Jobs and work do much more than most of us realize to provide happiness and contentment.We're all used to thinking that work provides the material things of life—the goods and services that make our modern civilization possible.But we are much less conscious of the degree to which work provides the more important psychological wellbeing that can make the difference between a full and an empty life.
Historically，work has been associated with slavery and sin (罪恶)and punishment.And in our own day we are used to bearing traditional complaints.Against this background，it may well come as a surprise to learn that not only psychologists but other behavioral scientists have come to accept the positive contribution of work to the individual's happiness and sense of personal achievement.Work is more than a necessity for most human beings；it is the focus of their lives，the source of their identity and creativity.
Rather than a punishment of a burden，work is the opportunity to realize one's potential.And the opposite is true，too.For large numbers of people，the absence of work is harmful to their health.Retirement often brings many problems surrounding the “What do I do with myself？”question，even though there may be no financial cares.Large numbers of people regularly get headaches and other illnesses on weekends when they don't have their jobs to go to，and must take care of themselves.It has been observed that unemployment，quite apart from financial pressures，brings enormous psychological troubles and that many individuals'conditions become worse rapidly when jobless.
But why？Why should work be such a significant source of human satisfaction？A good share of the answer rests in the kind of pride that is stimulated by the job，by the activity of accomplishing.Which of the following statements can NOT be learned from the passage?
| A．People feel happier and more content than they realize when working. |
| B．Work is likely to provide you with the chance of achieving your potential. |
| C．Happiness can only be gained through working. |
| D．A lot of people will suffer physically and psychologically without work. |
Traditionally，people are used to believing ________.
| A．work is related to negative aspects |
| B．happiness has nothing to do with work |
| C．identity and creativity depend on work |
| D．work is not only a necessity for humans but the focus of their lives |
What would the author probably discuss in the following paragraph?
| A．What the proper way to balance work and life is. |
| B．How work brings people pride in accomplishment. |
| C．Which is more important：the material things of life or psychological wellbeing. |
| D．How people overcome the problems arising from retirement. |
Which best describes the author's attitude towards work in the passage?
| A．Doubtful. | B．Concerned. |
| C．Approving. | D．Neutral. |
Every day, 15-year-old Martha wrote on the Internet about the meal she ate at school. She also took pictures of the food. However, Martha was very honest about the food. She did not just describe the food. She judged the taste and health of the food.
Martha also began to use her blog for an important reason. She began to raise money for the organization Mary’s Meals in the East African country of Malawi. It provides food food for children in schools for free. Martha encouraged her readers to send money to Mary’s Meals to help build a kitchen.
But then, Martha began to have a problem. Many people read her blog. She became big news. The news stories showed that the food at Martha’s school was not always healthy. And that made some people angry. So the school officials decided to stop Martha’s blog. They said that she could not take her camera to school.
But an amazing thing happened. Many people began sending messages of support across the Internet. Martha’s story was even bigger than before. Now the officials had to change their minds. A few days later, Martha was again writing her blog. But more than that, people had sent a lot of money for the Malawi school children. Martha had hoped to raise about 10,000 dollars. But the total reached 10,000 dollars and still kept on growing!
Martha’s blog also helped to improve meals at her school. One day she wrote: As we waited for dinner we were told that we are allowed to eat as much fruit and bread as we want.
No one knows what will happen to Martha’s blog in future. But already this little girl has helped to change the eating experience of many children just by sharing on the Internet pictures of her school meals. Martha wrote about her school meals on her blog to ______
| A．invite students to judge the food |
| B．show the terrible taste of food |
| C．express her opinion about the food |
| D．ask the school t improve the food |
The organization Mary’s Meals _______
| A．was set up by Martha |
| B．provides free school meals |
| C．is an international organization |
| D．help poor families build kitchens |
Why did the school officials want to prevent Martha writing her blog?
| A．It had a bad influence on her study. |
| B．Some people were upset by it content. |
| C．Taking pictures needs a lot of time. |
| D．Many other students started to copy her. |
What’s the best title for the text?
| A．School meals | B．Mary’s Meals |
| C．Power of the Internet | D．Martha shares her food |
Joe is interested in getting exercise and competing on a team. He reads about the events at the local pool and finds the perfect activity.
Swimming Programs
Summer Swim Team
Join a Summer Swim Team and compete with other swimmers! The program is offered at eight different local pools for youths to 17 years old. The season runs June 21—August 21. Practices are daily (Monday through Friday) throughout the summer. The championship meet(冠军赛) is August 21. Cost: $50.00
Pools & Practice Times
Buckman 2-3 P.M. Montavilla 8-9 A.M.
Creston 7-9 A.M. Peninsula 4-7 P.M.
Dishman 8-9 A.M. Pier noon-1 P.M.
Grant 8-10 A.M. Sellwood 7-9 A.M.
Junior Swim Instructor
Two weeks, 20 hours of instruction, two hours per day for children 11-14 years old. Pre-training for youths interested in becoming swim instructors($45 per child)
Two weeks, 30 hours of instruction, three hours per day for children 11-14 years old. Pre-training in lifeguarding, and customer service ($45 per child)
Junior Swim Instructor & Junior Lifeguard Training Dates
June 28-July 9 August 9-August 20
June 12-July 23 August 23-September 3
June 26-August 6
Special Offer
Anyone who takes part in both junior swim instructor and junior lifeguard programs at the same time need only spend $75 instead of $90 for 50 hours of training.
