Have you ever been offered an alcoholic drink? What about someone saying "Don't worry, just have one little sip"? Most people have their first drink by the time they're 13. That first drink can be the start of a troubled life. Drinking can make teens feel good, but that lasts only a short time. Alcohol clouds your brain and limits your ability to make decisions. Excessive drinking gradually makes your brain shrink and can cause serious damage. Over-drinking can cause learning disabilities and damage your memory. It distorts your vision and leads to blackouts. Teenagers often think that drinking will give you more energy, but alcohol isn't an energy drink; it's a depressant. Drinking and driving is one of the top causes of death for teen boys. An alcohol-related motor vehicle crash kills one person every 33 minutes and injures someone every two minutes. The rate of teenagers driving drunk is so high that the government is trying to pass new laws restricting teen driving. When we get to high school, friends start pressuring us to drink. High school students see alcohol as glamorous and a way to become popular. I created a survey at my school. Twenty-four of the 63 respondents predicted they would drink in high school. Eleven said maybe, and 28 said they don't plan on drinking. Regardless of what they say now, things can change. Teens starting high school want to fit in. Some people will do anything to be accepted, including potentially(,) hurting themselves. They think that one drink won't do anything. A little bit of alcohol probably won't kill you, but it can lead to poor decisions. High school is the time to experiment with what you want to do in life, but if you're experimenting with alcohol you could hurt someone, including yourself. (300 words) Some students in high school start drinking mainly because _ . A) they think drinking is quite interesting B) they want to imitate adults around them. C) they want to fit in with the surroundings D) they don't think high school an important period
C
Television is a relatively stable advertising medium. In many ways, the television ads today are almost the same to those two decades ago. Most television ads still feature actors, still run 30 or 60 seconds, and still show a product. However, the different medium of the Internet causes unique challenges to advertisers, forcing them to adapt their practices and techniques. In the early days of Internet marketing, online advertisers used banner and pop-up ads to attract customers. These techniques reached large audiences, led to many sales leads, and came at a low cost. However, a small number of Internet users began to consider these advertising techniques annoying. Yet because marketing strategies relying heavily on banners and pop-ups produced results, companies invested growing amounts of money into purchasing these ad types. As consumers became more complicated, frustration with these online advertising techniques grew. Independent programmers began to develop tools that blocked banner and pop-up ads. A major development in online marketing came with the introduction of pay-per-click ads. Unlike banner or pop-up ads, which originally required companies to pay every time a website visitor saw an ad, pay-per-click ads allowed companies to pay only when an interested potential customer clicked on an ad. More importantly, however, these ads are not affected by the pop-up and banner blockers. As a result of these advantages and the incredible growth in the use of search engines, which provide excellent places for pay-per-click advertising, a great number of companies began turning to pay-per-click marketing. However, as with the banner and pop-up ads, pay-per-click ads came with their shortcomings. When companies began pouring billions of dollars into this emerging medium, online advertising specialists started to notice the presence of what would later be called click fraud : representatives of a company with no interest in the product advertised by a competitor click on the competitor's ads simply to... What is the main idea of the passage? A) The pace of the Internet's evolution is increasing and will only increase in the future. B) Internet advertising fails to reach Internet users, causing ads to be blocked. C) The Internet has experienced dramatic changes in short periods of time. D) Rapid development of the Internet calls for new advertising strategies and mediums.
D
(Question)
JOHANNESBURG--They say cats have nine lives. Now a Chinese toad has joined that club of clever survivors. South Africans are shocked at the endurance of a toad that got trapped in a cargo shipment from China to Cape Town, after jumping into a porcelain candlestick that was made there. South African officials reportedly planned to put down the creature, fearing it would cause harm as an invasive species if it were let go in the wild. But the toad got a last-minute pardon. Mango Airlines, a South African airline, transported the toad on Friday to Johannesburg for delivery to an animal shelter, after officials decided to find a way to let the toad live. The two-hour flight was a breeze compared to the trip from China, a long way of many weeks and thousands of kilometers across the Indian Ocean. Airline spokesman Hein Kaiser said the toad got "first-class treatment", sitting in a transparent plastic container with escort Brett Glasby, an animal welfare inspector. There was even a ceremony, in which the toad's boarding pass was handed to Glasby. "He was the star of the show on the flight," Kaiser said of the amphibious passenger. "I think every passenger stopped to have a look." On landing in Johannesburg, the toad was brought out of its container for a celebrity-style photo shoot. Observers said the brown toad seemed like a cool customer. It belongs to the Asian Toad species, which breeds during the monsoon season. It is believed to have survived the trip from China by hardening its skin to prevent it from drying out, and also by slowing its breathing and heart rate--methods that help the species survive in times of drought. "We've had snakes in imported timber and scorpions in fruit. We were called because the toad was right inside the candlestick, and we had to break it to get it out" Glasby, the inspector, toldThe Star, a South African newspaper. If the toad is released into the wild, _ . A) it will make the locals feel shocked B) it will lose its life in the wild C) it might flee into another country D) it might harm the native species
(Answer)
D