As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000--7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations--UNESCO and National Geographic among them--have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials-including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes--which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded–the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project--Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
1.Many scholars are making efforts to ______.
A. promote global languages
B. set up language research organizations.
C. search for language communities
D. rescue disappearing languages
2.What does “that tradition’ in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A. Telling stories about language users
B. Writing books on language teaching.
C. Having full records of the languages
D. Living with the native speaker.
3.What is Turin’s book based on?
A. The cultual studies
B. The documents available at Yale.
C. His language research in Bhutan.
D. His personal experience in Nepal.
4.Which of the following best describe Turin’s work?
A.Write, sell and donate.
B. Collect, protect and reconnect.
C. Record, repair and reward.
D. Design, experiment and report.
Passenger pigeons(旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.
It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons--a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.
Sadly, the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.
By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by Americans’ need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and spring storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.
In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons, but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.
1.In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons________.
A. were the largest bird population in the Us
B. lived mainly in the south of America
C. did great harm to the natural environment
D. were the biggest bird in the world
2.The underlined word “ undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ ________.
A. escape B. liberation
C. ruin D. evolution
3.What was the main reason for people to kill passenger pigeons?
A. To seek pleasure. B. To save other birds.
C. To make money. D. To protect crops.
4.What can we infer about the law passed in Michigan?
A. It was ignored by the public.
B. It was declared too late.
C. It was unfair.
D. It was strict.
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans have gotten a lot “greener” toward the environment. “We didn’t know at that time that there even was an environment, let alone that there was a problem with it,” says Bruce Anderson, president of Earth Day USA.
But what began as nothing important in public affairs has grown into a social movement. Business people, political leaders, university professors, and especially millions of grass-roots Americans are taking part in the movement. “The understanding has increased many, many times,” says Gaylord Nelson, the former governor from Wisconsin, who thought up the first Earth Day.
According to US government reports, emissions (排放)from cars and trucks have dropped from 10.3 million tons a year to 5.5 tons. The number of cities producing CO beyond the standard has been reduced from 40 to 9. Although serious problems still remain and need to be dealt with, the world is a safer and healthier place. A kind of “Green thinking ” has become part of practices.
Great improvement has been achieved. In 1988 there were only 600 recycling programs, today in 1995 there are about 6,600. Advanced lights, motors, and building designs have helped save a lot of energy and therefore prevented pollution.
Twenty–five years ago, there were hardly any education programs for environment. Today, it’s hard to find a public school, university, or law school that does not have such a kind of program. “Until we do that, nothing else will change!” says Bruce Anderson.
1.According to Anderson, before 1970, Americans had little idea about ________.
A. the social movement
B. environmental problems
C. recycling techniques
D. the importance of Earth Day
2.Where does the support for environmental protection mainly come from?
A. The business circle B. Government officials
C.The grass–roots level D. University professors
3.What have Americans achieved in environmental protection?
A. They have cut car emissions to the lowest.
B They have reduced pollution through effective measures.
C. They have lowered their CO levels in forty cities.
D. They have settled their environmental problems.
4.What is especially important for environmental protection according to the last paragraph?
A. Planning B. Education
C. Green living D. CO reduction
Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.
During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.
He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.
My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.
That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.
1.What did Rashid plan to do after his arrival in Sydney?
A. Go shopping B. Take a vacation
C. Join his family D. Find a house
2.What does the underlined word“restored”in the last paragraph mean?
A. Showed B. Gave back
C. Delivered D. Sent out
3.Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
A. Turning Trash to Treasure. B. Living in a a New Country.
C. From India to Australia. D. In Search of New Friends.
假如你是新华中学的学生会主席李华，最近学生忙于学习，疏于锻炼，体质下降，容易感冒，结合实际，写一份“号召锻炼”的倡议书，内容如下：
1. 现状分析；
2. 倡导锻炼。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文流畅。
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根据所学课文和所给汉语意思完成下列句子（每空不超过三个词）！
1.When Zhou Kai’s mother saw him _________________towards the front door without a jacket on, she_________________ him anxiously.
周凯的妈妈看到他没有穿夹克衫就往前门走去，她担心地盯着周凯。
2.Britain was the first country in the world_________________ a free health care system _________________by the government.
英国是世界上第一个由政府负担经费、实行免费医疗的国家。
3.The next day, I _______________a house and _______________a television and a video recorder.
第二天，我闯进一户人家，偷了一台电视机和一台录像机。
4.By the time he was 14, Mozart _________________ many pieces for the harpsichord , piano and violin, _________________ for orchestras.
莫扎特到14岁的时候，不仅已经谱写了很多管弦乐曲，还谱写了许多大键琴曲，钢琴曲和小提琴曲。
5.Ye Xiaogang, ____________ was born in 1955, is one of a group of Chinese composers _________________ the New Tide.
出生在1955年的叶小刚，是以“新潮流”著称得一群中国作曲家的一员。
