Eleven-year-old Evan Green doesn’t want to save just one tree-he wants to save a whole rainforest!
In the Redwood City, Calif, a boy started a group called the Red Dragon Conservation Team four years ago to do just that. So far, the team’s members have raised $4,500. That’s enough to purchase and protect more than 16 acres of rainforest in Costa Rica through the Center for Ecosystem survival.
Every year, thousands of square miles of rainforest are destroyed worldwide. Logging and farming are mostly likely to blame, scientists say. The loss is terrible news for animals and people. Even though rainforests cover less than 2 percent of the earth, they are home to half the world’s plants and animals. Rainforests also provide water and help control the earth’s climate.
Evan’s work to save the rainforests recently earned him a Barron prize for Young Heroes. The prizes are given to children or teenagers who have made a positive difference in the world. Evan’s goal is “to save enough rainforests to last forever”. He won’t have to do it alone. His actions have already inspired other kids to chip in. One girl asked for donations instead of presents on her birthday. She raised $850. Other kids are starting their own conservation teams.
Evan says everyone can help the planet-even by taking small steps such as recycling. He and his family try to make a difference every day. “We recycle, we try to limit our garbage… we’ve been walking a little more, and we buy local food,” Evan said.Evan started the group _______.
A.to help the poor | B.to make himself well-known |
C.to win the Barron prize | D.to save the rainforest |
How much does it cost to buy and protect an acre of rainforest in Costa Rica?
A.About $4,500. | B.About $850. |
C.About $1,000. | D.About $280. |
What Evan said in the last paragraph suggests that _________.
A.actions speak louder than words |
B.we can all do something to protect the earth |
C.we should learn to recycle from now on |
D.a good beginning makes a good ending |
What would be the best title for the passage?
A.Evan Green-a famous teenager |
B.The Red Dragon Conservation Team |
C.Boy gathers support for rainforests |
D.Rainforests are being destroyed |
As the pace of life continues to increase, we are fast losing the art of relaxation. Once you are in the habit of rushing through lift, being on the go from morning till night, it is hard to slow down. But relaxation is essential for a healthy mind and body.
Stress is a natural part of everyday life and there is no way to avoid it. In fact, it is not the bad thing it is often supposed to be. A certain amount of stress is vital to provide motivation and give purpose to life. It is only when the stress gets out of control that it can lead to poor performance and ill health.
The amount of stress a person can withstand(抵抗)depends very much on the individual. Some people are not afraid of stress, and such characters are obviously prime material for managerial responsibilities. Others lose heart at the first signs of unusual difficulties. When exposed to stress, in whatever form, we react both chemically and physically. In fact we make choice between "fight" or "flight" and in more primitive days the choice made the difference between life or death. The crises we meet today are unlikely to be so extreme, but however little the stress is, it involves the same response. It is when such a reaction lasts long, through continued exposure to stress, that health becomes endangered. Such serious conditions as high blood pressure and heart disease have established links with stress. Since we cannot remove stress from our lives (it would be unwise to do so even if we could), we need to find ways to deal with it.
People are finding less and less time for relaxing themselves because_____.
A.they do not know how to enjoy themselves |
B.they do not believe that relaxation is important for health![]() |
C.they are travelling fast all the time |
D.they are becoming busier with their work |
According to the writer, the most important character for a good manager is his ________.
A.not fearing stress | B.knowing the art of relaxation |
C.high sense of responsibility | D.having control over performance |
Which of the following statements is true?
A.We can find some ways to avoid stress. |
B.Stress is always harmful to people. |
C.It is easy to change the habit of keeping oneself busy with work. |
D.Different people can withstand ![]() |
In Paragraph 3, "such a reaction" refers back to_______.
A."making a choice between 'flight' or 'fight'" |
B."reaction to stress both chemically and physically" |
C."responding to crises quickly" |
D."losing heart at the signs difficulties" |
In the last sentence of the passage, "do so " refers to ______.
A."expose ourselves to stress" |
B."find ways to deal with stress" |
C."remove stress from our lives" |
D."established links between diseases and stress" |
Advertising means to draw people’s attention to something. It is a central feature of our lives. Sales depend upon it. So does our knowledge of what is available. Read the following advertisements and see how much you understand them. About what they advertise, we can safely say that .
A.advertisements(I)and(III)advertise two products |
B.advertisements(III)and(IV)advertise services |
C.advertisements(II)and(III)advertise beliefs |
D.advertisements(I)and(IV)provide jobs |
How many advertisements are trying to be price competitive?
A.1. | B.2. | C.3. | D.4. |
Which of the following statements about the advertisements above is NOT true?
A.A newspaper uses one of them in its own newspaper. |
B.All of them advertise for the largest number of customers. |
C.All of them list the prices. |
D.All of them have included contact in formation. |
From these examples of advertisements, we can conclude that .
A.some advertisements are provided by newspapers free of charge |
B.newspaper is the most common means of advertising |
C.advertising is an expensive business |
D.advertisements should appeal to customers |
If you want someone to do some cleaning for you, you can call .
A.232567 | B.73204683 |
C.444237058 | D.0732605041 |
As the US wakes up to China’s rising status (地位) as an economic and strategic competitor, US parents are urging their children to learn Chinese, reports Julian Borger.
