An eighteen-year-old high school student from Utah won the top prize in the Intel Science Talent Search in the United States. The winner received a computer and a scholarship for a college education.
More than 1,500students from across the country entered projects in the competition this year. Their research included chemistry, medicine, physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science-almost every area of science.
Forty students were invited to Washington, D.C. for the final judging. A group of scientists judged them on their research abilities, critical thinking skills and creativity. The judges also questioned the students about scientific problems before deciding on the winners.
The top winner received 100,000 dollars for college. Shannon Babb of American Fork High School studied the water quality of tile Spanish Fork River in Utah for six years. She found that people have a harmful effect on the river through human activity, including agriculture. And she suggested ways to improve the water quality in the future. These include educating the public not to put household chemicals down the drains（下水道）, which lead to the river eventually.
Seventeen-year-old Yi Sun of the Hanker School in San Jose, California, earned the second place. He won a 75,000-dollar scholarship for new discoveries about a mathematical theory known as random walks. His work could help computer scientists and chemists. Yi Sun was born in China.
The third-place winner was also seventeen and born in China. Yuan “Chelsea” Zhang of Montgomery Blair High School in Rockville, Maryland, won a 50,000-dollar scholarship. She researched the molecular genetics（分子遗传学）of heart disease. Her findings could aid the development of new medicines.
The Intel Science Talent Search is the oldest science competition for high school students in the United States. It is 65 years old this year. Past winners have gone on to receive six Nobel prizes and other top honors in science and math.What do we know about the talent search project?
| A．Most of its winners have received Nobel prizes. |
| B．The project includes researches in every area of science. |
| C．Only a small part of the students can attend the final judging. |
| D．Most of the winners come from Asian countries. |
According to the text, .
| A．water quality in Utah will be better than that in the other states |
| B．the river was polluted only by those living near it |
| C．Shannon Babb suggested more than one way to improve the water quality |
| D．household chemicals should be kept in the drains forever |
Which of the following about the girl from Maryland is NOT true?
| A．The scholarship she received was half as many as Shannon Babb. |
| B．Her discovery is of great help to Chinese medicine. |
| C．Her research will contribute to the cure of heart disease. |
| D．She and the second-place winner Yi Sun have something in common. |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．Three winners' contributions to science and math. |
| B．Three Chinese students won the Science Talent Search. |
| C．Great rewards were given to winners in the competition. |
| D．Winners of the Intel Science Talent Search in the US. |
Where are you most likely to find this text?
| A．In a newspaper. | B．In a handbook. | C．In a textbook. | D．In a medical magazine. |
Today, we are talking about money. I can share a bit about my history with money and my new view when it comes to using green paper.
I made a web page with links to posts about our financial journey where you can look for more details of where we’ve been and how we got where we are now. It was a big part of my story in the past and was a huge part of our downsizing journey. We got out of debt and stayed out of debt.
So I feel eager to share the benefits of being on this side. It takes planning and more careful thought whenever a dollar is spent now than it did when I had a wallet full of credit cards. I now like to think all of my dollars having a job. So many of us work for money and don’t consider that money should work for us, too. Make your dollars do the job of helping you live the life you want.
Each time money is spent or saved, it should be going toward something that you purposefully want for your life. Last week I was out and I spent $20 on food in 3 days. It made me angry because afterward I thought about eating is not at all what for my life.
On the other hand, there are times I spend $20 while out with my family and it doesn’t bother me one bit. An afternoon out with my kids during which we stop for ice cream, and do something fun together has a completely different feel to it.
In the end, I want the dollars I spend to have purpose like I can enjoy life while still planning and saving for the future.What do the underlined words “green paper” in Paragraph I refer to ______.
| A．money | B．work | C．newspaper | D．book |
You can learn about the writer’s history with money ______.
| A．by making a web page |
| B．by reading posts about their financial journey |
| C．by going on a financial journey |
| D．by writing to him |
In the writer’s opinion, ________.
| A．more credit cards should be used in our daily life |
| B．we should work hard to make more money |
| C．money should help us live better |
| D．saving money is very easy |
Why did the writer feel happy with the money spent with his family?
| A．Because the money is spent on food. |
| B．Because the money is spent in doing something fun. |
| C．Because eating is what he wanted for his life. |
| D．Because the money went toward something that he wanted for his life. |
People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behavior are formed. It is not easy to explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another is competitive.
