House Sitting

In many countries of the world people do what is called house sitting. It means that if owners of the house are going away, they want someone to come into their home and look after the house and maybe pets while they are away.

In Australia, many people travel. After people retire, they might buy a van and travel all over the country. 1. (many people—retired people—thousands of them)

So if someone wants to travel or go away for some reason, they might want someone in their home to care for it and keep the gardens tidy. House sitters might have to care for pets. Also, quite a few people have swimming pools in their back yards and they need cleaning. 2. I feel it is a great way of seeing the country, because you go and stay in a new city, get to meet new people, and have time to go sightseeing in a new area.

3. There are websites where you find the advertisements by people who want to travel, and by replying to the advertisement, you can make arrangements to go and look after their home.

There are some requirements to be a house sitter. You must be a trusted person, so that the home owner knows you will not steal anything. You must be able to go when the house owner wants you to go, so you need lots of free time. 4. You need to be good with pets, able to care for cats and dogs, or other pets they may have.

Some house sitting jobs are just for a few days or a couple of weeks while the home owner has a short holiday. Sometimes it is for much longer. We have had one house sit for six months, while the home owner travelled to Europe.

5. Then you can travel to many different countries and stay there. One of the important things to get are references from the home owners where you have stayed. A reference is a written letter to say that you are trustworthy and have looked after their home well. You can show these letters to prospective house sitting jobs and they know you will do a good job.

A. I have done house sitting many times.

B. Thousands of people do this all the time.

C. It is also possible to do house sitting in other countries.

D. Generally you have many opportunities to get a house sitting job.

E. You must take a little care over what your description says about you.

F. This is an international house sitting service for all city and country areas.

G. You must have a good car, so you can travel to different parts of the country.

In her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World,” Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students’ test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored(超过……分数) American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Warsaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind.

That American high schools waste more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. This is not a matter of how any given student who plays sports does in school, but of the culture and its priorities. This December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are announced, it’s safe to predict that American high-school students will once again display their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers.

Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D.C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader—a mother with three children in the school—was asked about the school’s flaws(瑕疵). When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. “Really?” one of them asked worriedly, “What do you mean?”

One of the ironies(讽刺) of the situation is that sports reveal what is possible. American kids’ performance on the field shows just how well they can do when expectations are high. It’s too bad that their test scores show the same thing.

1.According to Paragraph 2, we know that ________.

A. little time is spent on sports in Japanese schools

B. too much importance is placed on sports in America

C. American high schools complain about sports time

D. PISA plays a very important role in America

2.The underlined sentence in the last paragraph means ________.

A. American students’ academic performance worries their parents a lot

B. high expectations push up American students’ academic performance

C. lacking practice contributes to American students’ average performance

D. low expectations result in American students’ poor PISA performance

3.The purpose of this article is to ________.

A. compare Polish schools with those in America

B. call on American schools to learn from the Polish model

C. draw public attention to a weakness in American school tradition

D. explain what is wrong with American schools and provide solutions

When you first arrive in Oxford, it may take a little while for you to find your way around. Some of the first things our students do when they arrive include finding a bike (most students in Oxford find cycling is the best way to go around), setting up a bank account, getting their computer and mobile phone working, finding their department, getting to know their college and working out the best places to socialize.

One of the major events you will experience shortly after “coming up” to Oxford is matriculation. Matriculation is held at the University’s Sheldonian Theatre and is the ceremony at which you are formally admitted to the university.

International students are invited to an orientation day at the start of the academic year. Sessions run throughout the day that will give you practical information about living and studying in the UK and introduce you to other graduate students from all over the world who are starting their studies at Oxford at the same time as you, as well as to current Oxford graduate students and staff who will be able to help and advise you. The day covers topics such as studying and learning in the Oxford system, University services, information on living in Britain and cultural differences, as well as addressing practical issues such as employment, immigration and visas, health and safety. You can choose which talks to attend and at the end of the day there is a social hour so you can meet fellow students.

Another good thing to experience early is college dining. Most colleges have a tradition of regular formal hall dinners, which consist of three or four courses, and the atmosphere of an evening out in a nice restaurant. On some of these occasions you can invite people around to your college for dinner and then they may return the favor. In this way, you can get to know people studying your own and other subjects at the same time as visiting many of the historical college grounds and dining halls.

1.For a newcomer to Oxford, what does he have to do first?

A. To work out what to major in.

B. To open a qq account.

C. To get a bike to go around.

D. To buy a new mobile phone.

2.What is matriculation?

A. A special day for International students to start academic year.

B. A ceremony when students are formally admitted to Oxford.

C. Performances held at the Sheldonian Theatre.

D. The best places to socialize.

3.Which talk can students attend on the orientation day?

A. Studying in the Cambridge system.

B. Talks on how to meet fellow students.

C. Practical issues like employment, immigration, and health.

D. University services about the life in Britain and cultural similarities.

4.What does the underlined part in paragraph 4 probably mean?

A. Treating you to dinner.

B. Visiting historic college in return.

C. Studying the subjects with your friend.

D. Showing you around the college.

The universe looks like a pretty quiet place to live. But the universe is filled with dangerous things, all struggling to be the one to wipe us off the planet. Happily for us, they’re all pretty unlikely, but if you wait long enough, one of them is certain to get us. But which one?

1. Death by Asteroid (小行星)

Of all the ways we might meet our untimely death, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a universal shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I’d imagine they would tell you to take this seriously.

2. Death by Exploding Star

When a huge star ends its life, it does so with a bang, which sends death spreading across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Many studies show that the bang would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars so close are able to do the deed.

3. Death by Dying Sun

The sun is important to us; without it, we’d freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged, already halfway to running out of fuel, expanding into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then, it’ll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans.

Happily, that’s a long time from now.

4. Death by Black Hole

Black holes are misunderstood. They don’t wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they turn around the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it’s possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary paths would be disturbed, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be thrown out into deep space.

Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don’t have to worry too much about black holes.

My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is concerned...and forever is a long, long time.

1.The underlined word “this” probably refers to ________.

A. getting wiped out by a dinosaur

B. an untimely death

C. a cosmic shooting gallery

D. 100 tons of material

2.Which of the following will cause the earth’s average temperature to go up dramatically?

A. The dying sun.B. The black hole.

C. The asteroid.D. The exploding star.

3.Which of the following statement is possible about black holes?

A. They wander the galaxy.

B. One of them wanders very close to the earth.

C. They turn around the galaxy.

D. They look for planets and stars.

4.While the author is introducing the ways the universe could wipe out humankind, he is ________ us.

A. warningB. comfortingC. entertainingD. ignoring

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