In April 2014，the world's oldest known message in a bottle was discovered floating in theBaltic Sea. It had spent 101 years lost in the ocean！The message was finally sent to the author's granddaughter.
A German fisherman named Konrad Fischer found the brown bottle near Kiel，Germany. He said he nearly threw the bottle back into the water after pulling it out of a fishing net. Then he noticed something inside.
The bottle in good condition contained a Danish postcard with two German stamps，dated May 17，1913. Although dampness had made most of the writing illegible（字迹模糊的），thereadable part of the message asked whoever found it to return it to an address in Berlin. It even contained two stamps to pay for postage.
From the address，researchers found that the postcard was written by a man named Richard Platz，who was 20 years old when he wrote the message. While he was hiking on the Baltic coast with a nature appreciation group，he threw the bottle into the sea. Then the researchers began a search for any living relatives of his. Sure enough，they were able to find his 62-year-old granddaughter，Angela Erdmann，who still lives in Berlin.
“It was almost unbelievable，”Erdmann said upon being presented with her grandfather's bottle and message.“That was a pretty moving moment. Tears rolled down my face."
Erdmann never knew her grandfather，who died in 1946，but says that the discovery of the bottle has made her want to learn more about him.
The bottle remained on display at the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg until May 1 ．After that，the researchers examined the postcard and tried to figure out the meaning of the rest of the message.
Previously，the oldest message found in a bottle spent nearly 98 years at sea and was discovered in April 2012，according to Guinness World Records.
When Konrad Fischer picked up the bottle from the sea， ．
| A．he thought it would bring him good luck |
| B．he noticed the postcard inside immediately |
| C．he decided to uncover the secret of the bottle |
| D．he wanted to throw it back into the sea at first |
Why did Richard Platz throw the bottle with the message into the sea?
| A．He expected his granddaughter could find the postcard. |
| B．He wished the finder would send the postcard to his home. |
| C．He believed his postcard would be kept secret at sea forever. |
| D．He thought he could make friends with the finder of the bottle. |
What can be the best title for this passage？
| A．The finding of a floating bottle at the sea |
| B．A one-century-old letter to a granddaughter |
| C．The world's oldest message in a floating bottle |
| D．The oldest Danish postcard in a floating bottle |
The following are letters to the editor of a school newspaper
Dear editor,
I’d like to express my opinion about grades. Students should be allowed to study without worrying about grades. Fortunately, most educators are becoming aware of the fact that students have different interests and abilities. I understand that grades are useful, but grades often limit creativity. Competing for better grades causes many students to turn down opportunities to pursue music, dramatics and sports. Grades force an arbitrary (武断的) standard of success on everyone. I do not demand, as some extremists do, that grades be removed immediately. However, I do believe that less emphasis should be placed on grades. I hope that someday grades will become optional at Village High School.
Magdalena Smith
Drama Club
Dear editor,
I’d like to say something about grades. Let’s face the facts about grades. Grades perform three basic functions. First, grades motivate students to work at their highest level of competence. Second, they act as a reward for hardworking students and as a punishment to students who do not work hard. Finally, grades are used as an effective standard by which to measure student achievement. Good grades help students to get jobs and to get into university. I’ve spoken with a number of students who have jobs, and most of them say that they were hired primarily on the basis of their grades. My grades helped me land a part-time job and will help me get into university next year. I think grades are extremely important at Village High School.
Simon Harper
Science ClubWhich of the following is not Magdalena Smith’s opinion?
| A．Students may give up the chance to learn music and sports for grades. |
| B．Students’ creativity may not be developed for grades. |
| C．Grades should not be used to measure a person’s success. |
| D．Grades should be taken away at once. |
We can learn Simon Harper __________.
| A．believes in the benefits of good grades |
| B．is concerned about students’ creativity |
| C．doesn’t work too hard at his studies |
| D．supports students’ interests and abilities |
From the second letter, we can infer that Simon Harper is a/an __________.
| A．teacher | B．headmaster |
| C．student | D．Advertiser |
The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to present all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month. The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on earth.