The US is being swept by a rush to learn Mandarin (普通话) -- from wealthy New York mothers hiring Chinese nannies (保姆) for their small children to a defence department education project in Oregon.
The forces driving Mandarin’s momentum (势头) are parental ambition for children facing a future in which China is almost certain to be a major player, and the government is worried about that America may get left behind in that new world.
The bottleneck is the supply of teachers. Mandarin instructors are difficult to import and difficult to train. There are visa problems in bringing over teachers from China but the biggest barrier is cultural. Teaching in Asia is generally done by rote and the change to western, interactive styles of instruction can be a large leap(跳越).
On the other hand, it requires enormous firmness for westerners to learn a language like Chinese, with its thousands of written characters. According to the Asia Society in New York, all of America’s teacher-training institutions turn out only a couple of dozen homegrown Mandarin teachers.
One way to ease the shortage is to find native Mandarin speakers and use fast-track methods to train them. However, the majority of Chinese-Americans grew up speaking Cantonese, the dialect(方言)spoken in Hong Kong, where their parents came from. Many are themselves signing on as Mandarin students at the private language schools springing up on the west coast.
Title :in the USA
You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes(撞击) through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead!Of course he isn't really dead. With any luck he isn't even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars and run out of them even when they catch fire, are professionals. They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks. There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress(床垫). Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar! But although their work depends on trick of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman’s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is "blown up" in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.
Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get seriously injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff(悬崖)a thousand feet high. His parachute(降落伞)failed to open, and he was killed. In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action. For nowadays there are stuntgirls too. Stuntmen are those who ______.
A.often dress up as actors |
B.prefer to lead dangerous lives |
C.often perform seemingly dangerous actions |
D.often fight each other for their lives |
Stuntmen earn their living by ______.
A.playing their dirty tricks | B.selling their special skills |
C.jumping out of high windows | D.jumping from fast moving trains |
When a stuntman falls from a high building, ______.
A.he needs little protection | B.he will be covered with a mattress |
C.his life is endangered | D.his safety is generally all right |
Which of the following is the main factor of a successful performance?
A.Strength. | B.Exactness. | C.Speed. | D.Carefulness |
What can be inferred from the author’s example of the Norwegian stuntman?
A.Sometimes an accident can occur to a stuntman. |
B.The percentage of serious accidents is high. |
C.Parachutes must be of good quality. |
D.The cliff is too high. |
This is a dangerous world we live in. The number of murders goes up every year, people are dying of cancer, more people contract HIV, more teens are using drugs, ect. You know this because you’ve heard all the statistics on the news and in the paper. But do you really have an accurate idea what they mean? The numbers are going up, but how do they compare to the growth in population? Are more cases of these diseases being reported because of better testing techniques, or are the diseases more common? The fact is that without knowing the background statistics mean very little.
This growing trend of reporting only part of the information is becoming dangerous. For example, several years ago a high school student reported the dangers of the chemical known as dihydrogen monoxide. This chemical, found in most cancerous tumors, is often found in the blood of people drunk on alcohol, and causes complete physical and mental dependence for those who take the chemical even once. After reading his report, more than 75% of his Advanced Placement Chemistry class voted to forbid this dangerous chemical! Every one of the above statement is true, yet this chemical is necessary to all life on earth. The students made a mistake because they voted knowing only a few statements and statistics, rather than the chemical’s full background.
The point of this article is that one should be aware of what is and is not being said. When one finds a new fact or number, one should try to consider other important information before forming an opinion with only half-truths. Always remember that the author is trying to convince you of his or her own view, and will leave our information that is different from his view. For example, look again at the statistics that suggest skiing is safe. Only 32 people die each year when skiing, while 897 die from lightening strikes, but which is really more dangerous? If you think more about it, you will realize far fewer people go skiing each year than the number of people in danger of a lightning strike. When you think about it again, skiing is more dangerous than you might at first think when looking at the statistics. If we teenagers are to be left in this world, we had better be able to think critically, and form our own views, rather than be easily persuaded by another’s. To be warned is just to be prepared.What’s the author’s attitude towards the growing trend of reporting only part of the
information?
Disapproving B. Positive C. Indifferent D. DangerousIn the first paragraph, what does the writer suggest?
A.We are now living in a dangerous world. |
B.We get a lot of false statistics from the media. |
C.There are around us more and more murders diseases, ect. |
D.Statistics alone without full background don’t give us an accurate picture of things. |
What’s the purpose of the writer’s using the two examples in the second paragraph?
A.To argue that high school students are easily persuaded. |
B.To prove what is necessary to us might be dangerous. |
C.To show the danger of reporting only part of the information. |
D.To warn us of the harmful substance around us. |
Relative information is often left out because ___________________.
A.it is not important |
B.the author is trying to show what he or she says is true |
C.readers will consider other important information |
D.readers are able to form an opinion with half-truths |
What can we learn from the passage?
A.Some measures must be taken to protect our dangerous world. |
B.The growing trend of reporting only half-truths is getting out of control. |
C.Teenagers ought to improve their ability of telling right from wrong. |
D.We should learn to think critically and look at problems from all sides. |