Abby Subark is a mother of two from Boston. “For my kids, I’m nervous. I don’t know if they’ll be able to achieve their American dream.” She may be right. More than hard work or education, the best way to get rich in America is to be born rich.

It is the case that somebody who is in the upper third of income, poor scores, in the bottom on tests when they are in eighth grade, is more likely to go to college and finish college than a poor kid with the top scores. That’s what the working persons’  children are up against.

The Economic Policy Institute finds it would take a poor couple with 2 children 9 or 10 generations to achieve middle class status. That’s about 200 years. The hallmark (特征) of American opportunity has always been the ability to do better than your parents. But compared with similar developed countries, the United States ranks fifth out of six for so-called intergenerational mobility (变动).

If you look at the mechanisms (机制) for upward mobility that were so readily available 50 years ago, they are becoming out of reach, like plentiful factory jobs with good wages and affordable education and health care.

White families are twice as likely as blacks to be upwardly mobile. For most people in America today, where you end up depends on where you start.

If you started in the middle-income class, about 40 to 45 percent of what you are making right now is due to the fact that your parents were in the middle-income class. The rest is up to you.

But for the millions of people who find themselves below the poverty line and the millions more who are the working poor, their starting point for the American dream leaves them painfully far away from the middle class.

The main idea of the passage is _______.

A. How the middle class comes about in the U.S.

B. It’s hard to realize the American dream for the poor.

C. Wealth and social status depend on family background.

D. Upward mobility in America is never easy.

Which of the statements is NOT true according to the passage?

A. People used to have job opportunities and welfare for upward mobility.

B. A great many poor people can hardly realize their American dream.

C. You can make all your dreams come true in America if born rich.

D. Rich kids are more likely to go to college than poor kids.

The underlined sentence “where you end up depends on where you start” most probably means _______.

A. Your starting point cannot determine your destination.

B. Only a high goal can ensure success.

C. One’s birth has nothing to do with his fate.

D. One’s family lays solid foundation for his future achievements.

Why is Abby Subark nervous?

A. Her kids don’t want to compare with other rich kids in achievements.

B. Her kids don’t want to achieve success at all.

C. Her kids can achieve success through hard work and education.

D. Her kids can’t reach their goal without a rich family.

What can we infer after reading the passage? 

A. Poverty causes people much pain.

B. People below the poverty line can never be in the middle class.

C. Lower starting point makes it hard for people to realize their dream.

D. Poor people’s starting point is too low.

Thousands of people living in the Chinese capital will celebrate the start of the Chinese New year by heading for the ski resorts (滑雪场). Never mind that Beijing’s dry weather seldom produces snow. It is cold enough in winter for snow-making machines to make a covering for the hills north to the capital. And the rapid growth of a pleasure-seeking middle class has formed the basis for this new craze(热潮).     
Since Beijing’s first ski resort was opened ten years ago, the sport has enjoyed astonishing increase. There are now more than a dozen resorts. Clothes markets in the city have added bright colored ski suits to their winter collections. Mr. Wei, a manager of a newly-opened ski resort in Beijing, sees the growth of an industry that could soon lead Chinese to head for the ski resorts of Europe. In recent years, ski resorts offering natural snow have opened in China. But many are in faraway areas of the country and can’t really match the equipment and services of some ski resorts in Europe.
Beijing’s skiing craze is partly a result of the recent increase in private (私有的) cars. This has led to the growth of a leisure industry in the capital’s suburbs (郊区), which until the late-1990s were unreachable to ordinary people. According to Mr. Wei, about 40% of the visitors to his resort come in their own cars. The rest are bused in by schools, businesses or government offices.  
The problem is making money. Starting ski resorts requires quite a lot of money; hiring land from the local government, preparing the hills, buying snow machines, making sure there are enough water and electricity to run them, and buying ski equipment for hiring out to customers.
The ski resort where Mr. Wei works cost nearly $4 million to set up. And as so often in China when someone comes up with a good idea, many others rush in and price wars break out. Beijing now offers some of the cheapest ski training classes in the world, though with most people rather new to the sport, expecting a few more doing the same job.
【小题1】What does this text mainly talk about?

