In many countries,_ 1.___ is not unusual for families of different backgrounds to live together in the shared space. __2.__, in the United States, this idea may still be considered odd.
But this type of housing, __3.___(call) co-housing, is gaining _4.___(popular) in the United States, too. Co-housing complexes are popping up across the country. For many people, this way of life is a _5.___(relieve) to the busy modern lifestyle. A co-housing community has __6.__(private) owned houses and shared land. There is often a “common house” with a kitchen and dining room, meeting room, and maybe a workshop of library or music room. About 25 co-housing communities __7.__(build) in recent years, and 150 more are planned.
A co-housing complex is a place __8.__ residents shop, cook, and eat together. Residents of a co-housing complex like its sense of shared community. Children have other kids to play __9.___which many families like. Other residents like the feeling of living in a “village”. Residents also say that they can live in co-housing for _10.__(little) money than they would pay for nearby apartments.
Tony Tomei was well-known in Los Alamos, N.M. for his heroic action when the forest fires swept through last May. Tomei had ___ run away from his house, which was ____. But soon after reaching a safe place, Tomei ____that although he had saved most of his collection of accordions (a kind of musical instruments), his precious Italian Bugari Armando accordion was ___ in the house. He raced home to ___it. “When I drove up, there was a lot of smoke,” he says, and at that moment he made ___ . “I was going to ____the fire. I was the only one left to ____ the neighbors’ house.” Tomei, 52, an engineer and accordion instructor, had no idea what a great danger he would ____. With a garden hose (软管)，he spent the ___ few hours putting out small spot fires.
Then the ___ picked up, and the fire began moving slowly from the valley 60 feet below toward his home. He attempted to put out the fire but without any __. The fire and smoke blew up beside him, ____ him to the ground, where he got hold of a tree. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I just stuck my face in the dirt.”
___, the wind changed. Against a frightening background of house burning up and down his street, Tomei fought through much of the ___ without any more water and ___ a couple of tools he could get to keep small fires away from his neighbors’ house.
At sunrise he got his first real look at what had left of the neighborhood. “I saw all those damaged house and thought, oh, my God,” ___ he’d saved his home along with two others’.
When his neighbor Nancy Tenbrink ___ to the house that she’d thought was lost, she ___threw her arms around Tomei. “My house was important, but his life was much more ___,” she says. “I’m deeply thankful for what he did for us.”
1.A. happilyB. bravelyC. safelyD. nearly
2.A. in fireB. out of orderC. in dangerD. out of shape
3.A. thoughtB. realizedC. saidD. wondered
4.A. stillB. alsoC. justD. yet
5.A. findB. hideC. checkD. get
6.A. a suggestionB. the choiceC. a decisionD. the preparation
7.A. put upB. keep fromC. take upD. hold off
8.A. preventB. saveC. watchD. keep
9.A. faceB. expectC. protectD. fight
10.A. restB. lastC. hardD. next
11.A. waterB. windC. smokeD. fire
12.A. toolsB. successC. meaningD. help
13.A. takingB. leavingC. knockingD. getting
14.A. FunnilyB. UnluckilyC. UndoubtedlyD. Fortunately
15.A. nightB. afternoonC. midnightD. daybreak
16.A. normallyB. onlyC. hardlyD. almost
17.A. ForB. AsC. ButD. If
18.A. removedB. returnedC. referredD. reported
19.A. tearfullyB. surprisinglyC. repeatedlyD. thoughtfully
20.A. specialB. lovelyC. valuableD. useful
Helping Students Find Their Writing Voices
One of the most frustrating things for writing teachers is reading papers that simply lack style. When all of the research has been completed and all of the sentences are structured well, but the paper still lacks some pizzazz（活力），it can be boring to grade. If you are searching for ways to help your students find their voices, why not try making students themselves the topic of the writing? 1.
Who are you?
