题目内容
B. global
C. formal
D. usual
Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend. But some women show great interest in colorful beads(珠子)from Uganda made of recycled paper. The beads are sold by a nonprofit organization called BeadforLife.
BeadforLife began as a chance meeting between three American women on a trip to Uganda and a local jewelry maker. Millie Grace Akena was rolling paper beads near her home. She made paper beads as a hobby. But there was no real market in her country. ![]()
Torkin Wakefield says she and her daughters Devin and Ginny brought some of the beads back home. Immediately people started admiring the beads. The three Americans started BeadforLife in 2004. Nearly 700 women have taken part.
The group says its beaders earn an average of more than 2,000 dollars a year in the program. This is five times what they earned before. The beads are sold across Uganda and in Boulder, Colorado. They are also sold online and at jewelry shows called bead parties. “Because they have meaning, because these are gifts that help people, when folks in America and beyond buy our beads, they feel a sense of generosity. They feel a direct connection, like they can really take part in getting rid of poverty.” Torkin said.
The jewelry costs between five and thirty dollars. BeadforLife reported sales in its last budget year of more that 3.5 million dollars. It says for every ten-dollar necklace sold, the beader gets two dollars and forty-three cents in money or materials. It says more than 90% of earnings are reinvested in community development projects in Uganda. Torkin Wakefield estimates that BeadforLi
fe has helped more than 8,000 people this way.
So what about Millie Grace Akena, the jewelry maker? Mrs Wakefield says she has gone on to organize a small group of women who work with her, and they sell their beads to a religious group.
【小题1】According to the passage, BeadforLife is an organization that ______.
| A.provides poor people worldwide with free education |
| B.mainly encourages people to learn to earn a living on their own |
| C.has attracted many businessmen to invest in beading |
| D.supports community development projects in Uganda |
| A.she didn’t know people would like them |
| B.she wanted to make a fortune out of them |
| C.people showed great interest in them at once |
| D.she was thinking of how to find investors |
| A.people think buying them is a good way to help the poor |
| B.they are of good quality and can be kept for a long time |
| C.they symbolize the most important thing in people’s life |
| D.they look even more beautiful than diamonds |
| A.Mrs Wakefield makes a great contribution to developing count |
| B.BeadforLife makes beads out of recycled paper. |
| C.BeadforLife uses paper beads to improve people’s lives. |
| D.Mrs Wakefield’s career takes off thanks to paper beads. |
请认真阅读下列短文,并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意:请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。
Is there a “success personality”—some winning combination of qualities that leads almost inevitably (必然地) to achievement? If so, exactly what is that secret success formula(公式), and can anyone develop it?
At the Gallop Organization we recently focused in depth on success, inquiring into the attitudes of 1500 distinguished people selected at random from Who’s Who in America. Our research finds out a number of qualities that occur regularly among top achievers. Here is one of the most important, that is common sense.
Common sense is the most widely possessed quality of the people surveyed. Seventy-nine percent award themselves a top score in this quality. And 61 percent say that common sense is very important in contributing to their success.
To most, common sense means the ability to present sound, practical judgments on everyday affairs. To do this, one has to remove extra ideas and get right to the key points of what matters. A Texas oil and gas businessman puts it this way: “The key ability for success is simplifying. In conduction of meeting and dealing with industry reducing a complex problem to the simplest term is highly important.”
Is common sense a quality a person is born with, or can you do something to increase it? The oil man’s answer is that common sense can definitely be developed. He owes this to learning how to debate in school. Another way to increase your store of common sense is to observe it in others, learning from their—and your own—mistakes.
Besides common sense, there are many other factors that influence success: knowing your field, self-reliance, intelligence, the ability to get things done, leadership, creativity, relationships with others, and of course, luck. But common sense stands out. If you develop these qualities, you’ll succeed. And you might even find yourself listed in Who’s Who someday.
| Secrets to success | |
| Finding of the 【小题1】________ | Top achievers have some common 【小题2】______, one of which is common sense. |
| The most important quality | 79 percent of the people surveyed 【小题3】______ highly of common sense. And 61 percent say their success【小题4】_______ from this quality. |
| Understanding of common sense | To most, it means one is【小题5】 ________ to present sound, make practical judgments on everyday affairs by【小题6】________ on what really counts. |
| 【小题7】________ to get common sense | 【小题8】________ it through activities like learning how to debate in school. Increasing it through mistakes by observing others. |
| Other factors leading to success | 【小题9】_______ from common sense, many other factors contribute to success, luck【小题10】________. But common sense is the most outstanding. |
If your family is like many in the United States, unloading the week’s groceries includes hauling a case or two of bottled water into your home. On your way to a soccer game or activity, it’s easy to grab a cold one right out of the fridge, right?
But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That’s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months.
Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.
So why don’t more people drink water straight from the kitchen faucet? Some people drink bottled water because they think it is better for them than water out of the tap, but that’s not true. In the United States, local governments make sure water from the faucet is safe. There is also growing concern that chemicals in the bottles themselves may leach into the water.
People love the convenience of bottled water. But maybe if they realized the problems it causes, they would try drinking from a glass at home or carrying water in a refillable steel container instead of plastic.
Plastic bottle recycling can help—instead of going out with the trash, plastic bottles can be turned into items like carpeting or cozy fleece clothing.
Unfortunately, for every six water bottles we use, only one makes it to the recycling bin. The rest are sent to landfills. Or, even worse, they end up as trash on the land and in rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Plastic bottles take many hundreds of years to disintegrate.
Water is good for you, so keep drinking it. But think about how often you use water bottles, and see if you can make a change.
Betty McLaughlin, who runs an organization called the Container Recycling Institute, says we should try using fewer bottles: “If you take one to school in your lunch, don’t throw it away—bring it home and refill it from the tap for the next day. Keep track of how many times you refill a bottle before you recycle it.”
And yes, you can make a difference. Remember this: Recycling one plastic bottle can save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for six hours.
| Title | Drinking Water: Bottled or From the Tap? |
| 【小题1】 situation | Americans consume the 【小题2】 bottled water in the world. |
| 【小题3】 for people’s preference for bottled water | Bottled water is of higher【小题4】 . |
| It’s more 【小题5】 for people to drink bottled water. | |
| Problems with bottled water | The 【小题6】 of plastic bottles use lots of fossil fuels. |
| Water bottles we use cause serious 【小题7】 . | |
| 【小题8】 the passage offers | Use bottles 【小题9】 of glass or steel. |
| Use a refillable plastic bottle as many times as 【小题10】 before recycling. |