题目内容
When an ant dies, other ants take it out of the nest, often within an hour after its death. This behavior interests scientists and they wonder how ants know for sure—and so soon—that another ant is dead.
One scientist recently came up with a way to explain this ant behaviour. Dong-Hwan Choe is a biologist, a scientist who studies animals and plants. He found that ants have a chemical on the outside of their bodies that signals to other ants, “I'm dead—take me away” when it is dead.
But there's a question to answer: As we know, if an ant is dead, it stops moving. But when an ant is sleeping or knocked unconscious, it is also not moving. However, other ants don't move the living ant out of the nest. How do they know this ant is not dead? Choe found that ants have another chemical on their bodies, which tells nearby ants something like, “Wait—I'm not dead yet” when it is not dead. Choe suspects that when an ant dies, the chemical that says, “Wait I'm not dead yet” quickly goes away. When other ants detect the “dead” chemical without the “not dead yet” chemical, they move away the body.
To test his theory , Choe and his team put different chemicals on ants. When the scientists used the “I'm dead” chemical, other ants quickly moved the treated ant away. When the scientists used the “Wait—I'm not dead yet” chemical, other ants left the treated ant alone. Choe believes this behavior shows that the “not dead yet” chemical overrides the “dead” chemical when picked up by other ants. And that when an ant dies, the “not dead yet” chemical fades away. Other nearby ants then detect the remaining “dead” chemical and remove the body from the nest.
Understanding this behavior can help scientists figure out how to stop ants from invading new places and causing problems.
1.What is the function of the first paragraph?
A. Leading the following paragraphs.
B. Showing the main idea of the passage.
C. Introducing the background of the passage.
D. Giving a summary of the passage.
2.Which of the following has the closest meaning to the underlined word “overrides” in the fourth paragraph?
A. is weaker than B. is stronger than
C. is better than D. is worse than
3.What can we learn from the passage?
A. Living ants can also be taken away when they are not moving.
B. When an ant dies, it can tell others using a certain chemical.
C. A living ant can pretend to be dead using a special chemical.
D. Ants often use chemicals to communicate with each other.
4.Which of the following descriptions about Dong-Hwan Choe is right?
A. Choe did this study in order to stop ants from invading new places.
B. Choe is a biologist who is only interested in animals, especially in ants.
C. Choe first came up with an idea to explain this ant behavior，and then did some tests to prove his theory.
D. Choe did the research on this ant behavior on his own
Different people use different languages. We Chinese speak Chinese, and, most of us are learning a foreign language. But there is another kind of language we need to know --- the language of the body.
All over the world, people “talk with their hand, with their heads and with their eyes.” When Japanese people meet, they bow. When Indians meet, they put their hands together. What do American and British do? Americans are more imformal(不拘小节的) than the British. They like to be friendly. They use first names, they ask questions and they talk easily about themselves. When they sit down, they like to relax in their chairs and make themselves comfortable. British people are more reserved(保守的). They take more time to make friends. They like to know you before they ask your name.
When British or American people meet someone for the first time, they shake hands. They do not usually shake hands with people they know well. Women sometimes kiss their women friends, and men kiss women friends (on one cheek only). When a man meets a man, he just smiles, and says, “Hello.” Men do not kiss each other, or hold hands. Even fathers and sons do not often kiss each other.
1.In the passsage, the writer thinks that body language is ______________.
A．uselss B．difficult C．quite easy D．important
2.Which of the following is right?
A．different countries hav the same body language.
B．different countries have different body anguages.
C．people in Asia share the same body language.
D．many people only use their body language.
3.If an American friend visits you, he probably _____________.
A．sit straight B．never sits down C．makes fun of you D．sits freely
4.If you want to make a British friend, you may feel it ________________.
A．imopssible B．too easy C．too difficult D．slow
5.Generally speaking, ____________ kiss more often.
