Millions of people visit Yosemite National Park every year to see the tall waterfalls and mountains. These mountains are a splendid sight when viewed form the valley floor. Lots of stores, hotels, and restaurants are needed to handle the crowds. Also, water, roads, and other service systems are part of the infrastructure (基础设施) that must be maintained.

       Unfortunately, these systems are starting to break down. It’s not just in Yosemite but in national parks around the nation.

       Yosemite is thirty years old according to Dennis Galvin, a National Park Service worker. The Park is not only old but worn out. Two or three times as many visitors come every year. That is too many visitors for the park to deal with.

       Four years ago a storm washed out a water pipeline in the Grand Canyon. The National Park Service had to send water trucks to provide water for the visitors. Last month pipes almost broke again and roads had to be closed for a while.

       Why hasn’t the National Park Service kept up the park repairs? There is a lack of money. The United States has 378 monuments, parks, and wilderness areas. Between three and four billion dollars are needed for repairs.

       Yosemite is one national park that does have money for repairs. It has two hundred million dollars but cannot spend it any way it chooses. When the park workers started widening the road, they were forced to stop by the Sierra Club. The club claimed that the road work was damaging the Merced River that runs through the park.

       A sierra Club lawyer, Julia Olson, feels that the infrastructure needs to be moved out of Yosemite. That way less pressure will be put on the already crowded park.

65. According to the text, the mountains in Yosemite look most splendid when they are appreciated from ______.

A. the bottom of the valleys                               B. the top of the mountains

C. the side of the mountains                              D. the edge of the valleys

66.National parks like Yosemite in the U.S. find it increasingly difficult to meet the need of

visitors because ______.

A. their transport management needs improving

B. they spend too much on their service systems

C. their service systems frequently go out of order

D. they need help from environmental organizations

67.The main problem of Yosemite National Park is its ______.

A. rundown water pipes                                    B. overcrowdedness

C. lack of money                                              D. narrow roads

68.   According to the text, the Sierra Club is most likely to be ______.

A. an environmental group                                 B. an information center

C. a travel service                                               D. a law firm

There is a lot of misunderstanding about studying. Most students have not been taught the principles behind really effective working. Imagine a graph showing the amount a person learns against the number of hours he works in a day. If he doesn’t do any work, he learns nothing (point 0). If he does an hour’s work he learns a certain amount (point 1). If he does two hours’ work he learns about twice as much (point 2). If he does more work he’ll learn still more (point 3). However, if he tries to do twenty-three and a half hours’ work in a day, he will be so tired that he’ll hardly remember anything: what he learns will be very little (point 4). If he did less work he’d learn more (point 5).
Now whatever the exact shape of the graph’s curve(曲线), made by joining these points, it must have a high point. Point “X” is the very maximum anyone can learn in the day. And this represents the optimum(最适度), the best, amount of work to do. It is the best possible compromise between adequate time at the books and fatigue(劳累). Fatigue is an absolutely real thing; one can’t escape it or ignore it. If you try to ignore it and press yourself to work past the optimum, you will only get on this downward slope and achieve less than the best – and then become very tired and lose your power of concentration.
The skill in being a student consists of getting one’s daily study as near the optimum point as possible. I cannot tell you what the optimum is. It differs with the type of work, it differs from person to person, and even in the same person it varies from week to week. You must try to find your own. Every day you study, bear this principle of the optimum in mind. When you feel yourself getting fatigued, if you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again and not taking it in, that’s a pretty good sign you’ve reached your highest point for the day and should stop. Most ordinary students find their optimum at five hours a day. Yours may be a little more or a little less – but if you get in five hours’ good work a day, you will be doing well.
Now, what are you doing with yourself when you aren’t working? Before examinations some students do nothing at all except sit in a chair and worry. Here is another misunderstanding. People often think that the mind works like the body; it does not. If one wanted to save one’s physical energy in order to cut the maximum amount of firewood, one would lie flat on a bed and rest when one wasn’t chopping. But the mind cannot rest. Even in sleep you dream, even if you forget your dreams. The mind is always turning. It gets its relaxation only by variety. That is what makes the mind rest.
When you’ve finished your optimum number of hours you must stop. You must not then sit around in the chair thinking about the work – that only tires without any learning. You must get out and do something. It doesn’t matter what – anything so long as you are actively doing something else but work.
【小题1】According to the passage, _______.

The Friday after the American holiday of Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. It’s said that it’s the day that store ledgers(分类账)move into the black and companies become profitable（有利可图的，有益的）. On that day, retailers（零售商）slash prices to get consumers to buy.  It is also a time when many Americans start their Christmas shopping. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee tells us how the economy may affect consumers on that bargain day.

 “It’s just the deals, the sales and everything you can get for a lesser（较少的，较小的）price,” said Sandy Thomas, a shopper. But it’s a nightmare（噩梦）for others. “I think it’s crazy. I’ve done all of my shopping throughout the week so I don’t have to go out on Friday,” she said. It’s called Black Friday, the start of the traditional Christmas shopping season in the United States. Every year it’s the day after the Thanksgiving holiday. Stores open before sunrise and there are deep discounts everywhere you look.

While the lead up to Christmas is known as the season of giving, Black Friday can get ugly.

Last year a crowd of bargain-hunters killed a Wal-mart（沃尔玛公司）worker in a New York suburb. This year, many stores are increasing security while they slash prices. “This is a huge time for the retail stores,” said Fred Joutz from George Washington University. “This is when they begin making their profits for the year.”

Economics professor Fred Joutz says how Americans spend the weekend after Thanksgiving is a good indication of how consumers feel about the future.

