This is time of year when we think about giving and receiving presents. Can you find a little extra to give? On this page we suggest a few organizations you might like to help.

       Littleton Children’s Home

       We don’t want your money, but children’s toys, books and clothes in good condition would be very welcome.

       Also—we are looking for friendly families who would take our children into their homes for a few hours or days as guests. You have so much—will you share it?

       Phone Sister Thomas on 55671.

       Children’s Hospice

       We look after a small number of very sick children. This important work needs skill and love. We cannot continue without gifts of money to pay for more nursing staff. We also need story books and toys suitable for quiet games.

       Please contact The Secretary, Little Children’s Hospice, Newby Road.w.^w.k.s.5*u.c.#o@m

       Street Food

       In the winter weather, it’s no fun being homeless. It’s even worse if you’re hungry. We give hot food to at least fifty people every night. It’s hard work, but necessary. Can you come and help? If not, can you find a little money? We use a very old kitchen, and we urgently need some new saucepans. Money for new ones would be most welcome indeed.

       Contact Street Food, c/o Mary’s House, Elming Way, Littleton. Phone 27713.

       Littleton Youth Club

       Have you got an unwanted chair?—a record player?—a pot of paint?

       Because we can use them!

       We want to get to work on our meeting room!

       Please phone 66231 and we’ll be happy to collect anything you can give us.

       Thank you!

       The Night Shelter

       We offer a warm bed for the night to anyone who has nowhere to go. We rent the former Commercial Hotel on Green Street. Although it is not expensive, we never seem to have quite enough money. Can you let us have a few pounds? Any amount, however small, will be such a help.

       Send it to us at 15, Green St, Littleton. Please make check payable to Night Shelter.

Reading the passage, you might like to help these organizations which work for     

       A．homeless and sick children    

       B．less fortunate members of our society   

       C．hungry people who have no beds to sleep in 

       D．friendly members of our society to help others

If you like children and can offer a happy family to a homeless child, you may go to      .

A．Street Food  B．Night Shelter     C．Children’s Home   D．Children’s Hospice

We can infer that       .

       A．there are too many social problems in this country      

       B．people are very poor during the time for giving presents     

       C．warm-hearted people like to give away money     

       D．this passage is taken from a local newspaper

If your child has grown up, you may take the child’s things to        .         

       A．Children’s Home and Children’s Hospice  B．Youth Club and Children’s Home     

       C．Children’s Hospice and Night Shelter     D．Youth Club and Night Shelter

THIS was the year the Earth struck back.

Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, snow storms, landslides and droughts killed at least a quarter of a million people in 2010 – the deadliest year in more than a generation. More people were killed worldwide by natural disasters this year than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past 40 years combined.

"It just seemed like it was back-to-back and it came in waves," said Craig Fugate, who heads the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. It handled a record number of disasters in 2010.

And we have ourselves to blame most of the time, scientists and disaster experts say.

Even though many catastrophes have the ring of random chance, the hand of man made this a particularly deadly, costly, extreme and weird（古怪的） year for everything from wild weather to earthquakes.

Poor construction and development practices conspire to make earthquakes more deadly than they need be. More people live in poverty in vulnerable（脆弱的） buildings in crowded cities. That means that when the ground shakes, the river breaches, or the tropical cyclone hits, more people die.

Disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes "are pretty much constant," said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. "All the change that's made is man-made."

The January earthquake that killed well more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people - many of them living in poverty - and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. So had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, total deaths would have probably been in the 80,000 range, said Richard Olson, director of disaster risk reduction at Florida International University.

In February, an earthquake that was more than 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile's bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Climate scientists say Earth's climate also is changing, bringing extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding.

In the summer, one weather system caused oppressive heat in Russia, while farther south it caused flooding in Pakistan that inundated 161,200 square kilometers, about the size of Wisconsin. That single heat-and-storm system killed almost 17,000 people, more people than all the worldwide airplane crashes in the past 15 years.

Scientists have calculated that the killer Russian heat wave—setting a national record of 43.9℃—would happen once every 100,000 years without global warming.

What is responsible for the most human deaths in 2010?

A．Natrual disasters.       B．Terrorist attacks.

    C．Poor buildings.      D．Too rapid developrnent.

According to Andreas Schraft,             .