A．men B．women C．British D．Americans
Children start out as natural scientists, eager to look into the world around them. Helping them enjoy science can be easy; there is no need for a lot of scientific terms or expensive lab equipment. You only have to share your children’s curiosity. Firstly, listen to their questions. I once visited a classroom of seven –year- olds to talk about science as a job. The children asked me “textbook questions” about schooling, salary and whether I liked my job. When I finished answering, we sat facing one another in science. Finally I said,” Now that we’ve finished with your lists, do you have questions of your own about science?”
After a long pause, a boy raised his hand, “have you ever seen a grasshopper eat? When I try eating leaves like that, I get a stomachache. Why?”
This began a set of questions that lasted nearly two hours.
Secondly, give them time to think. Studies over the past 30 years have shown that. After asking a question, adults typically wait only one second or less for an answer, no time for a child to think. When adults increase their “wait time” to three seconds or more, children give more logical, complete and creative answers.
Thirdly, watch your language. Once you have a child involved in a science discussion, don’t jump in with “That’s right” or “very good”. These words work well when it comes to encouraging good behavior. But in talking about science, quick praise can signal that discussion is over. Instead, keep things going by saying, “That’s interesting” or “I’d never thought of it that way before’, or coming up with more questions or ideas.
Never push a child to “think”. It doesn’t make sense; children are always thinking, without your telling them to. What’s more, this can turn a conversation into a performance. The child will try to find the answer you want, in as few words as possible, so that he will be a small target for your disagreement.
Lastly, show; don’t tell. Real-life impressions of nature are far more impressive than any lesson children can learn from a book or a television program. Let children look at their fingertips through a magnifying glass, and they’ll understand why you want them to wash before dinner. Rather than saying that water evaporates, set a pot of water to boil and let them watch the water level drop.
1.According to the passage, children are natural scientist, and to raise their interest, the most important thing for adults to do is______________.
A．to let them see the world around
B．to share the children’s curiosity
C．to explain difficult phrases about science
D．to supply the children with lab equipment
2.In the last sentence of the first paragraph, the word “list” could best be replaced by ______________.
A．any questions B．any problems
C．questions from the textbooks D．any number of questions
3.According to the passage, children can answer questions in a more logical, complete and creative way if adults______________________.
A．ask them to answer quickly
B．wait for one or two seconds after a question
C．tell them to answer the next day
D．wait at least for three seconds after a question
4.In which of the following paragraph (s) does the author tell us what to say to encourage children in a science discussion?
A．The 2nd and 3rd B．The 4th and 5th C．The 5th and 6th D．The 7th
5.The author mentions all of the following techniques for adults to share with their children’s curiosity except that adults should_____________.
A．tell their children stories instead of reciting facts
B．offer their children chances to see things for themselves
C．be patient enough when their children answer questions
D．encourage their children to ask questions of their own
Almost a decade ago, the federal government dropped $10 million for an Earth-monitoring satellite that never made it into space. Today it sits in a closet in Maryland. Cost to taxpayers for storing it: $1 million a year. And that's just what's hiding in one closet. Who knows what's in the rest of them?
Because we think the government should be held to at least the same standards as a publicly traded company, and because as taxpayers, we're America's shareholders, we performed an audit （财务检查）of sorts of the federal books. We're not economists, but we do have common sense. We tried to get help from Congressional staffers from both parties, as well as various watchdog groups and agencies. In the end, we found that the federal government wastes nearly $1 trillion every year.
That's roughly equal to the amount collected annually by the Internal Revenue Service in personal income taxes. Put another way, it's also equal to about one-third of the country's $2.9 trillion total annual budget. And reclaiming that lost trillion could help wipe out the country's annual budget deficit（赤字）, improve education, and provide health insurance for those who don't have it.
So how do you define "waste"? David Walker of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, calls it "the government's failure to give taxpayers the most for their money." For our part, we used the kind of household test you would use on a piece of meat sitting in your refrigerator: If it smells rotten, it's waste. Our government regularly pays for products and services it never gets, wildly overpays companies to do things it could do more cheaply itself, loses money outright due to lax（不严格的）accounting and oversight, and spends money randomly on unnecessary programs.
