For high school leavers starting out in the working world, it is very important to learn particular skills and practice how to behave in an interview or how to find an internship (实习). In some countries, schools have programs to help students onto the path to work. In the United States, however, such programs are still few and far behind.
Research shows that if high schools provide career-related courses, students are likely to get higher earnings in later years. The students are more likely to stay in school, graduate and go on to higher education.
In Germany, students as young as 13 and 14 are expected to do internships. German companies work with schools to make sure that young people get the education they need for future employment.
But in America, education reform programs focus on how well students do in exams instead of bringing them into contact with the working world. Harvard Education school professor Robert Schwartz has criticized education reformers for trying to place all graduates directly on the four-year college track. Schwartz argued that this approach leaves the countrys most vulnerable(易受影响的)kids with no jobs and no skills.
Schwartz believed that the best career programs encourage kids to go for higher education while also teach them valuable practical skills at high school. James Madison High School in New York, for example ,encourages students to choose classes on career-based courses. The school then helps them gain on-the-job experience in those fields while theyre still at high school.
However, even for teens whose schools encourage them to connect with work, the job market is daunting. In the US, unemployment rates for 16-to-19-year-olds are above 20 percent for the third summer in a row.
“The risk is that if teenagers miss out on the summer job experience, they will become part of this generation of teens who had trouble in landing a job, said Michael, a researcher in the US. In the authors opinion, German high school leavers ______.
| A．enjoy more career-related courses than that of US |
| B．need more career advice from their schools |
| C．perform better in exams than American students |
| D．are less brought into contact with the working world |
According to Robert Schwartz, high school students should _________.
| A．directly carry on higher education |
| B．get contact with the working world |
| C．focus on their performance in exams |
| D．not miss out on the summer job experience |
The underlined word “daunting” in Paragraph 6 most probably mean “______”.
| A．incredible | B．motivating |
| C．impressive | D．discouraging |
What’s the main idea of the text?
| A．Remarks on recent US high school education reform |
| B．Tips on finding jobs for high school leavers in US. |
| C．The lack of career-based education in US high schools. |
| D．The severe situation of unemployment in US. |
There is an English saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Until recently, few people took the saying very seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to study laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found facts that laughter really can improve people’s health.
Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart rate and the rate of breathing. it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.
Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produce pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programmes. The group which tolerated(忍受) the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny programme. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce endorphins(内啡肽) in the brain. These are natural chemicals which diminish both stress and pain.
There is also some fact to suggest that laughter helps the body’s immune （免疫的）system, that is , the system which fights infection. In an experiment, one group of students watched a funny video while another group of students served as the control group--- in other words, a group with which to compare the first group. Doctors checked the blood of the students in both groups and found that the people in the group that watched the video had an increase in the activity of their white blood cells, that is, the cells which fight infection.
As a result of these discoveries, some doctors and psychiatrists( 精神病医生) in the United States now hold laughter clinics, in which they try to improve their patients’ condition by encouraging them to laugh.
They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing , making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter. It can be learnt from the passage that laughter can ______.
| A．make people feel younger | B．change people’s habits |
| C．improve people’s health | D．make people love their lives |
The underlined word “diminish” refers to _______.
| A．test | B．reduce | C．stop | D．find |
Smiling can produce____.
| A．the same effects as laughter | B．more effects than laughter |
| C．less effects on the human body | D．no effects on the human body |
The main idea of this passage is that _____.
| A．there are several ways of studying the benefits of laughter. |
| B．laughter and physical exercise have the same effects on human body. |
| C．tests show that laughter can produce beneficial effects on human body. |
| D．the doctors should learn how to make people laugh. |
Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers advised, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.” How right they were!
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang on there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” When others shout, “No, you can’t!” It took years for the early work of Barbara Mclintock, a geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn’t stop working on her experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.
We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder and it is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such youthful air, whatever their age. At 90, pianist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, joy would reappear in his eyes. As author and poet Samuel Ulman once wrote, “Years wrinkle(使皱) the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
Enthusiastic people also love what they do, without being affected by money or title or power. Patricia Mellratl, retired director of the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City, was once asked where she got her enthusiasm. She replied, “My father, long ago, told me, ‘I never made a penny until I stopped working for money.’”
If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a hobby. Elizabeth Layton was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended periods of depression that troubled her for at least 30 years and the quality of her work led one critic to say, “I am tempted into a genius.”
We can’t afford to waste tears on “might-have-been”. We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be”．We need to live each moment whole-heartedly, with all our senses—finding pleasure in the sweet smell of a back-yard garden, the simple picture of a six-year-old, and the beauty of a rainbow.The author mainly wants to say that _________
| A．enthusiastic people will never get old |
| B．enthusiasm can make you succeed and enjoy life |
| C．enthusiasm is more important than experience |
| D．enthusiasm can give people more success and fame |
Which of the following can best explain the underlined sentence in the second paragraph?
| A．Enthusiasm can give you courage and strength in difficult times. |
| B．If you don’t have enthusiasm, you can achieve nothing. |
| C．Enthusiastic people never consider money and fame. |
| D．Enthusiastic people can gain great fame and honor. |
The author mentions cellist Pablo Casals in the third paragraph to show that____
| A．music can arouse people’s enthusiasm |
| B．enthusiasm can give people inspiration needed to succeed |
| C．enthusiasm can make people feel young |
| D．enthusiasm can keep people healthy |
How many examples are given in the passage to show the importance of enthusiasm?
| A．Three | B．Two | C．Four | D． Five |
People travel for a lot of reasons. Some tourists go to see battlefields or other historic remains. Others are looking for culture, or simply want to have their pictures taken in front of famous places. Most European tourists are looking for a sunny beach to lie on.
