Their grandmothers fought for the vote, and their mothers have battled to have it all. Now the upcoming generation of girls have decided to turn the clock back and stay at home with their babies.
According to a survey of more than 5,000 teenage girls in Britain, their main ambition (追求的目标) is to complete university then stay at home. More than nine out of ten of the girls believe it should be up to their husbands to provide for them. And although 43 percent of those questioned believe they should continue with their education until they have achieved a university degree, one in four say getting married is the most important thing for them.
The supposedly super-modern, “fun comes first” teenage generation has proved to be very traditional in every area of their beliefs, with over 50 percent saying they would not dream of having children before seeing a ring on their finger.
The desire to have children is beginning earlier too. On average, teenage girls plan to have their first child at 26, and most plan to have one or two more children over the following four years. The national average now is 1.64 children per couple.
“This survey doesn’t show that the battles of feminism (女权运动) have been lost,” said author Claire Rayner, “Feminism was never opposed (反对) to marriage or children. On the contrary, feminism was about to equal opportunities for women to do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, and this is exactly what these girls are choosing to do.”
【小题1】The passage is mainly about ________.

A.the result of the battles of feminism
B.women’s struggle for independence in the society
C.the girls’ desire to stay at home after they graduate
D.women’s social status in the modern society
【小题2】Girls prefer to be housewives rather than independent women because _______.
A.it’s hard for women to find jobs
B.men would rather their wives look after babies at home
C.girls want to live a more comfortable life
D.women have a low salary
【小题3】. From the last paragraph we can see that Rayner thinks ________.
A.women should stay at home with their babies
B.women should find jobs and support the family
C.women should be offered more job opportunities
D.women should live the life they like


Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. It is in the Himalayan Mountains between Nepal and China, and it is 8 900 meters high. Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal were the first people ever to climb Mount Everest. They climbed it in 1953. Men from several different countries climbed it after that.
Jumko Tabei, a Japanese from Hokkaido, was the first woman to make this difficult climb. A Tokyo newspaper television organized the climb in 1975. They chose fifteen women from mountaineering (登山) clubs to go to Nepal. The group climbed for several days. Then there was an avalanche (雪崩). The heavy ice and snow injured ten of the women. They had to stop climbing, the other five women continued.
Only Ms. Tabei was able to climbing the last 70 meters. She was standing on the top of the world. She was the first woman there.
Ms. Tabei was 35 years old at the time. She is 1 meter 50 centimeters and weighs 42 kilograms. She says that she is an ordinary housewife. She started climbing mountains in 1960. She climbed every mountain in Japan. Then she climbed Mount Annapurna, another high mountain in the Himalayas. Finally she climbed the world’s highest mountain.
When she reached the top, she thought, “I’m at the top and I’m glad that I’m at the top.” Then she climbed back down the mountain.
1. Ms. Tabei was great because _________.
A. she was the first one ever to climb Mount Everest
B. she had climbed every mountain in Japan
C. she was the first woman that climbed the world’s highest mountain
D. she had climbed many mountains though she was small and young
2. “The heavy ice and snow injured ten of the women.” The word “injured” means ________.
A. killed       B. hurt     C. buried      D. froze
3. Which of the following is true?
A.None of the group reached the top of Mount Everest.
B. Ms. Tabei was one of the other five women who reached the top of Mount Everest.
C. The other five women reached the top of Mount Everest but Ms. Tabei was the first one.
D. Ms. Tabei was the only one of the group who reached the top of Mount Everest.
4. Ms. Tabei had practiced climbing for _________ years.
A. fifteen     B. twenty-two      C. thirteen   D. ten
5.What’s the main idea of the passage ?
A. The highest mountain in  the world.
B. The first woman to set foot on the highest mountain in the world.
C. How to climb the highest mountain in the world.
D. The exploration to the highest mountain in the world.

If you lose your wallet, how often do you think someone will be kind enough to return it to you, with cash and credit cards?

Some people may be greedy, and others are simply too lazy to bother(打搅) with the trip to the post office to send back a wallet to a stranger. But according to a psychology study by Dr. Richard Wiseman, there’s one thing that’ll greatly increase your odds of being reunited with a lost wallet: a photograph of a cute baby.

In the study, hundreds of wallets were scattered(分散) around the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. The psychologists wanted to see how many strangers would take the trouble to return them to the addresses listed on the drivers’ licenses inside—but more than that, they wanted to find out what would make a person more likely to help out a stranger.

