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Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets and newsletters. “The coffee houses particularly are very roomy for a free conversation, and for reading at an easier rate all manner of printed news,” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, The New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media.Now, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social and diverse, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before the mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics. In much of the world, the mass media are flourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by 6% between 2005 and 2009. But those global figures mask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving up newspapers and TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinary people are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and distributing news. Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published their thousands online, Mobile phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes is posted on social-networking sites and shown on television newscasts. Social-networking sites help people find, discuss and share news with their friends.And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have become important means of news. Celebrities and world leaders publish updates directly via social networks; many countries now make raw data available through “open government” initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channels from around the world. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sites, to rise to prominence in a very short space of time. And it has made possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practiced by Wiki leaks, which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The news agenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets.In principle, every liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social news environment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. The transformation of the news business is unstoppable, and attempts to reverse it are doomed to failure. As producers of new journalism, individuals can be scrupulous with facts and transparent with their sources. As consumers, they can be general in their tastes and demanding in their standards. And although this transformation does raise concerns, there is much to celebrate in the noisy, diverse, vociferous, argumentative and stridently alive environment of the news business in the ages of the internet. The coffee house is back. Enjoy it.1. According to the passage, what initiated the transformation of coffee-house news to mass-media news?2. Which of the following statements best supports “Now, the new industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house”? 3. According to the passage, which is NOT a role played by information technology?4. The author’s tone in the last paragraph towards new journalism is ¬______.5. In “The coffee house is back”, coffee house best symbolize ¬______.

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The mouth of the Amazon River has long been a starting place for hunters going to the jungles of Brazil. In recent years it has been, too, the headquarters for a middle-aged American couple who hunt the smallest living things and perhaps the most deadly-viruses. Dr. Causey and his wife have discovered more new types and more old ones in new places than all of the other search teams.Dr. Causey insists that the couple’s success is due more to the number of viruses in the forests of the Amazon than to the skill he and his wife have developed during their eighteen years of work in Brazil.“We have found the loveliest diseases right in our backyard,” he told me one day as we walked through a light train along a jungle trail.“Oh, these viruses are here all right. There is in the jungle a great pool of disease which is carried in the blood of animals and birds. Some of the diseases can be caught by people. It may be that we shall find that the jungle is a great center of virus disease and that it overflows from here to other parts of the world. It may be that birds carry the viruses to far countries. It may be that some viruses which presently reproduce in man without making him ill, may change and become deadly to him. ‘Viruses waiting for a disease,’ they are sometimes called. This is just an idea, you understand. We do not know, but it is important that we find out, and the first step in finding out is to learn what viruses there are in the jungles.”There is a Brazilian story about the beginning of the world which goes: When God was making the world he tried to keep everything in balance. When he made a desert, he provided it with some green places. When he made a land that was beautiful, he gave it storms and other terrible things caused by the weather. Where the earth was rich below the surface, it was also made hard to live on. Where the land could be farmed, the weather was made too hot or too cold or too dry. Where there was enough water, God made it so that there should sometimes be too much water.“But in one place God made a land that was rich, where everything grew easily. Where it was not too hot and certainly not too cold, where animals were plentiful and fruit hung from the trees all the year round.”“The angels looked at this loveliness and were jealous of man.” They asked God if this was not too beautiful, too much like heaven, this valley of the Amazon.“And God said, True, this land looks like heaven, but wait until you see what happens to man when he tries to live in it.”1. The Causeys chose the mouth of the Amazon as their headquarters______.2. According to Dr. Causey, the success of his wife and himself was mainly due to ______.3. Which of the following is true?4. When Dr. Causey said, “We have found the loveliest diseases right in our backyard”, he meant ______. 5. The central idea of the Brazilian legend is that ______.

