One day when I was driving on the freeway, I noticed all the way there were large dividing walls, which had been built between it and the road running parallel to it, for noise reduction (减少) and a sense of separation. The purpose was to create a sense of privacy (隐私) for people on the other side.
This got me thinking: How often do we put up mental barriers that keep us distant from others? Lifting the artificial barriers that keep us apart can offer opportunities to express our goodwill and create better relationships. If we can do like this, maybe our life will be a little different.
There is a little post office in a nearby town, and since it is closer to me than the post office in my own town, I go there. One day, with many people jammed into the little building, a man came hurrying in to mail a letter, and the girl at the counter saw he had too little postage on it. She told him he needed 2 more cents. Obviously he was a little at a loss. He had hurried over from his office, and didn’t have any money on him or time to stand in line. He was going to run back to get the needed money and wait in line again, but he hurried to get the letter mailed in the first place.
As we were watching him, one woman volunteered a two-cent stamp, and the whole line became very quiet. It was a beautiful moment. The man hesitated for a little while and asked her if she was sure, and she assured him she was fine with giving him the stamp. He offered to go back to his office to get the two cents, and she told him not to bother.
It was a small thing, but it meant something to both of the people involved, and to the rest of us. We aren’t a yard that needs defining or a freeway that needs barriers. We are human beings who can contribute to each other’s wellbeing by taking time to pay attention and interact. After all, we are all parts of a whole living in society.The purpose of the first paragraph is to __________.
| A．summarize the main idea |
| B．give detailed information |
| C．tell readers the author’s opinion |
| D．introduce the topic |
What happened after the man being told he needed two more cents?
| A．The man went back to his office immediately. |
| B．The man turned to a lady for help. |
| C．A woman offered a stamp to the man. |
| D．The man waited in line patiently. |
What can we learn about the author?
| A．She pays too much attention to privacy. |
| B．She believes people should participate in the world around them. |
| C．She confuses real barriers with false ones. |
| D．She insists all small things always have the greatest meaning. |
Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Artificial Barriers | B．Unnecessary Separation |
| C．An Unforgettable Experience | D．The Kindness of People |
Since the first Earth Day in 1970,American have gotten a lot “greener” toward the environment . “We didn’t know at that time 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 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! ” say Bruce Anderson .According to Anderson , before 1970, Americans had little idea about ___
| A．the social movement |
| B．recycling techniques |
| C．environmental problems |
| D．the importance of Earth Day |
Where does the support for environmental protection mainly come from?
| A．The grass –roots level |
| B．The business circle |
| C．Government officials |
| D．University professors |
What have Americans achieved in environmental protection ?
| A．They have cut car emissions to the lowest |
| B．They have settled their environmental problems |
| C．They have lowered their CO levels in forty cities. |
| D．They have reduced pollution through effective measures . |
What is especially important for environmental protection according to the last paragraph ?
| A．Education |
| B．Planning |
| C．Green living |
| D．CO reduction |
ArrivinginSydneyonhisownfromIndia, my husband ,Rashid, stayedina hotel 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 restoredour faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.
| 1． |
What did Rashid plan to do after his arrival in Sydney?
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| 2． |
The girl's parents got Rashid's phone number from.
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| 3． |
What does the underlined word "restored" in the last paragraph mean?
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| 4． |
Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
|
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 Center, 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, looking and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Tangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayans 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, tap 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, found in libraries and stores around the world, available not just to scholars but to the youngers.
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．rescue the disappearing languages |
| C．search for language communities |
| D．set up languages research organizations. |
What does “that tradition” in Paragraph 3 refer to?
| A．Having first records of the languages |
| B．Writing books on language searching |
| C．Telling stories about language users |
| D．Linking with the native speakers |
What is Turin’s book based on?
| A．The cultural statics in India. |
| B．The documents available at Yale. |
| C．His language research in Britain. |
| D．His personal experience in Nepal. |
Which of the following best describe Turin’s Work?
| A．Write sell and donate. |
| B．Record,repeat and reward. |
| C．Collect,protect and reconnect. |
| D．Design, experiment and report. |
A typical lion tamer (驯兽师) in people's mind is an entertainer holding a whip (鞭子)and a chair .The whip get all of the attention , but it's mostly for show .In reality , it's the chair that does the important work .When a lion tamer holds a chair in front of the lion's face , the lion tries to focus on all four legs of the chair at the same time .With its focus divided , the lion becomes confused and is unsure about what to do next .When faced with so many options , the lion chooses to freeze and wait instead of attacking the man holding the chair.
How often do you find yourself in the same position as the lion ? How often do you have something you want to achiever (e,g. lose weight , start a business , travel more ) -only to end up confused by all of the options in front of you and never make progress ?
This upsets me to no end because while all the experts are busy debating about which option is best , the people who want to improve their lives are left confused by all of the conflicting information .The end result is that we feel like we can't focus or that we're focused on the wrong things , and so we take less action , make less progress , and stay the same when we could be improving .
It doesn't have to be that way .Anytime you find the world waving a chair in your face , remember this :All you need to do is focus on one thing .You just need to get started .Starting before you feel ready is one of the habits of successful people .If you have somewhere you want to go , something you want to accomplish , someone you want to become ….take immediate action .If you're clear about where you want to go , the rest of the world will either help you get there or get out the way .
| 1． |
Why does the lion tamer use a chair?
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| 2． |
In what sense are people similar to a lion facing a chair?
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| 3． |
What is the author's attitude towards the experts mentioned in paragraph 3?
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| 4． |
When the world is "waving a chair in your face", you're advised to.
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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 reach 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 birds 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 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 in September 1, 1914.In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons _______.
| A．were the biggest bird in the world |
| B．lived mainly in the south of America |
| C．did great harm to the natural environment |
| D．Were the largest population in the US |
The underlined word “undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ _______.
| A．escape | B．ruin | C．liberation | 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. |