70.
The article mainly tells us about __________.
A. the
great inventors in the world
B. the
important inventions in the world
C. the
short history of household machines
D. the
importance of the machines used in the home
IV.
PART FOUR WRITING
SECTION
A(10 points)
Directions:
Read the following passage. Complete the diagram/Fill in the numbered blanks by
using the information for the passage. Write NO MORE THAN 3 WORDS for each
answer.
As the
US wakes up to China’s rising status(地位)as an economic
and strategic competitor, US parents are urging their children to learn
Chinese, reports Julian Borger.
The US
is being swept by a rush to learn Mandarin(普通话)-- from wealthy
New York mothers hiring Chinese nannies(保姆)for their small
children to a defence department education project in Oregon.
The
forces driving Mandarin’s momentum(势头)are parental
ambition for children facing a future in which China is almost certain to be a
major player, and the government is worried about that America may get left
behind in that new world.
The
bottleneck is the supply of teachers. Mandarin instructors are difficult to
import and difficult to train. There are visa problems in bringing over
teachers from China
but the biggest barrier is cultural. Teaching in Asia is generally done by rote
and the change to western, interactive styles of instruction can be a large
leap(跳越).
On the
other hand, it requires enormous firmness for westerners to learn a language
like Chinese, with its thousands of written characters. According to the Asia
Society in New York, all of America’s teacher-training
institutions turn out only a couple of dozen homegrown Mandarin teachers.
One
way to ease the shortage is to find native Mandarin speakers and use fast-track
methods to train them. However, the majority of Chinese-Americans grew up
speaking Cantonese, the dialect(方言)spoken in Hong
Kong, where their parents came from. Many are themselves signing on as Mandarin
students at the private language schools springing up on the west coast.
Title: 71
in the USA
SECTION
B(10 points)
Directions:
Read the following passage. Answer the questions according to the information
given in the passage and the required words limit.
Write
your answers on your answer sheet.
Lights
went out at tourism landmarks(地标)and homes across
the globe on Saturday for Earth Hour 2009, a global event aimed to highlight
the threat from climate change.
From
the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge to the Eiffel
Tower in Paris and London's Houses of Parliament, lights were
turned off as part of a campaign to encourage people to cut energy use and
control greenhouse gas emissions from fuels.
Organizers
said the action showed millions of people wanted governments to work out a
strong new U. N. deal to fight global warming by the end of 2009, even though
the global economic crisis has raised worries about the costs.
"We
have been dreaming of a new climate deal for a long time," Kim Carstensen,
head of a global climate organization at the conservation group WWF, said in a
bar in the German city of Bonn, which hosts U. N. climate talks between March
29 and April 8.
"Now
we're no longer so alone with our dream. We're sharing it with all these people
switching off their lights," he said.
The UN
Climate Panel says greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and will
lead to more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and animal and plant
extinctions.
World
emissions have risen by about 70 percent since the 1970s.
Australia first
held Earth Hour in 2007 and it went global in 2008, attracting 50 million
people, organizers say. WWF, which started the event, is hoping one billion
people from nearly 90 countries will take part.