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The development of the modern presidency in the United States began with Andrew Jackson who swept to power in 1829 as the head of the Democratic Party and served until 1837. During his second term, his opponents had gradually come together to form the Whig party, Whigs and Democrats held different attitudes toward the changes brought about by the market, banks, and commerce. The Democrats tended to view society as a continuing conflict between “the people” farmers, planters, and workers-and a set of greedy aristocrats. This “paper money aristocracy” of bankers and investors manipulated the banking system for their own profit, Democrats claimed, and sapped the nation’s virtue by encouraging speculation and the desire for sudden, unearned wealth. The Democrats wanted the rewards of the market without sacrificing the features of a simple agrarian republic. They wanted the wealth that the market offered without the competitive, changing society; the complex dealing: the dominance of urban centers; and the loss came with it.Whigs, on the other hand, were more comfortable with the market. For them, commerce and economic development were agents of civilization. Nor did the Whigs envision any conflict in society between farmers and workers on the one hand and businesspeople and bankers on the other. Economic growth would benefit everyone by raising national income and expanding opportunity. The government’s responsibility was to provide a well-regulated economy that guaranteed opportunity for citizens of ability.Whigs and Democrats differed not only in their attitudes toward the market but also about how active the central government should be in people’s lives. Despite Andrew Jackson’s inclination to be a strong President, Democrats as a rule believed in limited government. Governments’ role in the economy was to promote competition by destroying monopolies and special privileges. In keeping with this philosophy of limited government, Democrats also rejected the idea that moral beliefs were the proper sphere of government action. Religion and politics, they believed, should be kept clearly separate, and they generally opposed humanitarian legislation.The Whigs, in contrast, viewed government power positively. They believed that it should be used to protect individual rights and public liberty, and that it had a special role where individual effort was ineffective. By regulating the economy and competition, the government could ensure equal opportunity. Indeed, for Whigs the concept of government promoting the general welfare went beyond the economy. In particular, Whigs in the northern sections of the United States also believed that government power should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country. They were much more likely to favor social-reform legislation and aid to education.In some ways the social makeup of the two parties was similar. To be competitive in winning votes, Whigs and Democrats both had to have significant support among farmers, the largest group in society, and workers. Neither party could win an election by appealing exclusively to the rich or the poor. The Whigs, however, enjoyed disproportionate strength among the business and commercial classes. Democrats attracted farmers isolated from the market or uncomfortable with it, workers alienated from the emerging industrial system, and rising entrepreneurs who wanted to break monopolies and open the economy to newcomers like themselves. The Whigs were strongest in the towns, cities, and those rural areas that were fully integrated into the market economy, whereas Democrats dominated areas of semi-subsistence farming that were more isolated and pitiful economically.1. The author mentions “bankers and investors” in the passage as an example of which of the following?2. According to paragraph 2, Whigs believed that commerce and economic development would have which of the following effects on society?3. A Democrat would be most likely to support government action in which of the following areas?4. Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 4 about variations in political reliefs within the Whig Party?5. According to the last paragraph, the Democrats were supported by all of the following groups EXCEPT______.

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Marc Hooper, not long promoted to CEO of confectionery giant Spartan Ketley(SK), is very different from his predecessors. He is a corporate lawyer by training, and his background has clearly shaped his management style. He was taught that no work should go unchecked and that no statement can go out without everything being fully defined. ”The legal world teaches you to think in a synthetic way, to take contrasting ideas and thread them together to form a strategy Hooper, with little marketing experience, was not at the top of market observers’ lists for the job. But here he is, just over a year into the role and seemingly on top of things.Educated at Harvard University, Hooper started his career with well-known New York consultants Cox & Leight(C&L), and became a specialist in mergers and acquisitions. It was a tremendous training ground and I could have stayed in mergers and acquisitions I found the work interesting. But another opportunity presented itself: SK offered him a job as general advisor. Hooper knew SK well because C&L was its main New York consultancy firm and Hooper looked after its account.Hooper liked SK and when they came calling, several factors weighed on his mind. “I admired SK and thought it would be a great place to work. C&L had told me I was only five years through a ten-year journey to become a partner. Also, for three years in a row my pay at C&L had stayed the same. Finally, I was working very long hours in a large, impersonal office and it seemed like an intelligent lifestyle decision to take a job with a different company.Hooper became established at SK, and soon felt ready for a higher position, but was told that no one could get on at SK unless they had been in sales and marketing. I had to make a move, “says Hooper.” I took a risk; I became head of marketing in Europe. In fact, this was a sideways move-not for more money but to add to his knowledge and to further his career. The first challenge was that he found himself in charge of 25 bright young marketing people. “I had to work hard to keep up,” he admits.Throughout, he has remained focused, his eye always on the main prize. His elevation to CEO, he says, is proof of SKS inclusiveness. “We are always open to people with fresh ideas, as CEO I support anyone who is willing to take a chance and who wants to stretch themselves. If you are keen to develop and prove you can succeed, this company will provide the challenge you need.” And in line with this philosophy, Hooper is not an autocratic leader his style is to consult, to seek advice, then to act.1. The choice of Mare Hooper as Spartan Ketley’s CEO was surprising because ______.2. What does Hooper say about his first job?3. One of the reasons for Hooper leaving Cox and Leight was ______.4. After some time at Spartan Ketley, Hooper changed departments because ______.5. Hooper says that his policy as CEO is to ______.