Social scientists are of course extremely interested in these types of questions. They want to explain why we possess certain characteristics and exhibit certain behavior. There are no clear answers yet, but two distinct schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might expect, the two approaches are very different from each other, and there is a great deal of debate between proponents of each theory. The controversy is often conveniently referred to as “nature and nurture”．
Those who support the “nature” side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behavior patterns are largely determined by biological factors. That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behavior is central to this theory. Taken to an extreme，this theory states that our behavior is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our instincts(本能)．
Proponents of the “nurture” theory, or, as they are often called, behaviorists, claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behavior is almost completely shaped by their surroundings. The behaviorists' view of the human being is quite mechanistic. They state that, like machines, humans respond to environmental stimuli (刺激) as the basis of their behavior.
Socially and politically, the consequences of these two theories are far-reaching. In the US，for example, blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some “nature” proponents to conclude that blacks are genetically lower in status than whites. Behaviorists, on the contrary, say that the differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often robbed of many of the educational and other environmental advantages that whites enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not develop the same responses that whites do.
Neither of these theories can yet fully explain human behavior. In fact, it is quite likely that the key to our behavior lies somewhere between these two extremes and that the controversy will continue for a long time is certain.This passage is mainly concerned with ________.
| A．relation between personality and behavior |
| B．relation between behavior and environment |
| C．different accounts of patterns of human behavior |
| D．different theories of the formation of human behavior |
The underlined word “proponents” in Paragraph 2 means ________.
| A．creators | B．advisors | C．advocates | D．judges |
In Paragraph 5, the author mainly writes about ________.
| A．the considerable influence of the two theories |
| B．differences between the blacks and whites |
| C．racial discrimination in the United States |
| D．different responds to intelligence tests |
What's the author's purpose in writing the passage?
| A．To call our attention to the changes of human behavior. |
| B．To urge scientists to do more research in social science. |
| C．To give us a detailed explanation of human behavior. |
| D．To present an argument in the field of social science. |
The English test will be removed from China’s college entrance exam by 2020, according to details of exam and admission reform revealed by the Ministry of Education. The national college exam, known as the “Gaokao” has been used to evaluate Chinese students for three decades. The Ministry of Education has worked out a plan for reforming exams and enrollment. The Ministry will solicit(征求) public opinions before its release. Instead, tests will be held several times a year to allow students to choose when and how often they sit the exam so as to ease study pressure and change China’s once-in-a-lifetime exam system.
The plan and suggestion for its implementation(实施) will be announced in the first half of next year. It will be piloted in selected provinces and cities and promoted nationwide from 2017. A new exam and admission system will be established by 2020, according to the education ministry.
The decision has aroused a heated discussion among Shanghai educators and parents who doubted the reform would reduce the burden of learning English or if the substitute test could reflect a student’s English skills and help students learn English better.
“The reform shows China is learning from the West to give students more test-taking chances. But more chances might become more of a burden since Chinese students are likely to repeat the test until they get the highest score,” said Cai Jigang, a professor at Fudan University’s College of Foreign Languages and Literature and chairman of the Shanghai Advisory Committee for College English Teaching at Tertiary level.
Yu Lizhong, chancellor of New York University Shanghai, where classes are in English and students are required to have a high standard of English, said the most important aspect of the reform lay in what to test and how to test.
“As far as I see, the reform doesn’t mean English is no longer important for Chinese students after it will be excluded from the college entrance exam,” Yu said. “In a way, English is even more important than before since the test would only serve as reference, while every college and university, even every major, can have different requirements of a student’s English skills under a diverse evaluation system.”
Yu said some students will have their study pressure reduced if the major they choose doesn’t need excellent English while others still need to study hard if they want to be among the best students.
