There is no denying that over the years college education has been accepted without the slightest doubt. All high school graduates should go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more, become “better” citizens and be more responsible than those who don’t go.
But college can never work its magic for everyone. Now with half our high school graduates attending college, those unfit for the pattern are getting more. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxis; college students interfere with each other’s experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the fierce competition for admission into graduate schools. Others find no stimulation (激励) in their studies, and consequently have to drop out, which is often encouraged by college administrators.
Some observers say the fault lies with young people themselves --- they are spoiled and expecting too much. But that’s a condemnation (谴责）of the students as a whole, and doesn’t explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame our society. Both are partly right. We have been told that young people have to go to college because our economy can’t absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disappointed graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-two-year-olds, either.
Some campus watchers suggest that college may not be the best, the proper or the only place for every young person after finishing high school. It seems that through the rosy (玫瑰的) glow of our own college experiences, we may have been looking at those surveys and statistics upside down. Perhaps college does not make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, or quick to learn things—maybe it is just the other way around. Intelligent, ambitious, happy, quick-learning people are merely those who are attracted to college in the first place. And perhaps all those successful college graduates would have been successful even without college education. This is heresy (异端邪说) to those who have been brought up to believe that if a little schooling is good, more has to be much better. But contrary evidence is beginning to pile up.According to the first paragraph, ______.
| A．people now no longer challenge college education |
| B．people have great expectations for college education |
| C．the author thinks youngsters should all go to college |
| D．people still have a low opinion of college education |
More young people drop out of college because ______.
| A．they are no longer motivated in their studies |
| B．they can start selling shoes and driving taxis |
| C．they compete for admission to graduate schools |
| D．college administrators encourage them to do so |
Who does the author think is responsible for campus unhappiness?
| A．young students who are all spoiled and expecting too much. |
| B．our society that can’t offer enough jobs to college graduates. |
| C．our society that has not enough jobs for high school graduates. |
| D．young people as well as our society are to blame for all this. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE about those surveys and statistics?
| A．They prove high school graduates are smarter than college graduates. |
| B．They are so convincing that we think of our rosy college experiences. |
| C．They may have been misread because of our rosy college experiences. |
| D．They prove wrong because they contradict our rosy college experiences. |
What is the meaning of the underlined sentence in Paragraph 4?
| A．It is just the opposite | B．There is no right way |
| C．It is the wrong way | D．There’s no other way |
What is the main purpose of this passage?
| A．To inform young people college education is no longer important now. |
| B．To prove college education doesn’t make young people more intelligent. |
| C．Toargueagainsttheideathatcollegeisthefirst choiceforallyoungsters. |
| D．To tell young people that there’s something wrong with college education. |
The teaching hospital is one associated with a medical school. Teaching hospitals are large, with a range of from 300 to 200 beds. These hospitals always have interns(实习医师) and residents(住院医师) and additionally have medical students on the hospital wards. They have superb technical resources, and it is here that the most extraordinary events of medicine take place. Open-heart surgery, transplantation of kidneys, elaborate(精致的) nurseries for the newborn, support for management of rare blood diseases, and other wonderful achievements are all available here. Dozens of people may be concerned with the well-being of a particular patient. Important medical decisions are thoroughly discussed, presented at conferences, and reviewed by many personnel.
On the other hand, the quality of personal relationships at teaching hospitals is variable. Many patients feel that they are treated in an impersonal way, and that their laboratory tests receive more attention that their human and social problems. Since these institutions are on the frontier of medicine, there is a tendency to emphasize the new and elaborate procedures, when older and more modest ones might have served as well. With the inexperience of some members of the care team, there is a tendency to order more laboratory tests than what would have been ordered for the same condition in a private hospital. The sick patients are sometimes confused by having to relate to a large number of doctors and students. Medical educators are concerned with such criticisms and have to correct some of the problems. However, some excesses(超额) of technological medicine still occur in these institutions.One of the advantages of a teaching hospital is that .
| A．its first-class personnel are a guarantee of excellent medical care |
| B．its first-class medical facilities and skills make medical breakthroughs possible |
| C．the interns, residents and medical students all offer satisfactory services |
| D．its laboratory staff provide high-class professional aids for the doctors |
The passage implies that .
| A．private hospitals usually give personalized care of high quality |
| B．private hospitals have more experienced laboratory staff |
| C．teaching hospitals use patients as subjects for their experiments |
| D．teaching hospitals usually give patients improper treatment |
Treatments of some difficult and complicated cases in teaching hospital are decided .
| A．by specialists in charge of the case |
| B．by doctors and students together |
| C．on some special and important occasions |
| D．through collective efforts and serious review |
The problem that still bothers teaching hospitals frequently is .
| A．the inadequate patient care caused by irresponsible nurses. |
| B．the wrong decisions made by inexperienced doctors |
| C．improper dependence on technological medicine |
| D．the inconvenience caused by the presence of medical students |
As motorways become more and more blocked up with traffic, a new generation on flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. That is the conclusion of engineers from the US space agency and aeronautical firms, who envision future commuters traveling by “skycar”.