One of the most difficult questions for students to answer is: “Who are you?” _ 2.__ In doing this, through writing, students will start to see their personalities differently and, hopefully, be able to add a feature to their writing.
Dear John
3. Encourage them to write to a famous person they’ve always admired, and then the one they absolutely hate. Explore how their language changes between the two letters. When students know their audiences, it is much easier for them to add the kind of personality their audience wants to see．
4. When students write about what matters most to them, they will often give you the best writing you’ve ever seen. You’ll get those when you ask questions that hit home. When students have something to say about a given topic, it can be easier for them to get their ideas down and then work on their writing style.
Get the words on paper, and then edit them
The most valuable lesson students can learn is to write first, and edit later. Have students write for five minutes about their topics. If they can get their ideas down on paper, that’s 90% of the battle. 5. This can help them realize that, once they have the ideas down, the rest is just fine tuning（微调）. Once they have this skill mastered, it’s easy for them to start adding their own personal voices to their papers.
A. What matters to you?
B. What style is taught in class?
C. When they write about themselves, students’ voices often shine through.
D. Writing letters is a great way for students to explore their writing style.
E. Have your students explore who they are and what makes them unique.
F. Voice is that magical quality which is able to make a creative writing idea sing!
G. After that, have them edit these ideas into a really strong introductory paragraph.
If you could take a large snapshot (照片) of everyone in the United States today, it would contain six million more females than males. In this country, women outlive men by about seven years. Throughout the modern world, cultures are different, diets are different, ways of life and causes of death are different, but one thing is the same--- women outlive men.
It starts before birth. At conception, male fetuses(胎儿) outnumber female by about 110 to 100; at birth, the rate has already fallen to about 105 boys to every 100 girls. By the age of 30, there are only enough men left to match the number of women. Then women start taking a lead. Beyond the age of 80, there are nearly twice as many women as men.
“If you look at the top ten or twelve causes of death,” said Deborah Wingard, a disease expert at the University of California at San Diego, “every single one kills more men.” She listed out one sad fate after another – heart disease, lung cancer and so on. Each kills men at roughly twice the rate of that it does women.
More than a century ago American men surpassed and outlived the women. But in the 20th century, women began living longer, primarily because pregnancy（怀孕) and giving birth to children had become less dangerous. The gap grew steadily. In 1946, for the first time ever in the United States, females outnumbered males.
Parts of the reasons are self-made. Men smoke more, drink more and take more life-threatening chances than women. Men are murdered (usually by other men) three times as often as women are. They commit suicide at a higher rate and have more than twice as many fatal car accidents as women do. Men are likely to be involved in alcohol-related deaths.
But behavior doesn’t explain away the longevity gap.
Today, some scientists studying the gender gap believe that the data point to one conclusion: Mother Nature may be partial(偏袒) to women.
Every living thing is assembled according to instructions on its chromosomes (染色体), and humans have 23 pairs of them. But in males, one of these is a weak non-matching pair, expressed by “xy”. The agreement pair in females is “xx”, and its genetic “backup” power is sometimes listed as a clue to woman’s superior restoring force. If the male’s single “x” chromosome isn’t perfect, it is possible for a serious genetic disorder to appear. Some blood diseases, for instance, are diseases caused by a shortcoming in a single gene on the “x” chromosome. They are far more common in males than females.
1.What may the underlined word “outlive” in Paragraph1 mean?
A. Become stronger than.
B. Live longer than.
C. Be wiser than.
D. Be born more earlier than.
2. What can we infer from the second paragraph?
A. Female fetuses are more than male.
B. The female are surpassing the male with age increasing.
C. By the age of 30, the female are more than the male.
D. Over 90, men are more than women in the United States.
3.How many exact diseases are mentioned as examples killing twice men than women?
