No budget for your vacation? Try home exchanges ---- swapping houses with strangers. Agree to use each other’s cars, and you can save dollars on car rentals (租赁费), too.
Home exchanges are not new. At least one group, Intervac, has been facilitating such an arrangement since 1953. But trading online is gaining popularity these days, with several sites in operation, including Home Exchanges. Founded in 1992, with some 28,000 listings, this company bills itself as the world’s largest home exchange club, reporting that membership has increased 30% this year.
The annual fee is usually less than US$100. Members can access thousands of listings for apartments, villas, suburban homes and farms around the world. Initial contact is made via e-mail, with subsequent communication usually by phone. Before a match is made, potential swappers tend to discuss a lot.
However, the concept may sound risky to some people. What about theft? Damage? These are reasonable causes for concern, but equally unlikely. As one swapper puts it, “Nobody is going to fly across the ocean or drive 600 miles to come steal your TV. Besides, at the same time they’re staying in your home, you are staying in their home.”
Exchange sites recommend that swappers discuss such matters ahead of time. They may fill out an agreement spelling out who shoulders which responsibilities if a problem arises. It does not matter if the agreement would hold up in court, but it does give the exchangers a little satisfaction.
Generally, the biggest complaint among home exchangers has to do with different standards of cleanliness. Swappers are supposed to make sure their home is in order before they depart, but one person’s idea of “clean” may be more forgiving than another’s. Some owners say if they come back to a less-than-sparkling kitchen, it may be inconvenient but would not sour them on future exchanges.
1.What is the second paragraph mainly about?
A．How to exchange homes.
B．The biggest home exchange agency Intervac.
C．The fact that home exchanges are not new.
D．A contrast between Intervac and Home Exchanges.
2.How do home exchangers normally begin their communication?
A．By phone. B．Via a matchmaker.
C． By e-mail. D．Via a face-to-face meeting.
3.What is recommended in the passage to deal with the concerns about theft and damage?
A．One can file a lawsuit in court.
B．Both parties can trade online.
C．One can damage the home of the other party in return.
D．Both parties can sign an agreement beforehand.
A sixth of undergraduates in Beijing this year have registered at driving school. The students, mostly from majors such as business management or international trade, will finish their driving courses within 20 days or so.
Training costs have dropped to 2, 600 yuan for students, according to the Haidian Driving School in Beijing. The price is not really low, but students will accept it, seeing it as an investment （投资）in their future. Familiarity with the operation of computers and fluent English are the basic skills graduating students need to find a job. But a driver’s permit has become another factor.
“In the job market, owning a driver’s permit sometimes strengthens a graduating student’s competitiveness for a good position, ”says Zhou Yang, an undergraduate at the China University of Political Science and Law.
Cars will become a necessary part of many people’s lives in the coming years, and it is difficult to get a permit out of campus because of the pressures on working people’s time. “Having a fulltime job after graduation offers limited time to learn to drive. We senior students have plenty of spare time, plenty of opportunity to learn. ”Zhou says.
Xu Jian, an official at the driving school, said undergraduates were very able and serious, and could grasp in an hour what ordinary people took four hours to learn. In this driving school, middle-aged people, young women and college students are the main customers.
To get a driver’s permit, a beginner is now required to have at least 86 hours’ practice before the final road test.
1.The undergraduates are learning to drive because ________.
A. they like to drive cars
B. they need this skill to find a good job
C. they will not have any time to learn to drive after they have found a full-time job
D. most of them will be able to buy cars in the future
2.Which of the following is likely to be Xu Jian’s opinion of students learning to drive?
A. It is better to learn it at college than at work.
B. Young people have an advantage in learning to drive.
C. It is a waste of money and time to learn to drive.
D. They will spend three times more time to learn to drive than usual.
3.Which of the following can be the best headline for the passage?
A. Students Learn to Drive.
B. Students Pay Less to Learn to Drive Now.
C. It is Better to Learn to Drive at Colleges.
D. Welcome to the Driving School.
The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.
Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.
He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels(元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”
“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘the citay’ and’dutay’, rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’, and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”
The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch(传统火鸡午餐).
The results were published(发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.
1.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because .
A. she has been Queen for many years
B. she has a less upper-class accent now
C. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years
D. her speeches are familiar to many people
2.Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?
A. “Dutay”. B. “Hame”. C. “Citee”. D. “Lorst”.
3.We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on .
A. Christmas customs B. speech sounds
C.TV broadcasting D. personal messages
4.What is the text mainly about?
A. The changes in a person’s accent.
B. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.
C. The relationship between accents and social classes.
D. The recent development of the English language.
I would like to suggest that for sixty to ninety minutes each evening all television broadcasting in the United States be forbidden by law. Let us take a , reasonable look at what the results might be if such a（an） were accepted.
Families might use the time for a real family hour. Without the distraction（分散注意力） of TV, they might together after dinner and actually talk to one another. It is well known that many of our ----everything in fact, from the generation gap to the high divorce rate to some forms of illness ----are caused at least in part by to communicate. By using the quiet family hour to our problems, we might get to know each other better, and to like each other better. On evenings when such talk is , families could discover more active pastimes(娱乐). Freed from TV and forced to find their own activities, they might take a together to watch the sunset they might take a walk together.
free time and no TV, children and adults might discover reading. There is more entertainment in than in a TV program. report that the generation growing up with television can hardly write an English sentence, at the college level. is often learned from reading. A more literate new generation could be a product of the quiet hour. A different form of reading might also be done it was in the past: reading aloud. The quiet hour could become the story hour. When the ends, the TV networks might be forced to with better shows in order to get us back from our newly- discovered activities.
At first glance, this idea seems radical(激进的). will we spend the time then? The fact is: it has been only twenty-five years since television came to control American free time. Those of us thirty-five and older can childhoods without television. It wasn't that difficult.
1.A. valuable B. pleasant C. serious D. quick
2.A. suggestion B. advice C. opinion D. offer
3.A. get around B. sit around C. meet with D. stand stiff
4.A. misfortunes B. troubles C. affairs D. problems
5.A. physical B. mental C. common D. familiar
6.A. failure B. attempt C. ability D. permission
7.A. comment B. talk C. discuss D. remark
8.A. impossible B. unpleasant C. funny D. unnecessary
9.A. ride B. look C. walk D. rest
10.A. And B. But C. Or D. While
11.A. At B. With C. For D. In
12.A. a good book B. a fine poem C. a quiet hour D. a composition
13.A. Professors B. Scientists C. Educators D. Parents
14.A. yet B. still C. just D. even
15.A. Skill B. Writing C. Speaking D. Listening
16.A. before B. as C. after D. when
17.A. talk B. programme C. performance D. quiet-hour
18.A. come across B. come about C. come out D. come up
19.A. How B. Whether C. What D. If
20.A. remind B. recognize C. remember D. know
Have you bought the same book ________ I referred to yesterday?
A. that B. as C. which D. what
_____ to drive after drinking, some drivers are still trying their luck, which is dangerous.
A. Not reminded B. Reminded not
C. Not having been reminded D. Having reminded not
