We continue our Foreign Student Series on higher education in the United States. Now you move on to college life once you are admitted to a school. The first thing you need to value is a place to live. Housing policies differ from school to school. Students might have to live in a dormitory, at least for the first year there.
Dorms come in all sizes. Some have suites. Six or more students may live in one suite. Other dorms have many rooms along a common hallway, usually with two students in each room . Many students say dormitories provide the best chance to get to know other students. Also, dorms generally cost less than apartments or other housing not owned by the school
Most colleges and universities offer single-sex dorms, but usually males and females live in the same building. They might live on the same floors and share the same common bathrooms. They may live in the same room only if they are married.
Edward Spencer is the associate vice president for student affairs at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. He says it is important to understand the rules of the building in which you will live. He advises students to ask questions before they decide about their housing. For example, if a student requires a special diet, will the school provide it ? How much privacy can a student expect ? Will the school provide a single room if a student requests one ? And what about any other special needs that a student might have?
Virginia Tech, for example, had a ban against candles in dorms . But it changed that policy to let students light up candles for religious purposes. The university also has several dorms open all year so foreign students have a place to stay during vacation time.
60. Why do some students in the U.S. choose to live in dorms, according to the passage ?
A. Dorms allow students in the U.S. choose to live in dorms
B. Dorms are safer for students to live in most cases
C. Dorms offer the chance to meet other people and are cheap as well
D. In most schools students are required to live in the dorms
61. The second paragraph is mainly about ______
A. what suites in American schools are like          
B. what dorms in American schools are like
C. what dorms are owned by schools         
D. when people get to know each other
62. We can infer from what Edward Spencer says that ______
A. colleges usually don’t provide a special diet 
B. housing rules differ from one building to another
C. a ban against candles in dorms is necessary 
D. the U.S. college always satisfies students’ requests
63 .What is the passage mainly about ?
A. Places to live in U.S. colleges      
B. housing polices in the U.S
C. Advantages of dormitories     
D. Rules of single-sex dorms

Half of the world’s population is affected by Asian monsoons (季风), but monsoons are difficult to predict. American researchers have put together a 700-year record of the rainy seasons, which is expected to provide guidance for experts making weather predictions.

Every year, moist (潮湿的) air masses，known as monsoon，produce large amounts of rainfall in India, East Asia, Northern Australia and East Africa. All this wet air is pulled in by a high pressure area over the Indian Ocean and a low pressure area to the south.

According to Edward Cook, a weather expert at Columbia University in New York, the complex nature of the climate systems across Asia makes monsoons hard to predict. In addition, climate records for the area are too recent and not detailed enough to be of much use. Therefore, he and a team of researchers spent more than fifteen years traveling across Asia, looking for trees old enough to provide long-term records. They measured the rings（年轮）, or circles, inside thousands of ancient trees in more than 300 places.

Rainfall has a direct link to the growth and width of rings on some kinds of trees. The researchers developed a document they are calling a Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas. It shows the effect of monsoons over seven centuries, beginning in the 1300s.

Professor Cook says the tree-ring records show periods of wet and dry weather. “If the monsoon basically fails or is a very weak one, the trees affected by monsoons at that location might put on a very narrow ring. But if the monsoon is very strong, the trees affected by that monsoon might put on a wide ring for that year. So, the wide and narrow ring widths of the chronology（大事年表） that we developed in Asia provide us with a measure of monsoon variability.” With all this information, researchers say they can begin to improve computer climate models for predicting the behavior of monsoons.

“There has been widespread famine and starvation and human dying in the past in large droughts. And on the other hand, if the monsoon is particularly heavy, it can cause extensive flooding.” said Eugene Wahl, a scientist with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “So, to get a sense of what the regional moisture patterns have been, dryness and wetness over such a long period of time in great detail, I would call it a kind of victory for climate science.”

1.What’s the passage mainly about？

A．The effects of Asian monsoons.             B．The necessity of weather forecast.

C．The achievements of Edward cook.          D．A breakthrough in monsoon prediction.

2.It is difficult for experts to predict Asian monsoons because _______.

A．it is hard to keep long-term climate records.

B．they are formed under complex climate systems.

C．they influence many nations.

D．there is heavy rainfall in Asia.

3.What can be inferred from the passage?

A．Long and detailed climate records can offer useful information for monsoon research.

B．The Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas has a monsoon record for about 1,300 years.

C．The trees affected by monsoon grow fast if the monsoon is weak.

D．The rainfall might be low although the monsoon is strong in monsoon-affected areas.

4.According to Professor Cook, the rings of the trees _______.

A．determine the regional climate.

B．have a great influence on the regional climate.

C．offer people information about the regional climate.

D．reflect all kinds of regional climate information.

5.What do we know about the research according to Eugene Wahl?

A．It is a great achievement in climate science.

B．It should include information about human life in the past.

C．It has analysed moisture models world wide,

D．It will help people prevent droughts and floods.

6.Which of the following best describes the tone of this passage?

A．Matter-of –fact    B．Pessimistic         C．Humorous         D．Friendly.

本文介绍了美国著名的生物学家Edward Wilson 的著作The Future of Life中的一些有关如何开发、利用和保护自然资源的情况。

Edward Wilson is America’s, if not the world’s, leading naturalist. In The Future of Life, he takes us on a tour of the world’s natural resources(资源). How are they used? What has been lost? What remains and is it able to continue with the present speed of use? Wilson also points out the need to understand fully the biodiversity(生物多样性)of our earth.

