题目内容

A recent housing project in Helsinki offers remarkably cheap apartments for those under the age of 25. They must commit to spending time with their older neighbors.

Helsinki offers 247-suqare-foot studio apartments with a bathroom, storage space, kitchen, and balcony for only $272 every month—about a third of the average price for a studio in the city. The apartment is inside homes for the elderly, and the young renter must spend between three to five hours with their elderly neighbors each week.

Like pretty much all other major cities in the world, Finland’s capital of Helsinki has faced rapid population growth in recent years. And with population growth, comes an inevitable rise in the cost of living, and of course, sharp increase in rent. Currently, Helsinki is ranked 14th on the list of the world’s most expensive cities. For those young and freshly independent, this causes terrible problems — even homelessness.

"It's a very expensive city to live in," Mr. Bostrom writes in an email to CNN’s Eoghan Macguire. "If you manage to get an apartment that the city owns, it can be quite affordable. The screening criteria included the ability to participate in a variety of activities, such as cooking or playing instruments, but the number of applicants for those apartments is so high that waiting list takes forever,” he says.

According to Helsinki’s Youth Housing Association, the city council aims to ensure that every young person will have a home by 2018. Miki Mielonen, a representative of the youth department, says this project, currently in its trial stages, will help out young people while offering social benefits to senior citizens. “I think there is quite a rigid opinion in Finland with many people thinking young of the old ideas that we are going to break down.”

1.Helsinki probably rents a cheap apartment to a young man who ________.

A. reaches the age of 25

B. has financial problems

C. promises to accompany the elderly

D. agrees to share it with his neighbor

2.Which is the root reason for the housing problems in Helsinki?

A. The population explosion.

B. The high living standard.

C. World’s priciest apartment rent.

D. Low employment of college graduates.

3.According to Mr Bostrom, the cheap apartments are ________.

A. well-decorated

B. difficult to afford

C. in short supply

D. popular with technicians

4.What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A. The young in Helsinki are mostly homeless.

B. Helsinki will overcome people’s prejudice.

C. The project will be experimental in future.

D. The project is more beneficial to the young.

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It is commonly believed that all over the world, boys and girls attend a mixed school, where they study together. But boys' schools are the perfect place to teach young men to express their emotions and involve them in activities such as art, dance and music.

Always boys at single-sex schools were said to be more likely to get involved in cultural and artistic activities that helped develop their emotional expressiveness, rather than feeling they had to correspond to(和…相符) the "boy code" of hiding their emotions to be a "real man".

Surprisingly, the findings of the study go against received wisdom that boys do better when taught alongside girls.

George Carl, headmaster of Eton, warned that boys were being failed by the British education system because it had become too focused on girls. He criticized teachers for failing to recognize that boys are actually more emotional than girls.

The research argued that boys often perform badly in mixed schools because they become discouraged when girls do better earlier in speaking and reading skills.

But in single-sex schools teachers can adjust lessons to boys' learning style, letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom, wrote the study's author, Abigail James, of the University of Virginia.

Teachers could encourage boys to enjoy reading and writing with "boy-focused" approaches such as themes and characters that appeal to them. Because boys generally have more acute vision, learn best through touch, and are physically more active, they need to be given "hands-on" lessons where they are allowed to walk around. "Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine(女性的) and prefer the modern genre (类型) in which violence and sexism are major themes," James wrote.

Single-sex education also made it less likely that boys would feel that they had to be "masterful and in charge" in relationships. "In mixed schools, boys feel forced to act like men before they understand themselves well enough to know what that means," the study reported.

1.The writer argues that a single-sex school would ________.

A. encourage boys to express their emotions more freely

B. help boys to be more competitive in schools.

C. force boys to he their emotions to be "real men".

D. naturally strengthen boys’ traditional image of a man.

2.Traditionally, in a mixed school boys ________.

A. behave more responsibly

B. perform relatively better

C. grow up more healthily

D. receive a better education

3.In Abigail James’ opinion, one of the advantages of single-sex schools is ________.

A. boys can choose to learn whatever they are interested in

B. boys can focus on their lessons without being distracted

C. teaching can be adjusted to suiting the characteristics of boys

D. teaching can be designed to promote boys' team spirit

4.The underlined word “acute” in paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to ________.

A. lovelyB. seriousC. sharpD. dull

To most people, noise pollution is a jet flying over their head. For one Spanish woman, it is a neighbor playing the piano. The woman has taken her neighbor to court. Now she wants to send her neighbor to prison for over seven years on the charges of psychological damage and noise pollution.

In a country known for its noisiness, the case has raised eyebrows. Neighbors often complain about street noise in Spain, but people seeking prison time for someone practicing the piano is unheard of. At the trial, Sonia Bosom says she has been suffering noise pollution up to now due to the practice sessions of Laia Martin, who lives below her. Martin, 27, didn’t admit that she played at home that often, saying she took regular classes in other towns and mostly practiced at home on the weekends.

On the first day of the trial, the newspaper reported that Bosom told the court she now hated pianos so much that she couldn’t even stand seeing them in a film.

Bosom says years of hearing constant playing has caused her “psychological injury”. Medical reports show she has suffered from a variety of problems, including insomnia (失眠), anxiety, and panic attacks.