A.Convenience for skiers brought about by private cars.
B.Skiing as a new way of enjoying one's spare time.
C.Things to be considered when starting a ski resort.
D.A sudden increase of ski training classes in Beijing.
【小题2】Why are some Chinese likely to go skiing in Europe?
A.To visit more ski areas.
B.To ski on natural snow.
C.For a large collection of ski suits.
D.For better services and equipment.
【小题3】The underlined words “leisure industry” in Paragraph 3 refer to         
A.transport to ski resorts
B.production of family cars
C.business of providing spare time enjoyments
D.part-time work for people living in the suburbs
【小题4】What is the main problem in running a ski resort?
A.Difficulty in hiring land.
B.Lack of business experience.
C.Price wars with other ski resorts
D.Shortage of water and electricity.

 

The price of coffee beans hits a 12 – year high today. I thought there might

be some kind of coffee – market story, like we saw with cocoa earlier this summer.

But the main driver of coffee prices right now is simpler: Colombia has had

a few years of weak coffee harvests because of too much rain, which has reduced

the global supply. And coffee drinkers keep buying coffee, even as prices rise, in

other words, demand is unchanged.

The higher price of beans – up about 40 percent since March – means higher prices for the coffee you buy by the pound. But it probably won’t affect the coffee you buy by the cup.

Smuckers, which sells Folgers and Millstone coffees, recently said it was raising its prices because of the higher cost of beans. Starbucks, however, said it would absorb the higher cost of beans without raising prices.

“You see it much more in the grocery store because the raw materials are a big factor of cost,” Jose Sette of the International Coffee Organization told me. “In a coffee shop, your big expenses are rent and labor.”

While real – world supply and demand is the big driver of the price of beans, there may be some speculative action in coffee business in the future.

But futures (期货) of the high – grade Arabica beans are traded in the US, where regulations prevent speculators (投机商) from controlling the market, hoping such things won’t happen just as in London summer market. That suggests that prices should fall when supply improves – which may happen next year.

Some experts say that farmers in third world countries won’t actually benefit from higher prices in this case. When the price difference is due to supply and demand, the profit of the seller usually doesn’t go up.

1.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

    A.Why coffee is getting more expensive?

    B.How farmer benefits from the high price?

    C.Whether the US will control the coffee market?

    D.What has caused the reduction of coffee?

2.From the second paragraph we can infer that _______________________.

    A.Colombia is the coffee trading center of the world

    B.Colombia coffee output contains a final share of the world

    C.People need more and more coffee

    D.Coffee sales will be getting less and less

3.In this summer’s coffee bean market, ____________________________.

    A.the US made more rules about coffee prices

    B.speculators once held the coffee bean market in London

    C.coffee bean trading was seriously disorganized

    D.coffee bean prices were very low in the US

4.Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?

    A.The price difference determines the profit of the seller.

    B.Smuckers is a famous coffee manufacturer.

    C.Real – world supply and demand decides the prices.

    D.Coffee prices will become much higher next year.

 

How do you feel after you've stayed up late to finish schoolwork? Or the day after a slumber party? Scientists now say that your answers to these questions may depend on your genes.

Genes are stretches of DNA that work like an instruction manual for our cells. Genes tell our bodies and brains what to do. People have about 40,000 genes, and each gene can have different forms. So, for example, certain forms of some genes make your eyes blue. Other versions of those genes make your eyes brown.

In a similar way, new research suggests that a gene called period3 affects how well you function without sleep. The discovery adds to older evidence that period3 helps determine whether you like to stay up late or get up early.

The period3 gene comes in two forms: short and long. Everyone has two copies of the gene. So, you may have two longs, two shorts, or one of each. Your particular combination depends on what your parents passed on to you.

