Student loans are based on a simple idea: that a graduate’s future flow of earnings will more than cover the costs of doing a degree. But with unemployment rates in parts of the rich world at post-war highs, that may no longer hold true for many people. The consequences will be felt by everybody.
All over the world student indebtedness is causing problems. In Britain, rising university fees mean that student debt is likely to treble (变成三倍) to £70 billion. But, partly because higher education there is so expensive, the scale of the problem is far greater in America. When the next official estimates of outstanding student debt there are published, it is expected to be close to $1 trillion.
Student-loan systems in America and elsewhere are often badly designed for an extended period of high unemployment. In contrast to the housing crash, the risk from student debt is not of a sudden explosion in losses but of gradual financial suffocation (窒息). The pressure needs to be eased.
One option is to change the bankruptcy laws. In America, Britain and elsewhere, these treat student debt as a special case: unlike other forms of debt, it cannot be wiped out. If student debt is not to bind existing graduates and put off future ones, the rules could be changed so that it is dischargeable (可解除的) in bankruptcy. Yet some worry that graduates would rush to declare bankruptcy, handing losses to taxpayers.
So a second option is preferable. Many countries, America included, have designed student debt primarily as a mortgage (抵押)-like obligation: it is repaid to a fixed schedule. Other places, like Britain and Australia, make student-loan repayments income- based so that the prospect of taking on debt is more acceptable to people from poorer backgrounds. That approach makes sense, especially when jobs are scarce.
Both changes would lead to a repricing of student debt. That would be a bad thing for taxpayers, but a good thing overall. Just as borrowers need to understand the risks they are exposing themselves to, voters need to understand the duties that governments are taking on when they subsidize (资助) students.
1. The idea supporting student loans _________.| A．illustrates the way the money serves graduates |
| B．shows the difficulty of paying off the debts |
| C．correctly estimates graduates future earnings |
| D．fails to expect the current condition of indebted students |
| A．High unemployment among graduates. | B．The loose student-loan systems. |
| C．The housing crash. | D．The rapid increase of student loans. |
| A．new bankruptcy rules | B．income-based repayment policy |
| C．clear student obligation | D．a better tax system |
| A．The Serious Tax Problems | B．Graduates Unemployment |
| C．The Indebted Graduates | D．Ways to cancel Students Debts |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Math, Taught like Football
Growing up, I thought math class was something to be endured, not enjoyed. I disliked memorizing formulas and taking tests, all for the dull goal of getting a good grade. But my problem wasn’t with math itself. In fact, I spent countless hours as a child doing logic and math puzzles on my own, and as a teenager, when a topic seemed particularly interesting, I would go to the library and read more about it.
By high school, none of my teachers questioned my mathematical talent, but none of them really encouraged it, either. No one told me that I could become a professional mathematician. What I wanted to do then was to play college football. My ambition was to get an athletic scholarship to attend a Big Ten school.
The chances of that happening were very low. In high school, I was just an above-average athlete and my high school was not a “feeder” school for college sports programs.
That didn’t stop me from dreaming, though. And it didn’t stop my coaches from encouraging me to believe I could reach my goal, and preparing and pushing me to work for it. They made video tapes of my performances and sent them to college coaches around the country. It didn’t matter that I didn’t initially attract much interest from the big schools. My coaches kept picking up the phone, and kept convincing me to try to prove myself. In the end, a Big Ten school, Pennstate, did offer me a scholarship.
A growing body of research shows that students are affected by more than just the quality of a lesson plan. They also respond to the passion of their teachers and the engagement of their peers, and they seek a sense of purpose. They benefit from specific instructions, constant feedback and a culture of earning that encourages resilience in the face of failure.
Until I got to college, I didn’t really know what mathematics was. I still thought of it as problem sets and laborious computations. Then one day, one of my professors handed me a book and suggested that I think about a particular problem. It wasn’t easy, but it was fascinating.
My professor kept giving me problems, and I kept pursuing them. Before long, he was introducing me to problems that had never been solved before and urging me to find new techniques to help crack them.
