American Sports

The United States is a sports-loving nation. Sports in America take a variety of forms: organized competitive struggles, which draw huge crowds to cheer their favorite team to victory; athletic games, played for recreation anywhere sufficient space is found; and hunting and fishing. Most sports are seasonal, so that what is happening in sports depends upon the time of year. Some sports are called spectator sports, as the number of spectators greatly exceeds the number playing in the game.

Baseball is the most popular sport in the US. It is played throughout the spring and summer, and professional baseball teams play well into the fall. Although no other game is exactly like baseball, perhaps the one most nearly like it is the English game of cricket.

Football is the most popular sport in the fall. The game originated as a college sport more than 75 years ago. It is still played by almost every college and university in the country, and the football stadiums of some of the largest universities seat as many as 80,000 people. The game is not the same as European football or soccer. In American football there are 11 players on each team, and they are dressed in padded uniforms and helmets because the game is rough and injuries are likely to occur.

Basketball is the winter sport in American schools and colleges. Like football, basketball originated in the US and is not popular in other countries. Many Americans prefer it to football because it is played indoors throughout the winter and because it is a faster game. It is a very popular game with high schools, and in more than 20 states, state-wide high school matches are held yearly.

Other spectator sports include wrestling, boxing, and horse racing. Although horse-racing fans call themselves sportsmen, the accuracy of the term is questionable, as only the jockeys who ride the horses in the races can be considered athletes. The so-called sportsmen are the spectators, who do “not assemble” primarily to see the horses race, but to bet upon the outcome of each race. Gambling is the attraction of horse racing.

1．Hunting and fishing are mainly favored by men, young and old, in the US.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

2．Professional baseball teams can continue to play for a long period of time in the fall after the regular baseball seasons of spring and summer.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

3．Baseball shares many features with the English game of cricket.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

4．Football can be classified as a spectator sport.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

5．Many Americans like basketball better than football because the latter is so harsh that players have to wear special uniforms.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

6．Basketball in American is so popular with universities that nationwide university matches are held yearly.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

7．Horse-racing fans cannot be considered sportsmen because they are spectators whose primary interest is gambling.

A. Right B. Wrong C. Not mentioned

Soot and Snow：a Hot Combination

l New research from NASA scientists suggests emissions of black soot alter the way sunlight reflects off snow. According to a computer simulation, black soot may be responsible for 25 percent of observed global warming over the past century.

2 Soot in the higher latitudes of the Earth, where ice is more common, absorbs more of the sun's energy and warmth than an icy, white background. Dark-colored black carbon, or soot, absorbs sunlight, while lighter colored ice reflects sunlight.

3 Soot in areas with snow and ice may play all important role in climate change. Also, if snow and ice covered areas begin melting, the warming effect increases, as the soot becomes more concentrated on the snow surface. “This provides a positive feedback, as glaciers and ice sheet smelt, they tend to get even dirtier,” said Dr．James Hansen，a researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NewYork.

4 Hansen found soot's effect on snow albedo （solar energy reflected back to space）, which may be contributing to trends toward early springs in the Northern Hemisphere, such as thinning Arctic sea ice, melting glaciers and permafrost. Soot also is believed to play a role in changes in the atmosphere above the oceans and land.

5 “Black carbon reduces the amount of energy reflected by snow back into space, thus heating the snow surface more than if there were no black carbon,”Hansen said. Soot's increased absorption of solar energy is especially effective in warming the world's climate. “This forcing is unusually effective, causing twice as much global warming as a carbon-dioxide forcing of the same magnitude,”Hansen noted.

6 Hansen cautioned, although the role of soot in altering global climate is substantial, it does not alter the fact that greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate warming during the past century. Such gases are expected to be the largest climate forcing for the rest of this century.

7 The researchers found that observed warming in the Northern Hemisphere was 1arge in the winter and spring at middle and high latitudes. These observations were consistent with the researchers' climate model simulations, which showed some of the largest warming effects occurred when there were heavy snow cover and sufficient sunlight.

