When Armida Armato’s daughter, Alexia, came home from school one day last year keen to go on a school trip to Ecuador, she wasn’t too sure how to feel. She was happy that her daughter could experience something she never did as a teen but was fearful of letting her travel to such a remote part of the world.
Alexia was 16 at the time, a student at Westwood High School. The school sponsored a humanitarian trip for 26 students and two teachers to spend 18 days living in a mountain village to build a one-room school. Even though Armato trusted her daughter, the other students and the teachers, she was worried about the side effects from the travel vaccines, possible accidents, and medical care.
Now that Alexia was home, Armato said she saw her daughter’s new maturity, greater confidence and independence. “This is the best thing I ever did,” Alexia said. “The experience was so eye-opening and life-changing. You’re with people who are not as lucky as you are. They live in very poor conditions but they’re so happy and outgoing. You say, ‘My God. I’m taking everything for granted back home.’”
She said they built a one-room school from scratch with no mechanical cement mixers. They used their hands, shovels and basic tools. She and another student lived with a local family in a small village about eight hours outside the capital, Quito. Despite the initial strangeness and knowing only basic Spanish, she said they grew very close and felt like a family.
Every year, groups of students at Montreal High School like Alexia pack their bags and fly off with classmates and teachers to developing countries where they volunteer for a variety of projects.
“Armato’s worries are very common among parents,” says Bill Nevin, a teacher at St. George’s High School. He organizes a humanitarian rip to India to the Sheela Bal Bhavan orphanage and says the three biggest fears families have are health, security and contact.When hearing the news that her daughter would go on a school trip to Ecuador, Armato was____.
| A．proud and happy | B．supportive but concerned |
| C．fearful and nervous | D．excited but puzzled |
The underlined phrase “from scratch” in Paragraph 4 probably means “______”.
| A．having great help | B．using high technology |
| C．ending up in failure | D．starting from the beginning |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．Volunteering helps students grow and develop. |
| B．School trips make parents worried about their children. |
| C．Ecuador is the most attractive travel destination in the world. |
| D．Brave Alexia dreams to work in Ecuador one day. |
Intellectual property (IP) is a product of the mind that has commercial value. The concept dates back to 1623, when the first patent law to protect IP rights was passed. IP rights protect an artist from having his/her creative ideas copied by another. For example, if somebody generated an idea for a novel, that idea is protected by IP rights. If someone else wishes to represent the idea or develop it further, he/she must consult the original artists, who will normally be rewarded financially for its use. Back in the 17th century, IP rights were primarily carried out to protect newly developed manufacturing processes against stealing, but today intellectual property rights are also enjoyed by those who create music, art and literature.
In recent years, IP rights have been the focus of a great deal of discussion because of a technology which looks set to weaken them altogether: the Internet. Many years ago, if you wanted a recoding of a song, you would have to purchase it from a music store; if a novel, from a book store. In those days, IP rights were easily protected since it was very difficult to obtain intellectual property without paying for it. However, a lot of IP, including songs, films, books and artwork, can be downloaded today free of charge using the internet. This practice has now taken the world by storm, dramatically affecting the way in which we view IP rights.According to the writer, in the beginning, IP rights were mainly of use to _______.
| A．those creating music, art and literature |
| B．novelists |
| C．those not receiving financial reward for their work |
| D．engineers and inventors |
What do we know about the Internet according to the passage?
| A．It does not affect the way we understand IP rights. |
| B．It sells songs and films. |
| C．It makes IP rights harder to protect. |
| D．It prevents the production of artwork. |
According to paragraph 2, what has “taken the world by storm”?
| A．Intellectual property rights. | B．Free downloading. |
| C．The Internet. | D．The large number of songs, films and books. |
A possible title for this passage could be _______.
| A．IP Rights and Our Attitudes | B．Ways to Protect Your IP Rights |
| C．The Present and the Future of IP rights | D．A History of IP Rights |
Every culture in the world has marriage and wedding ceremonies . Usually marriages are between one woman(the bride) and one man ( the groom). However, in other parts of the world a man may have several wives, or, as in some areas of India, a wife may have more than one husband..