I am now a Ph. D. candidate in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and I have published several papers in mathematical journals. I still feel that childlike excitement every time I complete a proof. I wish I’d known this was possible when I was a kid.
1. Why did the writer think math class in school was “something to be endured” before entering college?| A．Because he wasn’t interested in math. |
| B．Because his math teachers didn’t care to push him. |
| C．Because he was too smart and talented for math class. |
| D．Because he was training hard for an athletic scholarship. |
| A．passion | B．constant feedback |
| C．a sense of purpose | D．specific instructions |
| A．was busy looking for problem sets to crack |
| B．began to realize what mathematics really is |
| C．met with laborious computations in his studies |
| D．studied on his own just as he was in high school |
| A．Feeling the children excitement. |
| B．Different mathematical research. |
| C．Generating curiosity and creativity. |
| D．Being a professional mathematician. |
【推荐2】A recent documentary produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation has caused a stir in China and in the UK.
The documentary, titled Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School revolves (以……为主题) around five Chinese teachers who are sent to teach 50 UK teens at a school in Hampshire.
The teachers instruct the students for a month. The pupils are then tested, and the results are compared to the ones of those who have continued in the regular UK education system. The idea is to see if the Chinese method improves academic performance.
The Chinese teachers use their own teaching methods but receive strong resistance from the students. A clip from the documentary online shows some problems, with Chinese teachers calling their students lazy and lacking in discipline(纪律), while the students say the high pressure and harsh teachers are driving them crazy.
This has aroused a new debate in both China and the UK, with some arguing the teenagers need more regulation and discipline. Others say Chinese methods encourage note learning instead of independent thinking. For instance, Chinese language teachers should do more than pass on knowledge about words and characters. They should inspire students, helping them feel the sentiment from Chinese literature. This is a higher level of teaching.
Yang Dongping, dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, says, “The Chinese teaching methods are designed to strictly train the majority. Foreign teaching methods, however, are more natural and relaxing, and designed to inspire students' interest in learning. Education methods are based on culture. That is why a successful education method in one place may not work that well when simply 'transplanted' into another place.”
Yang Dongping says, “The documentary does reflect some problems rooted in traditional Chinese teaching methods. Nobel Prize winner, Yang Zhenning, gave a very fair comment on this issue. He said the Chinese-style education method works for most ordinary qualified students effectively, helping them reach high standards. However, it may compromise the training for high-potential outstanding students.”
1. What is the purpose of 50 UK teens' being instructed by five Chinese teachers?| A．To test the effectiveness of Chinese teaching method. |
| B．To help the school improve their teaching efficiency. |
| C．To do some practical research into the UK education system. |
| D．To test the intelligence of the UK teens. |
| A．Very attractive. | B．Quite friendly. |
| C．Rather cold. | D．Extremely strict. |
| A．passing on knowledge | B．encouraging independent thinking |
| C．regulation and discipline | D．training the majority strictly |
| A．good for Chinese students of all levels |
| B．helpful to students of high standards |
| C．good for most ordinary qualified students |
| D．helpful to high-potential outstanding students |
A master of English education in China, Chen Lin just celebrated his 100th birthday in April. Chen has spent his whole life on English education.
In 1950, Chen started teaching at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU). He was known as the “Professor of Three Ups”. He always put importance on “standing up” and “speaking up” in his classes. He always stood to teach and talked loudly. When class was over, he would “shut up” at once.
③Chen’s good teaching impressed students. LiJinzhao, one of Chen’s students and a teacher at BFSU now, said Chen likes role-playing and singing to make the class active. It was different from the “teacher speaks, students listen” style of the time. He also encouraged students to speak more and practice more.
In 1999, Chen led experts to make English curriculum standards (课程标准). Before that, English teaching goals from primary school to university didn’t connect well with each other. But the standards changed it. Then, English education worked like “one package (一条龙)”. He also wrote the first set of textbooks to carry out the new standards.
After leaving his job, Chen keeps on working. He reads and writes about how to improve English teaching. He once said, “I have been a teacher all my life, and I want to be an English teacher again in my next life.”