A．earthquakes are happening more often because of human beings

B．earthquakes are causing more damage because of human beings

C．stronger houses should be built to limit storm damage

D．Port—au—Prince is now overpopulated

The main point of the article is to           

A．list the natural disasters that occurred in 2010

B．give the details of some natural disasters of 2010

C．warn that more natural disasters are to strike

D．blame humanity for not helping those affected by the disasters

A story from the Bible tells of old Babylon, where the men decided to build a tower that would touch the sky．But God was unhappy, and he made them speak different languages．They couldn’t understand each other, so their dream never came true．

Yet the dream remains alive: if all men speak the same language, they can do anything．L．L．Zamenhof from Poland was among the men who pursue this dream．He developed Esperanto（世界语）between 1877 and 1885．

As the most successful man-made world language, it is spoken by over two million people around the world．Last month, the World Esperanto Congress（大会）, dealing with language rights, ended in Sweden．The 2004 conference will be held in Beijing．Most Esperanto speakers are in Central and Eastern Europe and in East Asia, particularly Chinese mainland．

Esperanto has two advantages．First, it’s easy．Each letter has exactly one sound and there are just 16 basic grammar rules．The second advantage is that it belongs to no one country．But Esperanto has only reached a small number of people compared with natural languages widely used around the world-such as English or Chinese．While these languages are deeply connected with their nations and cultures, Esperanto doesn’t have this background．

Will Esperanto really become a global language? It remains a question．

The writer tells us a story at the beginning to          ．

           A．explain why men have been making the effort to create a language shared by all

              B．explain why men now speak different languages

              C．show the relationship between man and God

              D．prove that language is very important

What does the underlined word “pursue” in the second paragraph mean?

              A．“Realize”．     B．“Work for”．   C．“Be against”． D．“Follow”．

What is the basic difference between Esperanto and English?

              A．More people speak English than Esperanto．

              B．Esperanto words are easier to spell．

              C．Esperanto has fewer grammar rules．

              D．Esperanto is not supported by any country or culture．

What does the story mainly talk about?

              A．Advantages and disadvantages of Esperanto．

              B．Men’s dream of sharing the same language．

              C．The most successful planned language-Esperanto．

              D．Comparison of Esperanto and other languages like English and Chinese．

A strong wind can be a dangerous thing — sometimes it is powerful enough to knock you off your feet. But to plants, the wind is a source of new life, carrying them or their spores (孢子) thousands of miles.

A NASA satellite called QuikSCAT has discovered highways of wind over the Earth's oceans. Scientists believe these invisible roads may explain why many nonflowering plants, such as mosses (苔) and lichens (地衣), grow where they do.

The satellite is able to send microwaves (微波) from space to the surface of the ocean. The pattern of signals that come back shows which way the winds are blowing.

Using this data, the scientists studied a group of islands in the southern hemisphere (半球), near Antarctica．Winds tend to blow anticlockwise (逆时针) in this region, but there are lots of local differences.

When the researchers compared these local patterns to botanical (植物学) data, they found that the wind had an important effect on where species of mosses, lichens, and other nonflowering plants grow.

For example, Bouvet Island and Heard Island, share 30 per cent of their moss species, 29 per cent of liverworts (叶苔), and 32 per cent of lichens — even though they are 4,430 kilometers apart. In contrast, Gough Island and Bouvet Island, separated by just 1,860 kilometers of sea, share only 16 per cent of mosses and 17 per cent of liverworts. They have no lichens in common.

Ferns (蕨类植物) and flowering plants don't travel as well in the wind, so they don't show the same kinds of distribution (分布) patterns.

This story is about _____.

       A．the discovery of wind highways    B．how wind travels

       C．how wind affects different plants        D． one function of the wind

The underlined word "data" in the fourth paragraph means _____.

       A．signal     B．pattern      C．information      D． research

Which of the following is wrong?

       A．Bouvet Island, Heard Island and Gough Island are all in the southern hemisphere.

       B．Winds in the researched area blow anti-clockwise.

       C．The scientists shouldn't base this research on how winds affect where ferns grow.

       D． Without the discovery of QuikSCAT, the research wouldn't have made sense.

Which of the following diagrams shows the correct position of the islands?

         

            

    A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

   A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises(出现) from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar(奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl-friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is _______.

A. repeated without any change                  B. treated as a joke

C. made some changes by the parent            D. set in the present

2. According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is _______.

A. in a realistic setting                       B. heard for the first time

C. repeated too often                                  D. told in a different way

3. The advantage claimed(提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.

A. makes them less fearful

B. develops their power of memory

C. makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

D. encourages them not to have strange beliefs

4. The author’s mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that _______.

A. fairy stories are still being made up

B. there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales

C. people try to modernize old fairy stories

D. there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

5. One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

A. they are full of imagination

B. they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

C. they are not interesting

D. they make teachers of history difficult to teach