There are also many different kinds of wedding ceremonies practiced around the world. These ceremonies can be very short and simple, or very long and complicated.
One of the largest and most expensive wedding ceremonies in recent times was held in Dubai in 1981. The couple tying the knot at this wedding were the son of Sheik ( a male Arab ruler) Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum and Princess Salama. The wedding ceremony took seven days and cost $44 million. It was held in a large building which was specially built for the ceremony and looked like a stadium. The bride and groom needed a large place for their wedding because more than 20,000 guests were invited.
The reasons why a man and woman get married also vary. Sometimes they marry because they are in love, sometimes they marry because someone they meet through a matchmaker, and sometimes they marry because their parents tell them that they must marry.
One unusual example of an arranged marrige took place in Bangladesh in 1986. The groom was an eleven-month-old boy and the bride was a three-month-old girl. They were the youngest married couple ever.
The parents of the bride and groom arranged the marriage as a way of ending a fight between the two families who had been arguing over a farm for twenty years. Both families thought they owned the farm, but no one knew exactly . The fight ended for good when the young boy married the young girl. By arranging this marriage, neither famlily was forced to lose face. The two families agreed to give the farm to the young people.What is the best title for this passage?
| A．An Unusual Wedding Tradition | B．A Short History of Marriage |
| C．Common Western Wedding Trations. | D．Interesting Wedding Around the World |
Who got married in the large Wedding Ceremony described in the passage?
A. a farmer and a neighbor B. the son of a sheik and a princess
B. a king and a queen D. two babies.Why was the wedding ceremony in Dubai held in a building like a stadium?
A. The ceremony was very long
B. The groom loved to play sports.
C, Many people came to the wedding.
D. People in Dubai usually get married in stadium.Why did the families in Bangladesh make their children get married?
| A．The children were in love |
| B．The families wanted to end the fight |
| C．The families wanted to buy a farm. |
| D．The bride’s family wanted to sell their farm. |
What was strange about the wedding in Bangladesh ?
| A．The bride and groom were young. | B．The wedding was on a farm |
| C． It was an arranged marriage. | D．More than 20,000 guests came to the wedding |
The first Starbucks coffee shop opened in 1971 in downtown Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It was a small coffee shop that roasted its own coffee beans. The coffee shop’s business did well, and by 1981 there were three more Starbucks stores in Seattle.
Things really began to change for the company in 1981. That year, Howard Schultz met the three men who ran Starbucks. Schultz worked in New York for a company that made kitchen equipment. He noticed that Starbucks ordered a large number of special coffee makers, and he was curious about the company. Schultz went to Seattle to see what Starbucks did , and he liked what he saw. He wanted to become part of the company. In 1982, the original Starbucks owners hired Schultz as the company’s head of marketing.
In 1983, Schultz traveled to Italy. The unique atmosphere of the espresso(浓咖啡) bars there caught his eye. To Schultz it seemed that Italians spent their daily lives in three places: home, work , and coffee bars . His experience in Italy gave Schultz a new idea for Starbucks back in Seattle.
Schultz created an atmosphere for Starbucks coffee shops that was comfortable and casual, and customers everywhere seemed to like it. Between 1987 and 1992, Starbucks opened 150 new stores---and that was only the beginning. As a matter of fact, by the year 2000, three new Starbucks stores opened somewhere around the world every day!