1. Why was Chen called the “Professor of Three Ups”? (No more than 15 words)2. According to Li Jinzhao, how did Chen make his classes active? (No more than 4 words)
3. What is Paragraph 3 mainly about? (No more than 5 words)
4. How did the curriculum standards change English education in China? (No more than 8 words)
5. Which of your teachers impresses you most? And why? (No more than 20 words)
【推荐1】Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder. This increase in complexity, often called "feature creep," costs consumers time, but it also costs business money. Product returns in the U.S. cost a hundred billion dollars a year, and a recent study by Elke den Ouden, of Philips Electronics, found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn't figure out how to use them. Companies now know a great deal about problems of usability and consumer behavior, so why is it that feature creep proves unstoppable?
In part, fieature creep is the product of the so-called internal-audience problem: the people who design and sell product are not the ones who buy and use them, and what engineers and marketers think is important is not necessarily what's best for consumers. The engineers tend not to notice when more options make a product less usable. And marketing and sales departments see each additional feature as a new selling point, and a new way to attract customers.
You might think, then, that companies could avoid fieature creep by just paying attention to what customers really want. But that's where the trouble begins, because although consumers find overloaded gadgets（ 配件）unmanageable, they also find them attractive. It turns out that when we look at a new product in a store we tend to think that the more features there are, the better. It is only once we get the product home and try to use it that we realize the virtues of simplicity.
It seems strange that we don't expect feature tiredness and thus avoid it. But, as numerous studies have shown, people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. As a result, we will pay more for more features because we systematically overestimate how often we'll use them. We also overestimate our ability to figure out how a complicated product works.
The fact that buyers want bells and whistles but users want something clear and simple creates an unusual problem for companies. A product that doesn't have enough features may fail to catch our eye in the store. But a product with too many features is likely to annoy consumers.
1. What does the first paragraph mainly discuss?| A．The benefits brought by the advanced technology. |
| B．The recent study conducted by Elke den Ouden. |
| C．The loss caused by the feature creep of technology. |
| D．Many problems of usability known by the consumers. |
| A．It is the audience problem that leads to feature creep. |
| B．What matters to designers and marketers is not good for consumers. |
| C．Feature creep brings blessings to the people in marketing and sales. |
| D．The engineers will not pay attention to the quality of the product |
| A．They are deeply convinced that all the products work in simple way. |
| B．They are fed up with the more and more features of the products. |
| C．They are too confident of their ability to use the complicated products. |
| D．They are quite clear about the products which will make them happy. |
| A．Saying No to Feature Creep is No Easy Thing |
| B．Feature-heavy Products in Demand |
| C．The More Features, the Better |
| D．Simplicity Outweighs Complexity |
【推荐2】If what we did were simply work to live, the reality of our everyday existence would be equivalent to that of stone age man. All of human achievement that makes modern life possible has happened because of the time that has been freed up from the work of everyday survival.
For most of the human species on earth man and woman have been occupied with the simple business of staying alive in as much relative comfort as possible.
Hunting and gathering, finding or building shelter, defending the little that one has from plunder(抢夺), surviving long enough to have offsprings of a mature enough age to contribute to the welfare of the group—this was initially the main business of living.
It has only been comparatively recently, since the agricultural and industrial revolutions that used emerging technologies to free human beings from the drudgery of day-to-day survival, that time has become available to do other than simply survive.
However, living to work is a luxury that we should not take for granted, for even now still most of the human race couldn’t be blessed with the pearl.
When we live to work we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it. The term “live to work” implies choice. Working to live denotes the exact opposite: anything will do that pays the bills. Anyone in the latter situation will attest to the undesirability of being in such a position. Living to work suggests exhilaration in one’s calling; it summons images of freedom and excitement in the prospect of what each new day will bring, whereas working to live suggests little choice if any. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” is a question with which most children will be familiar, perhaps even bored. It is a question of what even a young adult can often not be sure of until they have had experiences of many different jobs, or at least the ones they thought to try. But to be forced to work at a task that one does not enjoy day after day for survival would be last choice on anyone’s list. Enlightened humanity, while acknowledging that some undesirable jobs must be done regardless, would acknowledge that if one was motivated in his work, the work would be so much better accomplished.