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On average, American kids ages 3 to 12 spent 29 hours a week in school, eight hours more than they did in 1981. They also did more household work and participated in more of such organized activities as soccer and ballet. Involvement in sports, in particular, rose almost 50% from 1981 to 1997: boys now spend an average of four hours a week playing sports; girls log half that time. All in all, however, children’s leisure time dropped from 40% of the day in 1981 to 25%.“Children are affected by the same time crunch (危机) that affects their parents,” says Sandra Hofferth, who headed the recent study of children’s timetable. A chief reason, she says, is that more mothers are working outside the home. (Nevertheless, children in both double-income and “male breadwinner” households spent comparable amounts of time interacting with their parents, 19 hours and 22 hours respectively. In contrast, children spent only 9 hours with their single mothers.All work and no play could make for some very messed-up kids. “Play is the most powerful way a child explores the world and learns about himself,” says T. Berry Brazelton, professor at Harvard Medical School. Unstructured play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to negotiate their relationships with their peers, but kids aged 3 to 12 spent only 12 hours a week engaged in it.The children sampled spent a quarter of their rapidly decreasing “free time watching television. But that, believe it or not, was one of the findings parents might regard as good news. If they’re spending less time in front of the TV set, however, kids aren’t replacing it with reading. Despite efforts to get kids more interested in books, the children spent just over an hour a week reading. Let’s face it, who’s got the time?1. By mentioning “the same time crunch” (Line 1, Para. 2) Sandra Hofferth means ______.2. According to the author: the reason given by Sandra Hofferth for the time crunch is ______.3. According to the author a child develops better if ______.4. The author is concerned about the fact that American kids______.5. We can infer from the passage that______.

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Since the dawn of humanity, the sky and stars have stimulated our imagination and curiosity. (1)As our understanding about outer space increases.so does our passion and drive to explore beyond the reaches of our own planet and to utilize space to understand our own planet. Just as communications satellites have emerged as an important part of our telecommunication networks, our daily lives are enhanced greatly by services such as weather forecasting, GPS, satellite imagery, and other applications. Just a half-century after the launch of the Sputnik, space infrastructure has become central to the way we live, work and play. The budget and revenue of space activities reached 257 billion dollars in 2008. (2)More and more countries are paying attention to space and joining in the space endeavor. It has been the hot topic for us all on how to develop space technology in an efficient and sustainable fashion and how to further the global cooperation on space development.It has been 50 splendid years since China embarked on the road to develop its space industry, starting in 1956. For half a century, China has worked independently in this field. (3) China has made eye-catching achievements, and ranks among the world’s most advanced countries in some important fields of space technology. China is unflinching in taking the road of peaceful development, and always maintains that outer space is the common wealth of mankind. While supporting all activities that utilize outer space for peaceful purposes, China actively explores and uses outer space and is trying to make new contributions to the development of man’s space programs.China’s space program attaches great importance to better serving the needs of social and economic development, through activities concerning space systems, space technology applications and space services. China’s space enterprises are fulfilling their social responsibility and providing continuous technical support to such fields of the national economy as satellite communications, disaster monitoring, earthquake rescue and relief, meteorological and ocean monitoring, land survey, forestry and agriculture. Taking advantage of creativity and advanced technologies, China’s space industry is developing IT products, new energy, new materials, environmental protection technologies and modern industrial equipment. (4)Using space technology. China upgrades conventional industries and realizes the effective integration of low resource and energy consumption, low-emission and high economy efficiency which is conductive to building a resource-saving, environment-friendly and harmonious-developing society. China has long been active in international space cooperation. Chinese space technology has also benefited people of other countries through sharing and free distribution of satellite data and commercial cooperation.As everyone knows, high input and high risk are features of space programs. (5) Facing the global economic recession, the space community is under more pressure than before. Enhancing exchange and cooperation might be the best way to a win-win situation. Global Space Development Summit offers a top-level forum for people from governments, research institutes, companies and relevant agencies to exchange their views at policy and academic levels, thus improving mutual understanding and creating a favorable atmosphere for international space cooperation.

