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Attempt a guess at the following question: In the English-speaking world, which country has the least affordable homes? You are wrong if you guessed the US, even with the housing bubble (气泡) and main sadness. Nor is it the UK, where prices have risen because demand is far from supply. According to a recent survey of 227 cities around the globe, you must go south of the equator (赤道) to Australia to find the priciest homes.
The report measured a city’s housing market along the following guidelines. An “affordable” home required three times or less of the average family’s income to purchase. At four times earnings, a home fell into the “unaffordable” category. And a “seriously unaffordable” home needed five times a family’s income. In Australia, homes in the least affordable city cost just about 9.5 times the average income. Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne were only a little under this figure.
Australian officials offered little comment, apart from a general statement on the dismal findings. These prices make the possibility that many Australians will one day own a home largely unbelievable. Land rationing (配给制) and excessive development charges have raised prices, and the problem will only be solved through urgent action by the Rudd government.
Some American cities were also included on the least affordable list, four of which were in California. America is still involved in a mortgage(抵押)crisis, though, affecting the affordability of homes. Yet a number of US cities garnered “affordable” status, namely Dallas and Kansas. Australia had no cities listed in the top fifty places with affordable homes.
The survey suggests that you can find affordable homes in most places, just not if you’re Australian and choose to live down under.
To buy an affordable house, you should pay _____.

A.3 times or less of the average family’s income
B.4 times or less of the average family’s income
C.5 times or less of the average family’s income
D.9.5 times or less of the average family’s income

What caused the prices of houses to increase in Australia?

A.The rising family’s income.
B.The demand over supply.
C.The excessive development charges.
D.The decrease of land.

The underlined word “dismal” in Paragraph 3 may mean _____.

A.cheerful B.satisfactory
C.difficult D.sad

What might be the most suitable title for the passage?

A.Affordable Houses B.A House is a Dream First
C.Housing Bubble D.Homes Too Expensive
科目 英语   题型 阅读理解   难度 中等
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Television is a relatively stable advertising medium. In many ways, the television ads today are almost the same to those two decades ago. Most television ads still feature actors, still run 30 or 60 seconds, and still show a product. However, the different medium of the Internet causes unique challenges to advertisers, forcing them to adapt their practices and techniques.
In the early days of Internet marketing, online advertisers used banner (框式广告) and pop-up ads (弹出式广告) to attract customers. These techniques reached large audiences, led to many sales leads, and came at a low cost. However, a small number of Internet users began to consider these advertising techniques annoying. Yet because marketing strategies relying heavily on banners and pop-ups produced results, companies invested growing amounts of money into purchasing these ad types. As consumers became more complicated, frustration with these online advertising techniques grew. Independent programmers began to develop tools that blocked banner and pop-up ads.
A major development in online marketing came with the introduction of pay-per-click ads. Unlike banner or pop-up ads, which originally required companies to pay every time a website visitor saw an ad, pay-per-click ads allowed companies to pay only when an interested potential customer clicked on an ad. More importantly, however, these ads are not affected by the pop-up and banner blockers. As a result of these advantages and the incredible growth in the use of search engines, which provide excellent places for pay-per-click advertising, a great number of companies began turning to pay-per-click marketing. However, as with the banner and pop-up ads, pay-per-click ads came with their shortcomings. When companies began pouring billions of dollars into this emerging medium, online advertising specialists started to notice the presence of what would later be called click fraud (欺诈): representatives of a company with no interest in the product advertised by a competitor click on the competitor’s ads simply to increase the marketing cost of the competitor. Click fraud grew so rapidly that marketers sought to diversify (摆脱) their online positions away from pay-per-click marketing through new mediums.
Although pay-per-click advertising remains a common and effective advertising tool, marketers adapted yet again to the changing elements of the Internet by adopting new techniques such as pay-per-performance advertising. As the pace of the Internet’s evolution increases, it seems all the more likely that advertising successfully on the Internet will require a strategy that avoids constancy (持续性) and welcomes change.
What is the main idea of the passage?

A.The pace of the Internet’s evolution is increasing and will only increase in the future.
B.Internet advertising fails to reach Internet users, causing ads to be blocked.
C.The Internet has experienced dramatic changes in short periods of time.
D.Rapid development of the Internet calls for new advertising strategies and mediums.

As an advertising medium, the television and the Internet mainly differ in ________.

A.the type of individual each medium reaches
B.whether the medium is interactive
C.the pace at which the medium develops
D.the cost of advertising with each medium

According to the passage, which of the following is a typical click fraud?

A.Using software to block competitors’ advertisements.
B.Clicking on the pay-per-click ads of competitors.
C.Clicking on the banner advertisements of opponent companies.
D.Using search engine to attack the pages of competitors.