1. The underlined word drudgery is closest in meaning to ______.| A．imagination | B．hard labor |
| C．dragging | D．familiarity |
| A．have been satisfied by contributing to the welfare of the group. |
| B．stayed alive in much possible comfort for centuries |
| C．made little progress before the emergence of technologies |
| D．were addicted to hunting, gathering and building shelters. |
| A．Human achievements facilitating modern life are done during the leisure time freed from survival work. |
| B．The major early business of humans is to seek chances for technological developments. |
| C．In modern society, most people have enough comforts to make individual choices for work. |
| D．Most adults can answer confidently questions concerning what jobs they want to do. |
| A．Technology, a driving force to push humans ahead |
| B．Working to live, a basic condition for pleasant living to work |
| C．Different desires and prospects people have for different kinds of work. |
| D．Working to live or living to work, a choice distinguishing joy from suffering |
【推荐3】If you want to disturb the car industry, you'd better have a few billion dollars: Mom-and-pop carmakers are unlikely to beat the biggest car companies.
For example, take the Quick Cut Greens Harvester, a tool developed just a couple of years ago by a young farmer in Tennessee, with a small loan from a local Slow Money group. It enables small-scale farmers to harvest 175 pounds of green vegetables per hour—a huge improvement over harvesting just a few dozen pounds by hand—suddenly making it possible for the little guys to compete with large farms of California. Before the tool came out, small farmers couldn't touch the price per pound offered by California farms.
The sustainable success of small farmers, though, won't happen without fundamental changes to the industry.
| A．Another challenge for farmers and managers is the greatest barrier to building a farm of their own. |
| B．But now, with the combination of a better price point and a generally fresher product, they can stay in business. |
| C．There are solutions that could light a path toward a more sustainable and fair farm economy. |
| D．But in agriculture, small farmers can get the best of the major players. |
| E．But competition between small and big farms is fierce. |
| F．One crucial factor is secure access to land. |
| G．Invest more in technology, which is vital for agricultural development. |
【推荐1】Like many parents working from home while their kids are learning remotely, we’ve been looking for creative ways to connect with our children — and nowhere has this been truer than in the kitchen.
Kitchen science, as Liz Heinecke, author of Kitchen Science Lab for Kids calls it doesn’t require any fancy equipment or ingredients (配料)—and, best of all in the era of remote education, we can combine science lessons with everyday meal preparations. By helping with cooking, kids can engage in lively, project-based lessons. Actually, even the easiest recipes include both simple and complex scientific concepts.
Kitchen science isn’t just about what we’re cooking: it’s also about understanding why It’s worth taking the time to figure out how ingredients and temperature interact and why substances behave the way they do. Everyone involved will learn something.
For example, we all know oil and water don’t mix easily, but we can change this by adding mustard (芥末) to the oil and water to make a salad dressing. This is an opportunity to teach kids about the science of emulsions (乳化). Adding lemon juice to a vegetable stops that vegetable from turning brown: cabbage changes color when you add vinegar to it. Both of those phenomena are the result of chemical reactions. In the classroom, it can be hard to see how scientific concepts will apply outside the lab. But when kids see these concepts play out in the real world, that sparks curiosity and learning.
“Every time you step into your kitchen to cook, you put science to work. In fact, physics and chemistry come into play whenever you steam, bake, freeze or boil. Thus, every time you step into the kitchen, it’s an opportunity for everyone to learn more about science,” Liz Heinecke said.
