Education is required and free for every child in the United States. Most children start school by the age of six. They attend eight years of elementary school and four years of high school (or secondary school ).The money for free public schools comes from taxes, and each state is responsible for its own educational system .State legislatures (立法机关) set the educational requirements but leave the management of the schools in the hands of the local communities .Most states require their children to go to school until a certain age. This age varies from 16 to 18 years according to the laws of the individual state. The Federal government contributes funds to the states for additional schools and schools services.

After graduation from high school, a student can start his higher education in two –year college, a four-year college, a university or a specialized professional school----either public or private. Most colleges admit students on the basis of their high-school records. The cost of a college education is expensive in private universities, but it is much less in those supported by states and cities. Many students receive scholarships from the schools, the government, or private foundations and organizations. More than 50 percent of the college students work to help pay their college expenses.

Only 2 percent of the population of the country cannot read and write.

1.Where does the money for public schools come from ?

A. From the Federal government.    B. From the state legislatures.

C. From taxes.           D. From the parents of the school children.

2.What is the educational system in the United States based on ?

A. The Federal government          B. Individual school

C. Individual state              D. Local communities

3.What percentage of the population is illiterate (文盲) ？

A. 50        B. 2        C. 4         D. 6

4.How are college expenses of most students paid ?

Mr Brown was going away for a week. Before he left, he said to his son, "if anyone asks for me, you can tell him that your father has been out for doing something, and will be back in a week, then be sure to ask him to sit down for a cup of tea."

 "OK, Dad," said his son. But he was afraid his son couldn't remember this, he wrote these words down on a piece of paper and gave it to him. His son put it into his small pocket, took it out and looked at it now and then.

 Four days passed, but no one came to see his father. The boy thought that there was no man to come and that the piece of paper was of no more use for him, so he burnt it that evening.

 The next afternoon, someone knocked at the door. The boy opened it. A man was standing at the door and said, "Where is your father?" The boy put his hand into his pocket at once and looked for the piece of paper. He could not find it. He suddenly remembered he had burnt it, so he shouted, "No more."

 The man was very surprised. He asked, "No more? I met your father last week. When did it happen?"

 "Burnt yesterday evening."

1.Mr Brown told his son that _____.

A. he would be away from home for four days

B. he would be back in seven days

C. he would be back in a month

D. he liked a cup of tea

2. Mr Brown wrote the words down on ________.

A. the wall B. the door

C. a piece of paper D. his son's pocket

3. A man came to visit the boy's father on ________.

A. the second day B. the third day C. the fourth day D. the fifth day

4. What was burnt? ___________.

A.     The piece of paper B. Mr Smith C. The visitor D. The boy

When an ant dies, other ants move the dead insect out. Sometimes, the dead ant get moved away very soon—within an hour of dying. This behavior is interesting to scientists, who wonder how ants know for sure—and so soon—that another ant is dead.
One scientist recently came up with a way to explain this ant behavior. Dong-Hwan Choe is a biologist. Choe found that Argentine ants have a chemical on the outside of their bodies that signals to other ants, “I’m dead—take me away.”
But there’s a twist to Choe’s discovery. Choe says that the living ants—not just the dead ones —have this death chemical. In other words, while an ant crawls around, perhaps in a picnic or home, it’s telling other ants that it’s dead.
What keeps ants from dragging away the living ants? Choe found that Argentine ants have two additional chemicals on their bodies, and these tell nearby ants something like, “Wait—I’m not dead yet.” So Choe’s research turned up two sets of chemical signals in ants: one says, “I’m dead,” and the other set says, “I’m not dead yet.”
Other scientists have tried to figure out how ants know when another ant is dead. If an ant is knocked unconscious, for example, other ants leave it alone until it wakes up. That means ants know that unmoving ants can still be alive.
Choe suspects that when an Argentine ant dies, the chemical that says “Wait- I’m not dead yet” quickly goes away. Once that chemical is gone, only the one that says “I’m dead” is left. “It’s because the dead ant no longer smells like a living ant that it gets carried to the graveyard, not because its body releases new unique chemicals after death,” said Choe. When other ants detect the “dead” chemical without the “not dead yet” chemical, they drag away the body.
Understanding this behavior may help scientists figure out how to stop Argentine ants from invading new places and causing problems. Choe would like to find a way to use the newly discovered chemicals to spread ant killer to Argentine ant nests.
The ants’ removal behavior is important to the overall health of the nest. “Being able to quickly remove dead individuals and other possible sources of disease is extremely important to all animals living in societies, including us,” says Choe. “Think about all the effort and money that we invest daily in waste management.”
51. The underlined word “twist” in Paragraph 3 means _____.
A. an unexpected change                              B. a clear mistake
C. an important key                                        D. a shocking conclusion
52. Ants judge whether another one is dead or not depending on ______.
A. the sense of taste                                      B. the sense of smell
C. the sense of touch                                               D. the sense of sight
53. The result of the research can be used to ______.
A. kill troublesome pests
B. solve the problem of endangered species
C. prevent further expansion of the ants’ territory
D. keep the balance of nature
54. Why is it important to remove dead individuals?
A. Because it is easier to manage the living.
B. Because it can save money to deal with the waste.
C. Because it can provide more space for the living.
D. Because it can keep the living from suffering disease.
55. What might be the best title of the text?
A. Dead or living? It is easy to judge
B. Pulling away the dead ants is a difficult task
C. Ant nests have great undertaking capacity
D. Leaving it alone or taking it away? Ants feel puzzled

Communications technologies are far from equal when it comes to conveying the truth. A recent research shows people tend to tell more lies in phone conversations than they are in emails. The fact that emails are automatically recorded and can come back to haunt you appears to be the key to the finding.