She says tests by local authorities have found that the sound levels made by the piano are up to 10 decibels (分贝) higher than the limit. City authorities(权威)have asked the family several times to either stop the piano playing or soundproof (隔音) the room. The family told the court they carried out soundproofing work twice but the complaints continued.

The court hasn’t made a final decision. A spokeswoman says the trial will end before May.

1.Bosom wants to send Martin to prison because ________.

A. Martin’s playing the piano damaged her health

B. Bosom suffered from heart attack

C. Martin refused to take regular classes in other towns

D. Martin flew a jet over her head

2.How did Laia Martin respond to the complaints?

A. She stopped playing the piano.

B. She soundproofed the room.

C. She didn’t admit she played at home.

D. She took her neighbor to court.

3.Which of the following may probably be the best title for the passage?

A. A 7-year Sentence Caused by the Piano

B. Pianist Charged with Noise Pollution

C. Health Problems of a Spanish Woman

D. Actions Against Noise by Local Authority

CANYOUIMAGINEHOWHARDITWOULDBETOREADSENTENCESLIKETHIS? Every one of us gets so used to punctuation marks that not many of us give them a second thought. Actually, the ancient Greeks wrote this way. The lack of punctuation marks probably didn’t bother good readers, though. As they read, they just put pauses where they fit best. Also at this time, sentences switched directions. A sentence read from left to right. The next one read right to left, and then left to right again, etc. The ancient Romans sometimes punctuated like this: They • put • something • that • can • separate • words • in • a • sentence. The word punctuation actually comes from this idea and the Latin word punctum, which means a dot.

When the 5th century arrived, there were just two punctuation marks: spaces and points. The spaces separated words while the points showed pauses in reading. Then in the 13th century, a printer named Aldus Manutius tried to standardize punctuation. He always used a period for a complete stop at the end of a sentence. He used a slash (/) to indicate a short pause. Over time, that slash was shortened and curled, and it became the modern comma (逗号).

Since that time, other marks have enlarged the punctuation family. The exclamation mark (感叹号) comes from the Latin word io. It means “exclamation of joy.” The question mark originally started out as the Latin word questio, meaning question. Eventually, scholars put it at the end of a sentence to show a question.

Punctuation even keeps changing nowadays. New marks are coming into existence, and old punctuation marks are used in new ways. Take for example the “interrobang”. This 1962 invention combines the question mark and exclamation mark for times when writers want both. For example, “She did what?” or “How much did you pay for that dress?” Obviously, the interrobang is not widely used or recognized yet, but its invention shows that English is not yet finished with its punctuation.

1.From the first paragraph, we can know that _______.

A. good readers had trouble reading without punctuation marks

B. a sentence always read from left to right in ancient Greece

C. ancient Greeks switched the direction of punctuation marks

D. the use of punctuation marks can date back to ancient times

2.The passage is developed _______.

A. by time B. by space

C. by comparison D. by importance

3.We can learn from the passage that _______.

A. ancient Romans didn’t use any punctuation marks

B. exclamation and question marks came from Latin

C. spaces and slashes were already used before the 5th century

D. Aldus Manutius first started to use commas

4.What can be concluded from the last paragraph?

A. The combination of two marks will not work.

B. It takes time for people to accept new punctuation marks.

C. Old punctuation marks need to be standardized.

D. Punctuation marks are still changing today.

阅读理解。

A qualified doctor who rarely practiced but instead devoted his life to writing. He once said: “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my lover.” Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, was a great playwright and one of the masters of the modern short story.

When Chekhov entered the Moscow University Medical School in 1879, he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support his family. After he graduated, he wrote regularly for a local daily newspaper.

As a writer he was extremely fast, often producing a short story in an hour or less. Chekhov’s medical and science experience can be seen through the indifference (冷漠) many of his characters show to tragic events. In 1892, he became a full time writer and published some of his most memorable stories.

Chekhov often wrote about the sufferings of life in small town Russia. Tragic events control his characters who are filled with feelings of hopelessness and despair.

It is often said that nothing happens in Chekhov’s stories and plays. He made up for this with his exciting technique for developing drama within his characters. Chekhov’s work combined the calm attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity(敏感) of an artist.

Some of Chekhov's works were translated into Chinese as early as the 1940s. One of his famous stories, The Man in a Shell, about a school teacher’s extraordinarily orderly life, was selected as a text for Chinese senior students.

1.Which of the following is the right order of the events?

a. became a doctor

b. became a full time writer

c. started to publish comic short stories

d. wrote regularly for a local daily newspaper.

e. entered the Moscow University Medical School

A. e→c→b→a→dB. e→c→a→d→b

C. d→a→b→c→eD. a→e→d→c→b

2.Anton Pavlovich Chekhov ________.

A. was a competent doctorB. had a lawful lover

C. used to be a lawyerD. as an illegal writer

3.In 1880, Chekhov ________.

A. became a full-time writer

B. published his most memorable stories

C. studied medicine in Moscow University

D. practiced medicine in his hometown

4.Which of the following adjectives can’t be used to describe Chekhov?

A. Sensitive.B. Cool.

C. Quick-minded.D. Warm-hearted.

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