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Most people feel stress at some time on their lives. Some people like this pressure and work better because of it. Other people are not comfortable with any stress at all; they soon become unhappy if they feel stress. Sometimes stress can lead people to do things they wouldn’t usually do, such as overeat, smoke, drink, or use drugs. Stress, however, is a very normal part of life.It is important to understand that stress doesn’t come from an event itself; that is from the things that are happening in our lives. It comes from the meaning we give to what has happened. For example, a crying baby may be stressful to one person, but it may not bother another person at all; a traffic jam may be stressful to one person while another person may be able to stay calm. We can experience stress any time we feel we don’t control. It can come from a feeling that we can’t do anything about a situation. Basically, it is the body’s way of showing anxiety or worry. Stress is not just caused by our mental or emotional condition. It is also influenced by how tired we are, whether we have a balanced diet with enough vitamins and minerals, whether we get enough physical exercises, and whether we are relaxed.The point at which stress becomes a problem changes from day to day, even for the same person, in some situation, if we are rested and feel good about ourselves, a little stress will not be a problem. In another situation, if we are tired or feel unsure about our abilities, even a small amount of stress can cause problems. For example, we might begin to worry about things that haven’t happened yet instead of working on things that are happening now. Or we might not feel able to find solutions to everyday problems.If we feel stressed, there are several things that we can do. First, we need to learn how to relax and breathe slowly and smoothly. We can also take some time out of our worried, busy schedule to notice the small things in life. Smell the air, look at the flowers, notice the small designs in the leaves on a tree—these activities can do much to quiet us and to give ourselves a small break in a busy schedule.We need to take care of our bodies. Being tired makes it easier for us to get sick and to develop physical problems related to stress. We need to get enough rest, eat well, and do some regular exercise. Scientists have found that for our minds to think clearly, our bodies need to have certain vitamins and minerals; some of the most important vitamins are the B-complex vitamins. Doing regular exercise is also a physical way to let go of angry feelings or feelings of helplessness. Finally, we need to find what is causing the stress in our lives. Once we have found it, we need to begin to change that part of our lives. If we believe that we can control stress we can begin to control our lives. Then we can start to use stress in a positive way. 1. The passage is mainly concerned with ______.2. All of the following statements are correct EXCEPT that ______.3. Which of the following is NOT among the solutions to stress provided by the passage?4. Which of the following is correct according to the passage?5. The passage talks about many aspects of stress EXCEPT ______.

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First the good news: 9 in 10 people said they were satisfied with their jobs or work that they do-and that remained steady throughout 2008, despite the economy. And now the bad, even if its not so surprising: The number of people who said their employer reduced the size of the workforce rose dramatically during the year, from 15% in the first quarter to 23% in the fourth quarter.That’s according to a survey from Gallup and health management company Healthways. Nearly each day in 2008, about 1,000 adults were asked about their physical, emotional, economic and workplace well-being. When it came to their work environment, many of the 355,334 people surveyed by phone were positive. But there were some labor pains.Just 47% of respondents from Hawaii said they were satisfied with their jobs, used their strengths at work, were treated by a supervisor as a partner and worked in an “open, trusting environment”. That was the lowest score of any state on a work environment index that was compiled by calculating positive responses in those four areas. Utah nabbed top honors, with 59% of its respondents saying those four elements were prevalent in work lives. Among the biggest differences between Utah and Hawaii: 73% of Utah respondents said their supervisor created a trusting environment, while only 58% of folks in Hawaii felt that way. The national average was 65%. The Gallup—Healthways AHIP Congressional Report didn’t offer any insights into why Utah ruled and Hawaii ranked so poorly on the workplace front.Hawaii’s residents took the No.1 slot in another two survey areas, emotional health and living conditions. “Maybe having a job while you’re in paradise may not be all that great,” says Jim Harter, a chief scientist of workplace and well-being at Gallup.Utah has done well in separate workplace studies, as well. After considering factors such as unemployment rate, job growth, income growth, median household income and the cost of living, Moody’s Economy.com named its capital, Salt Lake City, the best U.S. city to work in for 2007 and 2008. But those glory days have faded, says Gus Faucher, Moody’s Economy.com director of macroeconomics. Utah’s housing boom turned into a bust later than most states. The national recession began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Salt Lake City’s recession began in November 2008, according to Moody’s Economy.com.From a non-economic angle, Faucher says he can see why Utah would earn strong marks on the work front. “The state is really Mormon, so there is a sense of solidarity” among many employees, he says. “People feel very connected to each other.” Also, with its high birth rate, Utah has a robust population of younger employees who often add enthusiasm to the workplace, Faucher says. That’s the case at the Wasatch Music Coaching Academy in Salt Lake City, school owner David Murphy says. Most instructors are between 22 and 35 years old and are extremely passionate and excited about teaching students, he says. Murphy, 52, who says he has a “dream” job, takes a collaborative approach in managing all staffers, “I see myself working side by side with my staff, not over my staff.”1. What can we infer from the first two paragraphs?2. From Paragraph 4, we can infer all of the following EXCEPT that ______.3. The author mentions several factors that will affect the happiness of people EXCEPT: ______. 4. Which of the following is correct according to the passage? 5. Why could Utah earn strong marks on the work front?

