results. Dont overload your electrical points; the ideal is "one appliance, one socket". Dont use an electric underblanket over you or an overblanket under you. An underblanket, unless of the low voltage type, MUST be switched off before you get into bed. Never let furniture or clothing get close to a lighted fire. Make sure that there is a suitable guard for the room heater. Keep aerosol type containers (噴霧器) away from heat and NEVER burn or puncture (刺穿) them. Dont dim a table lamp by covering it: buy a low wattage bulb. Pyjamas and nightdresses, especially for children and elderly people, should be made from flame resistant material. IF CUT OFF BY FIRE Close the door of the room and any fanlight or other opening and block up any cracks with bedding, etc. Go to the window and try to attract attention. If the room fills with smoke, lean out of the window unless prevented by smoke and flame coming from a room below or nearby. If you cannot lean out of the window, lie close to the floor where the air is clearer until you hear the fire brigade. If you have to escape before the fire brigade arrives, make a rope by knotting together sheets or similar materials and tie it to a bed or another heavy piece of furniture. If you cannot make a rope and the situation becomes intolerable, drop cushions or bedding from the window to break your fall, get through the window feet first, lower yourself to the full extent of your arms and drop. If possible drop from a position above soft earth. If above the first floor, drop only as a last resort

According to the instructions, fires in the bedroom can be caused by______.

A．one appliance, one socket

B．smoking in bed

C．underblankets of the low voltage type

D．a(chǎn)ll of the above mentioned points

on, having outgrown the available food supplies. Today, a century and a half later, there are still experts who forecast the same global disaster—unless urgent measures are taken to prevent it. By the end of the present century there may well be over five thousand million people living on this globe, an increase of over fifty percent on todays figure. In order to keep pace with this increase in mankind the farmers of the world will have to step up their production of food by at least two percent every year. Such a rate of increase has never been maintained in any country by conventional methods of agriculture, despite modern mechanization and the widespread use of fertilizers. There are no large worthwhile reserves of potential farmland remaining, and good fertile land is continually being changed into industrial use. Moreover, erosion of the soil takes a constant toll (損失). Intensive research, carried out over many years in all manners of climate conditions, has produced a revolutionary method of growing crops without using any soil at all. Hydroponics (水栽 法), as this technique is called, may well be the answer to all our food worries; already it has accomplished wonders in producing huge crops. Hydroponics was once a complicated and expensive business, now it is well out of the experimental stage. Labor costs are far lower than when normal methods of agriculture are employed. In fact, it is a completely automatic system. There is no hard manual work, no digging or ploughing, and no weeding to speak of. Yields can be far higher than they are in soil.

Which of the following best sums up the whole passage?

A．Malthus" prediction has been proved to be correct by modern experts.

B．Hydroponics is a new development in agriculture.

C．Hydroponics may be the answer to the world food shortage in the future.

D．Conventional methods of agriculture should be improved so as to step up food production by two percent every year.

ee, "Im more of a creature to polish my mind than polish my furniture. The house takes second place while I put the studying first. " "I was very happy at school and had wonderful teaching. I passed the university entrance examination and was ready to go to university but with World War I went into banking. I was paid 1 pound a week. Manchester University kept my place open for three years but I was enjoying the money and the freedom so I turned it down. " Mrs. Sephton is now in the second year of her Open University course and is finding it hard work. She underestimates her ability. "Im feeling tired more frequently. I cant do more than an hours work at a time. The memorys shocking. Im supposed to be revising and I look up notes I did earlier this year and think, Have you read this before? So Im doing it very slowly—one credit a year, so itll take six years. " "At the moment the greatest reward is simply the increase in knowledge—and the discipline. I had an essay failed this week. The professor said I hadnt answered the question. Ive been thinking about it all week. I know I havent got the facility for essay construction. I just let myself go and get excited. I feel more emotionally than I do mentally. Im very ordinary really. " Claiming to be ordinary and lazy, Mrs. Sephton is still working hard daily at her assignments. Mrs. Sephton sees her studies as keeping her fit and independent. "Because of my life Ive been self-sufficient. Its not a very nice characteristic. It means I dont care enough about people. I cant say I find comfort in what Ill be learning, so Ill be interested to see if theres a life ahead. "

When Florence said "Im more of a creature to polish my mind than polish my furniture" (Line 2, Para. 1) , she meant that______.

