套题5

　　Nobody has ever seen a dragon, but there arestill many drawings of dragons around the world. They have wings and sharpclaws, and they breathe fire. Dragons represent different things in differentcultures. For example, the Chinese dragon lives in the sky and controls all thewater on Earth. One type of dragon really does exist and that is the SeaDragon. It is found in the seas of Australia. It is about 45 centimetres long.There is a strange thing about this creature --- the males have the babies.Some males live for more than twenty years and give birth twice a year.

　　There is one type of jellyfish called theSea Wasp. It has no head, no brain and is 99% water. However, its sting cankill. If you get stung by one of these creatures, you have four minutes to gethelp, or die!

　　套题6

　　Wang Damin sitson the side of the river. He is cooking a meal, with a large bird on his head.The bird is a cormorant, and Damin is a fisherman. He is over 60 now but stillworks every day and is still strong enough to control his raft on the river. Helives and works with his cormorants on this river.

　　Cormorants are large, black birds, about ametre long. They are good at catching fish because they can swim well under water, their largefeet are used to push them quickly through the water.

　　Damin does not require nets to catch fish.That is done for him by his twelve cormorants. Damin begins his work on hisbamboo raft with his birds in the late afternoon. The birds swim down and catchfish.

　　套题7

　　The writer asksus to imagine Earth inside a kind of greenhouse. The atmosphere around Earthacts like the glass. It lets sunlight in and keeps much of the warmth fromgetting out. It is important to us all. “Without it, Earth would be as cold andlifeless as the surface of the moon”. The trouble is that our atmosphere ischanging because we are polluting it with chemicals --- in the form of gases--- and it is keeping in too much heat!” This will cause the level of seas torise and drown cities and even whole countries.

　　The burning and cutting down of trees ismaking the greenhouse effect worse because trees taking in harmful gases. Itwill also cause floods because trees can help hold soil together, and soilabsorbs water when it rains.

　　套题8

　　In 1897, H GWells wrote a science fiction book about spaceships coming to Earth. Its namewas The War of the Worlds. The book was still very popular in the 1930s. On 30October, 1938, a man named Orson Welles put out a radio programme from the book.The programme was different from the book in one important way: in theprogramme the actors talked like reporters and it sounded like a news report tothe listeners.

　　The actors said, “Space people from theplanet Mars are going to attack Earth. Huge things like snakes will come out ofspaceships and kill people and people’s guns cannot hurt any of them.” Whenpeople heard this, they were very afraid. Some even left their homes and triedto hide.