题目内容
B. who
C. whichever
D. which
阅读快车系列答案 Recently, online high schools in America have sparked (激发) a debate about whether or not taxpayers’ money should be used to support online education. Online schools receive the same amount of funding as all other public schools, even though they don’t have to pay for rent or school equipment. States should use their educational funds to improve education at real schools, not to support online programs.
Some students only use online classes to supplement their school work. They benefit from the social experience of a traditional high school, while still taking online courses.
However, about 90 thousand students in America receive their education only from online schools. 50 thousand of these students take courses at Florida Virtual School, the largest online school in the country. While this method of schooling helps students who live in remote regions, most school systems are upset that they are losing more students each year to these online programs.
Although online learning allows children to work at their own pace, these online schools have only one teacher per several hundred students. Often, teachers can’t give struggling students the help they need as they are unable to talk face-to-face with them, to find exactly what they’re having difficulty with.
Additionally, even though online schooling accommodates (顾及) students who live in more remote states, students in online programs may suffer in social situations because they will not learn valuable communication skills from their schooling. Similar to students who are home schooled, those who take only online classes won’t learn social etiquette (礼节), and will be treated differently by their peers.
Online schooling might be useful for places where there are not enough students for a real school, such as agricultural regions, but states should only spend taxpayers’ money on online schools in extreme cases.
【小题1】What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Whether students should study at online schools. |
| B．Whether online schools should be allowed to exist. |
| C．Whether taxpayers should pay for online schools. |
| D．Whether traditional schools should be replaced. |
| A．is helpful to students living in remote regions |
| B．allows students to work together |
| C．makes it possible for students to get immediate help |
| D．develops students’ critical thinking |
| A．might lose interest in learning |
| B．would play online games |
| C．could not receive teachers’ help |
| D．could not become fully developed |
| A．Taxpayers should not pay for online schools at all. |
| B．Taxpayers should pay more for online schools than real schools. |
| C．Taxpayers’ money should be spent on online schools conditionally. |
| D．Taxpayers should support online schools in different ways. |
A study involving 8,500 teenagers from all social backgrounds found that most of them are ignorant when it comes to money. The findings, the first in a series of reports from NatWest that has started a five-year research project into teenagers and money, are particularly worrying as this generation of young people is likely to be burdened with greater debts than any before.
University tuition feesare currently capped at £3,000 annually, but this will be reviewed next year and the Government is under enormous pressure to raise the ceiling.
In the research, the teenagers were presented with the terms of four different loans but 76 per cent failed to identify the cheapest. The young people also predicted that they would be earning on average £31.000 by the age of 25, although the average salary for those aged 22 to 29 is just £17,815. The teenagers expected to be in debt when they finished university or training, although half said that they assumed the debts would be less than £10.000. Average debts for graduates are £12,363.
Stephen Moir, head of community investment at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group which owns NatWest, said. "The more exposed young people are to financial issues, and the younger they become aware of them, the more likely they are to become responsible, forward-planning adults who manage their finances confidently and effectively."
Ministers are deeply concerned about the financial pressures on teenagers and young people because of student loans and rising housing costs. They have just introduced new lessons in how to manage debts. Nikki Fairweather, aged 15, from St Helens, said that she had benefited from lessons on personal finance, but admitted that she still had a lot to learn about money.
【小题1】Which of the following can be found from the five-year research project?
| A．Students understand personal finances differently. |
| B．University tuition fees in England have been rising. |
| C．Teenagers tend to overestimate their future earnings. |
| D．The students' payback ability has become a major issue. |
| A．to raise the student loans | B．to improve the school facilities |
| C．to increase the upper limit of the tuition | D．to lift the school building roofs |
| A．are too young to be exposed to financial issues |
| B．should learn to manage their finances well |
| C．should maintain a positive attitude when facing loans |
| D．benefit a lot from lessons on personal finance |
| A．Many British teenagers do not know money matters well |
| B．Teenagers in Britain are heavily burdened with debts. |
| C．Financial planning is a required course at college. |
| D．Young people should become responsible adults. |
There is an old saying in English： "Laughter is the best medicine". Until recently, few people took the saying very seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to investigate laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found evidence that laughter really can improve people's health.
Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films, while doctors checked their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart rate and the rate of breathing； it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.
Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be capable of reducing the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group which tolerated the pain for the longest time was 'the group which listened to a funny program. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce endorphins （内啡肽） in the brain. These are natural chemicals which diminish both stress and pain.
There is also some evidence to suggest that laughter helps the body's immune(免疫的)system, that is, the system which fights infection. In an experiment, one group of students watched a funny video while another group served as the control group - in other words, a group with which to compare the first group. Doctors checked the blood of the students in both groups and found that the people in the group that watched the video had an increase in the activity of their white blood cells, that is, the cells which fight infection.
As a result of these discoveries, some doctors and psychiatrists （精神病学家） in the United States now hold laughter clinics, in which they try to improve their patients' condition by encouraging them to laugh. They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.
【小题1】 We learn from the first paragraph that laughter____________________.
| A．is good for one's health |
| B．is related to some illness |
| C．has been investigated long since |
| D．has no effect on the body |
| A．keeps down blood pressure. |
| B．has similar effects to physical exercise |
| C．decreases the heart rate |
| D．increases stress |
| A．It reduces pain. |
| B．It exercises the body. |
| C．It improves the body's immune system. |
| D．It can cure cancer. |
| A．critical |
| B．doubtful |
| C．positive |
| D．negative |