These could look much like the concept skycar shown in the picture, designed by Boeing research and development. However, such vehicles could be some 25 years from appearing on the market. Efforts to build flying vehicles in the past have not been very successful. Such vehicles would not only be expensive and require the skills of a trained pilot to fly, but there are significant engineering challenges involved in developing them. “When you try to combine them you get the worst of both worlds: a very heavy, slow, expensive vehicle that’s hard to use,” said Mark Moore, head of the personal air vehicle(PAV) division of the vehicle systems program at Nasa’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, US. But Boeing is also considering how to police the airways-and prevent total pandemonium(吵杂狂乱的喧闹)-if thousands of flying cars enter the skies.
“The neat, gee-whiz part is thinking about what the vehicle itself would look like,” said Dick Paul, a vice president with Phantom Works, Boeing’s research and development arm. “But we’re trying to think through all the consequences of what it would take to deploy(散开) a fleet of these.”
Past proposals to solve this problem have included artificial intelligence systems to prevent collisions between air traffic. Nasa is working on flying vehicles with the initial goal of transforming small plane travel. Small planes are generally costly, loud, and require months of training and lots of money to operate, making flying to work impractical for most people. But within five years, Nasa researchers hope to develop technology for a small plane that can fly out of regional airports, costs less than $100,000(£55,725), is as quiet as a motorcycle and as simple to operate as a car.
Although it would not have any road-driving capabilities, it would bring this form of travel within the grasp of a wider section of people. The new technology would automate many of the pilot’s functions. This Small Aircraft Transportation System(Sats) would divert pressure away from the “hub-and-spoke(中心辐射型)” model of air travel. Hub-and-spoke refers to the typically US model of passengers being processed through large “hub” airports and then on to secondary flights to “spoke” airports near their final destinations.The best title for this text would be .
| A．Developing Skycars | B．The Traffic Jams in the Sky |
| C．How to Guide Flying Cars in the Sky | D．What Flying Cars Will Look Like |
The underlined word “envision” in Paragraph 1 most probably means “ ”.
| A．see | B．expect | C．think | D．announce |
When engineers develop the skycars, they have to deal with the following difficulties except .
| A．how to fly out of regional airports |
| B．how to prevent the disorder of the airways |
| C．how to reduce expenses and the vehicle’s weight |
| D．how to fly the skycars to enter skies |
Now Nasa researchers’ aim is to .
| A．make big flying cars |
| B．work out the plan——how to transform small plane travel |
| C．develop a new kind of small plane different from the traditional one |
| D．build a new kind of small plane with road-driving abilities |
Why not an island get-away?
Newfoundland
Price
From £1080 per person in June 2005
We went with:
Frontier Canada frontier-travel. Co. uk/Canada
About this trip
John Cabot had set sail looking for a new trade route for Asia, when he landed in Cape Bonavista. Clearly he felt this barren desolate landscape could provide this, so he claimed it for its potential and so began the rise of the British Empire.
Newfoundland is the most easterly point in North America and was Britain’s first overseas colony until 1949, when it became part of Canada. It’s roughly the size of England and Craig’s journey by camper van or RV (recreational vehicle) took in just a small part of the island called the Bonavista Peninsula.
First stop was the tiny fishing port of Keels to stock up for the journey ahead. There’s a long standing love affair between Newfoundlanders and cod. The seas off the Newfoundland coast were once the richest cod fishing grounds in the world, attracting fishermen from all over Europe. Many settled, establishing these coastal villages known locally as outports.
