B

One month into my French degree course at Nottingham University, I was eager to travel around, having just spent a year working as a teacher in Nepal. Two years later, my schedule reads more like a traveller's than a student's does , having spent 18 months abroad under university programmes.

I have seen many students abandon their studies, desiring to see the world before making any long-term decisions. My advice for would-be globe travellers is to choose a degree subject that you find truly interesting, and use the resources available to see as much of the world as possible. So no longer does the “travel or study" question need an either/or response ; with a little research and organization, it’s possible to combine the two. Two programmes that allow you to do this are "Erasmus" and "U21".

The Erasmus Programme aims to increase student mobility within the European Union and associated states. Participants under this programme get to spend a semester (学期)at a foreign university, often receiving a grant(助学金)from the EU or their home department. By the start of the next academic year, more than one million students will have benefited under Erasmus. Not only do you get to sit through hours of lectures in the local language , you also gain cultural experience in the country. France, Germany and Spain are always popular, but the EU encourages applications to countries where less popular languages are spoken，such as Greece and Portugal. Theoretically» students of any subject can participate in the Erasmus Programme , although it depends on the involvement of your specific department in the project. The reality is that, in many universities, the programme-is most commonly intended for modern language students.

For a French student like me, Melbourne in Australia seems an unlikely- destination ,yet I was sent there in my second year. U21 is a multinational association of universities throughout the world, which have united to offer their students the opportunity to study abroad for a semester. The applicant's destination depends on the links between their department and the corresponding departments ofmember universities , which can be found in countries such as New Zealand , China , Singapore , Canada, Sweden and the United States.

60. What happened to many students who travelled while studying?

A. They chose a degree subject that they found truly interesting.

B. They abandoned their studies.

C. They used the resources available to see the world.

D. They responded to the “travel or study " question.

61. Who is most likely to be chosen by the Erasmus Programme?

A. A student from the EU.

B. A student who would be a global traveller.

C. A modern language student.

D. A student involved in a specific department.

62. Which of the following can be tl^e best title for the passage?

A. Seeing the World with University Students

B. Studying and Traveling in the European Union

C. Experiencing Foreign Cultures

D- Studying Abroad under University Programmes

C

Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.

"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape，，，thundered a magazine article last year. Species(物种)are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface , dead.

But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong ： things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world’s environment. Rivers , seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg ? professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environ¬mental groups, and the ‘‘bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.

Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of millions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics (谋略)to gain donations. Lomborg's bookdoesn't deny global warming—probably the biggest environmental threat—butdestroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.

The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation has been accelerating over the last 30 years”. But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover，but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area , since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US，UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainfor¬est has only shrunk(缩小) by about 15 per cent.

Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0. 08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.

Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale，director of Greenpeace UK，said ： “There are important examples , such as acid rain and ozone，where things weren't as bad as predi