Of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists (语言学家) say, nearly half are likely to disappear this century. In fact, one falls out of use about every two weeks.
Some languages die out in an instant, at the death of the only surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual (双语的) cultures, as local tongues are edged out by the dominant (占主导地位的) language at school, in the marketplace and on television.
New research, supported by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, has found the five regions where languages are disappearing most rapidly. They are northern Australia, central South America, North America's upper Pacific coastal zone, eastern Siberia, and Oklahoma and the southwestern United States.
K. David Harrison, an associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, US, said that more than half the languages had no written form and were vulnerable to loss and being forgotten." Their loss leaves no dictionary, no text, or no record of the accumulated knowledge and history of a disappeared culture.
Harrison and other researchers started their rescue project last year. They have been trying to identify and record endangered languages. They interviewed and made recordings of the few remaining speakers of a language and collected basic word lists. The individual projects, some lasting three to four years, involve hundreds of hours of recording speech, developing grammar and preparing children's readers in the obscure (逐渐没落的) language. The research has concentrated on preserving entire language families.
"These are probably languages that cannot be brought back, but at least we made records of them," said Gregory Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute, in Oregon, US.
【小题1】What does the passage mainly tell us?          

A.Many languages are quickly disappearing.
B.Some languages are disappearing because they are hard to remember.
C.Chinese is one of the languages that are disappearing.
D.Thanks to some researchers, many endangered languages have been rescued.
【小题2】What does the word vulnerable in the fourth paragraph mean?  
A.easy to remember.B.easy to forget.
C.likely to be damaged.D.likely to be protected.
【小题3】Which of the following is true according to the fifth paragraph?  
A.Harrison and other researchers are trying to find out why some languages died out.
B.Harrison and other researchers tried to start a rescue project.
C.Harrison and other researchers have concentrated on preserving all the languages.
D.Harrison and other researchers have done some rescue work on the obscure languages.
【小题4】One of the things that Harrison and other researchers did was         .   
A.to have more people speak the disappearing language
B.to make records of the disappearing language
C.to limit dominant languages
D.to publish a dictionary of the disappearing language
【小题5】What do you think is the suggested reason for some languages disappearing?     
A.Local tongues are gradually edged out by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.
B.The number of people who speak the languages are small.
C.There are no dictionaries for the languages.
D.No one make records of the languages, so they gradually disappear.

While I was in 9th grade, I built a circuit (电路装置) for the traffic system of our city. After getting the first prize, I got this valuable advice from my father: “Do whatever interests you, and don’t let the work challenge you, make sure you are challenging that work.” 
I have always preferred the projects which are challenging and related to real life problems. I clearly remember building a shipping program several years ago. I divided the whole project into several small sections. When I understood it clearly, I used my brainstorming skill on it, and gave some basic ideas. Then I asked my professor for help before jumping into coding (编码). At first, I did not know how to ask questions correctly and always asked the question “How do I do it?” As I kept working and discussed with my professor, I became more comfortable and those “how” questions soon turned into “what if I do this and that” types of questions.
It took me four days to write the code. The desire to solve the problem kept me sleepless all nights brainstorming in even greater details. Every time I saw my program running smoothly, I exploded with joy. I still remember the last day of my work. I was getting some problem and didn’t know what to do. At that moment, a man came in to clean. He had headphones, and he was dancing while cleaning the room. Seeing this, I burst out laughing. That moment calmed me. I regained energy and interest and started to work again, and soon I fixed the problem. 
My success in the project proved that breaking up a large problem into small parts could help find a possible solution. Discussing the problem with others was also very beneficial. Now I have gained the confidence to attempt any kind of project. 
【小题1】According to the passage, the writer was interested in ______.

A.developing traffic systemsB.doing challenging projects
C.winning great prizesD.writing different codes
【小题2】 The writer asked the question “how do I do it” at first because ______.
A.he had no clear idea about his programB.he was too shy to express himself
C.he wanted to be understood easilyD.he preferred this kind of question
【小题3】 We learn from the passage that the writer’s shipping program ______.
A.would benefit people a lotB.was done together with others
C.was difficult and needed patienceD.cost much money and energy
【小题4】 What would be the best title for the passage?
A.Do It YourselfB.No Pains, No Gains
C.Learning with InterestD.Practice Makes Perfect

An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
James Harrison has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia. He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.
Mr. Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special that his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.
He was also nicknamed the “man with the golden arm” or the “man in two million”. He said: “I've never thought about stopping. Never.” He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 litres of blood. “I was in hospital for three months,” he said. “The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.”
Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare and life-saving antibody in his blood. At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent brain damage because of the condition. The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive blood and the other Rh-negative.
His blood has since led to the development of a vaccine called Anti-D. After his blood type was discovered, Mr. Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine. “They insured me for a million dollars so I knew my wife Barbara would be taken care of,” he said. “I wasn't scared. I was glad to help. I had to sign every form going and basically sign my life away.”
Mr. Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood. It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women. It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.
It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far. Mr. Harrison is still donating every few weeks now.
【小题1】How old is James Harrison?