Today, Starbucks has thousands of stores, including stores in twenty-six countries. One thing that helps make Starbucks succeed in cities outside the United Stateds is the way Starbucks works with local stores and restaurants. By working together with a store already in the city, Starbucks gains an understanding of customers in the city. This understanding helps Starbucks open stores in the right locations for their customers.What is the main topic of the reading?
| A．how Starbucks has grown | B．Starbucks’ customers |
| C．what Starbucks makes | D．how Starbucks makes its coffee |
Which is true about Starbucks’ first ten years of business?
| A．It grew very quickly | B．It was run by Howard Schultz |
| C．It was a small company | D．It made special coffee makers |
Who is Howard Schultz?
| A．a coffee seller from New York | B．the man who changed the company |
| C．an Italian coffee maker | D．one of the original owners of the company |
About how many new Starbucks opened in 1999?
| A．3 | B．150 | C．300 | D．more than 1000 |
What helps Starbucks succeed in places outside the United States?
| A．opening restaurants in just a few locations each year. |
| B．only selling locally produced coffee beans |
| C．working with other major coffee-making companies |
| D．learning about local customers. |
Popular breakfast foods in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, include coffee, milk , juice, eggs, and bread. Some other breakfast items served in the United States are thought by many to be traditionally American. However, they actually come from other cultures.
A very popular breakfast food in America is the pancake--- a thin , flat cake made out of flour and often served with maple syrup. The idea of the pancake is very old. In fact, pancakes were made long ago in ancient China.
Bagels, a round thick bread with a hole in the middle , are also popular for breakfast in America. Polish people in the late 1600s came up with the idea for the first bagels and this new kind of bread soon took off across Eastern Europe.
In the late 1800s, thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe travelled to the United States and brought the recipe for bagels with them. Today, New York bagels are said to be the best in the world. Many people have them with cream for breakfast on the go.
Doughnuts (usually spelled “donut” in the United States) came from France. They were served to American soldiers in France in the World War Ⅰ. After the war, American soldiers asked cooks in the United States to make doughnuts for them. Now , served with coffee, they are a very popular breakfast food across the United States.This reading is mainly about ________
| A．famous places to eat breakfast. |
| B．why people in the United States eat breakfast |
| C．the most popular types of pancakes in the United States |
| D．the history of popular breakfast foods in the United States. |
The oldest breakfast food in the passage is ______
| A．the pancake | B．the bagel | C．the doughnut | D．The passage doesn’t say. |
Which sentence is true for both bagels and donuts?
| A．They both came from Europe | B．They are both easy to make |
| C．They are both sweet | D．people in New York make them best |
Who brought bagels to America?
| A．Polish people | B．Jewish People | C．Chinese People | D．American soldiers |
Who served donuts to American soldiers during World War Ⅰ?
| A．French people | B．Jewish people |
| C．other American soldiers | D．cooks from the United States. |
Why does the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy lean? It leans because of a mistake. It has leaned almost since the day the tower was built.
In 1173, the people of Pisa, Italy, wanted to build a bell tower. They wanted the tower to be the most beautiful bell tower in all of Italy. The city also needed a bell tower because the church did not have one.
However, there was a problem. As soon as the first floor of the building was finished, the tower started to lean. Builders tried to make the building straight again as they added more floors, but they couldn’t figure out how to make it stop leaning.
It took almost 180 years to finish the tower. Since then, the tower has leaned by another millimeter every year. Today, the Leaning Tower has eight floors and is 54.5 meters tall. By 1990, it was leaning by about 4 meters to one side. It was also slowly sinking into the ground. Many people became worried that it would soon fall apart.
In 1998, repair works began on the tower, and by the end of 2001, it had been moved back by 45 centimeters. The tower will still lean, however, so it will need to be repaired again---in another 200 years.why did the people of Pisa want to build the tower?
| A．They needed a new church | B．They wanted to build the tallest tower in Tower | C．They needed a bell tower. | D． They wanted to build a leaning tower. |
When did the tower begin to lean?
| A．from the first day it was built | B．after the first floor was built |
| C．after the last floor was built | D．180 years after it was built |
When was the tower finished?
| A．in 1173 | B．in 1180 | C．in 1353 | D．in 1474 |
Before being repaired,, the tower leaned every year by another _______
| A．1 millimeter | B．45 centimeters | C．54.5 millimeters | D．4 meters |
Which of the following is NOT true about the tower?
| A．It was sinking into the ground |
| B．People were worried it might fall apart |
| C．It was repaired between 1990 and 1998. |
| D．It will need to be repaired again in 200 years. |