When you put down your pens at the end of the college entrance exam, 12 hard years of study will have come to an end. Forget your studies for a while. It's time to enjoy yourselves!
There are many ways to celebrate this special month of graduation. You can have photos taken with your classmates and teachers, or dine out together and exchange gifts.
High school students in Western countries such as the United States and Canada usually have a prom to mark their graduation. It’s to mark the time kids turn into young men and women. After the prom, teenagers either go to college or find a job. It means they are no longer as dependent on their parents as they were before.
At the prom, boys usually dress in dinner jackets and bow ties, though many different types of formal clothes are worn. Traditionally, girls give boys matching boutonnieres (a small collection of flowers they pin to their jackets). Girls traditionally wear formal dresses, or dress to shock or be noticed, in shiny or brightly colored materials.
Common prom activities include dining, dancing, the crowning (加冠) of a prom king and queen, and just talking to friends. In some cases, high school students collect funds for their class prom through the four years of their high school.
High schools in or near large cities may rent ballrooms at expensive hotels or, to be unusual, on a pleasure cruise boat.
But often costs are cut by simply using the school gym. Students make a lot of effort to decorate the gym to make the event special. The music played at the prom will be the most popular kinds, like rock and hip-hop.
The students elect the Prom Queen. She is partnered with a Prom King who is elected similarly. These are great honors that the pair take very seriously. The two dance with each other to celebrate their election.
Sometimes teachers and parents also go to the prom. But others like to go with friends, to whom they are soon going to be saying goodbye.
If you like the idea of a prom, why don't you and your classmates organize one for your graduation?
1.Which of the following is an economical way to hold the prom?
A. Renting a ballroom.
B. Holding it in the school gym.
C. Taking a cruise boat.
D. Wearing formal dresses.
2.Which of the following clearly indicates that prom is very important to students?
A. They take pictures at the prom.
B. They wear formal clothes or special clothes.
C. Music is played at the prom.
D. Teachers and parents attend it.
3.Why do some students attend the prom with their friends?
A. They will part with their friends in a short time.
B. They don’t like to be accompanied by their parents.
C. They don’t want to depend on their parents.
D. They want to be elected by their friends as the Prom King or Queen.
4.What is the writer’s purpose to write this passage?
A. To tell an interesting experience of high school students.
B. To tell how the western students spend the last days of high school.
C. To introduce serval ways of western students’ killing time.
D. To tell how western high school students usually celebrate graduation.
Free Fun Guides
1.What is new about this year’s Museum Day?
A. People will get free tickets online.
B. Two museums offer free admission.
C. People can visit a museum for free.
D. People can visit museums online.
2. How is National Public Lands Day different from the other three events?
A. It comes on Sept. 25.
B. Visitors may choose what to visit.
C. Admission is free for people.
D. Visitors may do some volunteer work.
3.How can kids get a free book?
A. By reading eighty books at any Barnes & Noble.
B. By downloading and printing out a passport.
C. By signing up a summer reading program and choosing one of the books they have read.
D. By signing up for a winter reading program.
4.Which of the following shows the similarity between Museum Day and Free Night of Theater?
A. They take place once a year.
B. They last for the same length of time.
C. The tickets can be used in any U.S. city.
D. The same number of free tickets is given away.
I have always known my kids use digital communications equipment a lot. But my cellphone bill last month really grabbed my attention. My son had come up to nearly 2,000 incoming text messages, and had sent nearly as many. Of course, he was out of school for the summer and communicating more with friends from a distance. Nevertheless, he found time to keep a summer job and complete a college course in between all that typing with thumb.
I was even more surprised to learn that my son is normal. "Teenagers with cellphones each send and receive 2,272 text messages a month on average, " Nielsen Mobile said.
Some experts regret that all that keyboard jabber(键盘闲聊) is making our kids stupid, unable to read non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture and other silent signals of mood and attitude. Unlike phones, text messaging doesn't even allow transmission of tone of voice or pauses, says Mark Bauerlein, author called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.
Beyond that, though, I'm not sure I see as much harm as critics of this trend. I' ve posted before on how I initially tried to control my kids' texting. But over time, I have seen my son suffer no apparent ill effects, and he gains a big benefit, continuing contact with others.
I don't think texting make kids stupid. It may make them annoying, when they try to text and talk to you at the same time. And it may make them distracted, when buzzing text message interrupt efforts to noodle out a math problem or finish reading for school.
But I don't see texting harming teens' ability to communicate. My son is as accustomed to nonverbal cues as any older members of our family. I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from a great distance. because he is constantly available by means of text message and responds with faithfulness and speed.
