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陪读妈妈——赔上青春　　随着越来越多的中国孩子来新加坡求学，“陪读妈妈”已逐渐成为新加坡社会的一个特殊群体。作为中国学生出国留学的选择地，新加坡无疑具有其独特的优势：法律健全，环境优美，社会治安良好，双语社会，华人居多，生活容易适应，又允许妈妈陪读。然而，事实上，新加坡远非人们想象中的教育天堂。　　中国学生大多是通过新加坡设在中国的中介公司介绍来新。来新前，中介公司的宣传天花乱坠，可是来新后，多数妈妈发现由于生活、学习费用以及工作证的原因，生计问题迫在眉睫。试想，如果中介公司能够公正、客观地介绍新加坡的求学和生活情况，来新求学的孩子和妈妈们就能根据自己的经济状况在权衡利弊之后做出明智的选择。　　再者，对于多数陪读妈妈来说，这里没有家的感觉，新加坡人好像总是对她们有所防范，她们感觉孤立、无助，很难融入当地人的生活圈子。　　“十年树木、百年树人”。教育本身就是一项长期的工程，短期行为根本无法留住人，更无法留住人才。

Language exists to communicate whatever it can communicate. Some things it communicates so badly that we never attempt to communicate them by words if any other medium is available. Those who think they are testing a boy’s “elementary” command of English by asking him to describe in words how one ties one’s tie or what a pair of scissors is like, are far astray. For precisely what language can hardly do at all, and never does well, is to inform us about complex physical shapes and movements. Hence descriptions of such things in the ancient writers are nearly always unintelligible. Hence we never in real life voluntarily use language for this purpose; we draw a diagram or go through pantomimic gestures. The exercises which such examiners set are no more a test of “elementary” linguistic competence than the most difficult bit of trick—riding from the circus ring is a test of elementary horsemanship.　　Another grave limitation of language is that it cannot, like music or gesture, do more than one thing at once. However the words in a great poet’s phrase interanimate one other and strike the mind as quasi-instantaneous chord, yet, strictly speaking, each word must be read or heard before the next. That way, language is as unilinear as time. Hence, in narrative, the great difficulty of presenting a very complicated change which happens suddenly. If we do justice to the complexity, the time the reader must take over the passage will destroy the feeling of suddenness. If we get in the suddenness we shall not be able to get in the complexity.　　One of the most important and effective uses of language is the emotional. It is also, of course, wholly legitimate. We do not talk only in order to reason or to inform. We have to make love and quarrel, to propitiate and pardon, to rebuke, to console, intercede, and a rouse. “He that complains,” said Johnson, “acts like a man, like a social being.” The real objection lies not against the language of emotion as such, but against language which, being in reality emotional, masquerades—whether by plain hypocrisy or subtle self-deceit—as being something else.

An Early History of Australia　　Before the arrival of European settlers, Aboriginal and Tortes Strait (托雷斯海峡) Islander peoples inhabited most areas of the Australian continent. Each people spoke one or more of hundreds of separate languages, with lifestyles and religious and cultural traditions that differed according to the region in which they lived.　　Adaptable and creative, with simple but highly efficient technology, Indigenous Australians had complex social systems and highly developed traditions reflecting a deep connection with the land and environment.　　Asian and Oceanic people had contact with Australia’s Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the European expansion into the Eastern Hemisphere. Some formed substantial relationships with communities in northern Australia.　　In 1606, the Spanish explorer Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through the strait that separates Australia and Papua New Guinea (巴布亚新几内亚). Dutch explorers charted the north and west coasts and found Tasmania. The first British explorer, William Dampier, landed on the northwest coast in 1688. But it was not until 1770 that his countryman, Captain James Cook, on the Endeavour, extended a scientific voyage to the South Pacific in order to chart the east coast of the continent that had become known as New Holland, and claimed it for the British Crown.　　The American war of independence shut off that country as a place to transport convicts, requiring Great Britain to establish a new penal colony. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, had sailed as a naturalist (博物学家) with Captain Cook, and suggested Australia for this purpose.　　The First Fleet of 11 ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788. Governor Phillip preferred Sydney Harbor and the date he landed in the Harbor,26 January, is now commemorated as Australia Day. The First Fleet carded 1,500 people, half of them convicts. Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore (1987) is a classic book on the convict system. Hughes suggests that the penal system had lasting effects on Australian society. About 160,000 convicts were sent to the Australian continent over the next 80 years.　　The wool industry and the gold rushes of the mid-19th century provided an impetus to free settlement. Scarcity of labor, the vastness of the bush and new wealth based on farming, mining and trade all contributed to the development of uniquely Australian institutions and sensibilities. At the time of European settlement in 1788 it is estimated there were at least 300,000 Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. European settlement involved the displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. It disrupted traditional land management practices and introduced new plants and animals into fragile Australian ecosystems.