Scientists from the University of Surrey in England studied 24 people who had either two short or two long copies of period3. Study participants had to stay awake for 40 hours straight. Then, they took tests that measured how quickly they pushed a button when numbers flashed on a screen and how well they could remember lists of numbers.

Results showed that the people with the short form of period3 performed much better on these tests than the people with the long form did. In both groups, people performed worst in the early morning. That's the time when truck drivers and other night-shift workers say they have the most trouble concentrating.

After the first round of experiments, participants were finally allowed to sleep. People in the group that performed well on the tests took about 18 minutes to nod off.

People with the long period3 gene, by contrast, fell asleep in just 8 minutes. They also spent more time in deep sleep. That suggests that people with the long form of the gene need more and deeper sleep to keep their brains working at top form.

1.We can know from the passage that genes can not ________.

A.tell our bodies and brains what to do

B.make our eyes blue or brown

C.decide how well you work without sleep

D.ensure whether you’re good at driving

2.Which of the following statements about the period3 is wrong?

 

A.It affects whether you like to stay up late or get up early.

B.It comes in two forms: short and long.

C.One has either two longs or two shorts of it.

D.Your parents determine what particular combination you have.

3. People with the short form of period3__________.

 

A.need to go to bed early and get up early

B.can work better than the people with long form of period3 without sleep

C.take less time to fall asleep after they stay up late

D.need more and deeper sleep to keep their brains working at top form

4.What’s the best title of the passage?

A.The Period3 Gene

B.The Function of Genes

C.Wake up, Sleepy Gene

D.Stay up Late or Get up Early?

 

 

The discovery of a dwarfed (矮个的) “human being” who lived in Flores, Indonesia, up to 18,000 years ago is changing the way we think about the human family. This “Flores Human” was three foot tall and her brain was smaller than that of the average chimp (黑猩猩), yet she and her relatives apparently lived fully human lives. They seem to have made tools, worked together to find food and cook it, and perhaps even buried their dead with ceremony.

It was a major surprise to find tools associated with the new human family member. The tools are like those formerly seen only with European fossils (化石 ) from our own species, Homo sapiens (智人 ), and the oldest of them were made 94,000 years ago. Homo sapiens is thought to have arrived in the island about 40,000 years ago, much too late to be responsible for the tools. If this tiny human made the tools, the inside structure (结构 ) of its brain must have been more like our own than a chimp’s, despite being just a third the size of ours.

This “new human” was suspected to be a dwarfed branch of Homo erectus (直立人 ). When creatures are separated in regions with rare resources but few enemies, being big is a disadvantage, and evolution tends to shrink them, a process known as island dwarfing. Could natural selection make a human smaller while keeping - even improving - mental ability? Quite possibly, believes Christopher Wills of the University of California.

Has the “Flores Human” even shown the ability of language? “I find it difficult to imagine that people could make tools, use fire, and kill large animals without fairly advanced communication,” Wills says. Did “Flores Human” possess the basic components of human culture - such as the burying of the dead with ceremony? Emiliano Bruner of the Italian Institute points out that Indonesia’s hot, wet environment is bad for fossilization. It is reasonable to assume, he says, that the 18,000-year-old bones of the most complete Flores woman were well-preserved because she was buried with special care.

1.According to the passage, “Flores Human” __________.

A. lived a partly human life

B. was a branch of Homo sapiens

C. used tools before Homo sapiens arrived

D. had a brain as large as a common chimp’s

2.The underlined part “this tiny human” in Paragraph 2 refers to __________.

A. a chip       B. Flores Human     C. Homo sapiens     D. Homo erectus

3.This passage mainly talks about __________.

A. the tools made by “Flores Human”

B. the language used by “Flores Human”

C. the evolution of “Flores Human”

D. the major surprising findings about “Flores Human”

4.According to the passage, it is believed that “Flores Human” __________.

A. was dwarfed by its enemies

B. could use language

C. left a lot of fossils in the hot and wet environment

D. reached Flores 40,000 years ago

 

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