An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his word, “the worst came to the worst”. Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill（钻孔） deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above 0ºC. The seeds will be protected behind walls a meter thick and high-security door.
The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will come from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present all the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eighteen degrees below 0ºC. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.
Mr. Fowler says the proposed structure will be the world’s safest gene bank. He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason. Norway first put forward the idea in the 1980s. But safety concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.The project is meant to ______.
| A．increase the world’s food output in the future |
| B．carry out some scientific experiments on plant genes |
| C．build an exhibition centre of the world’s plant seeds |
| D．protect crop seeds from dying out in case of possible disasters |
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the above passage?
| A．The government of Norway will perform the project alone. |
| B．Seeds to be collected there were produced ten thousand years ago. |
| C．Spitsbergen is chosen because it is free of the nuclear war forever. |
| D．Temperature is a major consideration when choosing the storage place. |
We can infer from the text that _______.
| A．Norway had meant to build the storage centre about 20 years before. |
| B．The storage center will greatly promote world agriculture |
| C．People will get newly-developed seeds from the center every year. |
| D．There haven’t been any seed storage centers in the world before. |
What is probably the best title of the passage?
| A．The Best Place to Store Seeds |
| B．Noah’s Ark（诺亚方舟）of Plant Seeds in Plan |
| C．Concerns of World Food Supply |
| D．A New Way to Feed the World |
Among various programmes, TV talk shows have covered every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one is different in style. But no two shows are more opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows.
Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of “rubbish talk”. The contents on his show are as surprising as they can be. For example, the show takes the ever-common talk show titles of love, sex, cheating, and hate, to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is about the dark side of society, yet people are willing to eat up the troubles of other people’s lives.
Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its top. But Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show is mainly about the improvement of society and different quality of life. Contents are from teaching your children lessons, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors.
Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being poured into society. Jerry ends every show with a “final word”. He makes a small speech about the entire idea of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable.
Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show’s main viewers are middleclass Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and ability to deal with life’s tough problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of a connection with the young adults of society. These are 18-to-21-year-olds whose main troubles in life include love, relationship, sex, money and drug. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned through the show’s exploitation.Compared with other TV talk shows, both the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey are ____.
| A．more interesting | B．more formal |
| C．more detailed | D．unusually popular |
Which of the following is likely to be a topic of the Oprah Winfrey show?
| A．Family income planning. | B．Nation hatred. |
| C．A new type of robot. | D．Street accident. |
We can learn from the passage that the two talk shows_____.
| A．have become the only ones of its kind |
| B．attract different people |
| C．appear at different times of the day |
| D．exploit the weaknesses in human nature |
Which statement about the passage is Not true? ______
| A．Jerry Springer show is like poisonous waste, so nothing can be learnt from it. |
| B．The two kinds of talk shows are opposite in content. |
| C．Opera Winfrey show is helpful for those middleclass Americans |
| D．Jerry Springer show attracts those who are young and in trouble. |
Should parents ever hit their children?
Research suggests many of us are likely to respond “no”, and public support for spanking（打屁股） has been falling over the years．But surveys also show that 75 percent to nearly 90 percent of parents admit to spanking their child at least once．
I was raised in a zero-tolerance home for disrespect, and my parents often turned to physical punishment．And, no, I don' t feel I was damaged by it．
Nothing is more annoying than watching ill-mannered behavior from children．
But there is data to suggest that a return to old-school spanking isn't the answer．
Two years ago, Newsweek reported that it had found data suggesting that teens whose parents used physical punishment were more likely to become aggressive．
Murray Straus, professor at the University of New Hampshire in America, has studied the topic of children and spanking for decades．He said that children who were physically punished have lower IQs than their peers．It may be that children with lower IQs were more likely to get spanked, but the punishment may have been counterproductive （反作用的） to their mental development, as well．
Some researchers make the argument that occasional open-handed smacks （用巴掌打） on the bottom are not only harmless but can have some benefit．
Last year, Marjorie Gunnoe, a psychologist at Calvin College, studied teens who have never spanked．There are a greater number of children growing up without ever having been physically punished．Gunnoe’s research suggests they don' t turn out any better than those who were sometimes spanked．
There are some parents who simply cannot control their tempers （脾气）．But I still believe that the best parents are the ones who are able to offer fair and firm discipline without ever turning to physical punishment．According to the first three paragraphs, the author was probably hit by her parents when.