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The whole region is rarely populated; our nearest neighbor lives ten miles away.

According to this passage, turtles are of great importance in China because they are _________.

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Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan　　For the first time in three decades Afghanistan is holding parliamentary elections. It’s a momentous time for a country still trying to emerge from years of war. There’s been much criticism that these polls will only consolidate the power of the country’s powerful commanders, the warlords with dubious histories. But Lyse Doucet, who’s been covering Afghanistan since the late nineteen eighties, has discovered that in a nation where a new political culture is only slowly taking shape, the very existence of an election process has brought new energy to a lung-stagnant political life:　　Now there is a veritable forest of signs at every square and roundabout in Kabul and other cities, billboards selling luxury watches, promoting national unity the new Afghan army. But, for the past month billboard, walls and fences across this land have been telling another story. Everywhere you look there are the faces of election candidates, middle aged men in suits and ties, men with turbans and long thick beards as dark as the night or as white as the first Afghan snow, hardly anyone is smiling. Tradition says photography is serious business. Even. wedding photographs here barely coax a smile.　　And in a country where only 4 years ago, women were largely confined to their homes under an oppressive Taliban rule, there are their faces too: candidates like young Sabrina with a fetching canary yellow headscarf, Shukda with finely penciled eyebrow, gazing into the distance, cradling a pen in her hand. The faces are plastered everywhere, on every available bit of space, sometimes on top of each other. It’s led to Afghan cartoonists sketching someone’s face on top of someone else’s legs.　　At first glance, these walls are just an unsightly mess of photographs. But, like the carpets of old, if you know this nation’s history, you can read meaning .into what seem like random patterns. These layers of paper form a bright new canvas of a nation’s dark history. General Ulumi who once worked with the Soviet Red Army is running for parliament. There’s also Mullah Khaqsar who used to execute the writ of the Taliban. But there’s also Malalai Joya, the young woman who, a few years ago, bravely condemned the warlords in public.　　In this election, candidates must run as individuals, not as members of parties. But Afghans know who everyone is. They know their past. They know their father, their grandfather, or at least, they do in most cases. But what if they don’t? In the last month of campaigning, in towns and villages across this country, Afghans, from village elders with wizened faces, to wide-eyed teenagers too young to vote, have sat cross legged in the shades of mulberry tress, or in air-conditioned rooms cooled with electricity powered by generators. They’ve pondered and argued and debated the questions of this time.　　One dimensional photograph, after all, only tells part of this new story. As one Afghan friend put it, in real life, many candidates with a past are two-faced. If elected to Parliament, it’s still not clear which face they will show. But whatever happens, the opening of Parliament will be the start of a new chapter. And no one here can say with certainty how that Afghan story will unfold.

中国海洋事业的发展　　海洋覆盖了地球表面的71％，是全球生命支持系统的一个基本组成部分，也是资源的宝库，环境的重要调节器。人类社会的发展必然会越来越多地依赖海洋。　　二十一世纪是人类开发利用海洋的新世纪。维护《联合国海洋法公约》确定的国际海洋法律原则，维护海洋健康，保护海洋环境，确保海洋资源的可持续利用和海上安全，已成为人类共同遵守的准则和共同担负的使命。　　中国是一个发展中的沿海大国。中国高度重视海洋的开发和保护，把发展海洋事业作为国家发展战略，加强海洋综合管理，不断完善海洋法律制度，积极发展海洋科学技术和教育。中国积极参与联合国系统的海洋事务，推进国家间和地区性海洋领域的合作，并认真履行自己承担的义务，为全球海洋开发和保护事业作出了积极贡献。