Northern Europeans are willing to pay a lot of money for the sun because they have so little of it. People of cities like London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam spend much of their winter in the dark because the days are so short, and much of the rest of the year in the rain . This is the reason why the Mediterranean has always attracted them. Every summer many people travel to Mediterranean resorts（度假胜地）and beaches for their vacation. They all come for the same reason: sun!
The huge crowds mean lots of money for the economics of Mediterranean countries. Italy's 30,000 hotels are booked every summer. And 13 million people camp put on French beaches, parks and roadsides. Spain's long sandy coastline attracts more people than anywhere else. 37 million tourists visit there yearly, or one tourist for each person living in Spain.
But there are signs that the area is getting more tourism than it can deal with. The Mediterranean is already one of the most polluted seas on earth. None of these, however, is mining anyone's fun. Obviously, they don't go there for clean water. They allow traffic jams and seem to like crowded beaches. They don't even mind the pollution. No matter how dirty the water is, the coastline still looks beautiful. And as long as the sun shines, it's still better than sitting in the cold rain in Berlin, London, or Oslo. The writer seems so imply that Europeans travel mostly for the reason that ________.
| A．they want to see historic remains |
| B．they wish to escape from cold, dark and rainy days |
| C．they would like to take pictures in front of famous places |
| D．they are interested in different cultural and social customs |
According to the passage, which of the following countries attracts more tourists than the others?
| A．Italy | B．Greece. | C．France. | D．Spain. |
The underlined part "one tourist for each person living in Spain" means ________.
| A．all the 37 million people living in Spain are tourist |
| B．every person living in Spain has to take care of a tourist |
| C．every year almost as many tourists visit Spain as there are people living in that country |
| D．every family in Spain is visited by a tourist every year |
According to the passage, which of the following might ruin the tourists' fun at Mediterranean resorts and beaches?
| A．Polluted water | B．Crowded buses. | C．Rainy weather. | D．Traffic jams. |
Weather Report（8:00 a.m．December 17 ----- 8:00 a.m．December18）
Influenced by a cold front, northern Xinjiang, the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the northern and eastern parts of Heilongjiang are expected to experience light snow today．Drizzle （小雨） is forecast for most areas of Sichuan and western costal areas of South China．Northerly winds of force 4—6 are expected to affect western and southwestern Inner Mongolia, and most parts of Northeast China while northerly winds of force 5—7 will sweep across the Bohai Sea, the northern parts of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits, and the central and northern parts of the South China Sea.
Weather forecast for major Chinese cities
| City |
Max（℃） |
Min（℃） |
Weather |
| Beijing |
10 |
－2 |
clear |
| Changchun |
0 |
－6 |
clear |
| Changsha |
19 |
5 |
clear |
| Chengdu |
9 |
4 |
drizzle |
| Chongqing |
10 |
5 |
overcast |
| Dalian |
12 |
3 |
clear |
| Fuzhou |
18 |
－12 |
cloudy |
| Guangzhou |
23 |
15 |
cloudy |
| Guilin |
19 |
4 |
clear |
| Haikou |
19 |
14 |
overcast |
| Hangzhou |
18 |
5 |
clear |
| Harbin |
－3 |
－8 |
clear |
| Hong Kong |
21 |
16 |
cloudy |
| Jinan |
14 |
3 |
clear |
According to the weather report, we know it doesn’t rain in many areas except _____.
| A．Xinjing | B．Qinghai-Tibet | C．Heilongjiang | D．Chengdu |
From December 17 to December 18, if you go to ____, you may be caught in the snow.
| A．Northern Xinjiang and Tibet | B．Sichuan and South China 20090616 |
C．Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang | D．Qinghai and Sichuan |
On December 17, the East China Sea will be swept by _____.
| A．a cold front | B．northerly winds of force 4—6 |
| C．light snow | D．northerly winds of force 5—7 |
The temperature in Harbin Min（℃）is ____ lower than that in Guangzhou Min（℃）.
| A．23 | B．31 | C．26 | D．7 |
A famous foreign company that invested in China wanted to employ a reception secretary for its public relation department.
A beautiful girl with a master degree in electric engineering became a winning candidate(候选人) through the difficult process of employment. At its last stage she faced an oral test together with another girl who was her equal not only in good looks but also in education standard. The girl we talk about was confident in herself and successful in the oral test. It seemed that she would get the chance. The examiner told her on behalf of the company that she could come to office of company next Monday as a new employee. At last he asked her, “Have you anything else to say? Shocked by the unexpected question, the beautiful girl was quite at a loss, saying with hesitation(犹豫不决),”“I have to talk with my parents before I give an answer.”Surprised, the examiner said calmly,“In that case, let’s wait till you are ready.”
The next day the girl came to tell that her parents agreed to her beginning work next Monday. But the examiner said regretfully,“Sorry, the job position is filled by another suitable candidate. You had better have a try in another place.”The beautiful girl was surprised. She asked for an explanation and was told,“What is needed here is a person who knows her own mind.”
That was how a good opportunity slipped away right under the nose of a beautiful girl.What did the examiner value most?
| A．One’s beautiful looks. | B．One’s knowledge. |
| C．One’s young age. | D．One’s independence. |
It can be inferred from the passage that ________.
| A．the other girl who failed at the last oral test was most likely to get the job |
| B．another girl chosen in next test held the company |
| C．the company lost its best employee |
| D．the examiner was surprised at his first choice |
Why did the beautiful girl want to ask her parents for advice?
| A．She didn’t know what to do. |
| B．She couldn’t answer the question. |
| C．She hadn’t expected the examiner would ask such a question. |
| D．Her parents would scold her if she agreed without their permission. |
The best title of this passage probably is ________.
| A．Make your decision quickly | B．Have your own judgment |
| C．Seize your chance in time | D．Hesitation leads to failure |