How exactly does the federal government waste your hard-earned tax dollars? We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways.
1.The underlined sentence in Paragraph1 really means .
A．there are many other closets B．there are some other satellites
C．there is something else in the closets D．the waste may be quite amazing
2.Which of the following can best describe the feeling of the author?
A．Annoyed. B．Calm. C．Surprised. D．Not concerned.
3.Which of the following statements may be right?
A．The country’s annual budget is usually decided by the public.
B．The government failed in launching the satellite.
C．The government is only wasting money in space experiments.
D．The amount collected annually in personal income taxes is equal to the country’s budget.
4.The best title for the passage would be .
A．Protecting Our Rights!
B．Our Country Is In Danger!
C．The Government Is Wasting Our Tax Dollars!
D．How to Prevent Government from Wasting Money!
5.What might be talked about if the passage is continued?
A．The government’s taking some steps to stop wasting taxes.
B．Presenting people’s feelings against the government’s wasting taxes.
C．Giving suggestion to help the government solve the financial problem.
D．Listing how the government is wasting taxes.
uChildren start out as natural scientists, eager to look into the world around them. Helping them enjoy science can be easy; there’s no need for a lot of scientific terms or expensive lab equipment. You only have to share your children’s curiosity. Firstly, listen to their questions. I once visited a classroom of seven-year-olds to talk about science as a job. The children asked me “textbook questions” about schooling, salary and whether I liked my job. When I finished answering, we sat facing one another in silence. Finally I said, “Now that we’ve finished with your lists, do you have questions of your own about science?”
After a long pause, a boy raised his hand,” Have you ever seen a grasshopper（蚱蜢） eat? When I try eating leaves like that, I get a stomachache. Why?”
Secondly, give them time to think. Studies over the past 30 years have shown that, after asking a question, adults typically wait only one second or less for an answer, no time for a child to think. When adults increase their “wait time” to three seconds or more, children give more logical（符合逻辑的）,complete and creative answers.
Thirdly, watch your language. Once you have a child involved in a science discussion, don’t jump in with “That’s right” or “Very good”. These words work well when it comes to encouraging good behavior. But in talking about science, quick praise can signal that discussion is over. Instead, keep things going by saying, “That’s interesting” or “I’d never thought of it that way before”, or coming up with more questions or ideas.
Never push a child to “Think”. It doesn’t make sense, children are always thinking, without your telling them to. What’s more, this can turn a conversation into a performance. The child will try to find the answer you want, in as few words as possible, so that he will be a smaller target for your disagreement.
Lastly, show doesn’t tell. Real-life impressions of nature are far more impressive than any lesson children can learn from a book or a television program. Let children look at their fingertips through a magnifying glass（放大镜）, and they’ll understand why you want them to wash before dinner. Rather than saying that water evaporates （蒸发）,set a pot of water to boil and let them watch the water level drop.
1. According to the passage, children are natural scientists, and to raise their interest, the most important thing for adults to do is__________
A. to share the children’s curiosity
B. to let them see the world around
C. to explain difficult phrases about science
D. to supply the children with lab equipment
2. In the last sentence of the first paragraph, the word “lists” could best be replaced by_______
A. any questions B. textbook questions
C. questions about science D. questions seven-year-olds are curious about
3. According to the passage, children can answer questions in a more logical, complete and creative way if adult____________.
A. wait at least for three seconds after a question
B. tell them to answer the next day
C. ask them to answer quickly
D. wait for one or two seconds after a question
4. In which of the following paragraph（s） does the author tell us what to say to encourage children in a science discussion?
A. The second and third. B. The fourth and fifth.
C. The fifth and sixth. D. The seventh.
After a long
pause, a boy raised his hand,” Have you ever seen a grasshopper（蚱蜢） eat? When I try
eating leaves like that, I get a stomachache. Why?”