What does the author imply about the future of pay-per-performance advertising?

A.It will eventually become less popular just like other forms of Internet advertising.
B.It will not face shortcomings due to its differing approach to online marketing.
C.Internet users will develop free software to block its effectiveness.
D.Although it improves on pay-per-click advertising, it still suffers from click fraud.

Winter begins in the north on December 22nd. People and animals have been doing what they always do to prepare for the colder months. Squirrels (松鼠), for example, have been busy gathering nuts from trees. Well, scientists have been busy gathering information about what the squirrels do with the food they collect.
They examined differences between red squirrels and gray squirrels in the American state of Indiana. The scientists wanted to know how these differences could affect the growth of black walnut (黑胡桃) trees. The black walnut is the nut of choice for both kinds of squirrels. The black walnut tree is also a central part of some hardwood forests.
Rob Swihart of Purdue University did the study with Jake Goheen, a former Purdue student now at the University of New Mexico. The two researchers estimate that several times as many walnuts grow when gathered by gray squirrels as compared to red squirrels. Gray squirrels and red squirrels do not store nuts and seeds in the same way. Gray squirrels bury nuts one at a time in a number of places. But they seldom remember where they buried every nut. So some nuts remain in the ground. Conditions are right for them to develop and grow the following spring. Red squirrels, however, store large groups of nuts above ground. Professor Swihart calls “death traps for seeds”.
Gray squirrels are native to Indiana. But Professor Swihart says their numbers began to decrease as more forests were cut for agriculture. Red squirrels began to spread through the state during the past century.
The researchers say red squirrels are native to forests that stay green all year, unlike walnut trees. They say the cleaning of forest land for agriculture has helped red squirrels invade Indiana. Jake Goheen calls them a sign of an environmental problem more than a cause.
The study done by Rob Swihart and Jake Goheen is to ________.

A.find out the living conditions for squirrels
B.learn squirrels’ influence on black walnut trees
C.do something to get rid of squirrels
D.save the forests in the American state of Indiana

The difference between gray squirrels and red squirrels mainly lies in ________.

A.the way they gather the walnut
B.the time they have winter sleep
C.the place they have winter sleep
D.the place they store the walnuts

When Professor Swihart says “death traps for seeds”, he actually means that ________.

A.red squirrels eat more nuts than gray squirrels
B.gray squirrels and red squirrels will have severe fights
C.nuts above the ground will not develop into plants
D.seeds can be traps for other animals in the forest

According to the passage, which of the following is true?

A.The black walnut is equally attractive to both gray and red squirrels.
B.Gray squirrels do more harm to the forest than red squirrels.
C.Red squirrels and gray squirrels have helped the spread of walnut trees.
D.The cleaning of forest land benefits red squirrels directly.

Benin is one of the smallest African states. It lies in West Africa on the Gulf (海湾) of Guinea, to the south of Burkina Faso and Niger, between Togo on the west and Nigeria on the east.
Benin used to be called Dahomey and was controlled and ruled by France from 1893 to 1960, when it became independent. In 1963 the army general Soglo overthrew (推翻) the first president Maga. Soglo set up an army government and called himself head of state in 1965, but was overthrown and replaced by a civilian (非军人) government in 1967. In December 1969 Benin had another change of power with the army again taking over. In May 1970, Maga and two other men set up a new government, with each of them acting as president in turn for two years. However, half a year after Maga turned over power to the second man Ahomadegbe, the three-man government was overthrown by the army once more and General Kerekou became president. In November 1975 Kerekou changed the name of the nation from Dahomey to Benin, Benin being the name of a 17th century kingdom covering the same place. Kerekou also announced that Benin would be a People’s Republic based on Marxism-Leninism.
Which of the following maps shows rightly the positions of Benin and its neighbouring countries?
Bn="Benin;"
Tg="Togo;"
Nr="Niger;"
BF="Burkina" Faso;
Na="Nigeria;"
GG="Gulf" of Guinea

For how long was Benin an independent state before it became a People’s Republic?

A.30 years. B.25 years. C.20 years. D.15 years.

Choose the right order in which the following people ruled in Benin. (Ah="Ahomadegbe;" Ke="Kerekou;" Ma="Maga;" So=Soglo)

A.Ma, So, Ma, Ke, Ah B.So, Ma, Ah, Ma, Ke C.Ma, So, Ma, Ah, Ke D.So, Ma, Ke, Ma, Ah

When and how did Benin get its two names — Benin and Dahomey?