A.56B.70C.74D.78
【小题2】What does the underlined phrase “two million” refer to?
A.babiesB.mothersC.dollarsD.all of the above
【小题3】   Why did James decide to donate his blood? Because _____.
A.his daughter asked him to help her son
B.he has a golden arm worth a million dollars
C.a vaccine called Anti-D is to be developed
D.someone else’s blood saved his life
【小题4】The sentence “The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood” (underlined in Paragraph 5) suggests that _____.
A.babies suffer permanent brain damage before born
B.the mother and the baby have different types of blood
C.Rhesus disease contributes to permanent brain damage
D.all the patients have a rare antibody in their blood
【小题5】   What can we infer from the sixth paragraph?
A.Some of the tests to develop the vaccine are dangerous.
B.His wife Barbara needed to be taken care of badly then.
C.Mr. Harrison was glad to help develop a new vaccine.
D.His blood type was accidentally discovered after tests.

Eat, drink and be merry. That’s what Spring Festival is all about. But there are millions of people, too, who love to let happiness go up in smoke.
Offering cigarettes to guests is a traditional Chinese way of showing respect to them. A cup of tea and cigarettes are perhaps the most common way of welcoming a guest in China, especially during festive occasions.
No wonder, 40 percent of the people surveyed(调查) recently said they would smoke at least twice the usual number of cigarettes during the Spring Festival because of all those gatherings and parties. Only 20 percent of the respondents said they would refuse a cigarette when offered one. Why can’t the others do the same? Because they could be seen as being rude, said more than half in the respondents. 15 percent feared they could be taken as “someone who cannot get along well with others”.
The Think-tank Research Centre for Health Development and sohu. com survey shows 61 percent Chinese think offering a cigarette is useful for socialising, and 52 percent have offered cigarettes to others. The study surveyed 3,800 people, and 64 percent of them were men.
One-third of those surveyed were smokers, out of which 57 percent said they couldn’t give up smoking because of the offering-and-accepting culture. “People have accepted offering cigarettes as an effective way of making friends,” research centre director Wu Yiqun says.
China has more than 350 million smokers, catering to the tobacco market that is worth 500 billion yuan. “The survey shows we still have a lot of work to do,” Wu says. “It is time to let people know that offering a cigarette is a bad habit and it should be given up immediately.”
【小题1】The passage is written with the purpose of ________.

A.telling us a custom about the Chinese Spring Festival
B.introducing a way to make friends with Chinese
C.stopping smoking during the Chinese Spring Festival
D.telling us that offering cigarettes is a bad habit
【小题2】The third paragraph mainly tells us ________.
A. the fact that smokers are greatly increasing during the festival
B. the reason why refusing cigarettes is acceptable
C. the fact that many people have to smoke more cigarettes during the festival
D. it is rude to attend parties without smoking cigarettes
【小题3】 Which of the following may NOT be the reason that makes many people fail to refuse the offered cigarettes?
A.It’s impolite to refuse.B.Smoking is harmful for non-smokers.
C.They want to be friendlyD.It’s a kind of social habit.
【小题4】The writer mentions the 500 billion yuan tobacco market because ________.
A.the tobacco market is not developing smoothly
B.the writer thinks that smoking wastes a lot of money
C.smoking is helpful to the tobacco market
D.the tobacco market attracts too many smokers

One of the world's richest men has taken a close interest in one of man's most basic functions: visiting the toilet.Bill Gates’ charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is looking for inventors to design the loo of the future, which, they hope, would improve sanitation for millions of people around the world.
So, what's wrong with the traditional flush toilet? Firstly, it wastes a huge amount of potential drinking water.Secondly, they are more likely to cause pollution.This is a real problem in many areas of the developing world, where, according to United Nations’ estimates, unsafe sanitation causes half of all hospitalizations.Younger people are particularly at risk.Illnesses which cause diarrhea are responsible for the deaths of about 1.5 million children a year.Finally, standard lavatories simply aren't practical in remote areas.
The challenge set by Bill Gates was to come up with a latrine which works without running water, electricity or aseptic tank.It also needed to operate for less than 5 cents.28 designs were displayed at the recent event of the Toilet Fair in Seattle, USA.Among them was one which turned human waste into electricity using microwaves, another which converted human waste into charcoal, and yet another which used urine for flushing.
But the winner was a solar-powered design which generated hydrogen gas and electricity.The team from the California Institute of Technology(CIT)picked up a prize of $ 100,000.
But clearly Bill Gates doesn't feel he's flushing money down the toilet.After the Seattle event he said, "We couldn't be happier with the response we've gotten," Gates has even promised $370 million more to the future toilet project.They hope to field test more prototypes over the next three years.
【小题1】Why is Bill Gates paying people to invent new toilets?

A.Because he wants to test people's sense of creativity.
B.Because he wants to improve sanitation for many people.
C.Because he thinks the traditional ones are out of fashion.
D.Because he can't design this kind of things himself.
【小题2】Which of the following is NOT a problem with the traditional flush toilet?
A.They waste too much water.B.They might cause diseases.
C.They are not always practical.D.They are too complicated to use.
【小题3】The underlined word "latrine" in the third paragraph might have similar meanings to the word "__   " in the text.
A.looB.sanitationC.diarrheaD.prototype
【小题4】The team from CIT won the prize because their design        .
A.can change human waste into electricity
B.can turn human waste into charcoal
C.can produce power with solar energy
D.can use urine for flushing
【小题5】If people "flush money down the toilet", they are       .
A.showing off their wealthB.angry with their working conditions
C.wasting money for nothingD.expressing their great determination

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