词汇：

soot n．煤烟，煤灰

emission n．释放，散发，排放

simulation v．模拟

latitude n．纬度

glacier n．冰川，冰河

albedo n．反照率

permafrost n．永冻层

forcing n．温室作用

dioxide n．二氧化物

magnitude n．量，大小

1．Paragraph 3____________

2．Paragraph 4____________

3．Paragraph 6____________

4．Paragraph 7____________

A Soot's Role in Changes in the Climate and the Atmosphere

B Observations of Warming in the Northern Hemisphere

C Explanation of Increased Warming Effect Caused by Soot

D Effort to Reduce Snow Albedo

E Ways to Reduce Soot Emission

F Greenhouse Gases as the Main Factor of Global Warming

5. In the twentieth century, soot_________ .

6. Hansen cautioned that greenhouse gases_________ .

7. Black soot covered snow and ice_________ .

8. A soot forcing is unusually effective, which_________ .

A produces much more global warming than a carbon-dioxide forcing of the same magnitude

B contributed to 25 percent of observed global warming

C can produce greenhouse gases

D absorb more of sun's energy and warmth than white background

E still surpass soot in warming the world's climate during the last century

F can be seen mostly in the Northern Hemisphere

Goal of American Education

Education is all enormous and expensive part of American life. Its size is matched by its variety.

Differences in American schools compared with those found in the majority of other countries lie in the fact that education here has long been intended for everyone — not just for a privileged elite. Schools ale expected to meet the needs of every child, regardless of ability, and also the needs of society itself. This means that public schools offer more than academic subjects. It surprises many people when they come here to find high schools offering such courses as typing, sewing, radio repair, computer programming or driver training, along with traditional academic subjects such as mathematics, history, and languages. Students choose their curricula depending on their interests, future goals, and level of ability. The underlying goal of American education is to develop every child to the utmost of his or her own possibilities, and to give each one a sense of civic and community consciousness.

Schools have traditionally played an important role in creating national unity and“Americanizing”the millions of immigrants who have poured into this country from many different backgrounds and origins. Schools still play a large role in the community, especially in the small towns.

The approach to teaching may seem unfamiliar to many, not only because it is informal, but also because there is not much emphasis on learning facts. Instead, Americans try to teach their children to think for themselves and to develop their own intellectual and creative abilities. Students spend much time learning how to use resource materials libraries, statistics and computers. Americans believe that if children are taught to reason well and to research well, they will be able to find whatever facts they need throughout the rest of their lives. Knowing how to solve problems is considered more important than the accumulation of facts.

This is America's answer to the searching question that thoughtful parents all over the world are asking themselves in the fast-moving time:“How Can one prepare today's child for a tomorrow that one can neither predict nor understand?”

词汇：

privileged adj．享有特权的

elite n．精英，精华

curricula n．课程

underlying adj．潜在的

reason v．推理

1．Which of the following best states the goal of American education?

A）To teach every learner some practical skills.

B）To provide every learner with rich knowledge.

C）To give every student the opportunity to fully develop his／her ability.

D）To train every student to be a responsible citizen.

2．It is implied in the passage that _____ .

A）all high-school students take the same courses

B）every high school student must take some practical ability training courses

C）every public school offers the same academic subjects

D）the subjects every student takes may vary

3．American schools place great emphasis on the learner's _____ .

A）enrichment of knowledge

B）accumulation of facts

C）acquisition of the ability to be creative

D）acquisition of the ability to work with his hands

4．According to the passage，American education meets the needs of all the following EXCEPT _____ .

A）the brightest students

B）the slow students

C）the students from foreign countries

D）the immigrants

5. Which of the following best states the feature of American education that makes it different from education in other countries?

A）The large number of its schools.

B）The variety of the courses offered in its schools.

C）Its special consideration given to immigrants.

D）Its underlying goal to develop every child's abilities to the fullest extent.

Common Problems, Common Solutions

The chances are that you made up your mind about smoking a long time ago — and decided it's not for you.

The chances are equally good that you know a lot of smokers — there are, after all about 60 million of them, work with them, and get along with them very well.

And finally it's a pretty safe bet that you're open-minded and interested in all the various issues about smokers and nonsmokers — or you wouldn't be reading this.

And those three things make you incredibly important today.

Because they mean that yours is the voice — not the smoker's and not the anti-smoker's — that will determine how much of society's efforts should go into building walls that separate us and how much into the search for solutions that bring us together.

For one tragic result of the emphasis on building walls is the diversion of millions of dollars from scientific research on the causes and cures of diseases which, when all is said and done, still strike the nonsmoker as well as the smoker. One prominent health organization, to cite but a single instance, now spends 28 cents of every publicly contributed dollar on "education" （much of it in anti-smoking propaganda） and only 2 cents on research.

