Ques:Article: As the summer time approaches, more and more commercials and advertisements can be seen on the mass media encouraging students to join English study tours abroad. The purpose of these tours is to provide students with an opportunity to learn English in a native speaking environment and use English in real situations. Parents always believe that their children will automatically speak good English after attending these study tours. However, for me, as an English major and former participant of many English study tours, I find these summer tours ineffective. Parents who send their children abroad for a summer to study English usually believe that the native speaking environment, including the courses, teachers, and host families, can help their children to learn English better. This might be true if the students really study hard and they really get an all-English environment. But the fact is that, most of the time, the tour part is more important than the study part. Although these tours take place in foreign countries, students are rarely exposed in an all-English environment. You will find that, in the morning classes, Taiwanese students would like to stick together and speak Chinese with each other, even though there are some students from other countries. In the afternoon, the students go on a sightseeing excursion with their companions from Taiwan; they speak Chinese of course. In the evening, when students return to the host families, they would stay in their room and share the day with their roommate, another Taiwanese student. People who speak the same language with you is like a log in the ocean when living in a foreign country where you can not express yourself well, so that you would naturally stick with them. This is especially true with children. Another unrealistic expectation parents have for these tours is that the experience of living abroad can make their children more independent and mature. However, maturity does not come overnight. It takes time and practice. The most important of all is... Question: What makes the parents send their children to join English study tours abroad according to the text? Yes or no, is the answer "Parents' unrealistic expectation."?

Ans:Yes
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Ques:Article: Step into an American preschool classroom today and you are likely to fall into a so-called print-rich environment,every surface colorfully decorated with instructional posters,classroom rules,chedules,and mottos,few of which a 4-year-old can understand in fact. Besides the confusing things on classroom walls,teaching methods and curriculums have changed recently,by which more time is spent on what's called "seat work"workbooks and worksheets--but less time devoted to music and art.School--readiness skills are essential for the youngest learners to move on to a subsequent stage. As a result, expectations that may arguably have been reasonable for 5-and 6-year-olds, such as bemg able to sit at a desk and using pencil and paper,are now directed at even younger children, who lack the motor skills and attention span to be successful. However,parents of preschoolers tend to _ these changes,because they fear that the old--fashioned pleasures of unhurried learning have no place in today's highly competitive world.The stress is obvious:Pick the "wrong" preschool and your child might not go to college.She might not be employable. She might not even be allowed to start first grade! As preschoolers are learning so much academic knowledge at earlier ages,they seem somehow less curious and less engaged.Some teachers say that more children today seem to lack the language skills.The real focus in the preschool years should not be just on vocabularv and reading,but on talking and listening.By talking with adults, and one another,they pick up information,learn how things work and solve puzzles that trouble them.For our littlest learners,what could be more important than that? Question: Why are parents so picky when choosing a preschool for their kids? Yes or no, is the answer "Because a wrong preschool might ruin kids' future."?

Ans:No
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Ques:Article: It is not easy to reach Panjiayu, a village in the countryside around Thangshan, Hebei province. To get to the isolated village, visitors first have to take a bus ride of about an hour to the Fengrun district before taking a long-distance bus, which usually runs five times a day. Surrounded by mountains and bathed in plentiful sunlight, Panjiayu is nicknamed "Turpan", after the city in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that is famous for its sweet grapes. The fruit is the Panjiayuy's main money spinner ------ the courtyard of almost every home boasts at least one grape trellis , and the main road is enlaced by vines. Last year, about 200,000 tourists from nearby cities visited Panjiayu. Even so, the place has retained its traditional feel. When night falls, except for a few road lamps that send out a dim light, the village is shrouded in darkness, the silence only broken by the occasional bark of a dog. So why does this village of just 1,500 residents attract so many visitors? Grapes are only part of the reason; most of the tourists visit to commemorate a massacre that happened 73 years ago. The modern building that seems so _ with the traditional feel of the place is a memorial to the events of Jan 25, 1941, two days before Lunar New Year, when the Japanese army carried out a frenzied slaughter of unarmed villagers. "About 1,298 of the 1,700 villagers were murdered. Of the survivors, 273 were not in the village that day, and although nearly 200 others survived, 98 of them were badly injured," said Pan Ruishen, the leader of the Panjiayu compensation Team for Japanese Atrocities . Panjiayu was just one of many massacres committed by the Japanese during the occupation of China before and during World War II, however, it is now a patriotism-education base because the village is full of sites of historical interest, such as the big lotus tree, whose hollow trunk was used to hide secret files of the Eighth Route Army, and the metal doors at the village entrance, which are scarred with countless white... Question: What can we know about Panjiayu from the text? Yes or no, is the answer "Panjiayu is viewed as a patriotism-education base in view of its historical events and many sites of historical interest ."?

Ans:No
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Ques:Article: Humans: It's time to abandon the earth or face extinction. This prediction isn't science fiction. It's a glimpse of the future, according to famed British scientist Stephen Hawking. "I see great dangers for the human race," he said in an interview with global forum Big Think. "There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go ." Hawking says humans must _ our home planet within the next two centuries and expand into space to survive. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," he said. "It will be difficult to avoid disaster on our planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million." He also voiced some concerns about the future of life on the earth. In April, he spoke about his fear of aliens in an interview for the Discovery Channel. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become wanderers, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach." But Hawking says he is still hopeful for the future of humanity. "I'm an optimist," he told Big Think. "We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space." Getting to another planet will prove a challenge, not to mention colonizing it for humanity. University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese told Big Think that "the nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away. That means, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there" --- or about 50,000 years using current rocket science. Question: Despite some concerns, Hawking's attitude towards the future of humans is _ . Yes or no, is the answer "positive"?

Ans:
No
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