Twelve-year-old Leonardo was born in a poor family in Bambamarca in Peru. He knew how to read but he had never seen a book in his life. So he asked the new priest（牧师）in his village to give him one. But there was no electricity. So Leonardo borrowed candles from the church and sat up all night reading it. The next morning, he was at the door of the priest asking for another book to read.
John Medcalf, the priest，was moved. He also realised that people would love to read if given a chance. But he knew how difficult it was for Leonardo and those in his village to get books. And yet, no one can be taught to read and write without books. To make people in a poor, faraway area grow to love books，they have to be with them. So he thought the only way was to bring books to people.
But how could this be done? Mobile libraries or car libraries would be too expensive and difficult to continue in the rocky, hilly land of Peru. So what other methods could be used?
Medcalf got a new idea from the barefoot（赤脚）doctors of China. And that was how the barefoot librarians（图书管理员）first appeared in the villages of northern Peru，almost thirty years ago.
The librarians began by going from village to village, lending books to villagers. They helped start The Rura1 Library Network of Peru.
At first，they were teachers of the village schools which these faraway libraries belonged to. But the teachers were not very interested in the job because it meant a lot of hard work. So, village leaders took on the job themselves.
Today, there are 600 village libraries across Peru. The barefoot librarians who walk up to 15 hours a day with bags of books are their lifeline.The first paragraph tells us that Leonardo ______ .
| A．had a lot of books |
| B．bought candles from others |
| C．enjoyed reading books |
| D．lived in the church |
The underlined word "this" in Paragraph 3 probably refers to “______ ”
| A．to grow to love books | B．to bring books to people |
| C．to read and write | D．to build a new library |
The passage doesn't mention ______.
| A．when the barefoot librarians appeared |
| B．who worked as village librarians at first |
| C．where Medcalf met Chinese doctors |
| D．how many village libraries Peru has today |
It can be inferred（推断）from the passage that ______．
| A．the first church in Peru was set up by John Medcalf |
| B．car libraries used to be popular in Leonardo's village |
| C．teachers were interested in bringing books to villagers |
| D．the barefoot librarians are important to village libraries |
Password (密码) strength has been a topic about the Internet lately. I have seen lots of clever methods for generating and remembering strong passwords. Some are better than others, but in my opinion, none are adequate. Here's the problem: It doesn't matter how strong your passwords are if you use the same one on multiple sites. All it takes is for a site to get hacked(侵入), like Gawker media, or even Sony did, and now your superstrong password has been stolen, and every site on which you used that password has been accessed.
So, the bottom line is that no matter how strong your passwords are, and no matter what clever tricks you use to help you remember them, if you surf internet often, the only truly secure password system is what you need.
Enter LastPass. It's not the only password manager out there, but I like it the best. You create ONE strong password that you have to memorize and use it to access your LastPass database. The LastPass database is stored online, on LastPass's servers. LastPass recognizes the site you're on and automatically logs you in (after, optionally, asking you to reenter your master password). LastPass also has automatic form fill and automatic password generation. This means that you can have a different, unique, very strong password for every site you log into, but you only have to remember one master password. It's the best of both worlds.
One argument against LastPass is that if their database is attacked, then all of your sites are in danger, and that's true, but given that their entire line of work is keeping that information safe, I'm willing to take that chance. The alternative is rolling dice(掷骰子) or picking phrases to create passwords, writing all of them down on a piece of paper or something, and then having to manually type them in when I go to a site. A terrible mess.
There is a free version of LastPass, with some additional features unlocked if you pay a $12 a year subscription.
Joshua BardwellThe writer thinks using the same password everywhere is ________.
| A．dangerous | B．convenient |
| C．appropriate | D．adequate |
When using Lastpass, users have to remember ________.
| A．all passwords used |
| B．the last password |
| C．unique password each time |
| D．the master password only |
Critics are against Lastpass because ________.
| A．they have better ways to create password |
| B．they think rolling dice is more convenient |
| C．they have no faith in Lastpass database's safety |
| D．Gawker media and Lastpass were hacked once |
Joshua Bardwell writes the passage to ________.
| A．share his experience |
| B．introduce a product of good quality |
| C．advertise his product |
| D．teach how to use a new product |
The Great Barn Adventure
One morning when I was 11, I explored the town's abandoned round grain barn(谷仓). I found a chained sliding door that was wide enough for me to pass through.
Inside, there was a heavy smell of dead mice in the dark. After my eyes adjusted, I noticed a shaft (升降机井) that rose all the way to the top of the barn. On one side was a oneman elevator with a long rope and roller.
I stepped onto the platform and gave the rope a drag and the elevator began sliding up the shaft, but stopped halfway. After a brief panic attack, I noticed holes in the wall at regular intervals, forming a ladder. For reasons known only to an 11yearold, I decided it would be better to go up than down. So, with shaking hands, I began climbing the wall.
After what seemed like forever, I reached the top of the shaft. I stood up, dusted myself off and found…absolutely nothing of interest. It was just an empty room with a ladder leading up to the roof. I climbed all the way up here for this? Then I noticed a fire extinguisher(灭火器)，which I'd always wanted to shoot off. So this was the chance of a lifetime. I tried it, and, much to my surprise, the thing worked! It shot out a thick cloud of powder that instantly filled the room. I couldn't breathe. I was going to choke to death, and they'd probably never even find my body.
Luckily, I remembered the ladder to the roof. I climbed up, popped the straw roof and saw a bright blue sky.
