For an owl (猫头鹰) with one-metre wingspan, the sky should be the limit. But Troy prefers his bird’s eye view to be no higher than 5 feet 10 inches. The one-year-old owl has an inconvenient symptom: he’s afraid of heights. After an unfortunate start in life when he fell from his nest by accident, Troy was raised by Gareth Tonen, a handler (饲养员), who just happens to be 5 feet 10 inches tall.
As a result, Troy has grown up without any great ambitions of his own. When it comes to trees, he can’t see what is about and would prefer to fly along at Mr. Tonen’s side. Only when the 25-year-old handler climbs up a tree can Troy be tempted to leave his comfort zone and join him.
Ashley Smith said, “ Troy’s fear of heights was a result of forgetting how to be a bird. He’s been in captivity (被圈养) for as long as he can remember and has never been higher than his handler can lift him. He sees himself as more of a human than an owl, and he doesn’t know how to sit in trees or hunt. Gareth has to almost act like an owl to get Troy to behave like one.”
As a result, a daily tree climb has become part of Troy’s – and Mr. Tonen’s – routine. Ladders have been fixed so Mr. Tonen can climb into the trees and call for Troy, who will fly up and join his handler but go no higher. Most of the time he flies down again, but occasionally Mr. Tonen has to carry him back to ground level. The afternoon ends with a meal of mouse, rabbit or his favorite, chicken.
Mr. Tonen said, “He now looks upon me as his mum or dad. He’s gaining more confidence and if I have to carry on climbing up trees with him then we’ll do what it takes for him to be a high flyer.
【小题1】Troy was brought up by Gareth Tonen because he ______.

My school makes students take one religion (宗教) class every year. But religion is really hard, especially with Mr Frank Smith for a teacher.

Mr Smith is 55 years old, with grey hair and a moustache (胡子). He always wears a blue school T-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes with long white socks. My friends say he looks like a cat.

In his class, we did yoga (瑜珈) and meditation (冥想) (actually most of the children in my class lay on the ground sleeping), tasted some strange tea, had classes outside in the garden, and watched videos and movies about Tibetan Buddhism (藏传佛教), God, and so on.

It was fun sometimes. However, the course (课程) was quite hard when it came to tests. The girls often worked until one or two o'clock in the morning on nights before the tests, but they still got bad scores.

When our test scores were bad, he would give us some makeup assignments (补考作业). Once I got a B, which I thought was bad, so I asked Mr Smith for an assignment to bring up my grades.

As a matter of fact, his assignments were often worse than the tests. The tests were just a lot of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, or short essays (文章). But his assignments usually included a speech in class.

I was not afraid of public speaking, yet it took me three days to collect the information, two days to write the speech, one day to make a PowerPoint and several hours to prepare. I knew my presentation (课堂展示) was good, because I saw Mr Smith's big smile when he listened to me. He gave me an A at last.

After finishing the course, I may not remember how hard it was or the meaning of some vocabulary. But through Mr Smith, I learned a lesson that will be with me my whole life. That is: no matter what we do, we need to put our hearts into it, and then our work will pay off.

1.The religion class is hard because Mr Smith _______.

A. uses strange ways to teach in his class.

B. never gives good scores, however hard you try.

C. gives difficult tests and make-up assignments.

D. likes students to make good presentations.

2. How could students get good scores in Mr. Smith’s class?

A. Work hard by studying late into the night.                  

B. Remember all of the vocabulary.

C. Pay attention and take notes in class.                              

D. Do well on the make-up assignment.

3.From the course, the writer learned that ____.

A. people should always be given a second chance

B. people should always put their hearts into their work

C. it is good to do yoga and meditation             

D. it is good to choose strict teacher

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, made his first public appearance since going on medical leave six weeks ago, taking the stage at a San Francisco media event to introduce the iPad 2, the second generation of the company’s tablet computer.
Thin but energetic, Mr. Jobs showed off a thinner iPad. “ We’ve been working on this product for a while and I just didn’t want to miss this day,” he said.
His absence has concerned investors, especially since the group has given no details of his condition. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and had a liver transplant during almost six moths of medical leave in 2009. People close to him said last month his health had been changing.
Apple’s stock rose more than 2 percent in the minutes after Mr. Jobs began speaking, then gave up some of its gain as he detailed the iPad 2.
The iPad 2 will go on sale in black and white versions in the US on March 11 and in 26 other countries, including the UK and Germany, on March 25. The table is Apple’s biggest product launch since the iPhone three years ago, and is comparable to the iPhone as the most expected in Apple’s history.
Most of the improvements in the latest version had been expected, including front and rear-facing video, which allows video conferencing between iPads, Mac computers and the most recent iPhones and iPods, a larger speaker, a faster processor and other upgrades. The iPad 2 is one-third thinner than the original tablet and slightly lighter, with a 9.7-inch touchscreen. It can run movies, books, games and a complete range of applications. In the US it will work with AT&T and Verizon, the top two mobile carriers. The pricing will be the same to the 2010 iPad at its introduction, ranging from $499 to $829 in six models. But Apple dropped prices on the older iPad on Wednesday by $100 across the board.
Apple has made the most of its year-long head start in tablets, selling 15,000,000 units of the older iPad last year and taking about 85 percent of the market. Forrester predicted that the iPad 2 would clain 80 percent of the US market this year, or 20,000,000 out of 24,000,000 total shipped. This prediction was based on both the technical improvements to the iPad 2, and the distribution difficulties and higher prices for Apple’s rivals.
Motorola, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Samsung and others have brought out competing tablets, many based on Google’s Android software.
Mr. Jobs said the rest of the field was still catching up with the first iPad and their markets for applications designed for tablets had, at best, 100 small programs. This compares with 65,000 on Apple’s applications store.
【小题1】Why are the investors of Apple worried according to the text?

