74. Beijing had its biggest snowfall since 1951 because of ______.

A. a fence from the Arctic　　　　　　　　　 B. a cooling trend in climate

C. a big outbreak of Arctic air　　　　　　　 D. its large population

73. According to experts, the current cold snap ______.

A. suggests that the climate has changed greatly

B. is not related to the climate change

C. shows that the climate will turn cold

D. is affected by global warming

72. With global warming, we will ______.

A. also meet with severe cold snap

B. have more hot temperatures forever

C. never experience cold temperatures

D. have more cold temperatures

71.What is the best title of the text?

A. Freezing weather is hitting the Deep South.

B. We’ll still have record cold temperatures.

C. The air flow has become a zigzag pattern.

D. Cold snap doesn’t contradict global warming.

70. Which of the following statements will Anirudh Mandagere agree with?

A. His wonderful performance results from the education his private school offers.

B. Without the existence of private schools, state ones wouldn’t get improved much.

C. Private education is a good system to make students successful in life.

D. Private schools are supposed to be sponsored more than state ones.

D

Beijing had its biggest snowfall since 1951. Britain is suffering through its longest cold snap (寒潮) since 1981. And freezing weather is hitting the Deep South, including Florida’s orange groves and beaches.

　　 Whatever happened to global warming?

　　 Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t contradict global warming at all-it’s just a temporary phenomenon in the long-term heating trend. “It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”

　　 Scientists say man-made climate change does have the potential to cause more frequent and more severe weather extremes. But experts did not connect the current cold snap to climate change.

　　 So what is going on?

“We basically have seen just a big outbreak of Arctic air over populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere”, Arndt said.

In the atmosphere, large rivers of air travel roughly west to east around the globe between the Arctic and the tropics. This air flow acts like a fence to keep Arctic air restricted. But recently, this air flow has become bent into a zigzag (之字形) pattern, wandering north and south. If you live in a place where it brings air up from the south, you get warm weather. In fact, record highs were reported this week in Washington state and Alaska.

But in the eastern United States, like some other unlucky parts of the globe, Arctic air is coming from the north. And that’s how you get a temperature of 3 degrees in Beijing, a reading of minus-42 in mainland Norway, and 18 inches of snow in parts of Britain. The zigzag pattern arises naturally from time to time, but it is not clear why it’s so strong right now.

69. Compared with state schools, private ones ______.

A. educate a little fewer students 　　　　　　　　B. conduct better than all state ones

C. are better received by the public　　　　　　　D. are more competitive on the whole

68. The underlined word “impetus” in the fourth paragraph probably means ______.

A. motivation　　　　 B. prevention　　　　 C. participation　　　 D. assessment

67. According to the passage, banning private education will ______.

A. obviously contribute to lower taxes

B. not cause the state schools to be overburdened

C. force the government to boost state education

D. lead to many people losing their jobs　

66. In the eye of Anirudh Mandagere, parents have the right to ______.

A. criticize state-funded schools

B. pay taxes for the promotion of private schools

C. choose the way their children receive education

D. advocate the competition between state schools and private ones

65. The underlined phrase “bank up” in the last paragraph most probably means ____.

A. pile up　　　　　　　 B. pick up　　　　　　　 C. add up　　　　　　　　　　 D. build up

C

Rarely have I experienced a reaction like that which came about following the idea of banning private education. One of those who contacted me to disagree with the idea was 17 year old Anirudh Mandagere. He got 10 A*s at GCSE and is currently studying English, French, Math and History at a private school in Manchester. Here is his response:

For me, the idea that all private schools should be banned is not only ridiculous and unrealistic, but goes against the idea of liberty. We must have the freedom to choose between state-funded and privately educated schools. If parents pay taxes, surely they should be able to choose whether they send their children to a state-funded or a privately-funded school.

The economic impacts of abolishing private education are vast. Banning private schools would obviously contribute to a great transfer to state schools. Many state schools are already overburdened; do they really need more pupils? Abolishing private education would lead to higher taxes for taxpayers since more money would be needed to educate the 7% who were previously private educated. In the times of economic crisis, should the taxpayer need to fork out more money to pay for their education? There would also be a great rise in unemployment of the staff who works at private schools.

It is noted that, in general, private schools have better grades at GCSE and A level than state schools. Yet, why do people view this as a bad thing? The higher private school grades eventually force the government to endlessly improve state education so that the middle-classes do not totally abandon state education for private education. This competition creates reform and progress within state schools and eventually promote them! If the private schools did not exist, where would be the impetus for state school improvement?

Government should not simply ban a system which produces results. It should learn from it and use the private education model as a basis for the state education model. Abolishing a successful system will not help anybody, learning from a successful system will.