1. What are parents expected to do in the kitchen?| A．Ask kids to cook a meal on their own. | B．Do science experiments in the kitchen. |
| C．Pay attention to cooking ingredients. | D．Combine scientific concepts with recipes. |
| A．Raw materials are important in the kitchen. |
| B．Procedures to cook dinner must be followed. |
| C．Cooking can inspire kids’ interest in studying science. |
| D．Family education is more important than school education. |
| A．Cooking can benefit both kids and parents. |
| B．Parents need to master different cooking skills. |
| C．Lab experiments can be repeated at home. |
| D．Schools should offer cooking courses. |
| A．To practice healthy eating habits. |
| B．To learn food science out of the lab. |
| C．To turn meal preparations into family learning. |
| D．To teach kids some recipes for cooking in the kitchen. |
【推荐2】Humans across the planet were once hunter-gatherers, with insects widely featuring on the menu. Studies have shown that early humans used tools made of bone to dig into termite mounds (白蚁丘).
Later, it quickly became apparent that, when it came to the needs of a growing human population, keeping animals on farms was far more beneficial than catching and eating insects. Farm animals delivered high yields of meat and milk products; provided skins, wool and fur for clothing; and were useful as a means of transport. They were also far more reliable in comparison to the unpredictability and seasonality of insects — particularly in colder countries, such as the UK, where many species hibernate (冬眠) or die in winter. Insects were soon degraded as pests that threatened food production, rather than being considered a source of food themselves.
Our current eating habits are harming the planet. Food production is responsible for almost 60 percent of global biodiversity loss, and contributes to overfishing, climate change and water shortages. Insects offer a promising alternative to a low-ecological-footprint diet: They are genetically very different from humans, so viruses are unlikely to make the jump; they produce only small amounts of greenhouse gas, compared to livestock; they can be fed on organic waste, such as vegetable peelings; and they require only tiny quantities of water. We simply need to accept that eating them is OK.
But a dislike of eating bugs is a largely western phenomenon. Two billion people across South America, Asia and Africa currently eat insects regularly and generally always have done that. Their choice to consume something with six legs rather than four has nothing to do with a lack of alternative food options or income — many are even considered delicious food. Ants, for example, are highly sought after in many parts of the world, and dozens of grasshopper species are consumed across the globe.
While there isn’t enough science yet to conclude the environmental impact of large-scale insect consumption, there is certainly research to demonstrate the huge environmental benefit that eating insects has in comparison to our over consumption of meat and dairy.
1. What can we learn from the passage?| A．Insects are more reliable than farm animals. |
| B．People currently eat insects because of a lack of alternative food options or income. |
| C．Humans are less likely to get virus infection by eating insects. |
| D．It has been concluded that insect consumption has a great effect on environment. |
| A．Serving as means of transport. | B．Changing with the seasons. |
| C．Providing materials for clothes. | D．Giving high output of meat and dairy. |
| A．Bad Effects on the Planet | B．A Dislike of Eating Insects |
| C．Benefits from Keeping Animals | D．Putting Insects on the Menu |
| A．Supportive. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Ambiguous. | D．Sympathetic. |
That’s what researchers from the University of Western Australia found in a new study published in the journal Child Development.
“Parents who frequently put themselves in someone else’s shoes in conversations with their children make it more likely their children will be able to do the same,” said lead author Brad Farrant.
Researchers of the UWA’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research looked at the influence of how parents interact with their children to learn more about how people develop the ability to take another’s perspective.
The two-year study involved more than 120 Australian children aged between four and six, including children with typically developing language and others delayed in language acquisition（习得）.
The children completed tasks which were designed to assess their language skills, ability to infer others’ beliefs and use these to predict others’ behavior, and their ability to shift flexibly between different perspectives.
Among children with typically developing language, the researchers found that mothers who talked more often and in greater detail about people’s thoughts and feelings — commenting on how another person might react to a particular situation as well as their own feelings about the topic — had children with better language skills and better perspective-taking skills.
Children with delayed language acquisition were also delayed in their development of perspective-taking skills. This displays the role played by language as children develop the ability to take another’s perspective.
“Solving the many challenges that the world faces today requires us all to get better at taking the perspective of other people,” said Brad Farrant.