The education ministry said the reform would not affect students attending the college entrance exam over the next three years.What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．English will become less and less important in the stage of compulsory education. |
| B．It has been 30 years since English became one subject of national college entrance exam. |
| C．China’s once-in-a-lifetime exam system is unacceptable at all. |
| D．The system that tests are held several times does more good than once-in-a-lifetime exam system. |
According to the passage, Shanghai educators and parents argue that________.
| A．the new exam and admission system will make no difference. |
| B．English shouldn’t be removed from China’s college entrance exam. |
| C．the reform may accomplish the very opposite. |
| D．Western educational system does not apply to China. |
What does the passage try to express in the underlined sentence?
| A．Students needn’t lay a good foundation during the period of high school. |
| B．Whether students should study English hard may depend on their major. |
| C．Students can constantly struggle for perfection only in their major. |
| D．English must be close to full mark. |
What’s the purpose of the passage?
| A．To advise students not to devote themselves to English. |
| B．To call on Education Department to remove English from “Gaokao”. |
| C．To support the act of Ministry of Education |
| D．To encourage students to do as they have planned. |
Using too much water or throwing rubbish into our rivers are clear ways that humans can put our water supply in danger, but we also affect our water supply in less obvious ways. You may wonder how paving(铺砌) a road can lead to less useable fresh water. A major part of the water we use every day is groundwater. Groundwater does not come from lakes or rivers.It comes from underground. The more roads and parking lots we pave, the less water can flow into the ground to become groundwater.
Human activity is not responsible for all water shortages. Drier climates are of course more likely to have droughts than areas with more rainfall，but in any case, good management can help to make sure there is enough water to meet our basic needs.
Thinking about the way we use water every day can make a big difference, too. In the United States, a family of four can use 1.5 tons of water a day! This shows how much we depend on water to live，but there's a lot we can do to lower the number.
You can take steps to save water in your home.To start with, use the same glass for your drinking water all day. Wash it only once a day. Run your dishwasher only when it is full. Help your parents fix any leaks in your home. You can even help to keep our water supply clean by recycling batteries instead of throwing them away.Which of the following is most likely to lead to less groundwater?
| A．Using river water. | B．Throwing batteries away. |
| C．Paving parking lots. | D．Throwing rubbish into lakes. |
What can be inferred from the text?
| A．All water shortages are due to human behavior. |
| B．It takes a lot of effort to meet our water needs. |
| C．There is much we can do to reduce family size. |
| D．The average family in America makes proper use of water. |
The last paragraph is intended to________.
| A．show us how to fix leaks at home |
| B．tell us how to run a dishwasher |
| C．prove what drinking glass is best for us |
| D．suggest what we do to save water at home |
The text is mainly about________.
| A．why paving roads reduces our water |
| B．how much we depend on water to live |
| C．why droughts occur more in dry climates |
| D．how human activity affects our water supply |
While Jennifer was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a monitor（监控器）a few hundred miles away was watching her every move.
Using a web camera equipped in Jennifer’s Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes moved from the computer screen and listened for the secret sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her Internet access was locked -- remotely -- to prevent Internet searches , and her typing style was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her student number at the same speed as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down?
In the battle against cheating, this is the advanced technique and a key to encourage honesty in the booming field of online education. The technology gives trust to the entire system, to the institution and to online education in general. Only with solid measures against cheating, experts say, can Internet universities show that their exams and diplomas are valid(有效的) - that students haven’t just searched the Internet to get the right answers.
Although online classes have existed for more than a decade, the concern over cheating has become sharper in the last year with the growth of "open online courses." Private colleges, public universities and corporations are jumping into the online education field, spending millions of dollars to attract potential students, while also taking steps to help guarantee honesty at a distance.
Aside from the web cameras, a number of other high-tech methods are becoming increasingly popular. Among them are programs that check students’ identities using personal information, such as the telephone number they once used.
Other programs can produce unique exam by drawing on a large list of questions and can recognize possible cheaters by analyzing whether difficult test questions are answered at the same speed as easy ones. As in many university classes, term papers are scanned against some large Internet data banks for cheating.Why was Jennifer watched in an online exam?
| A．To correct her typing mistakes. |
| B．To find her secrets in the room. |
| C．To prevent her from slowing down. |
| D．To keep her from dishonest behaviors. |
For Internet universities, exams and diplomas will be valid if _____.
| A．they can attract potential students |
| B．they can defeat academic cheating |
| C．they offer students online help |
| D．they offer many online courses |
Some programs can find out possible cheaters by _____.
| A．checking the question answering speed |
| B．producing a large number of question |
| C．scanning the Internet test question |
| D．giving difficult test question |
Which of the following is the best title of this passage?
| A．The Advantages of Online Exams |
| B．The High-tech Methods in Online Courses |
| C．The Fight against Cheating in Online Education |
| D．The War against the Booming of Online Education |