A．she was tired of learning

B．she was thirsty for knowledge

C．she was more suitable for doing housework

D．she didn"t have enough time to keep the house clean

, cheques and plastic credit cards. Then theres the whole interesting history of the monetary system. If youre something of a philosopher, however, you may be more interested in peoples attitude to money. Consider the difference between those who always manage to live within their income , and those who—no matter how much they earn—always need to spend more. The philosophies people have about money are reflected in the way they spend it. Two families earning the same salary may use their money in different ways. One familys consumer goods may be anothers ticket to a foreign country. In the radio series The Cost of Living, English people are heard discussing many different aspects of money. The programmers make me think of a particular Englishman—one who is not featured in the series. Francis Bacon was born in 1560, a few years before Shakespeare, and died in 1626. As a boy he displayed a remarkable intelligence, and by the age of thirteen was a student at Cambridge University. He studied law, then had a highly successful career. By 1617 he was Prime Minister of England. He had also published some important philosophical and literary works which are still read today. Why should a series of programmes about money make me think of Lord Bacon? Briefly, because it was his attitude to money which controlled, and ultimately ruined, his life. He was a man who spent much more than he could earn. To support his luxurious life-style. he borrowed money from anyone who was foolish enough to lend it to him, then carefully avoided his creditors. Far worse, he abused his position of authority, accepting bribes in return for favors. For that he was eventually sent to prison. He spent the last years of his life in disgrace.

This selection is probably taken from______.

A．a(chǎn) newspaper editorial

B．a(chǎn) history textbook

C．a(chǎn)n essay on money

D．a(chǎn) personal record

al games for the disabled were started at Stoke Mandeville, England in 1948 by Sir Ludwig Gutt-mann, the situation began to change. Sir Ludwig Guttmann, who had been driven to England in 1939 from Nazi Germany, had been asked by the British government to set up an injuries centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near London. His ideas about treating injuries included sport for the disabled. In the first games just two teams of injured soldiers took part. The next year, 1949, five teams took part. From those beginnings, things have developed fast. Teams now come from abroad to Stoke Mandeville every year. In 1960 the first Olympics for the Disabled were held in Rome, in the same place as the normal Olympic Games. Now every four years the Olympic Games for the Disabled are held, if possible, in the same place as the normal Olympic Games, although they are organized separately. In other years Games for the Disabled are still held at Stoke Mandeville. In the 1984 Wheelchair Olympic Games, 1 064 wheelchair athletes from about 40 countries took part. Unfortunately, they were held at Stoke Mandeville and not in Los Angeles, along with the other Olympics. The Games have been a great success in promoting international friendship and understanding, and in proving that being disabled does not mean you cant enjoy sport. One small source of disappointment for those who organize and take part in the games, however, has been the unwill-ingness of the International Olympic Committee to include disabled events at the Olympic Games for the able-bodied. Perhaps a few more years are still needed to convince those fortunate enough not to be disabled that their disabled fellow athletes should not be excluded.

The first games for the disabled were held______after Sir Ludwig Guttmann arrived in England.

A．9 years

B．10 years

C．21 years

D．40 years

promote native language literacy among Indians. Indians were to be taught to read and write in their native language before being taught English. Studies in many cultures around the world demonstrate that children learn to read best in their mother tongue. Bilingual reading books and other educational materials were prepared in Navaho, Hopi, Siouan, Pueblo, and Papago languages. The difficulties were tremendous because many American Indian languages are distinctively different in structure from all other languages in the world. They do not have "words" in the sense that other languages do—as independent meaningful sound sequences that combine into "sentences". Their "sentences" are made by combining prefixes, infixes, and suffixes into what looks like one long word but is essentially the equivalent of our sentence. It is impossible, in other words, to make an Indian utterance that is not a sentence. In our sense, Indian languages do not have parts of speech, conjugations etc. The sentence is the smallest structure available to speakers of the language. Therefore bridging the translation gap between English and such language is a massive feat. In most cases, Indian children need to be bilingual though not necessarily be literate. That is, they need to speak their native language to participate fully in their home and tribal affairs. But, they do not need to read and write that language. On the other hand, they also need a reading, writing, and speaking knowledge of English, not only to get their due in this country but, ironically, also to preserve their heritage.

In the first sentence "literacy" means______.

A．freedom

B．concerning literature

C．quality

D．being able to read and/or write

uld free housewives of drudgery (單調(diào)沉悶的工作) and fill factories with tireless work force. But in many ways, the brainwave has been a washout. Robots can paint cars, salvage (收集) nuclear fuel and even assist in brain surgery, but theyre still pretty dumb. Mr. Reddy says robots are dumb "because we havent taken the trouble to put the pieces together, not because we dont know how. That takes money and time and effort, and we dont have the money". But today robots can recognize forms and shapes and measure distances. They can hear and speak by using computers that recognize thousands of words. Their sensors can detect smoke or fumes. They can move about rolling on wheels or walk with as many as eight legs like a spider on uneven terrain (地面,地帶). In addition, they can recognize texture and the force of a movement, such as pressing. Many robots have one or two of these abilities to some degree, but creating a competent robot that combines most or all of them has been difficult. Scientists have also found it difficult to match human abilities that most people take for granted such as the fingers dexterity (靈巧,熟練) or the ability to identify objects. "The list of things that robots can do better than humans is much shorter than the list of things robots cannot," says Tom Smith from the Cambridge Mellon Institute.

