Questions 11~15It’s estimated that every year 100,000 children aged 16 and under run away from home. The London Refuge, an unremarkable house on an unremarkable street, is the only place in Britain that will give them a bed. Last year it gave sanctuary to 238 children of whom the youngest was 11. What happened to the other 99,762 Nobody knows, although it’s a fair bet that some of them ended up on the streets, that some fell into inappropriate and dangerous company, that some didn’t survive. "The mere fact that they’re running away puts them at risk," says Lorna Simpson, the refuge’s deputy manager. "On the streets they’ 11 mix with other young people. They’ re so naive; they don’t understand that people who are nice to them will want payback. Our job is to make them safe. "Simpson, a former social worker, is a calm woman of great warmth. The refuge has six beds and has been open since 1993, often with the threat of closure hanging over it. The problem has nothing to do with the quality of its service and everything to do with funding. A week’s placement costs £2. 278 and three successive governments have argued that the annual running costs of £720. 000 should be locally funded. But because it is used by children from many parts of London, and beyond, local authorities are reluctant to contribute.The Government has now agreed to work on a strategy to support runaway children in England and Wales, which is rich after its withdrawal of funding from the refuge in December. Since then the NSPCC, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which runs the refuge in conjunction with St Christopher’s Fellowship, has financed it through a donation from an individual, but that money will last only until late next year. "Without this facility there’s nothing; children who run away are on the street," says Nasima Patel, the assistant director of the NSPCC. "One of the strengths of the refuge is that children who have left home can ring up directly and will get a bed and supportive staff without having to go through a process of assessment".The refuge accommodates six children plus staff. Many of the admissions are at night and children can stay up to 21 days in three months, although most stay for three to five days. They find it through social services, through ChildLine and through word of mouth."Children run away from everything you can think of," Simpson says. "Arguments with step-parents, sexual abuse, alcoholic parents, being left to bring up their younger siblings, neglected children who have been failed by social services, girls who have been trafficked. We get doctors’ and lawyers’ children who run away because they want more pocket money, or want to stay out later than their parents allow. They’ve been given everything, they get to 15 and no one thinks to pull the reins in. By that time it’s too late; they rebel. "Most of the children are from families known to social services, and for them the refuge’s ordered regimen is a welcome contrast to the chaos they know. Staff listen without judging and without encouraging dependency, trying to establish why the children have run away. The aim is to get them home or into the care of social services and, after discharge from the refuge, a family support worker is available. We learn from the passage that the London Refuge is faced with the threat of closure ().
A. for its failure to meet the demand
B. for lack of money
C. because of its poor service
D. because of limited accommodation
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Questions 16~20It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard—just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America’s vigorous work ethic.But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40 per cent of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s.It is probably mere coincidence that George W. Bush, one of the few Americans who has been known to enjoy a French-style month off during August, cut back his holiday in Texas to a fortnight. But the survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans.A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays.The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK—where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers—and 7.9weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who has just started their jobs.Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas of travel take their own toll. "We commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations," the author Po Bronson wrote recently. "We leave home tired; we come back exhausted "Christian Schneider, a German-born scholar at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, argues that there is "a tendency to really relax in Europe, to disengage from work. When an American finally does take those few days of vacation per year they are most likely to be in constant contact with the office. "Mindful that well-rested workers are more productive than burnt-out ones, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has started closing all its US offices completely twice a year, for 10 days over Christmas and about five around Independence Day. "We wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 emails," Barbara Kraft, a partner at the company, told the New York Times.Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement—an annual national total of 574 million unclaimed days. The author mentions George W. Bush cutting back his holiday to indicate that ().
A. the tendency to overwork is limited to people holding important positions
B. ordinary Americans overwork and important ones are no exception
C. the president finds it necessary to cut back his holiday, let alone others
D. the president has every reason to overwork, but ordinary Americans don’t
Questions 16~20It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard—just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America’s vigorous work ethic.But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40 per cent of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s.It is probably mere coincidence that George W. Bush, one of the few Americans who has been known to enjoy a French-style month off during August, cut back his holiday in Texas to a fortnight. But the survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans.A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays.The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK—where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers—and 7.9weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who has just started their jobs.Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas of travel take their own toll. "We commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations," the author Po Bronson wrote recently. "We leave home tired; we come back exhausted "Christian Schneider, a German-born scholar at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, argues that there is "a tendency to really relax in Europe, to disengage from work. When an American finally does take those few days of vacation per year they are most likely to be in constant contact with the office. "Mindful that well-rested workers are more productive than burnt-out ones, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has started closing all its US offices completely twice a year, for 10 days over Christmas and about five around Independence Day. "We wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 emails," Barbara Kraft, a partner at the company, told the New York Times.Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement—an annual national total of 574 million unclaimed days. In which of the following countries are employees entitled to more weeks per year for their holidays ()