A new law has recently been announced which forbids people to disturb, annoy, harm, kill or interfere with any bats which choose to live in their houses. Anyone who disturbs a bat on its nest ,or handles one without a license will be fined ￡1,000.
There are some people who like bats. The late Mrs. Ian Fleming was one. She would crawl for miles to see them in caves or hanging from trees. Similarly, there are many people who do not like bats much but are not particularly troubled by them. The chance of a bat resting in their attics（阁楼） or spare bedroom curtains may seem far away from them. But there are others who do not fall into either of these categories and Mr. Auberon Waugh is one. Underneath his house are eight large cellars(地下室) which for some reason bats have chosen to claim for themselves. He finds it extremely disagreeable to have to fight his way through a colony of them every time he wants a bottle of wine. And as a wine-lover he gets a particular pleasure from the ownership of wine. He has certain bottles in his cellar which he thinks are too good to serve to anyone he knows, but he likes to go down and enjoy looking at them occasionally. The bats entirely destroy this pleasure.
Until the recent law, he could keep the bat problem within manageable proportions by sending his children down on a bat hunt every three months armed with tennis rackets. They usually managed to kill one or two and discouraged the rest from settling. But now, Mr. Waugh fears that the bats will take over the house. To solve the problem he inquired what course of action he could take and was told by Dr Robert Stebbings of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, “I am sure that no one will mind if you pick up a bat and take it outside and hang it on a tree or the outside of the house.” The trouble with this, as Mr. Waugh explains, is that he would be fined a ￡1,000 if he had not already applied to the Nature Conservancy Council for a license to handle bats. And there is no certainty that he would automatically be granted（agreed to give）one.
【小题1】 Mr. Waugh thinks that bats        .

A．stores only good wines	B．keeps certain good wine
C．refuses to drink good wines	D．only wants to own the best wines

A new law has recently been announced which forbids people to disturb, annoy, harm, kill or interfere with any bats which choose to live in their houses. Anyone who disturbs a bat on its nest ,or handles one without a license will be fined ￡1,000.

There are some people who like bats. The late Mrs. Ian Fleming was one. She would crawl for miles to see them in caves or hanging from trees. Similarly, there are many people who do not like bats much but are not particularly troubled by them. The chance of a bat resting in their attics（阁楼） or spare bedroom curtains may seem far away from them. But there are others who do not fall into either of these categories and Mr. Auberon Waugh is one. Underneath his house are eight large cellars(地下室) which for some reason bats have chosen to claim for themselves. He finds it extremely disagreeable to have to fight his way through a colony of them every time he wants a bottle of wine. And as a wine-lover he gets a particular pleasure from the ownership of wine. He has certain bottles in his cellar which he thinks are too good to serve to anyone he knows, but he likes to go down and enjoy looking at them occasionally. The bats entirely destroy this pleasure.

Until the recent law, he could keep the bat problem within manageable proportions by sending his children down on a bat hunt every three months armed with tennis rackets. They usually managed to kill one or two and discouraged the rest from settling. But now, Mr. Waugh fears that the bats will take over the house. To solve the problem he inquired what course of action he could take and was told by Dr Robert Stebbings of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, “I am sure that no one will mind if you pick up a bat and take it outside and hang it on a tree or the outside of the house.” The trouble with this, as Mr. Waugh explains, is that he would be fined a ￡1,000 if he had not already applied to the Nature Conservancy Council for a license to handle bats. And there is no certainty that he would automatically be granted（agreed to give）one.

Mr. Waugh thinks that bats        .

A. should all be destroyed  B. interfere with his wine 

C. should be kept under control D. prevent him owning wine

Because he is a wine-lover, M. Waugh        .

A. stores only good wines   B. keeps certain good wine

C. refuses to drink good wines  D. only wants to own the best wines

Success in removing bats from your home depends on        .

A. applying for a license from the Nature Conservancy Council

B. seeking help from the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology

C. taking the course of action recommended by Dr Stebbings

D. the granting of a Nature Conservancy Council license

Some people who dislike bats        .

A. think they are unlikely to be bothered by them

B. run the risk of finding them in their attics

C. think it strange they should roost（栖息） in the curtains

D. do not mind them hanging in trees