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A fast-food restaurant within about 500 feet of a school may lead to at least a 5 percent increase in the overweight rate at that school. The study, conducted by economists at Columbia University and the University California, Berkeley, suggests that “a ban on fast foods in the immediate proximity of schools could have a sizable effect on obesity rates among affected students.”The researchers looked at how proximity to the restaurants affected obesity rates among 3 million ninth graders at California schools, and more than 1 million pregnant women in Michigan, New Jersey and Texas. They focused on the ninth graders, typically about 14 years old, in part because the students get a fitness test in the spring—about 30 weeks after starting school and exposure to fast food. The study, released by the American Association of Wine Economists, showed that “the presence of a fast-food restaurant within a tenth of a mile of a school is associated with at least a 5.2 percent increase in the obesity rate in that school.” It also found that pregnant women who lived within a tenth of a mile of a fast-food restaurant had “a 4.4 percent increase in the probability of gaining over 20 kilos (44 pounds).”The study follows one presented last month at an American Stroke Association conference. Researchers from the University of Michigan found people who live in neighborhoods packed with fast-food restaurants are more likely to suffer from strokes. In December, a study found that youth who study within a half mile from a fast-food outlet eat fewer fruit and vegetables, drink more soda and are more likely to be obese than students at other schools.Janet Currie, lead researcher of the wine economists’ study, said that it might be a good policy to have a fast-food-free zone if fast food near schools causes obesity. “It would not be so different in spirit from existing policies that aim to prohibit soft drinks and junk foods in schools or to improve the quality of school lunch,” she said.A spokeswoman for the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s, declined to comment, saying she had not seen the study. Burger King did not return calls seeking comment. A McDonald’s spokeswoman referred calls to the National Retail Federation, a trade group in Washington.“I think it would be a dangerous precedent to limit the types of legitimate, important businesses and where they’re located in a city,” federation spokeswoman Ellen Davis said. “Doesn’t it make more sense for parents to limit a child’s allowance or let them know when and where they can’t eat certain things?” Davis added that restaurants have changed their menus in the last five years, especially for children’s meals. “We see many healthy options available—slices of apple, milk instead of sodas. It’s important to note that many chain restaurants have tried to diversify their menus and make them healthier.”1. Which of the following is INCORRECT about the study mentioned in Paragraph 2? 2. Which of the following can be inferred from the last three paragraphs? 3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?4. Why is it necessary to create a fast-food-free-zone?5. According to the passage, which of the following may NOT be the reason for children’s overweight?