A.Benin was its oldest name. The name Dahomey was used later, but has been replaced by Benin again.
B.Dahomey was its oldest name, but it has been replaced by Benin.
C.Dahomey was its oldest name. The name Benin was used later, but has been replaced by Dahomey again.
D.Benin was its oldest name, but it has been replaced by Dahomey.

A job is more than a job,especially to the old. “It’s not the money that matters,but the sense of self-worth.”56-year-old Cbeng Wonlan said. So,every day Ms Cheng carries a bag of parcels,letters and documents and does her rounds in North Point. She’s a courier(快递员)
Five years ago.Ms Cheng was a nurse at a private clinic. She had worked there for 30 years but was Jobless when the doctor migrated. It was difficult for her to find another job as a nurse. “People do not trust my ability when they learn how old I am,”she said. After two years of searching, she eventually found another nursing job. But then after two years,she quit Why?
‘My colleagues were young and they didn’t understand me because of my age. They often asked me ‘You are so old what are you working for? I was very unhappy” She said. So while the rest of her family left for work,she was left to lonely boredom at home .Then her neighbours told her about Employee’s Retraining Board(ERB)offering retraining courses for older people. These courses are specifically designed to encourage the older people back to work.
“I was interested in courier work. I didn’t think my age was a barrier because I was fit.” She said .Upon graduating,Ms Cheng was offered a job by the Speeding Shuttle Courier Service Company. But then Ms Cheng was faced with a conflict:she was caught between honour and employment“I felt embarrassed about carrying and delivering letters and parcels.” she said. It took Ms Cheng 24 hours to make up her mind:there was nothing wrong or embarrassing about doing the job. So she went off to work as a courier.
Ms Cheng’s employer is delighted with her responsible attitude and said.“I hired older people because they were able and reliable .Age is not an important factor but attitude is Many old people will not run from difficulties but the young ones will”
Why was it difficult for Ms Cheng to find another nursing Job?

A.Nursing clinics were hard to find
B.She found it difficult to trust others
C.People thought she was too old to work
D.People didn’t think she had enough work experience

Ms Cheng left her second nursing job because___________.

A.she was bored with change less jobs
B.it was too difficult
C.she was too old to do the job
D.the other staff made her feel uncomfortable

Employee Retraining Board is a plan for___________.

A.finding jobs for older people
B.teaching new skills to older people
C.training older people to be healthier
D.providing older people with chances to earn money

According to Anthony Chong,young people___________.

A.are more likely to give up than the older ones
B.are less experienced than the older ores
C.are filler and stronger than the older ones
D.are able and reliable

From the text, we call infer that__________.

A.the life of the old is miserable
B.there is a generation gap between young and old
C.job—hunting is hard for old people
D.the old are looked down upon in society

How to deal successfully with a child showing outstanding musical ability? It’s not always clear how best to develop and encourage his gift. Many parents may even fail to recognize and respond to their children′s need until discouragement explodes into uncooperative(不合作的)behavior. And while most schools are equipped to deal with children who are especially able in academic subjects,the musically gifted require special understanding which may not always be available in an ordinary school. Such children may well benefit from the education offered by a specialist music school.
The five music schools in Britain aim to provide all environment where gifted children can develop their skills under the guidance of professional musicians. Children here spend about half of a day on musical activities,for example,individual lessons,orchestras,chamber(室内音乐的)groups,voice training,conducting and theory. They also spend several hours a day practicing in private rooms .The rest of their time is taken up with the subjects:English,maths and basic sciences.
What are the disadvantages? An obvious problem is that the fees are high .However, each school will often scholarships and other forms of financial aid. Secondly, not all parents want to send their children to boarding school, especially at an early age .Almost all the directors of the specialist schools express doubts about the wisdom of admitting children as young as seven into such a tense and disciplined(守纪律的)environment. They stress,however, that their main aim is to turn out “well-rounded and well—balanced individual.”
If a child’s musical ability is not recognized___________.

A.the child may behave badly
B.the ability may fade away
C.the child may lose interest
D.the parents may become anxious

What probably may musically gifted children face in ordinary schools?

A.Their academic work may suffer.
B.Schools lack musical equipment
C.Music is not seen as an important subject
D.Parents and teachers don’t work together.

What makes specialist music schools different from other schools?

A.Their working day is longer.
B.A range of musical training is offered
C.More than half the day is spent on music
D.The children have mostly one-to-one lessons

According to school directors,what is a possible disadvantage for pupils?

A.Poor children may not be included
B.They may lose their individuality
C.There may be a discipline problem
D.They may be too small on arrival

The passage mainly talks about__________.

A.education and development about children
B.disadvantages of music schools
C.music schools for children with music gift
D.how to deal with music talented children

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