An hour’s drive down the coast is the town of Bonavista, where Craig met up with retired fisherman, Wilson Hayward. He told Craig how the landscape used to lie, and described the peculiarities of the language and accents in the area. There’s a different language in every bay.The title “Why not an island get-away?” _________.
| A．invites people to take a holiday trip to Newfoundland |
| B．informs people that the island is moving away from where it used to be |
| C．tells people that they can buy the island at the price of £1080. |
| D．asks people to visit the website frontier-travel. co.uk/Canada |
From the context we can conclude that “Frontier Canada” is the name of _________.
| A．a tourist guide |
| B．a kind of fish found around the island |
| C．a tourist agency |
| D．someone who has already booked the trip |
When John Cabot first discovered Cape Bonavista he was actually on a voyage to find ____.
| A．North America | B．Asia |
| C．South America | D．the British Empire |
According to the passage Newfoundland is now part of _________.
| A．UK | B．Canada | C．Europe | D．Bonavista |
In the past the Newfoundlanders mainly lived by _________.
| A．teaching languages | B．making camper vans |
| C．looking after retired fishermen | D．fishing cod |
At Yale University, enrollment in basic Chinese in 2005 grew rapidly, and for the first time professors can remember, large numbers of freshmen were arriving with enough knowledge of the Chinese language to start in second- or third-year Chinese language class, rather than basic Chinese.
The American interest in China is not just at the university level. In the 2006 school year, high-school students will be offered an Advanced Placement test, which is one of the national exams American students take for university admission, in Chinese. This is the first time Chinese is offered in the Advanced Placement test, which is usually limited to the most important subjects that high school students take.
What is surprising is that earlier last year, an organization that tracks university students surveyed high schools throughout America, asking if they planned to offer the language courses that prepare students for the language Advanced Placement test. They expected that only a hundred high schools, mostly in California, New York, and a few other places with large immigrant populations, would show interest in each of the new language programs. Although that was true for the courses in Italian, Russian and Japanese, it was not true for the Chinese language course. There were thousands of American high schools that indicated that they planned to build their Chinese programs to levels where students could take the Advanced Placement exam for Chinese language. The demand for courses in Chinese is rising so rapidly that it is rapidly overtaking all other foreign languages except Spanish. According to the passage many freshmen at Yale University today .
| A．know enough basic Chinese |
| B．needn’t learn Chinese any more |
| C．take courses in the Chinese language |
| D．go to university to study Chinese |
For university entrance, the American high-school students .
| A．have to learn Chinese | B．learn more than one foreign language. |
| C．take the Advanced Placement Test | D．used to have a test in Chinese |
We can learn from the passage that .
| A．Chinese will overtake all foreign languages in American high schools |
| B．Americans will know more about China and its people |
| C．the U.S. government pays much attention to language studies |
| D．Chinese may take the place of English in American universities |
Imagine one day, the water taps in your house stop running. You have to buy water from shops. And still there isn’t enough for everyone. Your mother has to save the family’s shower water to do other things. Would you be able to stand that kind of life?
Probably not. But that’s what kids in Yemen are experiencing. Experts said Yemen is going to be the first country in the world to run out of water. According to a report, the capital, Sanaa, will run out of drinking water as early as 2025. Because of the shortage, the government often cuts the water supply. Hannan, an 18-year-old from Lahej, told the Times: “In a good week we’ll have a water supply all week. But then the following week there will be water only for a day or two.”
Hannan said only rich people have enough water to use. They can buy water from the shops or from the water truck. Private companies own the trucks. They travel around the city every day to sell water – at very high prices.
“A lot of people can’t afford it,” she said.
The average person in Yemen uses 100 to 200 cubic meters of water per year. That is far below the international water poverty line of 1,000 cubic meters.
The government is thinking of making use of seawater. But it will cost a lot and it may not happen soon enough to help the people of Yemen.
The purpose of the text is to _______.
| A．tell us what life is like in Yemen |
| B．draw our attention to water shortage |
| C．remind us how important water is |
| D．show us ways of solving problems |
The underlined word “that” in Paragraph 2 refers to _____.
| A．buying water from shops |
| B．drinking dirty water |
| C．suffering from water shortage |
| D．washing clothes with used water |
Hannan described _____.
| A．what her life is like |
| B．how beautiful Lahej is |
| C．how people use water fully |
| D．how heavy the traffic in Lahej is |
The Yemen Government _____.
| A．has found a practical solution |
| B．only cares about rich people |
| C．may try to make use of seawater |
| D．can do nothing about the water supply |
We can infer from the text that _____.
| A．Sanaa will run out of water in 10 years |
| B．Hannan is a teenager from a rich family |
| C．the capital of Yemen is developing fast |
| D．private companies make a lot of money |