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The mystery of the expansion of sea ice around Antarctica, at the same time as global warming is melting swaths of Arctic sea ice, has been solved using data from U.S. military satellites.Two decades of measurements show that changing wind patterns around Antarctica have caused a small increase in sea ice, the result of cold winds off the continent blowing ice away from the coastline. “Until now these changes in ice drift were only speculated upon using computer models,” said Paul Holland at the British Antarctic Survey. “Our study of direct satellite observations shows the complexity of climate change.” The Arctic is losing sea ice five times faster than the Antarctic is gaining it, so on average, the Earth is losing sea ice very quickly. There is no inconsistency between our results and global warming.”The extent of sea ice is of global importance because the bright ice reflects sunlight far more than the ocean, meaning temperature rises still further. This summer saw a record low in Arctic sea ice since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. Holland said the changing pattern of sea ice at both poles would also affect global ocean circulation, with unknown effects. He noted that while Antarctic sea ice was growing, the Antarctic ice cap—the glacier and snow pack on the continent was losing mass, with the fresh water flowing into the ocean.The research on Antarctic sea ice, published in Nature Geoscience, revealed large regional variations. In places where warm winds blowing from the tropics towards Antarctica had become stronger, sea ice was being lost rapidly. “In some areas, such as the Bellingshausen Sea, the sea ice is being lost as fast as in the Arctic,” said Holland.But in other areas, sea ice was being added as sea water left behind ice being blown away from the coast froze. The net effect is that there has been an extra 17,000 sq km of sea ice each year since 1978—about a tenth of a percent of the maximum sea ice cover.Antarctica is a continent surrounded by an ocean, whereas the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by a continent. For that reason, said Holland, sea ice was not able to expand by the same mechanism in the Arctic as at the southern pole, because if winds pushed the ice away from the pole it quickly hit land.Holland did the research with Ron Kwok at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory in California, where maps of sea ice movements were created from more than 5m individual daily measurements collected over 19 years. The maps showed, for the first time, the long-term changes in sea ice drift around Antarctica. Kwok said: “The Antarctic sea ice cover interacts with the global climate system very differently than that of the Arctic, and these results highlight the sensitivity of the Antarctic ice coverage to changes in the strength of the wind around the continent.” 1. The contradiction of changes in sea ice coverage at both poles has been made clear by______.2. According to what Holland said, we can draw the conclusion that ______.3. Which of the following statement is true according to the passage?4. According to the passage, what is to be blamed for the melting sea ice?5. Which of the following statement is NOT true?

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All over the world, your chances of success in school and life depend more on your family circumstances than on any other factor. By age three, kids with professional parents are already a full year ahead of their poorer peers. They know twice as many words as many words and score 40 points higher on IQ tests. By age 10, the gap is three years. By then, some poor children have not mastered basic reading and math skills, and many never will: his is the age at which failure starts to become irreversible.A few school systems seem to have figured out how to erase these gaps. Finland ensures that every child completes basic education and meets a rigorous standard. One Finnish district official, asked about the number of children who don’t complete school in her city, replied,” I can tell you their names if you want. “In the United States, KIPP charter schools enroll students from the poorest families and ensure that most almost every one of them graduates high school—80 percent make it to college. Singapore narrowed its achievement gap among ethnic minorities from 17 percent to 5 percent over 20 years.These success stories offer lessons for the rest of us. First, get children into school early. High-quality pre-schooling does more for a child’s chances in school and life than any other educational intervention. One study, which began in the 1960s, tracked two groups of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some were given the opportunity to attend a high-quality pre-school; others were not. Thirty-five years later, the kids who went to pre-school earned more, had better jobs, and were less likely to have been in prison or divorced.Second, recognize that the average kid spends about half his waking hours up until the age of 18 outside of school—don’t ignore that time. KIPP students spend 60 percent more time in school than the average American students. They arrive earlier, leave later, attend more regularly, and even go to school every other Saturday. Similarly, in 1996, Chile extended its school day to add the equivalent of more than two more years of schooling.Third, pour lots of effort to train teachers. Studies in the United States have shown that kids with the most effective teachers learn three times as much as those with the least effective. Systems such as Singapore’s are choosy about recruiting; they invest in training and continuing education; they evaluate teachers regularly, and they award bonuses only to the top performers.Finally, recognize the value of individualized attention. In Finland, kids who start to struggle receive one-to-one support from their teachers. Roughly one in three Finnish students also gets extra help from a tutor each year. If we can learn the lesson of what works, we can build on it. 1. What can we infer from the Finnish district official’s reply in Paragraph 2? 2. Why is it important for kids to attend a high-quality pre-school? Which of the following is NOT true?3. The most important educational factor for a child to achieve success in school and life is to ______. 4. Why does Singapore lay so much emphasis on the role of teachers? 5. What does the passage mainly discuss?

