．On the contrary, I think it is Truman, ________ you, ________ to blame.

A．more than; are          B．less than; who are

C．rather than; that is        D．rather than; is

Though they had not much to say, they email each other _____ .

 A. sooner or later    B. from then on    C. every now and then    D. more or less

WASHINGTON Laura Straub is a very worried woman.  Her job is to find families for French teenagers who expect to live with American families in the summer.

It’s not easy, even desperate.

    “We have many children left to place: 40 out of 75,” said Straub, who works for a Paris based foreign exchange programme called LEC.

    When exchange programmes started 50 years ago, more families were willing to help others. For one thing, more mothers stayed home.

    But now, increasing numbers of women work outside the home. Exchange student programmes have struggled in recent years to sign up host families for the 30,000 teenagers who come from abroad every year to have some courses for one year in the United States. as well as the thousands more who take part in summer programmes.

School systems in many parts of the US, unhappy about accepting non taxpaying students, have also strictly limited the number of exchange students they accept. At the same time, the idea of hosting foreign students is becoming less exotic (异国情调的).

In searching for host families, who usually receive no pay, exchange programmes are increasingly broadening their requests to include everyone from young couples to the retired.

“We are open to many different types of families.” said Vickie Weiner, eastern regional director for ASSE, a 25-year-old programme that sends about 30,000 teenagers on one-year exchange programmes worldwide.

For elderly people, exchange students “keep us young——they really do,” said Jean Foster, who is hosting 16-year-old Nina Ports from Denmark.

1.Foreign teenagers come to American families with the purpose of _____.

  A. finding their parents in America         B. finding good jobs in America

C. learning the culture of America          D. enjoying the life of America

2.In the past, Straub’s job was easy, because American families _____.

  A. needed more money to live             B. had fewer children to support

 C. had spare rooms to rent                 D. were not as busy as now

3.To deal with the problem in recent years, Straub and her workmates have to _____.

A. ask different kinds of families for help    B. limit the number of the exchange students

C. borrow much money to pay for the costs   D. force some families to accept students

4.From the last paragraph we can conclude that _____.

   A. exchange students are welcome in America

B. exchange students must pay much money to the host families

C. American students don’t want to join the exchange programmes

D. old Americans can benefit from hosting exchange students

31^st October —— A team of British explorers has announced they are going to the North Pole to measure the ice cap’s thickness. The exploration will take ground-based readings (仪表的读数) of an ice formation which most scientists agree is shrinking at an alarming rate.

    Explorer Pen Hadow’s three-member team will pull a sled-fixed radar device, which measures ice density every eight centimeters, 2,000 kilometers across the Arctic and will produce millions of readings.

    They will leave in February, 2008 and will face temperatures of -50℃ on a journey that will take up to 120 days. They have been testing their equipment in Britain and Canada.

    Hadow is excited about the prospects (前景), “For the first time we will be able to transmit video images — webcam film of the expedition — as it unfolds so people can track us, and the whole idea is to engage as many people as we can in what we’re doing.”

    New fallen snow on top of the ice makes ground-based measurements more accurate than satellite data.

    “It has been in the planning stage for a while,” said Hadow. “We spent the last two years developing impulse radar (冲击雷达), which normally is about 100 kilograms and hangs under an aircraft and so on. We’ve managed to get it down to about 4 kilograms. It’s the size of a briefcase and we are dragging it behind the sled as we go.”

　　　　The ice cap shrank enough in 2007 so that a pathway through the cap known as the Northwest Passage opened up during the melting of the Arctic summer.

    Cambridge University’s Joao Rodrigues explains, “Thickness of the ice cap will determine how much solar radiation will be reflected and the heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and it is thus a vital component (成分) of climate models.”

    If warming trends continue, some experts predict that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free during the summer within a few decades.

１ What would be the best title for the text?

A. Exploration to the North Pole.

B. Arctic ice cap shrinking.

C. Arctic ice survey announced.

D. Ground-based measurements of ice.

２. What is special about the exploration?

A. It will be broadcast live on the Internet.

B. Explorers will use a sled-fixed radar device.

C. Explorers will travel in extremely cold conditions.

D. Ground-based measurements are more accurate.

３. What is the purpose of the exploration?

A. To measure the ice cap’s thickness.

B. To study whether ice will disappear in the Arctic.

C. To make a film about the Arctic exploration.

D. To make people interested in what they are doing.

４. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A. ice in the Arctic will disappear in ten years

B. the exploration will last for half a year

C. Hadow spent two years developing a kind of radar, which is about 100 kilograms

D. if there is snow on ice, satellites can’t measure the ice thickness accurately enough

５. From the passage, we learn that ________.

A. the explorers will measure ice density every other centimeter

B. people will be able to follow the explorers and see what they are doing  

C. people could go through the Northwest Passage in the 2007 Arctic summer

D. the equipment that Hadow’s team use will be tested in the United States

 假设你过生日时收到了Lucy送来的鲜花，写信向她表示感谢。你的信应包括：

  1. 表达感谢之意      2. 提出回报对方        3. 期待对方做客

— Is Miss Wang in the office today?

 — No, she’s gone to her hometown_________the Spring Festival and she’ll be back in a week.

A.in              B.during              C.for                 D.on

．Researchers from MIT, Harvard reported a study of human brains yesterday that may______ some new information for mental illnesses.

A．create          B．provide        C．expect       D．imagine

Students are now preparing for the college entrance exam．and I hope their efforts will _____．

       A．come on         B．go up              C．stand out D．pay off

—Does Bill do his new job well?

— _____ ___ his old job. I’m afraid there’s no hope for him.

A. Not better than      B. No better than      C. Not so well as    D. Not as well as

Yesterday evening when going to the cinema I frequented, I went in a wrong direction _______.

A. somehow     B. anyhow      C. somewhat      D. anyway