Which of the following best expresses the ideas of the passage?

A．Robots still have a long way to go.

B．What can robots do today.

C．How to improve the abilities of robots.

D．Difficulties in creating a competent robot.

ost banks cared only for the wealthy, powerful, and well-born. The "little fellows" had to hide their savings under a mattress (床墊) and borrow from loan sharks at high rates. Yet A. P. knew these people were struggling to make something of their lives. A. P. argued with the banks directors to change their policies. They refused. So he stormed out saying, "Ill start my own bank!" And on October 17, 1904, Bank of Italy later renamed Bank of America opened its doors. According to Giannini, "There isnt any good reason why a bank should have the temperature of a fish market. When you walked into some of them you felt as if youd got into a funeral parlor. I think what I am most proud of is anything I may have done to help with the humaniza-tion of banking. " At first, bankers looked down their noses at "the baby bank" and its methods. They felt that going out to ask for new business was distasteful especially from immigrants, farmers, and wage-earners. But A. P. and bank employees went door-to-door explaining to people what a bank could do for them and inviting them to become customers. They did. And Bank of Italy grew. Said Giannini, "The old idea of a banker was that he must wear a silk hat and shut himself up in fancy quarters. He thought he couldnt ask for business. If business is worth having, its worth going after. It helps to get up earlier than your competitor, and to keep looking for new ways to do more good business. " A former bank vice-president remembers that "A. P. was always available. People would often come to his desk, just to say hello. " Recalls another bank employee: "He wanted to make sure the customer was always our boss, that we were working for the customer. "

The term "loan sharks" (Line 3, Para. 1) refers to______.

A．people who lend money at illegal rates of interest

B．banks which care only for influential persons

C．banks which keep money for the poor but charge high fees

D．people who possess wealth and power

純粹的) physical survival and beyond that its own economic prosperity. Thus, children were valued in terms of their productivity, and they assumed the role of producer quite early. Until they fulfilled this role, their position in the structure of the family was one of subordination and their psychological needs and capacities received little consideration. As the society became more complex, the status of children in the family and in the society became more important. In the complex, technological society that the United States has become each member must fulfill a number of personal and occupational roles and be in constant contact with a great many other members. Consequently, viewing children as potentially acceptable and necessarily multifaceted (多方面的，多樣化的) members of society means that they are regarded more as people in their own right than as utilitarian (功利主義的) organisms (社會(huì)成員). This acceptance of children as equal participants in the contemporary family is reflected in the variety of statutes protecting the rights of children and in the social and public welfare programs devoted exclusively to their well-being. This new view of children and the increasing contact between the members of society has also resulted in a surge (浪潮，波濤) of interest in child-rearing techniques. People today spend a considerable portion of their time conferring on the proper way to bring up children. It is now possible to influence the details of the socialization of another persons child by spreading the gospel (經(jīng)典，福音) of current and fashionable theories and methods of child rearing. The socialization of the contemporary child in the United States is a two-way transaction between parent and child rather than a one-way, parent-to-child training program. As a consequence, socializing children and living with them over a long period of time is for parents a mixture of pleasure, satisfaction, and problems.

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．The Place of Children in United States Society.

B．The Children of Colonial North America.

C．The Development of Cultural Values.

D．The Child as a Utilitarian Organism.

onstrated by the fact that virtually all 600 high schools and about one-third of the 1 600 elementary schools are now using computers in one form. or another. Another third of the elementary schools are actively working to acquire computers. In addition, all teachers and college students must participate in at least one basic computer course. The main support for acquiring, maintaining and operating computers in schools has come from the "Educational Welfare Program" of the Ministry of Education, which is similar in many ways to Title I in the United States, and from the educational branch of "Project Renewal", which is concerned with helping extremely poor neighborhoods and towns both physically and socially. As a result, most computers are found in schools with many disadvantaged pupils. For example, the first school computer system was introduced in Netivot, which is a small development town in Negev Desert. The situation is now changing, support provided by the Educational Welfare Program and by Project Renewal is reducing and parental contributions are being used to purchase computers in schools with many advantaged pupils. However, some of the slack (松懈,減弱，減緩)created by reduced government support will be taken up by support from the national lottery (彩票), and it is likely that such support will be channeled largely to schools with many disadvantaged pupils. Control of government funding for software development, teacher training and purchase of equipment is centralized in a high-level committee of the Ministry of Education. In recent years about 50 percent of the funding went for the development of basic computer courses by various universities and teachers colleges. About 30 percent went for general curriculum development and 20 percent went for purchase of equipment by schools and teachers colleges.

The number of the elementary schools to which computers have not yet been introduced is about______.

A．1 600

B．600

C．500

D．1 000