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(1) Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action that we never recognize the assumptions cm which their lives and their sanity rest. As one observer put it, if birds were suddenly endowed with scientific curiosity they might examine many things, but the sky itself would be overlooked as a suitable subject: if fish were to become curious about the world, it would never occur to them to begin by investigating water. (2) For birds and fish would take the sky and sea for granted, unaware of their profound influence because they comprise the medium for every fact. Human beings, in a similarly way, occupy a symbolic universe governed by codes that are unconsciously acquired and automatically employed. So much so that they rarely notice that the ways they interpret and talk about events are distinctively different from the ways people conduct their affairs in other cultures.As long as people remain blind to the sources of their meanings, they are imprisoned within them. These cultural frames of reference are no less confining simply because they cannot be seen or touched. (3) Whether it is an individual neurosis that keeps an individual out of contact with his neighbors, or a collective neurosis that separates neighbors of different cultures, both are forms of blindness that limit what can be experienced and what can be learned from others.It would seem that everywhere people would desire to break out of the boundaries of their own experiential worlds. Their ability to react sensitively to a wider spectrum of events and peoples requires an overcoming of such cultural parochialism. But, in fact, few attain this broader vision. (4) Some, of course, have little opportunity for wider cultural experience, though this condition should change as the movement of accelerates. Others do not try to widen their experience because they prefer the old and familiar, seek from their affairs only further confirmation of the correctness of their own values. Still others recoil from such experiences because they feel it dangerous to probe too deeply into the personal or cultural unconscious. (5) Exposure may reveal how tenuous and arbitrary many cultural norms are; such exposure might force people to acquire new bases for interpreting events. And even for the many who do seek actively to enlarge the variety of human beings with whom they are capable of communicating there are still difficulties.Cultural myopia persists not merely because of inertia and habit, but chiefly because it is so difficult to overcome. One acquires a personality and a culture in childhood, long before he is capable of comprehending either of them. To survive, each person masters the perceptual orientations, cognitive biases, and communicative habits of his own culture. But once mastered, objective assessment of these same processes is awkward since the same mechanisms that are being evaluated must be used in making the evaluations.

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A generation of e-mailing, followed by an explosion in texting, has pushed the telephone conversation into serious decline, creating new tensions between baby boomers and millennial-those in their teens, 20s and early 30s.Nearly all age groups are spending less time talking on the phone; boomers in their mid-5Os and early 60s are the only ones still yakking as they did when Ma Bell was America’s communications queen. But the fall of the call is driven by 18-to-34-year-olds, whose average monthly voice minutes have plunged from about 1,200 to 900 in the past two years, according to the research by Nielsen. Texting among 18-to-24-year-olds has more than doubled in the same period, from an average of 600 messages a month two years ago to more than 1, 400 texts a month, according to Nielsen.Young people say they avoid voice calls because the immediacy of a phone call strips them of the control that they have over the arguably less-intimate pleasures of texting, e-mailing, or Face booking. They even complain that phone calls are by their nature impolite, more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text. The bias, against unexpected phone calls stems in good part from the way texting and e-mail have conditioned young people to be cautious about how they communicate when they are not face to face, experts, say.Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University who studies how people converse in everyday life, said older generations misinterpret the way younger people use their cellphones. “One student told me that it takes her days to call her parents back and the parents thought she was intentionally putting them off.” she said. “But the parents didn’t get it. It’s the medium.”The difference in communications preferences has created a palpable perception gap between young adults and their parents. Jane Beard, who coaches business leaders on public speaking, said that when her niece, Lindsay Spencer, 20, “is in classes at the University of Maryland, I’ll never hear from her until she comes over to do the laundry. We text multiple times a day.”But Beard is understanding about the change in ways of conversing. Not all parents are quite that open to new ways. “My mom gets offended,” said Muggaga Kintu, 32, an administrative assistant at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who prefers texting or calling on his own time when he’s not around patients. “She thinks I don’t want to hear from her, and that’s not the case. One day she called me when I was at work, and I told her, ‘Instead of calling me, can you text me?’ ‘What? You don’t like to hear from me? You don’t like the sound of my voice?’ She said.”1. Who drives the decline of telephone conversation according to the research by Nielsen?2. Why do the young people avoid phone calls?3. What do experts say about young people’s bias against unexpected phone calls?4. According to Deborah Tannen, the older generations should recognize that ______.5. What can we conclude based on the experiences of Jane Beard and Muggaga Kintu?A. The less popularity of phone calls should arouse the young’s concern.B. Lives have changed fundamentally due to the change of communication.C. Answering a phone call causes great pressure on the young.D. Perception gap emerges due to different communication preferences. 

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