It is ________________ (分布广地，普遍地) known that he has gained a master’s degree.

You are busy filling out the application form for a position you really need; let’s assume you once actually completed a couple of years of college work or even that you completed your degree. Isn’t it tempting to lie just a little, to claim on the form that your diploma(毕业文凭) represents a Harvard degree? Or that you finished an extra couple of years back at State University?
More and more people are turning to an utter deception(欺骗)  like this to land their first job or to move head in their careers. For personnel officers, like most Americans, value degrees from famous schools. A job applicant may have a good education anyway, but he or she assumes that chances of being hired are better with a diploma from a well-known university. Registrars(注册主任)at most well-known colleges say that they deal with dishonest claims like these at the rate of about one per week.
Personnel officers do check up on degrees listed on application forms. If it turns out that an applicant is lying, most colleges are unwilling to accuse the applicant directly. One lvy League school refers to them as “special cases”, One well-known West Coast school, in perhaps the most delicate phrase of all, says these claims are made by “no such people”.
To avoid complete lies, some job seekers claim that they “attended” or “were associated with” a college or university. After careful checking, a personnel officer may discover that “attending” means being dismissed after one semester. It may be that “being as sociated with” a college means that the job-seeker visited his younger brother for a football weekend. One school that keeps records of false claims says that the practice dates back at least to the turn of  the century—that’s when they began keeping records, anyhow.
If you don’t want to lie or even stretch the truth, there are companies that will sell you a fake diploma. One company, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, will put your name on a diploma from any number of non-existent colleges. The price begins at around twenty dollars for a diploma from “Smoot State University”. The prices increase rapidly for a degree from the “University of Purdue”. As there is no Smoot State and the real school in Indiana is properly called Purdue University, the prices seem rather high for one sheet of paper.
【小题1】The writer mainly wants to tell us that _______.

You are mistaken if you think all Chinese people speak in the same way. Have you ever seen a person from Shanghai try talking to 1________ from Guangzhou? It is quite likely 2________ both of them may feel puzzled! The Chinese language, 3________ a whole, uses the same set of characters, but even the same characters can have 4________ pronunciations. That is 5_______ it is difficult for people to understand each other. Luckily, the widespread use of Putonghua in China has made a great contribution 6________ people’s communication, though people from different areas tend to speak with various accents.
People in Northern Europe are much luckier. Even though people from Sweden, Denmark and Norway have their own official languages, it is very convenient for them to communicate with one another. Do you know 7______? That is because their languages are quite similar, though not 8________ small distinctions. Thus, they can communicate easily in their mother tongues.

1 

The time is not far away ___ modern communication will become widespread in China’s vast countryside.

A. when                   B. as                        C. that                    D. which

More than one million children in the United States do not go to school. Instead, they learn at home. Most often, their parents are their teachers. Educational companies, libraries and the Internet provide many families with teaching materials.

    Parents choose home schooling for several reasons. Some choose it because of their religious beliefs. Others say it provides more time for the family to be together. They say the home offers a better place for learning. Some parents believe home schooling avoids learning. Some parents believe home schooling avoids problems of national schools. Critics, however, say children need to attend school with other children.

    All fifty American states and the District of Columbia permit home schooling. Some states do not require much preparation by parents or testing of children. Other states have more requirements for home schooling. Home schooling in the United States began when the country was established. In farm areas, people often lived far from a school. Widespread home schooling took place until about the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, in 1852, the state of Massachusetts passed the first law requiring children to attend school.

    Over the years, the American public education system strengthened and grew. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, some Americans believed that traditional education was not helping their children. So a number of parents began home schooling.

    Home schooling expert Linda Dobson says many people have helped the movement grow. She says many kinds of people have joined the movement. These include rich people and poor people. They represent many races, religions and political beliefs. Ms. Dobson says the number of home-schooled children has increased an estimated fifteen to twenty percent each year during the last fifteen years.

Teaching materials for home schooling do NOT come from _______.

   A. parents                                  B. libraries       

C. the Internet                            D. educational companies

Which of the following is one of the reasons why parents choose home schooling?

A. it makes parents and their children have less time together.

  B. Some people have different religious beliefs from the others.

   C. It can’t provide a comfortable place for children to be in.

   D. There are too many students in a home classroom.

Home schooling was started in ________.

   A. the 1960s                 B. the 1970s       C. the 1850s          D. the 1776

Home schooling in the United States now is __________.

   A. facing many difficulties             B. struggling

   C. growing fast                      D. decreasing in large numbers