When the weather turns warm, everyone wants to be in or around the water. Learning how to keep safe is necessary if you plan to go swimming.

“Buddy up!” Always swim with a partner, every time-and this is very important. Even experienced swimmers can become tired or face sudden accidents, which might make it difficult to get out of the water. When you swim together, you can help each other or go for help in a minute.

Get skilled. It’s good to go be fully prepared. Learning some life-saving skills can help you save a life. A number of organizations offer free classes to both beginning and experienced swimmers and boaters. Check with local hospitals, or the Red Cross.

Know your limits (极限). Swimming an be a lot of fun and you might want to stay in the water as long as possible. If you’re not a good swimmer or you’re just learning to swim, don’t go in water that’s so deep for you and don’t try to keep up with skilled swimmers. That can be dangerous, especially when your friends are challenging you.

If you are a good swimmer and have had lessons, keep an eye on friends who aren’t as comfortable or as skilled as you are. If they or you are getting tired, you should take a break for a while.

Swim in safe areas only. It’s a good idea to swim only in places that are directed by a lifeguard. No one can expect changing ocean currents (水流), sudden storms, or other dangers. In the event that something does go wrong, lifeguards trained in life-saving skills are ready to help.

Swimming in an open body of water like a lake is different from swimming in a pool. Do your research so you know where not to swim, and pay attention to any warning sign(警告标志) posted in the area.

Would you believe that the first outstanding deaf teacher in America was a Frenchman? His name was Laurent Clerc. He became a friend of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and together they founded America's first school for the deaf.

Laurent Clerc was born in a small village near Lyons, France, on December 26, 1785. When he was one year old, he fell into a fire, losing both his hearing and his sense of smell.

At 12, Laurent entered the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris where he did well in his studies. After he graduated, the school asked him to stay on as an assistant teacher.

Meanwhile, in America, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was studying to be a minister. He was very concerned about the lack of educational opportunities for the deaf. Therefore, in 1815, Gallaudet sailed to London, England to seek ideas on how to teach deaf people. While he was there, he met a French educator of the deaf who invited him to go to Paris to spend three months learning at the Royal Institution for the Deaf, the school where Laurent Clerc was teaching. Gallaudet accepted the offer. The two worked and studied well together. When the time came for Gallaudet to return, he asked Clerc to come with him. Clerc accepted on one condition: that he would stay in America only a short time.

The two men set sail on June 18, 1816. The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean took 52 days; however, Clerc and Gallaudet put the time to good use. Clerc studied English, and Gallaudet studied sign language. They discussed the school for the deaf which they planned to open. On the long trip, they had many conversations about education and deafness. The year after they arrived, they founded a school for the deaf in Harford, Connecticut.

At the school, Clerc led a busy life. He taught signs to Principal Gallaudet; he taught the pupils; and he taught hearing men who came to the school to study deaf education.

In 1819, Clerc married Eliza Crocker Boardman, one of his pupils. They had six children. He retired from teaching in 1858. Although he had intended to return to France, he never did. He died on July 18, 1869 in the United States.

1.Why did Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet sail to London?

2.On their trip from Paris to America, Clerc and Gallaudet ___________.

3.Which is the right order of the things Clerc did？

4.The main idea of this passage could best be stated as_________.

Two traveling angels (天使) stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the guest room. Instead the angels were given a space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor，the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied: “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable(好客的)farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had，the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night’s rest. When the sun came up the next morning，the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their only income, lay dead in the field.

The younger angel was very angry and asked the older angel, “How could this happen?” “Why did you not watch out for the cow? The first man had everything, yet you watched over his house,” she accused. “The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you did not help.”

“Things aren’t always what they seem,” the older angel replied. “When we stayed in the basement，I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so greedy and unwilling to share his good fortune，I asked God if I could seal(封口) the wall so he wouldn’t find it. Then last night as we slept in the farmer’s bed，the angel of death(死神) came for his wife. I asked God if the angel could take the cow instead. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

1.The underlined part “the pair” in the second paragraph two refers to　　　  .

A. the poor couple         B. the rich couple           C. the angels           D. the guests

2.The younger angel was very angry because 　　　　.

A. the older angel killed the farmer’s cow           

B. the older angel treated the two families unfairly

C. the wealthy man gave them a bad place to live 

D. the angel of death took the cow away

3.Why did the older angel let the farmer’s cow die?

A. Because God wanted the older angel to take the cow.

B. Because she wanted to teach the younger angel a lesson.

C. Because she was sympathetic to the rich.

D. Because she wanted to save the farmer’s wife. 

4.The story tries to tell the reader that 　　　　.

A. sometimes things are not what they seem    

B. angels are always ready to help the poor

C. angels are always ready to help the rich 

D. the young should always learn from the old

A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

(392 words)

1.The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.

A．they had no model in their mind

B．they did not have sufficient time

C．they had no ready-made components

D．they could not assemble the components

2.It can be inferred from paragraphs 3 and 4 that the robotic fly __________.

A．consists of a flight device and a control system

B．can just fly in limited areas at the present time

C．can collect information from many sources

D．has been put into wide application

3.Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A．The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.

B．Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C．There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

D．Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments.

4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．Father of Robotic Fly

B．Inspiration from Engineering Science

C．Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect

D．Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study

Tom, Eric, Tess and Ann are talking about in what way they would like their schools improved. Read the following descriptions (A, B, C and D) and match them with the four opinions.

1.Tom: I’d like somewhere to sit and read and enjoy myself.

2.Eric: I hope our school can be more comfortable and convenient.

3.Tess: I really prefer to have a place to do some exercise after class.

4.Ann: I think our school should buy more equipment like computers.

               A

What I’d most like to have is a little café, where we students can rest and do some reading. At the moment people have to stand in the passage, or even outside and there’s nowhere to buy a drink or something, or read the paper, so people don’t stay in school for long after the lessons finish. I think it would be completely different if they had somewhere to enjoy themselves.                  B

Our school is big with nice modern buildings and everything, but there is one thing I would really love ---- a gym. We’re right in the middle of a big city and the traffic is very busy, so I find it very difficult to get out to the gym at lunchtime. A gym would be good for the school. If more people went to the gym and did some exercise, they’d probably work better.

              C

Our school is just uncomfortable in every way. For example, the chairs are really uncomfortable, so the next thing I’d like to do is get some comfortable chairs of good quality. Oh, and the worst thing is that we’re on the fifth and sixth floors of our building, so I’d love to have some lifts put in. Just one little lift would make our lives so much easier.                  D

Our school has a nice building, and is in a nice part of the city. Unfortunately we haven’t got much equipment, so I’d really like to have a computer room with the Internet available. I think students can learn a lot this way. And I’d like to have VCD sub every classroom instead of tapes. VCDs are so much more interesting for learning a language, I think.