Jeff Hancock of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, asked 30 students to keep a communications diary for a week. In it they noted the number of conversations or email exchanges they had lasting more than 10 minutes, and confessed to how many lies they told. Hancock then worked out the number of lies per conversation for each medium. He found that lies made up 14 percent of emails, 21 percent of instant messages, 27 percent of face-to-face interactions and an astonishing 37 of phone calls.

His results to be presented at the conference on human-computer interaction in Vienna, Austria, in April, have surprised psychologists. Some expected emailers to be the biggest liars, reasoning that because deception makes people uncomfortable, the detachment（非直接接触）of emailing would make it easier to lie. Others expected people to be more in face-to-face exchanges because we are most practiced at that form of communication.

But Hancock says it is also crucial whether a conversation is being recorded and could be reread, and whether it occurs in real time. “People appear to be afraid to lie when they know the communication could later be used to hold them to account,” he says. This is why fewer lies appear in email than on the phone.

“People are also more likely to lie in real time in an instant message or phone call than if they have time to think of a response,” say Hancock. He found many lies are spontaneous responses to an unexpected demand, such as, “Do you like my dress?”

Hancock hopes his research will help companies work out the best ways for their employees to communicate. For instance, the phone might be the best medium for sales where employees are encouraged to stretch the truth. But, given his result, work assessment where honesty is a priority, might be best done using email.

Hancock’s study focuses on ______.

A. the consequences of lying in various communications media

B. the success of communications technologies in conveying ideas

C. people are less likely to lie in instant messages

D. people’s honesty levels across a range of communications media

Hancock’s research finding surprised those who believed that ______.

A. people are less likely to lie in instant messages

B. people are unlikely to lie in face-to-face interactions

C. people are most likely to lie in email communication

D. people are twice as likely to lie in phone conversations

According to the passage, why are people more likely to tell the truth through certain media of communication?

A. They are afraid of leaving behind traces of their lies.

B. They believe that honesty is the best policy.

C. They tend to be relaxed when using those media.

D. They are most practiced at those forms of communication.

It can be inferred from the passage that ______.

A. honesty should be encouraged in interpersonal communications

B. more employers will use emails to communicate with their employees

C. suitable media should be chosen for different communication purposes

D. email is now the dominant medium of communication within a company

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has just published a report on new materials and has looked at the case of nanotechnology（纳米技术）, which describes the science of the very small. Nanotechnology covers those man-made materials or objects that are about a thousand times smaller than the microtechnology（微电子技术）we use, such as the silicon chips of computers.

Nanotechnology gets its name from the nanometer, which is a billionth of a meter. There are about 600 consumer products already on the market that use nanotechnology. Nanomedicine is also being developed to fight cancer and other fatal diseases.

The Royal Commission found no evidence of harm to health or the environment from nanomaterials, but this “absence of evidence” is not being taken as “evidence of absence”. In other words, just because there are no apparent problems, this is not to say that here is no risk now or in the future. The commission is concerned about the pace at which we are inventing and adopting new nanomaterials, which could result in future problems that we are ill-equipped to understand or even find with current testing methods.

One of the problems about nanotechnology is that when we make something very small out of a well known material, we may actually change the functionality of that material even if the chemical composition remains the same. Indeed, it is not the particle（颗粒）size that should concern us, but its functionality. Take gold, for example, which is a famously inert (惰性) substance, and valuable because of it. It doesn’t rust or corrode because it doesn’t interact with water or oxygen. However, a particle of gold that is between 2 and 5 nanometers in diameter becomes highly reactive. This is not due to a change in chemical composition, but because of a change in the physical size of the gold particles. How can a change in size result in a change of function? One reason is to do with surface area. Nanoparticles have relatively a much bigger surface area. It is like comparing the surface area of a basketball with the total surface area of many pea-sized balls with the same weight of the single basketball. The pea-sized balls have a surface area many hundreds, indeed thousands of times bigger than the basketball, and this allows them to interact more easily with the environment. It is this increased interactivity that changes their functionality—and makes them potentially more dangerous to health or the environment.

1.Why does the writer mention microtechnology in the first paragraph?

A. to introduce the topic of nanotechnology

B. to help us better understand nanotechnology

C. to help us know more about microtechnology

D. to compare microtechnology with nanotechnology

2.The example of the “gold” in the last paragraph is intended to show that_________.

A. gold is valuable because it is an inert substance

B. an inert substance like gold doesn’t interact with water or oxygen

C. the function of gold is steady because it is an inert substance

D. the function of gold changes when made into something very small

3.Which process explains that there might be risks in nanotechnology?

A. expand surface area →increase interactivity → change functionality→cause possible dangers

B. expand surface area → change functionality → increase interactivity →cause possible dangers

C. increase interactivity → expand surface area → change functionality→cause possible dangers

D. increase interactivity → change functionality → expand surface area→cause possible dangers

4.What does the passage mainly focus on?

A. the introduction of nanotechnology and its wide use

B. the present use of nanotechnology and its future

C. the potential danger nanotechnology may bring us

D. the proposal to stop nanotechnology due to the potential danger