With the unemployment rate above 10 percent, Joutz says Americans are saving more and spending less. “Credit is still strictly controlled whether through credit cards or through borrowing from banks,” he said. Some retailers are attracting consumers by opening on Thanksgiving Day, when shops are traditionally closed.  Other stores open their doors anywhere from midnight to four in the morning.

And shoppers will be lining up in front of the doors in order to be one of the first ones to walk through and get a big discount. Electronics like flat screen TVs are usually the first items to go. Sandy Thomas says it’s an annual family tradition and well worth it. “I just save maybe half of what I would have spent on a regular, you know, shopping trip,” she said.

Economists say U.S. consumers will spend money this Black Friday, but they will spend it more carefully.     

1. The underlined word “slash” in the first paragraph probably means _________.

 A. reduce         B. raise         C. increase        D. change

2.The sentence “This day should be a shopper’s dream.” should be placed between ________.

 A. paragraph two and paragraph three        B. paragraph one and paragraph two

 C. paragraph three and paragraph four      D. paragraph five and paragraph six

3.Why are many stores increasing security according to the passage?

 A. Because there are too many people saving more and spending less.

 B. Because it’s a time when they begin making their profits for the year.

 C. Because last year a crowd of bargain-hunters caused an accident.

 D. Because many stores open their doors from midnight to four a.m.

4.What can we learn from the passage?

 A. Christmas shopping is traditional time and this year it is no exception.

 B. Electronics like flat screen TVs are usually least discounted.

 C. The economy only affects consumers on that bargain day.

 D. Thanksgiving is a good indication of how consumers feel about the future.

Many of the world’s pollution problems have been caused by the crowding of large groups of people into the cities. Supply for the needs of the people leads to further pollution by industry. If the rapid increase of world population in countries continues at the present rate, there may be much greater harm to human beings. Some scientists speak of the increase in numbers of people as “population pollution.”

About 2,000 years ago, the world population was probably about 250 million. It reached a billion in 1850. By 1930 the population was two billion. It is now three and a half billion. It is expected to double by the year 2,000. If the population continues to grow at the same rate, there will be 25 billion in the world a hundred years from now.

Man has been using the earth’s resources more and more rapidly over the past years. Some of them are almost used up. Now many people believe that man’s greatest problem is how to control the growth of the population. The material supplies in the world will be far from enough to support the human population in time to come, if the present rate of increase continues. Already there is overcrowding in many cities and starvation in some countries. Should man’s population keep on growing so rapidly as before? Many people believe that human survival in the future depends on the answer to this question.

The rapid increase in population is considered to be __________.

A. the increase of resources   B. population pollution

C. the development of mankind    D. the present rate

If the present rate of increase continue, ________________.

A. the world is going to end

B. the earth won’t be able to support the growing population in the future

C. pollution has nothing to do with the rapidly increasing population

D. there would be four billion in the world a hundred years from now

Which of the following is Wrong according to the passage?

A. In 1850 the world population reached a billion.

B. Man must fight a battle against population pollution.

C. The world’s population is increasing with years.

D. All of the earth’s resources are gone now.

Betty and Harold have been married for years. But one thing still puzzles old Harold. How is it that he can leave Betty and her friend Joan sitting on the sofa, talking, go out to a ballgame, come back three and a half hours later, and they’re still sitting on the sofa, talking?

What in the world, Harold wonders, do they have to talk about?

Betty shrugs（耸肩）. Talk? We’re friends.

Researching this matter called friendship, psychologists Lillian Rubin spent two years interviewing more than two hundred women and men. No matter what their age, their job, their sex, the results were completely clear: Women have more friendships than men, and the difference in the content and the quality of those friendships is “marked and unmistakable”.

More than two-thirds of the single men Rubin interviewed could not name a best friend. Those who could were likely to name a woman. Yet three-quarters of the single women had no problem naming a best friend, and almost always it was a woman. More married men than women named their wife/husband as a best friend, most trusted person, or the one they would turn to in time of emotional distress (感情危机). “Most women,” says Rubin, “identifies (认定) at least one, usually more, trusted friends to whom they could turn in a troubled moment, and they spoke openly about the importance of these relationships in their lives.”

“In general,” writes Rubin in her new book, “women’s friendships with each other rest on shared emotions and support, but men’s relationships are marked by shared activities.” For the most part, Rubin says, interactions between men are emotionally controlled ---a good fit with the social requirements of “manly behavior（行为）”.

“Even when a man is said to be a best friend,” Rubin writes, “the two share little about their innermost feelings. While a woman’s closest female friend might be the first to tell her to leave a failing marriage, it wasn’t unusual to hear a man say he didn’t know his friend’s marriage was in serious trouble until he appeared one night asking if he could sleep on the sofa.”

What old Harold cannot understand or explain is the fact that______.

   A. he is treated as an outsider rather than a husband

   B. women has so much to share

   C. women show little interest in ballgames

   D. he finds his wife difficult to talk to

Rubin’s study shows that for emotional support a married woman is more likely to turn to ___.

   A. a male friend    B. a female friend      

C. her parents      D. her husband

According to the text, which type of behavior is NOT expected of a man by society?

   A. Many of them do not have a best friend

   B. Don’t often share their emotional feelings.

   C. Complaining about his marriage trouble.

   D. Going out to ballgames too often.

Which of the following statements is best supported by the last paragraph?

   A. Men keep their innermost feelings to themselves.

   B. Women are more serious than men about marriage.

   C. Men often take sudden action to end their marriage.

   D. Women depend on others in making decisions.

The research done by psychologist Rubin centers around _____.

A. happy and successful marriages   

B. friendship of men and women

C. emotional problems in marriage

D. interactions between men and women