(B)
A Language Programme for Teenagers
Welcome to Teenagers Abroad! We invite you to join us on an amazing journey of language learning.
Our Courses
Regardless of your choice of course, you’ll develop your language ability both quickly and effectively. Our Standard Course guarantees a significant increase in your confidence in a foreign language, with focused teaching in all 4 skill areas — speaking, listening, reading and writing.
Our Intensive Course builds on our Standard Course, with 10 additional lessons per week, guaranteeing the fastest possible language learning (see table below).
Course TypeDaysNumber of LessonsCourse Timetable
Standard Course
Mon-Fri
20 lessons
9:00-12:30
Intensive Course
Mon-Fri
20 lessons
9:00-12:30
10 lessons
13:00-14:30
Evaluation
Students are placed into classes according to their current language skills. The majority of them take an online language test before their programme. However, if this is not available, students sit the exam on the first Monday of their course.
Learning materials are provided to students throughout their course, and there will never be more than 15 participants in each class.
Arrivals and Transfer
Our programme offers the full package — students are taken good care of from the start through to the very end. They are collected from the airport upon arrival and brought to their accommodation in comfort. We require the student’s full flight details at least 4 weeks in advance.
Meals/Special Dietary Requirements
Students are provided with breakfast, dinner and either a cooked or packed lunch (which consists of a sandwich, a drink and a dessert). Snacks outside of mealtimes may be purchased by the student individually.
We ask that you let us know of any dietary requirements as well as information about any medicines you take. Depending on the type of dietary requirements, an extra charge may be made for providing special food.
60. When can a student attend Standard Course?
A.13:00-14:30 Monday. B. 13:00-14:30 Friday.
C.9:00-12:30 Tuesday. D. 9:00-12:30 Saturday.
61. With the full package, the programme organizer is supposed to .
A. inform students of their full flight detail
B. look after students throughout the programme
C. offer students free medical care
D. collect students，luggage in advance
62. Which of the following may require an extra payment?
A. Cooked dinner B. Mealtime dessert.
C. Packed lunch D. Special diet.
(C)
I plan to remember this year’s vacation season with just two words: NEVER AGAIN. Never again, that is, will I take all my technology along. The Internet has ruined summer vacations.
Instead of reading dog-eared summerhouse mystery novels, this year we browsed the Internet. Instead of long evenings of crossword puzzles or board games, we checked our Twitter feeds and updated our Facebook pages. And that, of course, is the problem with the Internet: It，s so easy that, unless you’re equipped with massive self-control, you use it if it’s there.
For several years, I kept my Internet addiction under control by using inconvenient technology: a laptop which is old and not in good condition and a slow dial-up connection. But this year, the combination of a new iPad and very good Wi-Fi turned out to be fatal. The magical iPad signaled silently from the picnic table: What harm could it be to give the e-mail a quick check? But once that attractive touch screen lights up, who can resist?
I’m not the first to get lost across this problem, of course. I，m a late adopter. As early as 2008, Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was warning that broadband Internet was reducing our attention spans and making us stupid. The Web, he said, encourages us to get stuck into our “natural state of distractedness.” Even before that, in 2000，Harvard’s Robert Putnam warned that television 一 and, more broadly, staring into any kind of screen — had reduced the amount of time families spent in social interactions. And last year, researchers at UC-Irvine reported that employees who were unplugged from their e-mail got more work done 一 and experienced far less stress.
Access to the Web is unquestionably a wonderful thing. I love having a bottomless library at my fingertips; I love having the world’s newspapers on my electronic doorstep. I love being able to pay bills and make airplane reservations online. And, thanks to those ugly cell phone towers in the woods, we now have a way to call for help if we need an ambulance or a fire truck. It’s also nice to have an app that identifies the constellations (星座)when you hold the iPad up to the night sky. But then, you have to remember to put the screen down and simply drink in the stars — the original, uncut version.
And that’s the point: It’s important not to let the convenience of the Internet get in the way of simpler beauties. It，s our fault instead of the Internet, for failing to control the urge to browse. My problem is learning how to limit the time I spend on it. So now I have one more thing to look forward to next summer: More time reading old novels; more time playing crossword puzzles and chasing frogs. Next year, I promise to unplug. Except, of course, when we need to find a new bike trail, or Google a recipe for wild blueberry pie.
