some parents, they do not feel that their local school system offers their children the best learning opportunities. So they want to take matters into their own hands. This may be because the local school has low educational standards (标准) or for some other reason the parents think it necessary to take their children out of the system. Sometimes the parents just feel the children will get a better education at home.
Some parents may not be rich enough to send their children to a private school, so the next best thing in their eyes is home-schooling. Thus they can teach their children what they like.
One should remember that the laws about home-schooling vary from state to state. In some states, the parents are required to hand in monthly attendance records (出席记录) to their local school system. What’s more, most states require state testing at certain periods such as the CRCT.The writer wrote this passage mainly to _______.
| A．advise parents to home-school their children |
| B．explain why some parents choose to home-school their children |
| C．tell us the advantages and disadvantages of home-schooling |
| D．praise home-schooling and private schools |
Paragraph 3 tells us that some parents choose home-schooling because ______.
| A．school teachers are not strict with their children |
| B．their children don’t do well in their studies at school |
| C．their children don’t like going to school |
| D．they are not satisfied with the school education |
What does the underlined word “vary” in the last paragraph mean?
| A．Increase | B．Change | C．Spread | D．Keep |
How many reasons for home-schooling are mentioned in the passage?
| A．2 | B．4 | C．3 | D．5 |
Continuing from the previous post 6 reasons to improve your body language, here is just a few of many pointers on how to improve your body language. Improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood.
There is no specific advice on how to use your body language. What you do might be interpreted in several ways, depending on the setting and who you are talking to. You’ll probably want to use your body language differently when talking to your boss compared to when you talk to a girl/guy you’re interested in. These are some common interpretations（解释，诠释） of body language and often more effective ways to communicate with your body.
First, to change your body language you must be aware of your body language. Notice how you sit, how you stand, how you use you hands and legs, what you do while talking to someone.
You might want to practice in front of a mirror. Yeah, it might seem silly but no one is watching you. This will give you good feedback on how you look to other people and give you an opportunity to practise a bit before going out into the world.
Another tip is to close your eyes and visualize how you would stand and sit to feel confident, open and relaxed or whatever you want to communicate. See yourself move like that version of yourself. Then try it out.You can also take bits and pieces you like from different people. Try using what you can learn from them. According to the passage, the improved body language can ______.
make people charming
make people encouraged
make people disappointed
make people interested From paragraph 2, we can learn that ______ will depend on how to use your body language.
some specific advice on how to use your body language
the backgrounds and the person who you are communicating with
the way a person communicate with other people
the mood of the person who you are communicating withIf a person wants to change his body language when he is talking, he must ______.
pay attention to others’ postures
pay attention to his own hands and legs
pay attention to his own body language
pay attention to his own language When a person practise his body language, he can ______ .
improve his body language in public
treat others body language well
make himself appear silly and funny
make himself become confidentMaybe a person can’t behave well in public until he ______ .
imitate different famous peoples ’body language
imitate others’ body language without any change
close his eyes to imagine his body language
close his eyes to imagine and practise his body language
The marine environment is fascinating to study and work in due to its beauty, richness, and complexity. It covers three quarters of the surface of the Earth, yet we know more detail about the surface of Mars.
In the past, it was seen as both an inexhaustible resource and a bottomless sink for our wastes. Yet the increasing pressures of overpopulation, pollution and the threat to our natural environment mean that there is an increasing need for scientists who can understand how it all works, how it affects us, and how we are affecting it from global warming through to the smallest plankton.
From local issues to global concerns, we now know that the marine environment is inextricably linked to our lives, and to our future survival. It is an area where much remains to be discovered, and where only a multidisciplinary approach can cover the breadth of issues to be confronted. This is the approach taken on our Marine Environmental Science degree course.
This course takes a multi-disciplinary approach to explore and understand the marine environment. After an initial grounding in basic science, optional choices are available in specialist topics such as marine ecosystems and pollution, coastal navigation and oceanography, among others.