A. Two. B. Three. C. Ten. D. Five.
4.The best title for this passage is _____
A. Why women live longer than men
B. Women are different from men
C. American men once lived longer than the women
D. Men smoke and drank more than women
◇ Share Flats Happy Valley big flat, 1 room ready for use immediately. Quiet and convenient, fully furnished, park view. $6, 800 including bills with maid. Female nonsmoker. No pet. Sara 25720836 or 10077809.
◇ Moving Sale 2 armchairs, red/brown at $400 each; coffee table, black, wood, $800; oil painting, big, $900; Tianjin carpet, green 3×7, $600; double bed, $500; mirror, big, square, $500; fridge, big, double-door, $1000; old pictures, $140, up, each; plants, big and small. Tel: Weekend, 2521-6011/Weekday, 2524-5867.
◇ Part-time Laboratory Assistant Wanted，required by busy electronics(电子) company to help with development of computer. Should have an electronics degree and some practical experience of working in an electronics laboratory. Hours 9:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Mon.-Fri. Fourteen days paid leave. Salary ￥6598-10230 dependent on experience. Letter of application to: Mrs. G Chan, NOVA ELECTRONICS, 45
Gordon Rd, Hung Hom Kowloon.
1.The one who put on the first ad probably wants to _______.
A. rent (租) a beautiful flat of her own in happy valley
B. share her room in a flat with whoever has no pet
C. find another lady to share the cost to rent a flat
D. take on a maid to look after herself and the flat
2.According to the ads, you may _______.
A. hire a maid by paying $6 800
B. call at 25720836 and see a beautiful park
C. buy two armchairs for $ 400
D. buy an old picture for $150
3.If you want to buy some old furniture, you should_______.
A. get in touch with NOVA ELECTRONICS
B. call at 2524-5867 any day except Monday
C. call at either 2524-5867 on Monday or 2521-6011 on Saturday
D. do it before you move to another place
4.Once you can get a part-time job in NOVA ELECTRONICS, _______.
A. you have to work at least 4 hours a day
B. you should write a letter to Mrs. G Chan
C. you will get no more than $6 598 each month
D. you will be given 14 days off each year besides weekends
“A very disruptive (调皮捣蛋的) six-year-old child kicked my legs and clawed at my hand,” said one teacher. “I broke up a fight and was kicked between my legs,” said another. Many people have heard stories like this. But the situation is more worrying still and it involves parents.
Every child, regardless of the circumstances into which they are born, has the right to achieve their potential, regardless of their parents’ wealth and class. And we recognize that, as a nation, it is a long way to achieve this goal. But with rights come responsibilities and what worries people is that we are in danger of neglecting the latter.
Far too many children are behaving badly at school, even to the point of being violent to staff. This is terrible enough, but it is hard to be surprised since many children are just mirroring the behaviour of their parents. Too many are starting school unable to hold a knife and fork, unused to eating at a table, and unable to use the lavatory(卫生间) properly.
We are in danger of becoming a nation of families living separate lives under one roof. The bedroom, once a place to sleep, has become the living space for the young. Spending hours in front of computer screens, on social networking sites or being immersed (沉迷于) in computer games, children and young people spend little time with their parents. Parents are unable to monitor just what their children are watching.
Schools cannot right the wrongs of society and teachers cannot become substitute parents. Both parties need to work together. Parents must be helped and given confidence to take back control. They are responsible for setting boundaries for their children’s behaviour and sticking to those boundaries. They are responsible for setting a good example to their children and for devoting that most precious of resources---time---so that children come to school ready and willing to learn.
1.In the opinion of the writer, what problem do people ignore?
A. The violence in the school
B. The pressure of students’ learning
C. The right to achieve students’ potential
D. The responsibilities of the students.
2.The underlined part in paragraph 4 means________.
A. parents care little about children’s life at home
B. parents and children live in their separate rooms
C. children don’t live with their parents in the same house
D. children live a different life from that of parents at home
3.The writer’s attitude to the behaviours of parents may be_______.
A. unconcern B. understanding
C. dissatisfied D. tolerant