63. Throughout the passage, what evidence does the author provide to support the claims he makes in paragraph 2?
A. Scientific studies and statistics about Internet use.
B. Historical facts regarding the effects of television and the Internet.
C. Personal accounts and opinions of those who have studied the Internet.
D. Results of opinion polls about Internet use.
64. According to the passage, how does the writer keep himself from getting addicted to the Internet?
A. By using outdated laptops with poor Internet access.
B. By only giving the e-mail a quick look.
C. By keeping the electronic devices out of reach.
D. By accessing new iPad and good Wi-Fi.
65. In the article, UC-Irvine research functions as .
A. a personal account that illustrates an idea about social life
B. a restatement of the author’s main argument
C. historical context to allow the reader to understand the article’s setting
D. evidence to support a point made by Nicolas Carr
66. Which of the following statement will the author probably agree to?
A. people should not rely simply on the Internet to provide them with news and other information
B. people can have meaningful vacations only if they leave all electronic devices at home
C. although the Internet is often useful, it can become addictive and prevent human interaction
D. even though there are some good things about the Internet, overall it has affected civilization for the worse
Section C
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The road that led to 1,000 stories
In his new book Watling Street, John Higgs explores one of Britain’s oldest roads — and how it inspired countless stories, from the Canterbury Tales to Great Expectations to Star Wars.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th Century, tells the story of a group of medieval pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury. Six hundred years later, the Star Wars movies were filmed on the same road. 67 .
We now think of Watling Street as the A2 and the A5 motorways, which run across Britain from Anglesey in north-west Wales to Dover in south-east England in a way that joins two opposite sides at an angle. But the road has existed throughout all of British history. 68 . It has been a Neolithic (新 石器时代的)pathway, a Roman road, one of the four medieval (中世纪的)royal highways, a main road in the age of coach travel and a road today usually with traffic jams.
It is a place that reflects its own history, always being rewritten. 69 . James Bond drives along the road in Ian Fleming’s novel Moonraker. Doctor Who appears suddenly at different points along it in different historical eras. It is part of Robin Hood’s plans in the medieval narrative poem A Little Geste of Robin Hood and his Meiny. Miss Havisham’s decaying Gothic house in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is based on Restoration House in Rochester, which stands just yards from Watling Street. In the 12th-Century Histories of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells how a young Merlin released the dragons that caused King Vortigem’s tower to fall. This was at Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia, on the route of the original, pre-Roman road through Wales.
For many years it was believed that William Shakespeare wrote a play called The Widow of Watling Street', it was included in early collections of his work. It is now thought that the real author of that play was Thomas Middleton. 70 .Before the Romans bridged the Thames, the original route of Watling Street crossed the river where Westminster Palace now stands. The route would have run close to where Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in Southwark later stood.
IV. Summary Writing
Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Reading the world in 195 boobs
In 2012, I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from every country of all 195 UN- recognized states in a year. With no idea how to find publications, I decided to ask the planet’s readers for help. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.
The response was amazing. Before I knew it, people all over the planet were getting in touch with ideas and offers of help. Some posted me books. Others did hours of research on my behalf. In addition, several writers, like Turkmenistan’s Ak Welsapar and Panama’s Juan David Morgan, sent me unpublished translations of their novels. Even with such an extraordinary team behind me, however, sourcing books was no easy task.
But the effort was worth it. As I made my way through the planet’s literary landscapes, extraordinary things started to happen. Far from simply armchair travelling, I found I was inhabiting the mental space of the storytellers. I discovered, book packing offered something that a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes. More powerful than a thousand news reports, these stories not only opened my mind to basic information of life in other places, but opened my heart to the way people there might feel. And that in turn changed my thinking. Through reading the stories shared with me by bookish strangers around the globe, I realized I was not an isolated person, but part of a network that stretched all over the planet.
One by one, the country names on the list that had begun as an intellectual exercise transformed into places filled with laughter, love, anger, hope and fear. Lands that had once seemed foreign and remote became close and familiar to me — places I could identify with. At its best, I learned, fiction makes the world real.