I suddenly realized the dust and powder pouring out of the top could draw attention. So when the dust had settled, I climbed down and slipped out of the chained door. I'm not sure if I was more excited about being alive or about not being caught, but I ran all the way back home. When the author got inside the barn, he ________.
| A．noticed a man on the elevator |
| B．opened the chained sliding door |
| C．saw many dead mice in the dark |
| D．found a shaft leading to the top |
Which of the following is the right order of the author's adventure?
a. The elevator stopped halfway.
b. He entered the round grain barn.
c. He climbed to the top of the shaft.
d. He found a fire extinguisher and shot it off.
| A．b－a－c－d | B．a－c－b－d |
| C．c－a－d－b | D．b－c－a－d |
After getting out of the chained door, the author might feel ________.
| A．inspired | B．relieved |
| C．surprised | D．disappointed |
I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a goods yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I can dimly remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity(大灾难) can do strange things to people. It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn't been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply, otherwise. I don't mean that I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left.
Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. In spite of the fact the adjustment is never easy, I had my parents and teachers to help. The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have collapsed and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person; that there is a special place where I can make myself fit.
It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was laughing at me and I was hurt. “I can't use this.” I said. “Take it with you，” he urged me, “and roll it around.” The words stuck in my head. “Roll it around！” By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball.
All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good to try for something that I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.We can learn from the beginning of the passage that ________.
| A．the author lost his sight because of a car crash |
| B．the author wouldn't love life if the calamity didn't happen |
| C．the calamity made the author appreciate what he had |
| D．the calamity strengthened the author's desire to see |
What's the most difficult thing for the author?
| A．How to adjust himself to reality |
| B．Building up assurance that he can find his place in life |
| C．Learning to manage his life alone |
| D．To find a special work that suits the author |
For the author, the baseball and encouragement offered by the man ________.
| A．hurt the author's feeling |
| B．made the author puzzled |
| C．directly led to the change of the author's career |
| D．inspired the author |
According to the passage, the author ________.
| A．set goals for himself but only invited failure most of the time |
| B．thought that nothing was impossible for him |
| C．was discouraged from trying something out of reach for fear of failure |
| D．suggested not trying something beyond one's ability at the beginning |
In her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World”， Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a highschool student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Wroclaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students' test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Wroclaw is that the latter has no football team or teams of any kind.
That American high schools spend more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. In December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are announced, it's safe to predict that American highschool students will once again show their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like China, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers.
Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D．C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader a mother with three children in the school was asked about the school's flaws (瑕疵). When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. “Really？” one of them asked worriedly, “What do you mean？”
One of the ironies of the situation is that sports show what is possible. American kids' performance on the field shows just how well they can do when expectations are high. It's too bad that their_test_scores_show_the_same_thing._Tom decides to spend his senior year in Poland because ________.
| A．he intends to improve his scores |
| B．Polish kids are better at learning |
| C．sports are not supported at schools in Gettysburg |
| D．he wants to be the smartest kid in the world |
According to Paragraph 2, we know that ________.
| A．PISA plays a very important role in America |
| B．little time is spent on sports in Japanese schools |
| C．American students do better in both math and sports |
| D．too much importance is placed on sports in America |
The underlined sentence in the last paragraph means ________.
| A．low expectations result in American students' poor PISA performance |
| B．high expectations push up American students' academic performance |
| C．American students' academic performance worries their parents a lot |
| D．lacking practice contributes to American students' average performance |
The purpose of this article is to ________.
| A．compare Polish schools with those in America |
| B．call on American schools to learn from the Polish model |
| C．draw public attention to a weakness in American school tradition |
| D．explain what is wrong with American schools and provide solutions |
Seven species of carp(鲤鱼) native to Asia have been introduced into United States waters in recent decades, but it's four in particular－bighead, black, grass and silver－that worry ecologists, biologists, fishers and policymakers alike. Introduced in the southeast to help control weeds and parasites in aquaculture (水产养殖) operations, these fish soon spread up the Mississippi River system where they have been crowding out native fish populations not used to competing with such aggressive invaders. The carps' presence in such numbers is also harming water quality and killing off sensitive species.
Asian carp are strong to jump over barriers such as low dams. They lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time and spread into new habitat quickly and easily. Also, flooding has helped the fish expand into previously unattainable water bodies. And fishers using young carp as live bait have also helped the fish's spread, as they have boats going through locks up and down the Mississippi.
The federal government considers the Asian carps to be annoying species and encourages and supports “active control” by natural resources management agencies. Federal and state governments have spent millions in tax dollars to prevent the carp from making their way into the Great Lakes, but an underwater electric fence constructed to keep them out has not worked as well as hoped, and policymakers are reviewing other options now.
In the meantime, state and federal agencies are monitoring the Mississippi and its branches for Asian carp and testing various barrier technologies to prevent their further spread. For instance, the National Park Service is cooperating with the state of Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources to construct new dams that are high enough to prevent Asian carp from jumping over. The Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee has funded DNA monitoring in potentially affected water bodies whereby researchers can determine whether the troublesome fish are present just by the biological footprints they leave behind. Individuals can do their part by not transporting fish, bait or even water from one water body to another, and by emptying and washing boats before moving them between different water bodies.Asian carp have been introduced to the USA in order to ________.
| A．improve water quality |
| B．help sensitive species |
| C．control the number of native fishes |
| D．control the ecosystem in aquaculture |
The measure to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lake but proved not good is ________.
| A．testing various barrier technologies |
| B．construction of an underwater electric fence |
| C．Emptying and washing boats before using them. |
| D．monitoring the Mississippi and its branches for Asian carp |
It is suggested from the passage that ________.
| A．aquaculture operations are dangerous to the water bodies |
| B．scientific technology is useless in preventing Asian carp spreading |
| C．both the state and the individuals can make efforts to keep out Asian carp |
| D．Asian carp have successfully invaded the Mississippi and the Great Lakes |