There will always be some who want to build walls, who want to separate people from people, and up to a point, even these may serve society. The anti-smoking wall-builders have, to give them their due, helped to make us all more keenly aware of choice.

But our guess, and certainly our hope, is that you are among the far greatest number who know that walls are only temporary at best, and that over the long run, we can serve society's interest better by working together in mutual accommodation.

Whatever virtue walls may have, they can never move our society toward fundamental solutions. People who work together on common problems, common solutions, can.

1. What does the word "wall" used in the passage mean?

A） Anti-smoking propaganda.

B） Diseases striking nonsmokers as well as smokers.

C） Rules and regulations that prohibit smoking.

D） Separation of smokers from nonsmokers.

2. In paragraph 4, "you" refers to _____ .

A） smokers

B） nonsmokers

C） anti-smokers

D） smokers who have quitted smoking

3. It is evident that the author is not in favor of _____ .

A） building a wall between smokers and nonsmokers

B） doing scientific research at the expense of one's health

C） bringing smokers and nonsmokers together

D） proving accommodation for smokers

4. As is suggested, the common solution to the common problem is _____ .

A） to separate people from people

B） to work together in mutual accommodation

C） to make us more keenly aware of choice

D） to serve society's interests better

5. According to the passage, the writer looks upon the anti-smoking wall-builders actions _____ .

A） optimistically

B） pessimistically

C） unconcernedly

D） skeptically

Early or Later Day Care

The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby maintains that separation from the parents during the sensitive “attachment” period from birth to three may scar a child's personality and predispose to emotional problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby's work that children should not be subjected to day care before the age of three because of the parental separation it entails, and many people do believe this. But there are also arguments against such a strong conclusion.

Firstly, anthropologists point out that the insulated love affair between children and parents found in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. For example, in some tribal societies, such as the Ngoni, the father and mother of a child did not rear their infant alone — far from it. Secondly, common sense tells US that day care would not be so widespread today if parents, care-takers found children had problems with it. Statistical studies of this kind have not yet been carried out, and even if they were, the results would be certain to be complicated and controversial. Thirdly, in the last decade there have been a number of careful American studies of children in day care, and they have uniformly reported that day care had a neural or slightly positive effect on children's development. But tests that have had to be used to measure this development are not widely enough accepted to settle the issue.

But Bowlby's analysis raises the possibility that early day care has delayed effects. The possibility that such care might lead to, say, more mental illness or crime 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. Children under three are likely to protest at leaving their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three or three and a half almost all children find the transition to nursery easy, and this is undoubtedly why more and more parents make use of child care at this time. The matter, then, is far from clear-cuff, though experience and available evidence indicate that early care is reasonable for infants.

词汇：

psychoanalyst n．精神分析学家一心理分析学家

insulate vt．隔绝

rear vt．抚养

predispose 易导致

care taker n.照顾者，看管人

entail vt．蕴涵

infant n．婴儿

anthropologist n．人类学家

1．Which of the following statements would Bowlby support?

A） Statistical studies should be carried out to assess the positive effect of day car for children at the age of three or older.

B） Early day care can delay the occurrence of mental illness in children.

C） The first three years of one's life is extremely important to the later development of personality.

D） Children under three get used to the life at nursery schools more readily than children over three.

2．Which of the following is derivable from Bowlby's work?

A） Mothers should not send their children to day care centers before the age of three.

B） Day care nurseries have positive effects on a child's development.

C） A child sent to a day care center before the age of three may have emotional problems in later life.

D） Baby care would not be so popular if it has noticeable negative effects on a child's s personality.

3．It is suggested that modern societies differ from traditional societies in that ______ .

A） the parents-child relationship is more exclusive in modern societies

B） a child more often grows up with his/her brothers or sisters in traditional societies

C） mother brings up children with the help of her husband in traditional societies

D） children in modern societies are more likely to develop mental illness in later years

4．Which of the following statements is NOT an argument against Bowlby's theory?

A） Many studies show that day care has a positive effect on children's development.

B） The fact that there are so many nursery schools today shows that day care is safe.

C） The separation of young children from their parents is common in some traditional societies.

D） Parents find the immediate effects of early day care difficult to deal with.

5. Which of the following best expresses the writer's attitude towards early day care?

A） Children under three should stay with their parents.

B） Early day care has positive effects on children's development.

C） The issue is controversial and its settlement calls for the use of statistics.

D） The effects of early day care on children are exaggerated and parents should ignore the issue.