1. According to the text, to help children gain better perspective-taking skills, parents should __________.
| A．give their children more chances to express themselves |
| B．talk more with their children about people’s feelings |
| C．encourage their children to guess other people’s thoughts |
| D．spend more time playing with their children |
| A．Over one hundred American children took part in it. |
| B．All the children had delayed in language acquisition. |
| C．The children in the study were around five years old. |
| D．Mothers helped their children to complete the tasks. |
| A．The surrounding environments. | B．Mother’s perspectives. |
| C．Personal characters. | D．Language skills. |
| A．stressed the importance of perspective-taking skills |
| B．expressed his concern about the world’s challenges |
| C．showed how to take the perspective of other people |
| D．explained why other people’s opinions are important |
| A．parents should talk to their children frequently no matter how old their children are |
| B．it was Brad Farrant who wrote the study in Child Development herself |
| C．the only way to improve language skill is talking to children more often |
| D．parents who are always thinking about others will help their children do the same way |
【推荐1】Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz was a philosopher and mathematician in search of a model. In the late 1600s Leibniz decided there was a need for a new, purer arithmetic than our common decimal（十进制）system. He got his inspiration from the 5000-year-old book that is at the heart of Chinese philosophy：the I-Ching, or Book of Changes.
This ancient text was such an influence on Liebniz that he titled his article on the new arithmetic “Explanation of a new arithmetic and the ancient Chinese figure of Fu X”. Fu Xi was the legendary first author of the I-Ching. The arithmetic that Liebniz described was binary（二进制）code, which is used in almost every modern computer, from iPhones to China’s own Tihane-2 supercomputer.
To figure out what Liebniz learned in the I-Ching, we need to understand something that most of us have taken for granted. When we listen to an MP3, look at a digital photo or watch the latest TV drama, we are experiencing a digital representation of reality. That representation is basically just a string of binary signals that are commonly known as 1s and 0s. What Liebniz’s gained from the book was that even the most complex reality could be represented in the binary form as 1s and 0s.
In the philosophy of the I-Ching, reality is not entirely real. It is something more like a dream. This dream of reality arises from the binaries of Yin and Yang, as they play out countless combinations, practically everything in the universe. It’s not surprising then, from the l-Ching’s perspective, that anything in the dream of reality can be represented in a string of 1s and 0s, processed by a computer.
The I-Ching was far more ambitious than the current practical applications of binary code. It is claimed that the I-Ching represents nothing less than the basic situation of human life itself. As a system for predicting the future, the I-Ching might disappoint, but as a way of questioning your own unconscious mind, it can be remarkably useful.
The I-Ching’s teachings also contain warnings about our digital revolution. Binary code, powered by modern computers, has an amazing capacity to represent reality. However, the ancient authors of the I-Ching might have understood its potential-and its dangers-even better than we now do.
So when scientific thinkers ask whether computers can create “virtual realities” or “artificial intelligence”, they are missing the point. Of course, we can create ever deeper and more complex layers of the dream of reality. The real question is, can we wake up from the dream we’ re in already?
1. Which of the following is TRUE about binary codes?| A．They share the same source with the decimal system. |
| B．They can form numerous combinations. |
| C．They are documented in the Book of Changes. |
| D．They are first discovered by Fu Xi. |
| A．media products are digitally represented using 1s and 0s. |
| B．TV dramas and digital photos are not worth seeing. |
| C．Reality is made more complex by binary codes. |
| D．Licbniz’s model is hardly understandable. |
| A．Computers’ ability to represent reality is quite limited. |
| B．Human life is now in grave danger according to the I-Ching. |
| C．We have yet to understand the complete teachings of the I-Ching. |
| D．The I-Ching is perfectly accurate in predicting the future. |
| A．The Ancient Book of Wisdom at the Heart of Every Computer |
| B．The Supercomputer that Employs Ancient Chinese Culture |
| C．The Father of Binary Code, Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz |
| D．The Origin of Eastern and Western Philosophy |
【推荐2】I’ve spent two decades observing what makes people lucky and trying to help people increase their luck. I teach entrepreneurship (社会学). We know many new enterprises fail, and innovators (创业者)need luck.
