We are looking for energetic volunteers who might be willing to volunteer their time. It’s a great way to build your volunteer experience, get involved in your community, meet new people and show your pride.

Computer Teacher

The computer teacher will be responsible for teaching older adults computer skills, including basic skills such as turning on computer or more media skills such as setting up email. This position requires patience, dedication and long hours on your feet. Computer skills needed. Ask Mandy, 01313377227.

Meals on Wheels

Do you have time in your schedule to make a difference in the lives of seniors in your community? Meals on Wheels drivers deliver nutritious lunchtime meals to homebound seniors on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Our aim is to help seniors who are unable to go out themselves due to age or disability. A valid driver’s license and personal vehicle is required. Call Lucy,（781）2727177.

Tree Nursery Volunteer

Tasks are different according to season, but may include: collecting tree seeds from ancient woodland, preparing seeds for sowing, planting trees and tree aftercare. Some of the work is physical and outdoors, others such as seed preparation can be done indoors. No experience is necessary, but a knowledge or interest in botany would certainly be helpful. Ask Amrita, 07748623073.

Photography Volunteer

     If you have a talent for photography, this may be the role for you. We need someone who can take great photos for posters and websites. We especially need photos of our events and volunteers. This is a great opportunity to gain valuable work experience. You’ll also gain the satisfaction of seeing your work being displayed on the National Trust website and in literature. Ask Sarah, 01248600954.

1. If you are interested in teaching, you can get in touch with ________.

A. Mandy  B. Lucy      C. Amrita  D. Sarah

2.What do Meals on Wheels volunteers deliver for the seniors?

A. Breakfast.      B. Lunch.  C. Supper. D. Snack.

3.Which kind of voluntary work doesn’t require special experience or skills?

A. Computer Teacher.                 B. Meals on Wheels.

C. Tree Nursery Volunteer.         D. Photography Volunteer.

Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change-to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.

 Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s, Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.

 Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.

 Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.

1.The underlined word “poetry” most probably means __________.

A. an object for artistic creation                                    B. a collection of poems

C. an unusual quality                                                        D. a natural scene

2. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because        .

A. they are close in style to works in ancient times

B. they look like works by 19th-century painters

C. they draw attention to common things in life

D. they depend heavily on color photography

3.What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?

A. It will not be found in future works of art.

B. It does not have a long-lasting standard.

C. It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.

D. It is lacking in modern works of art.

4.What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?

A. They express people's curiosity about the past.

B. They make people interested in everyday experience.

C. They are considered important for variety in form.

D. They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.

5.Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

A. History of the arts.

B. Basic questions of the arts.

C. New developments in the arts.

D. Use of modern technology in the arts.

Before Nicholas Clapp got there, he had half hoped that he might run into some of Ubar’s ruins sticking(凸出) out of the sand. But finding the city wasn’t that easy. During the summer, he and his 40 helpers dug at 35 different spots. The only things they found were ground spiders, giant ticks, and deadly snakes.
Just before Thanksgiving says Clapp, “We were within a whisker of total failure.”
But then Clapp’s team looked at the high-tech maps again and saw something surprising. Many of the caravan routes(沙漠商队路线)on the high-tech maps came together on the same spot marked “Omani Marketplace” on Ptolomy’s map. Two maps, made almost 2000 years apart, pointed the team toward the same area!
In December 1991, Clapp arrived at the spot where, according to the maps, the caravans met. Clapp had a handheld instrument that could detect(探测) objects below the ground. It showed ruins under the sand! He and his team started digging. And then they found it! A tower buried in the sand. They slowly unearthed a giant, eight-sided fortress(堡垒). It had nine towers and many rooms. People had lived in this fortress 2000 years ago. Outside its walls, they had found buried remains of nearly 40 campsites. They seemed to be camping areas for traders(商人). 
More digging found shards, or pieces of pottery(陶瓷) from ancient Rome, Greece, China, Egypt, and Syria. Diggers and scientists agree that people were here for about 5000 years. Clapp and his team were excited as they continued to discover more pieces of the past that seemed to prove that it was the lost city of Ubar.
“We started with this hopeless myth(神秘),” says Clapp, “and then finally found the truth behind the myth.” But is this unearthed site really the once-great Ubar? Experts aren’t totally persuaded.
Donald Whitcomb is an archeologist(考古学家) at the University of Chicago. He doubts that Clapp really discovered Ubar. “There’s probably some truth to this myth,” he says. “But Ubar is described as a place with walls all made of gold, and the rubies and emeralds(宝石).” No gold or precious stones have been found by Clapp.
“I’m not sure whether they discovered Ubar because I’m not sure if Ubar really existed,” Whitcomb says.
【小题1】The following statements are true according to the reading EXCEPT_____.

B

Daban town is famous for girls and windmills（风车）, while Loulan is a myth（神话）in the desert. From Daban, we move to another ancient city, Loulan.

Two thousand years ago, beside the beautiful and rich Luobu Lake, there lay Loulan, ancient city on the Silk Road. Businessmen from every country gathered here and there were dancing parties. Everything shows that people in Loulan lived a rich life then.

However, two thousand years later, this rich land suddenly disappeared from the map of China. Then it became an area covered with sand and dead tree trunks.

Loulan was first “discovered” by a Swedish man Sven Hedin in 1900. People from America, Britain, Japan and Sweden, all set foot here. Then in the 1930s, a Chinese named Huang Wenbi came to Loulan for the first time. He visited and studied this area and found many relics that were beautifully and carefully made.

It is recorded that the ancient city of Loulan was the capital of Loulan Kingdom during the Han and Jin dynasties. In the past century many things have been dug out there including Han Dynasty coins, mirrors and many others from Greece and Rome. All these things show that a lot of business between East and West once took place there.

Lying on the northwest of the Lop Nur area, the Loulan Kingdom is now a lifeless area with endless “forests” of mounds（小丘）which aren’t easily seen in other parts of the world. Its mystery (神秘) has been attracting so many people from so many countries.

65. The first person to set foot in Loulan in the 20th century is       .

A. a European                 B. an American

C. an Englishman              D. a Japanese

66. Before Loulan disappeared,          .

A. a lot of business between East and West had taken place there

B. people from America and Japan had set foot there

C. a lifeless area with lots of mounds could easily be seen there

D. Africans had visited the ancient country

67. We can infer from the passage that       .

A. Loulan was destroyed by the terrible weather there

B. wars between dynasties made Loulan disappear

C. foreigners came to Loulan and destroyed it

D. how Loulan disappeared is still unknown to us

68. What makes so many people visit Loulan Kingdom?

A. The beautiful scenery there.

B. Its developed business in the past.

C. Its mysterious stories

D. Those buried treasures there