1.What is Mark Bauerlein ' s attitude to texting?
A. It is convenient for teens to communicate with others.
B. It is likely to cause trouble in understanding each other.
C. It is convenient for teens to text and call at the same time.
D. It will cause damage to the development of teens' intelligence.
2.What would be the best title for this passage?
A. For Teens, Texting Instead of Talking
B. For Parents, Caring Much for Their Kids
C. Disadvantages of Texting
D. The Effect of Communication
3.What does the underlined word "distracted" in the fifth paragraph mean?
A. Confused. B. Absent-minded.
C. Comfortable. D. Bad-tempered.
请根据你对下面漫画的理解，以“Should we help the old who fall down on the street?”为题，用英语写一篇作文。
你的作文应包括以下内容：
1．简要描述漫画内容；
2．分析不愿扶老人的原因，至少两点；
3．你的观点。
注意：
1．参考词汇：肇事者： trouble maker
2．作文词数：150左右；
Should we help the old who fall down on the street?
As we can see in the picture，
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：每个空格只填1个单词。
Disability aids are vital to those who suffer problems with executing work with two hands. These are people who have been disabled due to some major sickness or some other problems. In order to help them carry on their work in the normal way, disability aids are manufactured. This helps them make their life a lot easier than what it would have been without these aids. The kind of disability aids that an individual might require depends on the person only. It is the problem that a person faces that decides the aids that he/she will use for carrying out their respective jobs. The following is the list of a few disability aids that come of significant use.
The first and foremost aid is the stocking aid, aiding the individuals suffering from the problem of bending down to reach the foot and wear their own socks. These stocking aids have a gutter(槽) that is made up of plastic material. These gutters are shaped in a certain way along with the attachment of cotton tapes in it. The sock is then put over the gutter. The foot is placed inside the gutter. The cotton tapes help in pulling the socks up the leg and subsequently the sock. In this manner, the sock is worn by a person who has problems wearing it by bending one’s back and reaching the foot.
There are openers that help the people who have problems with their hands or wrists to open bottles of ketchup, jam and other such bottles and jars that necessitates the use of hands and fingers.
The third type of disability aids that comes to our minds are lifts. Now what are lifts? Lifts are certain machines that help in lifting people from specific areas, such as a bathtub or a set of stairs. These lifts are of varied types and come for numerous applications. It is for the individual to decide the type that he/she requires to use.
For people, who have problems in balancing their upper bodies in a stable manner, there is something known as grab rails. These grab rails are installed for those who have mobility problems in their upper bodies. These rails come in varieties of shapes, sizes and angles. These grab rails are available to home users as well, in their different variations. One can purchase and fix one to their homes according to one’s specificities. These grab rails require the act of screwing and drilling in order to fix them to their appropriate place. The prices of these rails also vary according to the variation of their shapes and sizes.
A portable book holder is a much sought-after disability aid. It can be used by anybody for that matter, not just the disabled. These portable book holders are light-weight and can be easily moved about. These holders relieve the strains on one’s hands, necks and shoulders that might occur due to the handling of a book. The holders are provided with extended legs that help in placing the reading material at suitable distance.
Thus with the help of these disability aids, the old and disabled people can make their lives much more convenient and comfortable that would otherwise have been a cumbersome and complex one.
Disability Aids
Theme | Disability aids are important to people with disabilities1. from some major sickness or other problems. | |
Different2. of aids | Stocking aids | They can be used to help individuals whose bodies are not 3. enough to reach their feet to put on socks by themselves. |
Openers | They can be used to aid the disabled to open the bottles when the use of hands or wrists is a 4. . | |
Lifts | They can be used to lift people from specific areas. They come in 5. of types and are 6. numerously. | |
Grab rails | They can be used to keep their balance in a stable manner after proper 7. . | |
Book holders | They can be used to help with the8. of strains on one’s hands , necks and shoulders when reading. | |
9. | 10. these disability aids, the life of the old and disabled would become cumbersome and complex. | |
Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.
1.What characterizes the business school student population of today?
A. Greater diversity.
B. Intellectual maturity.
C. Exceptional diligence.
D. Higher ambition.
2.What is the author’s concern about current business school education?
A. It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations.
B. It will produce business leaders of a uniform style.
C. It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills.
D. It stresses competition rather than cooperation.
3.What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?
A. Age and educational background.
C. Attitude and approach to business.
B. Social and professional experience.
D. Ethnic origin and gender.
4.What does Mannaz say about the current management style?
A. It is eradicating the tough aspects of management.
B. It encourages male and female executives to work side by side.
C. It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model.
D. It is shifting towards more collaborative models.