Register Online
You can now register online! Visit our website at http://www.example.com You can choose an area of town, a specific local center, a program, or search for classes which can meet the needs of students of different ages. Just visit our website, and you’re on your way!If Joe joins the Summer Swim Team, he _____
A. needs to pay $45.00
B. begins training at 6 A.M.
C. has to practice for two months
D. needs to practice for 7 days a weekAnyone who wants to be a junior swim instructor should _____
| A．be 11-14 years old |
| B．pay the instructor by the hour |
| C．do at least 30 hours of training |
| D．be an experienced junior lifeguard |
What’s the main purpose of this text?
| A．To introduce Joe’ s hobbies. |
| B．To introduce a new website. |
| C．To introduce several swimming pools |
| D．To introduce some swimming activities. |
If you’re like most kids, you’ve probably made more than a few paper airplanes in your day. But how many kids can say their paper airplanes have been built life-size and then flown? At least one: 12-year-old Arturo Veldenegro of Tucson, Arizona, who won the Pima Air& Space Museum’s first annual Great Paper Airplane Project Fly-Off in March 2012.
“ The purpose of the competition is to inspire and draw kids’ interest in science and flight,” says Tim Vimmerstedt, director of the museum.
About 150 kids entered the competition. The young designers learned about how airplanes fly and then set to work designing their own planes.
Arturo designed and built his airplane. When hen was finished, he took his plane to the flight area and let it fly, outdistancing the other competitors in all age groups. At last, Arturo’s airplane flew the farthest---more than 75 feet!
As the winner, Arturo got to meet with a team of engineers, which took his design and made a bigger one. The new paper airplane might have been the largest one ever built! Arturo named his large paper airplane Arturo’s Desert Eagle.
Later a helicopter tried to lift the paper airplane over the Arizona desert, but it was unsuccessful. Engineers worked for eight hours to repair it for a second try. This time, the helicopter managed to raise it to 2700 feet and then set the plane free.
Arturo watched as his plane flew through the sky at speeds of up to 98 miles per hour for 10 seconds before falling to pieces.
“I felt happy but sad,” Arturo says, “ It flew really well, but it was sad to see it destroyed.”
But that wasn’t the end of Arturo’s Desert Eagle. The Pima Air & Space Museum collected the pieces of the broken plane and put them on show to inspire other young engineers to reach for the sky. According to the text, the Great Paper Airplane Project Fly-Off competition _______
| A．has been held many times |
| B．can only be entered by kids |
| C．is to choose the largest plane |
| D．is held by a team of designers |
The underlined word ”outdistancing” in Para 4 means ________
| A．looking for | B．believing in | C．throwing away | D．leaving behind |
What do we know about the paper airplane Arturo built?
| A．It flew the highest | B．It flew for 20 minutes |
| C．It flew more than 75 feet | D．it took him eight hours to build |
In the end, Arturo’s Desert Eagle ______
| A．was made into a helicopter |
| B．was produced in many places |
| C．was sold to a team of engineers |
| D．was put on show in the museum |
Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place.
The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household’s waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.
Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of it for carrying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.
But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.
There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realise just how much unnecessary material are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.What does the underlined phrase “over-consumption” refer to?
| A．Using too much packaging. |
| B．Recycling too many wastes. |
| C．Making more products than necessary. |
| D．Having more material than is needed. |
The author uses figures in Paragraph 2 to show _______.
| A．the tendency of cutting household waste |
| B．the increase of packaging recycling |
| C．the rapid growth of super markets |
| D．the fact of packaging overuse |
According to the text, recycling ______.
| A．helps control the greenhouse effect |
| B．means burning packaging for energy |
| C．is the solution to gas shortage |
| D．leads to a waste of land |
What can be inferred from Paragraph 4?
| A．Unpackaged products are of bad quality. |
| B．Supermarkets care more about packaging. |
| C．It is improper to judge quality by packaging. |
| D．Other products are better packaged than food. |
What can we learn from the last paragraph?
| A．Fighting wastefulness is difficult. |
| B．Needless material is mostly recycled. |
| C．People like collecting recyclable waste. |
| D．The author is proud of their consumer culture. |
Every morning my father buys a newspaper on his way to work. Every evening my mother looks through magazines at home. And every night, I look at the posters with photos of David Beckham and Yao Ming on my bedroom wall before I go to sleep. Can we imagine life without paper or print?
Paper was first created about 2,000 years ago, and has been made from silk, cotton, bamboo, and, since the 19th century, from wood. People learned to write words on paper to make a book. But in those days, books could only be produced one at a time by hand. As a result, they were expensive and rare. And because there weren’t many books, few people learned to read.
Then printing was invented in China. When printing was developed greatly at the beginning of the 11th century, books could be produced more quickly and cheaply. As a result, more people learned to read. After that, knowledge and ideas spread quickly.
Today information can be received online, downloaded from the Internet rather than found in books, and information can be kept on CD-ROMs or machines such as MP3 players.
Computers are already used in classrooms, and newspapers and magazines can already be read online. So will books be replaced by computers one day? No, I don’t think the Yao Ming poster on my bedroom wall will ever be replaced by a computer two metres high!What does the writer do before he goes to sleep’?
| A．He reads books. | B．He reads newspapers |
| C．He looks through magazines | D．He looks at the posters on the wall. |
When was paper first created?
| A．About 2.000 years ago. | B．In the 19th century. |
| C．About 1.000 years ago. | D．In the 11th century. |
Why were books expensive and rare before the invention of printing?
A. People could not read.
B. People could not write words on paper.
C. People could not find silk, cotton or bamboo.
D People could only produce books one at a time by handWhat happened after books became cheaper?
| A．People didn’t want to buy books. |
| B．Printing was invented in China. |
| C．Knowledge and ideas spread quickly. |
| D．The Internet was introduced to people soon |
What is the writer’s opinion about books and computers’?
| A．People won’t need books any more |
| B．Books won’t be replaced by computers. |
| C．People prefer to find information in books. |
| D．Computers have already replaced books. |