Our new harbor side marine laboratory is used for some of the specialist lectures, laboratory and project work, while a week's residential field course in the Isle of Man provides training to prepare for the research project conducted in your final year. There is an optional trip to Belize in the final year to study tropical marine environments. From the passage, we can infer that ______.
| A．people waste a lot of resource |
| B．marine environment covers 3/4 of the surface of Mars |
| C．marine environment is beautiful for its sufficient resources |
| D．the Earth is similar to Mars |
The present environment of the Earth forces the experts and scholars to study ______.
| A．the relationship between people’s actions and natural environment |
| B．the relationship between people’s actions and pollution |
| C．the relationship between people’s actions and overpopulation |
| D．the relationship between people’s actions and plankton |
According to the passage, a multi-disciplinary approach is effective because _______.
| A．we can choose some issues as optionally as we can |
| B．we have practiced the approach for a long time |
| C．the approach is linked to our future survival |
| D．the approach covers a lot of problems we will meet |
We can divide the lectures of the course into ______ parts.
| A．1 | B．2 | C．3 | D．4 |
If a student choose marine Environmental Science degree course, he must ______.
A. make lectures about the issues to be confronted
B. provide training to get ready to do research project
C. take several days residential field in the Isle
travel to Belize to study tropical marine environments
Answers:
Student Services
Students' Union
Every University has a Students' Union. If students are the lifeblood of a university, the Union is surely its beating heart.
For students, by students
A Students’ Union is run by students and acts independently. At the end of each academic year, it will find six students to hold a sabbatical（带有休假的） position managing the Union for the coming year. That the six successful sabbatical officers have only recently experienced issues affecting students ensures that your needs are very well understood.
Letting your hair down
Although the University is spread across a fairly wide area, the Union is centrally located and is only a short walk from any of the main buildings. This makes it very easy to catch up with friends who might be on a different course.
At night, the place really comes alive – we have three different bars to suit every occasion. The venues are student-only so you can be sure of meeting people with a similar outlook and we throw in a transport service to make sure you get home safely.
The Union also organizes various formal balls throughout the year, with the highlight being the end-of-year ball.
Supporting you
Beyond having fun, we also make sure some of the more serious issues are effectively dealt with. If you have a problem with your course, another sabbatical officer is trained to help you. Being independent from the University means we can represent and support you to the best of our ability, and once you reach university you may find that you become aware of more national or political issues. From the second paragraph of the passage, we can infer that ______.
| A．a Students’ Union is operated by the university |
| B．a Students’ Union is not operated by the university |
| C．a Students’ Union is operated is working for the university |
| D．a Students’ Union is affected by the university |
The person who takes up a certain post of the Students’ Union ______.
| A．learns what the students need |
| B．is very happy and easy |
| C．can affect the life of any student |
| D．has understood everything of the University |
According to the third paragraph, we can learn that ______.
| A．a Students’ Union is far away from the university |
| B．a Students’ Union is near to the home |
| C．a Students’ Union is central part of the university |
| D．a Students’ Union has different courses for all the students |
From the passage, we can learn that ______ is the most wonderful program of every year.
| A．making friends |
| B．dancing in a bar |
| C．the match of the end-year ball |
| D．electing the officers |
After reading the last two parts, we can infer that _______.
| A．the Students’ Union can help a student who has trouble in the study |
| B．the Students’ Union can help a student who is being trained |
| C．the Students’ Union can cultivate the ability of a student to be suitable for political position |
| D．the Students’ Union can support a student to run the University |
It is hardly surprising that clothing manufacturers （生产商）follow certain uniform standards for various features（特征）of clothes. What seems strange, however, is that the standard adopted for women is the opposite of the one for men. Take a look at the way your clothes button. Men’s clothes tend to button from the right, and women’s from the left. Considering most of the world’s population---men and women---are right-handed, the men’s standard would appear to make more sense for women. So why do women’s clothes button from the left?
History really seems to matter here. Button first appeared only on the clothes of the rich in the 17th century, when rich women were dressed by servants. For the mostly right-handed servants, having women’s shirts button from the left would be easier. On the other hand, having men’s shirts button from the right made sense, too. Most men dressed themselves, and a sword drawn from the left with the right hand would be less likely to get caught in the shirt.