With my students, I spend much time encouraging them to get out of their comfort zone and take some risks. I do this myself all the time. About a dozen years ago, during a flight, I decided to take a little risk. I started a conversation with the man sitting next to me. I introduced myself, and I learned that he was a publisher. I learned all about the future of the publishing industry and we exchanged contact (联系) information. So about three quarters through the night, I decided to take another risk. I showed him a book plan I was doing in my class. Although he was very polite, he said it wasn’t right for us.
A couple of months later, I told him I was doing a project on transforming the book, the future of publishing and invited him to come to my class. So he gladly came to my class. We had a great experience. A few months later, I wrote to him again, sending a bunch of video clips (剪辑) from another project my students had made. He was so stricken by one of them that he thought there was a book in it. I was a little bit hurt, but it was all right. So I invited him and his colleagues to have lunch together. Later, one of his editors asked me if I had considered writing a book. And I pulled out the exact same plan I had showed his boss a year earlier. Within two years, my book had sold over a million copies.
1. We can infer from the author’s experience on the plane that .| A．the publisher was stricken by his book |
| B．that was his first experience by plane |
| C．the first risk during the night didn’t work out |
| D．the experience made him transform his book |
| A．To have their book published. | B．To help to increase his luck. |
| C．To assess their writing skills. | D．To help them see their strength. |
| A．Take the Lead | B．Everything is Possible |
| C．Win in Danger | D．Luck and Risk |
| A．Publishing books. | B．A series of small risks. |
| C．Being turned down frequently. | D．Meeting with the stranger on the plane. |
【推荐3】When we say that residents in the Chicago suburb of North Riverside, Illinois, “wrote the book” on how to be good neighbors, we are not exaggerating. The residents of North Riverside really did write a book on neighborliness that has helped make their town a remarkable place.
Neighbors All: Creating Community One Block at a Time is a 65 - page manual filled with friendly suggestions and inspiring stories, all designed to build “family bonds” among neighbors. Every household gets a copy, delivered by a volunteer “block captain” tasked with welcoming new arrivals, helping seniors, making sure kids play nice, and more. It’s a big job, but the 90 captains across the town of 6,700 don’t do it alone. They are organized by their own captain, Caro Saple, and the neighborhood Services Committee, which appoints leaders of all ages, including a team of school - age “angels”.
If all this seems somewhat bureaucratic (官僚制度的), in practice Neighbors All has very much lived up to its title. One captain got to chatting with an elder couple who revealed that they couldn’t afford to replace their broken stove. Before long, the Neighborhood Services Committee had collected enough money to buy them a new one.
Another resident, a woman from Poland, told her captain that she was having trouble sorting out the paperwork to get her citizenship. The captain told the committee, which told the mayor, who got the help of their local congressperson, and soon the woman’s paperwork was all in order.
“ I have been in North Riverside over 34 years and am very proud of the small-town caring the community demonstrates every day,” said Vera Jandacek Wilt. “Waters rising in the river, ready to flood nearby homes? Residents and officials are filling sandbags to hold back the floods. Lonely seniors have not stepped out of the house? A block captain shows up to invite them to a block party. This community truly looks out for one another.”
Does all this mean that North Riverside is perfect? No -- neighbors still quarrel. Kids still fight. But the community spirit that is part of North Riverside’s DNA appears all over town.
1. In paragraph 1, the phrase “wrote the book” is closest in meaning to _______.| A．showed expertise | B．learned a lesson |
| C．put down in writing | D．revealed secrets |
| A．It includes inspiring stories written by Caro Saple. |
| B．It gives advice and instructions on how to be nice. |
| C．It is a historical record of the North Riverside. |
| D．It is for the Neighborhood Services Committee. |
(1) Spreading copies of the book Neighbors All;
(2) Appointing school - age kids as volunteer “angels”;
(3) visiting and accompanying lonely seniors.
| A．(1) and (2) | B．(2) and (3) |
| C．(1) and (3) | D．All of above |
| A．the neighborliness in North Riverside |
| B．the block parties for senior residents |
| C．living in a perfectly safe community |
| D．becoming a captain for those in need |