A. The US.
B. The UK.
C. France.
D. Italy.
Questions 16~20It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard—just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America’s vigorous work ethic.But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40 per cent of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s.It is probably mere coincidence that George W. Bush, one of the few Americans who has been known to enjoy a French-style month off during August, cut back his holiday in Texas to a fortnight. But the survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans.A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays.The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK—where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers—and 7.9weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who has just started their jobs.Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas of travel take their own toll. "We commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations," the author Po Bronson wrote recently. "We leave home tired; we come back exhausted "Christian Schneider, a German-born scholar at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, argues that there is "a tendency to really relax in Europe, to disengage from work. When an American finally does take those few days of vacation per year they are most likely to be in constant contact with the office. "Mindful that well-rested workers are more productive than burnt-out ones, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has started closing all its US offices completely twice a year, for 10 days over Christmas and about five around Independence Day. "We wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 emails," Barbara Kraft, a partner at the company, told the New York Times.Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement—an annual national total of 574 million unclaimed days. What did PricewaterhouseCoopers do to make it possible for its employees to really relax in their vacation ()
A. It created an environment for its employees to be disengaged from work.
B. It advised its employees not to worry about missing telephone calls or emails.
C. It set aside for its employees 10 days for Christmas and Independence Day.
D. It left it to its employees themselves to decide on more vacation entitlement.
Questions 21~25While other members of my team explored the wreck of a small Greek merchant ship that sank off the Turkish coast more than 2,400 years ago, I hovered above them in a submarine. One diver, an archaeologist, placed an amphora, or two-handled jar, inside a lifting basket. Another vacuumed sediment from the site by fanning sand into the mouth of a nearly vertical pipe. Two more were taking measurements, carefully, but of necessity quickly, for at this depth each diver had only 20 minutes to complete the morning’s assigned task. Any longer, and they would require lengthy medical treatment, to avoid the divers’ ailment known as the bends.In four decades of diving on shipwrecks, I’ d been too engrossed in carrying out similar tasks to think of the families whose loved ones may have disappeared long ago. I had always concentrated on the technical features of my trade. I had stopped diving regularly 15 years before this exploration, turning over the bulk of the underwater work to a younger generation, but I continue to make inspection dives on most wrecks we excavate.This was not just any wreck. Although I’ve been involved in uncovering the remains of much older ships, and of more than a hundred ancient shipwrecks along the Turkish coast. I had never even seen a wreck from the fifth century BC. Preliminary photographs of the cargo dated it to the third quarter of the century, during the Golden Age of classical Greece. Athens, then as now the major city in Greece, controlled an empire stretching from one side of the Aegean Sea to the other. None of this would have been possible without naval might and maritime commerce.During our three-year exploration of the wreck we excavated examples of nearly every type of jar that the classical Greeks made for wine or water. Many types might have been used as tableware by the ship’s crew, but they were far in excess of what would have been required. We concluded therefore that they must have been cargo. We also discovered in the seabed two marble discs, which we guessed were the ship’s eyes. It has long been known from vase paintings that classical Greek ships—like those from other cultures—had eyes to give them life or help them see their way through the waves. Although warships were known to have had naturalistic marble eyes attached to them, most scholars assumed that the eyes on more modest merchant ships were depicted as simple circles painted onto the sides of the vessel.Did the sailors who depended on these eyes for safety survive the ship’s last voyage They could have lived through the actual sinking. The ship was less than a hundred yards from land when it sank, so they might have swum towards the shore. And we know from Greek literature that some ships had lifeboats. But proximity to land and having lifeboats are no guarantee of safety. Even if some had swum to shore, it’s hard to imagine that many managed to crawl up on the exposed and sharp rocks while being smashed by waves like those that almost certainly sank their ship. What does the writer suggest about himself in the second paragraph ()
A. He had developed every skill that was needed for exploring wrecks.
B. He had benefited by changing his role in explorations.
C. He was pleased he had started training younger divers.
D. He was aware he distanced himself from aspects of his work.