To finish this, they included personal things in most of the wallets: some included a photo of a happy elderly couple, some contained a cute puppy, some contained a family portrait, and some held a photo of a lovely baby. Others had receipts(发票) showing that the wallet’s owner had recently donated to a charity(慈善). Some contained no personal details.

As the psychologists soon discovered, the sight of a smiling baby is enough to warm nearly any heart: only one in ten of the strangers who retrieved such wallets did not return them. In contrast, the second most successful image, the puppy, had a 53% return rate. When the wallet included no photograph, it stood only a one in seven chance of being returned to the owner.

The success of the baby photograph shows a human compassion(同情) for the young that’s been passed down through the ages, according to Dr. Wiseman. “The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective(进化的角度),” he told the Times.

To ensure our species’ survival, scientists think that we must feel empathy and compassion for our young. Scientists say that this study supports the argument that we won’t feel compassion only for our own babies, but for any that we see—hence, the strong desire a stranger would feel to return a wallet to the baby’s parent.

On a more basic level, the study also provides a great tip to help ensure that if your wallet is ever lost, you’re more likely to get it back. “If you want to increase the chances of your wallet being returned if lost, gain a photograph of the cutest baby you can find and ensure that it is clearly displayed,” said Dr. Wiseman.

1.The main purpose of the psychologists’ leaving hundreds of wallets around was to find out________.

A.whether people were as honest as before

B.what made people willing to help strangers

C.what kind of feelings could be caused by a smiling baby

D.how evolution influenced human beings

2.The underlined word “retrieved” in Para. 5 probably means “________”.

A.picked up         B.spread out         C.found out         D.looked for

3.Why did people return a wallet with a photograph of a cute baby in it?

A.Because the wallet was not attractive enough to keep.

B.Because the sight of a baby could cause a caring feeling in them.

C.Because they were curious to know the parents of the baby

D.Because the sight of a cute baby reminded them of their own children.

4.If there are 30 lost wallets with a photograph of a cute baby, how many of them will probably be returned?

A.Only 3.           B.About 15.         C.20 or so.          D.About 27.

5.We can learn from the last two paragraphs that________.

A.humans usually have compassion for the young

B.the caring feeling in people is gone during evolution

C.scientists believed that people only feel compassion for their own babies

D.a wallet with a cute baby’s picture in it cannot be lost

 

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.

 

British people have the worst quality of life in Europe, according to a report which highlights (强调) the long hours, bad weather, low life expectancy and high price of many goods.

In a study of ten of the largest European countries, Britain, which was considered a popular country to live in, now comes last followed by Ireland, with France and Spain topping the table.

Though British families enjoy the highest income in Europe, they still have to fight with a high cost of living, with fuel, food and alcohol all costing more than the European average.

With the high price of petrol, the UK is the second most expensive country in Europe. However, diesel (柴油) is more expensive in the UK than anywhere else in Europe.

The report by the website uSwitch analyses 10 European countries against 17 different benchmarks(基准点), from the price of gas, electricity, fuel, food and drink to the money each country spends on education, health to working conditions and the weather.

The top three countries are France, Spain and Denmark, with Sweden, Ireland and Britain coming eighth, ninth and tenth respectively.

The study comes less than a week after the United Nations moved Britain out of the top 20 list of most desirable countries to live in for the first time.

Although France and Germany were at the beginning hit hard by the global financial crisis, both have officially got out of the trouble, while Britain has yet to prove this has happened. Later this week, despite (尽管) signs of recovery in the housing market and rising sales, unemployment is still expected to have climbed to above 2.5 million for the first time since 1994.

1.Which country has the best quality of life in Europe according to the report?

 A. Ireland.        B. France.         C. Sweden.         D. Denmark

2.Which is TRUE according to the passage?

A. British families are suffering from the high cost of living.  

B. The report comes after the website uSwitch analysed 10 Asian countries.

C. The price of petrol is higher in Britain than anywhere else in Europe.

D. The quality of British life is reported to be terrible because of the bad working conditions.

3.The underlined word “desirable” probably means           .

A. terrible      B. attractive         C. expensive       D. different

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A. Britain is still struggling to get out of the global financial crisis.

B. Unemployment in Britain is expected to go down soon.

C. Recovery in the housing market leads to unemployment in Britain.

D. Britain has recovered from the crisis together with France and Germany.

 

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