Today women are seldom dressed by servants, but buttoning from the left is still the standard for them. Is it interesting? Actually, a standard, once set, resists change. At a time when all women’s shirts buttoned from the left, it would have been risky for any single manufacture to offer women’s shirts that buttoned the right. After all, women had grown so used to shirts which buttoned from the left and would have to develop new habits and skills to switch. It would be weird for them to button from the right, since anyone who noticed that would believe they were wearing men’s shirts.What is surprising about the standard of the clothing industry?
| A．It has been followed by the industry for over 400 years. |
| B．It is different for men’s clothing and women’s. |
| C．It works better with men than with women. |
| D．It fails to consider right-handed people. |
What do we know about the rich men in the 17th century?
| A．They tended to wear clothes without buttons. |
| B．They were interested in the historical matters. |
| C．They were mostly dressed by servants. |
| D．They drew their swords from the left. |
Women’s clothes still button from the left today because .
| A．adopting men’s style is improper for women |
| B．manufacturers should follow standards |
| C．modern women dress themselves |
| D．customs are hard to change |
The passage is mainly developed by .
| A．analyzing cause |
| B．making comparisons |
| C．examining differences |
| D．following the time order |
Imagine, one day, getting out of bed in Beijing and being at your office in Shanghai in only a couple of hours, and then, after a full day of work, going back home to Beijing and having dinner there．
Sounds unusual, doesn't it? But it's not that unrealistic, with the development of China’s high-speed railway system. And that’s not all. China has an even greater high-speed railway plan to connect the country with Southeast Asia, and eventually Eastern Europe．
China is negotiating(谈判) to extend its own high-speed railway network to up to 17 countries in 1 0 to 15 years, eventually reaching London and Singapore．
China has proposed three such projects. The first would possibly connect Kunming with Singapore via Vietnam and Malaysia. Another could start in Urumqi and go through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and possibly to Germany. The third would start in the northeast and go north through Russia and then into Western Europe．
If China’s plan for the high-speed railway goes forward, people could zip over from London to Beijing in under two days．The new system would still follow China’s high-speed railway standard. And the trains would be able to go 346 kilometers an hour, almost as fast as some airplanes．
China’s bullet train(高速列车), the one connecting Wuhan to Guangzhou, already has the World’s fastest average speed. It covers 1,069 kilometers in about three hours．
Of course, there are some technical challenges to overcome. There are so many issues that need to be settled, such as safety, rail gauge(轨距), maintenance(保养) of railway tracks. So, it’s important to pay attention to every detail. But the key issue is really money. China is already spending hundreds of billions of yuan on domestic railway expansion．
China prefers that the other countries pay in natural resources rather than with capital（资本的）investment. Resources from those countries could stream into China to sustain development．
It’ll be a win-win project. For other countries, the railway network will definitely create more opportunities for business, tourism and so on, not to mention the better communication among those countries．
For China，such a project would not only connect it with the rest of Asia and bring some much-needed resources, but would also help develop China’s far west．We foresee that in the coming decades, millions of people will migrate to the western regions，where the land is empty and resources unused. With high-speed trains, people will set up factories and business centers in the west once and for all. And they’ll trade with Central Asian and Eastern European countries． China’s new high-speed railway plan will be a win-win project because．
| A．China will get much-needed resources and develop its western regions |
| B．China and the countries involved will benefit from the project in various ways |
| C．China will develop its railway system and communication with other countries |
| D．the foreign countries involved will develop their railway transportation, business and tourism |
According to the passage，the greatest challenge to the new high-speed railway plan is．
| A．technical issues | B．safety of the system |
| C．financial problems | D．maintenance of railway tracks |
Which of the following words best describes the author’s attitude
towards China’s high-speed railway plan?
| A．Critical． | B．Reserved． | C．Doubtful | D．Positive． |
Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?
| A．New Railway Standards | B．Big Railway Dreams |
| C．High-speed Bullet Trains | D．International Railway Network |