| A．they were dissatisfied with her grade |
| B．she showed no respect for the elder |
| C．they cannot control their temper |
| D．their discipline turns out to be not strict enough |
According to Murray Straus, children who are physically punished ______．
| A．are less aggressive toward others when they get older |
| B．have slower physical development |
| C．benefit from occasional spanking |
| D．may develop lower IQs than their peer |
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the article?
| A．40 percent of children grow up without ever being spanked |
| B．Children who suffer less physical punishment are better students |
| C．Occasional open-handed spanking on the bottom are mentally harmful |
| D．Researchers disagree over whether smacking is mentally harmful to children |
“It was all his own idea, ” says Pat Peters, the 38-year-old wife of Palo Alto, California high school football coach Bob Peters, 39. Bob had just drawn up a “motherhood contract” --a document stating that for 70 days this summer he would take over the care and feeding of the couple’s four children, plus all household chores. Although he didn’t even know how to make coffee when he signed, he was quite confident. (He thought the experience would make a nice book.)
After 40 of the 70 days, he was ready to give up. “I was beaten down, completely humbled（挫败的）,” admits Peters. Three weeks later he spoke to the local press, stating, “Not only is motherhood a difficult task, not only is it never-ending, it is an impossible job for any normal human being.
Bob and Pat were high school sweethearts. After they were married in 1960, she worked as a secretary to help put him through university. Since then Bob has been the football and wrestling coach at Palo Alto’s Cubberley High while Pat raised the kids. Then two years ago Pat went back to work as a secretary at Cubberley. “I had been around children so much,” she sighs, “I couldn’t talk to a grown-up.” She continued to run the household, however----until Bob signed the contract, therefore, she decided to relax and enjoy it.
Although Peters had consulted with his school’s home economics teachers and the head of the cafeteria, his meals were sometimes a disaster. “I tried to slip the butter I’d forgotten under the eggs after they were frying, ” he says. For the last three weeks, the family ate out a lot—sometimes having Macdonald’s hamburgers for lunch and dinner.
As for housekeeping, a home economics teacher had told Bob that a room always looks clean if the bed is made. “I found an easier way-I shut the doors, ” he says. Soon the kids were wearing the same clothes for a week. “I made them wear their shirts inside out, and when we went to pick up Pat at work they turned them right side out so they would look clean.”
Now that Bob has publicly admitted he was wrong, he is routinely sharing the child-raising and household tasks with Pat. The tentative（暂时的） title of his book about the summer is taken from something he shouted at the kids one day.The couple signed the contract because _______.
| A．Pat complained a lot about her doing the housework all by herself |
| B．Bob loved taking care of children and wanted his wife to have a good rest |
| C．they agreed that husband and wife should share household tasks |
| D．Bob thought it easy to take care of the family and wanted the experience for a book |
It was agreed that if Bob failed to keep to the contract, he would have to _______.
| A．pay a certain amount of money |
| B．admit publicly he was wrong about motherhood |
| C．say sorry to his wife Now that Bob has publicly admitted he was wrong, he is routinely sharing the child-raising and household tasks with Pat. |
| D．do all the housework for years |
What can we learn about Pat Peters?
| A．She was hard-working and selfless. |
| B．She was pretty and kind-hearted. |
| C．She was tired of the child-raising and household tasks. |
| D．She did not love Bob any longer. |
Which of the following can best end the news story?
| A．“Wait till your mother gets home!” |
| B．“My experience of being a mother.” |
| C．“I’m proud of you all, my dear!” |
| D．“Motherhood: an impossible job for anyone.” |