Wilson begins with an open letter to the pioneer in environment (环境) protection, Henry David Thoreau. He compares today’s Walden Pond with that of Thoreau’s day. Wilson will use such comparisons for the rest of the book. The problem is clear: man has done great damage to his home over the years. Van the earth, with human help, be made to return to biodiversity levels that will be able to support us in the future?

Biodiversity, Wilson argues, is the key to settling many problems the earth faces today. Even our agricultural crops can gain advantages from it. A mere hundred species(物种) are the basis of our food supply, of which but twenty carry the load. Wilson suggests changing this situation by looking into ten thousand species that could be made use of, which will be a way to reduce the clearing of the natural homes of plants and animals to enlarge farming areas.

At the end of the book, Wilson discusses the importance of human values in considering the environment. If you are to continue to live on the earth, you may well read and act on the ideas in this book.

1. We learn from the text that Wilson cares most about ______

2.How many species are most important to our present food supply?

3.Wilson suggests that one way to keep biodiversity is to _______.

4. We can infer that the text is _______

Kieron Williamson, a seven-year-old British boy, is being recognized as an art genius after selling 16 paintings for 18, 000 pounds in just 14 minutes. This boy has artistic skills that would be the envy of any serious painter and drawn comparisons to Pablo Picasso, a child prodigy（神童）who became one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century.

 It all began on a family holiday to Cornwall on the southwest English coast when Kieron was five. Inspired by the view, he asked his parents for his first sketch-pad （速写纸）. From that moment on, he became deeply interested. While supportive, Kieron’s parents are careful not to push their son. He only paints when and what he wants.

 He has a waiting list of hundreds and requests for his works have been flooding in. His father said a sale of Kieron’s works held in November even drew a buyer from Japan. “We had people driving down that night, there were people on the door waiting to come in the morning who had been standing outside, the phones were going mad as soon as the door opened at nine o’clock and within 14 minutes all the 16 pictures had gone, ” he said.

All this talent, money and high praise could so easily go to a young boy’s head, but Kieron said his friends keep him grounded. “Some of them want to be as good as me and some of them think. . . Umn, ‘you are not too special’, ” he said.

    Kieron’s favourite painter is British artist Edward Seago and he has spent some of his earnings buying a work by his hero. The rest is being invested by his parents until he reaches 25. Kieron’s parents and his younger sister Billi-Jo don’t see him as anything other than a normal seven-year-old boy who likes to tear around the house and who’s mad about football. But for now, with so much still to learn, there’s only one thing he wants to be when he grows up. He said, “I think I’ll definitely be an artist. ”

26. According to Paragraph 1, we can know Kieron Williamson ________.

A. painted 16 paintings in only 14 minutes

B. draws as well as Picasso did

C. is one of the most recognized artists

D. has unusual ability in painting

27. What made Kieron Williamson begin to love painting?

A. His first sketch-pad.

B. His parents’ encouragement.

C. The view at the seaside.

D. His swimming near the coast.

28. In Kieron Williamson’s friends’ opinion, he ________.

A. is famous but a little proud

B. isn’t very special from other children

C. isn’t worth praising at all

D. is hard to get along with

29. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ________.

A. Edward Seago thinks highly of Kieron’s painting

B. Kieron likes doing sports and painting instead of studying

C. Kieron’s family is very poor

D. Kieron wants to be a great painter

30. The passage mainly tells us________.

A. a seven-year-old painting genius

B. how to be a great painter

C. Kieron Williamson may become the second Picasso

D. the painting changed Kieron Williamson’s life greatly

Recently the World Health Organization announced that the disease of smallpox（天花）had almost been wiped out in most parts of the world, thanks to widespread vaccination（种牛痘）. Most people are vaccinated at least once in their lives and if they wish to travel from one country to another they must be able to prove that they have had a recent vaccination. In this way the disease has been prevented from spreading and today one seldom hears of it at all.
This is mainly because of the great discovery made by a village doctor, Edward Jenner, in about 1798 when he published his report of his new experiment called vaccination (from the word ‘vacca’ meaning a cow). Jenner discovered that people who worked with cattle often suffered from a harmless disease which they caught from the cattle, but these people never seemed to get smallpox. So he experimented by putting the disease into a small opening on the arms of healthy people, and though their arms became painful for a day or two, they soon recovered and none of these people ever got smallpox.
So the news of the wonderful discovery spread to other countries and people
rushed to their doctors to be vaccinated. In many countries the simple way to deal with the arm was done on thousands of people, and the terrible smallpox began to disappear.
71．Vaccination against smallpox has been so successful that _________ .
A．the discoverer made a large amount of money
B．Dr Jenner was given a prize by the World Health Organization
C．smallpox has almost disappeared in most countries
D．smallpox was no longer in existence on earth
72 ．Smallpox has been prevented from spreading through the following measures EXCEPT that _____.
A．most people were vaccinated against the disease at least once
B．people going abroad should promise not to spread the disease
C．people travelling from one country to another must prove they
are vaccinated
D．people must be vaccinated shortly before going to foreign countries
73 ．What led Dr Jenner to experiment with vaccination was that ________ .　
A．he wanted to make a great discovery and publish it
B．vaccination could make people's arms safe
C．he tried to cure the farmers of some disease caught from the cattle
D．those who worked with cattle seemed free from getting smallpox
74．The doctor's new discovery was called ‘vaccination’ for the reason that ________ .
A．he discovered smallpox near a farm
B．he experimented with a disease from the cattle
C．he was working with cattle in the countryside
D．people got the disease of smallpox from the cattle
75．The news of the discovery ________.
A．caught people's attention from all corners of the world
B．spread far and near in the western countries
C．made people rush to Dr Jenner for vaccination
D．helped to get rid of the terrible disease of smallpox