Venice, one of the cities in Italy, was founded in A.D.811 by the people of Malamocco, fleeing（逃跑）from the Franks. It was said that they were guided by pigeons carrying little crosses, and settled where now Venice lies.

Venice is built on 117 islands. It has 150 canals and 400 bridges. The narrow streets, with their historic names, are covered with stones, but have no footpaths. They are dotted with flowershop signs and lanterns. Shops and palaces stand by side. The brick bridges are high enough to allow boats to pass freely under them.

The center of public life is St. Mark’s Square where tourists and citizens sit in the famous Florian and Quadri cafes to listen to music, enjoying themselves. The Quadri is more popular but the Florian, founded in 1720, is the best-known cafe because it has received such great persons as Byron (an English poet) and Goethe (a German poet).

Unfortunately the special position of Venice is threatening（威胁）its own existence. The terrain（地势）on which it is built began to sink while the level of the surrounding waters is constantly rising. However, many measures have already been taken to prevent the city from sinking.

In the second paragraph, the author _______.

Which of the following shows the right relationship?（○=Italy; △=Venice; □=St. Mark’s Square）

Why is the Florian the famous cafe? Because _________.

From the article we can see that _______.

  The Atlantic Ocean is one of the oceans that separate the Old World from the New. For centuries it kept the Americans from being discovered by the people of Europe.

       Many wrong ideas about the Atlantic made early sailors unwilling to sail far out into it. One idea was that it reached out to “the edge of the world.” Sailors were afraid that they might sail right off the earth. Another idea was that at the equator（赤道）the ocean would be boiling hot.

       The Atlantic Ocean is only half as big as the Pacific, but it is still very large. It is more than 4,000 miles (6,000km) wide where Columbus crossed it. Even at its narrowest it is about 2,000 miles (3,200km) wide.

       Two things make the Atlantic Ocean rather unusual. For so large an ocean it has very few islands. Also, it is the world’s saltiest ocean.

       There is so much water in the Atlantic that it is hard to imagine how much there is. But suppose no more rain fell into it and no more water was brought to it by rivers. It would take the ocean about 4,000 years to dry up. On the average the water is a little more than two miles (3.2km) deep, but in places it is much deeper. The deepest spot is near Puerto Rico. This “deep” measures 30,246 feet-almost six miles (9.6km).

       One of the longest mountain ranges of the world rises from the floor of the Atlantic. This mountain range runs north and south down the middle of the ocean. The tops of a few of the mountains reach up above the sea and make islands.

       Several hundred miles eastward from Florida there is a part of the ocean called the Sargasso Sea. Here the water is quiet, for there is little wind. In the days of sailing vessels（船）the crew were afraid they would be becalmed（停滞不前）here. Sometimes they were.

       Today the Atlantic is a great highway. It is not, however, always a smooth and safe one. Storms sweep across it and pile up great waves. Icebergs（冰山）float down from the Far North across the paths of ships.

       We now have such fast ways of traveling that this big ocean seems to have grown smaller. Columbus sailed for more than two months to cross it. A fast modern steamship can make the trip in less than four days. Airplanes fly from New York to London in only eight hours and from south America to Africa in four!

There is a lot to learn about the creations of Beatrix Potter—not only is she the author and illustrator of one of the world's most famous children's books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but also a pioneering conservationist with the spirit of a scientist.

“Potter grew up as the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family, but along with her brother filled an entire floor of their large house in London with all sorts of animals,” said Anne Lundin, a retired professor for the UW-Madison School of Library Studies.

“As an adult, she was a frustrated botanical illustrator and scientist. That field was not open to her because she was female,”Lundin said. Potter was urged to turn the charming illustrations and stories she wrote in letters to children into books. She wrote 23 books in all—a body of work that has inspired plays, ballets, films and an astonishing amount of merchandise.

“The Tale of Peter Rabbit is probably the most famous children's book in the world, which was published 113 years ago and has really stood the test of time. It's been translated into 36 languages. The parents and grandparents will share it with the next generation,”said Lundin.

Potter also made a mark on the world through her land conservation. “In many ways, she was like Peter Rabbit, venturing into a world of adventure and risk. She withdrew from London as soon as she started making some money on her books to the Lake District and became an extremely important farmer and conservationist. She preserved and passed on 15 farms and over 4,000 acres, which were given back to the country as gifts in the 20th century,”said Lundin.

Even though she was born 150 years ago, she was amazingly modern—her embracing of the natural world, commented Jennifer Blatchley Smith, an artistic director of the show Peter Rabbit Tales to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth.

   I think it was October, 1982. A friend had business dealings in the city of Reno, Nevada, and I was asked to accompany her on an overnight trip. While she conducted her business, I was aimlessly wandering down Virginia Street, heading into a most gloriously beautiful sunset. I had an urge to speak to someone on the street to share that beauty, but I couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Quickly I ducked into a department store and asked the lady behind the counter if she could come outside for just a minute. She looked at me as though I were from some other planet and said, "Well..." Surprisingly, she followed me out.

   When she got outside I said to her, "Just look at that sunset! Nobody out here was looking at it and I just had to share it with someone."

   For a few seconds we just looked. Then I said, "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world." I thanked her for coming out to see it and sharing the beauty.

   Four years later my situation had changed considerably. I had come to the end of a twenty-year marriage, I was alone and on my own for the first time in my life. One day, while my clothes were going around, I picked up a Unity Magazine and read an article about a woman who had been in similar circumstances. She had come to the end of a marriage, moved to a strange community, and the only job she could find was one she disliked: cosmetic sales in a department store. We had a lot in common.

   Then something happened to her that changed everything. She said a woman came into her department store and asked her to step outside to look at a sunset. The stranger had said, "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.", and she had realized the truth in that statement and that she simply had not been seeing it. From that moment on, she turned her life around.

Reading is thought to be a kind of conservation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and gets answers. In the light of these he puts further questions, and so on.

       For most of the time this “conservation” goes on below the level of consciousness. At times, however, we become aware of it. This is usually when we are running into difficulties, when mismatching is occurring between expectation and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced , our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level.

Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page; others take off imaginatively from the words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension which is written in the text. The latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers. There is another conservation which from our point of view is equally important, and that is not to do with what is read but how it is read. We call this a “process” conservation as opposed to a “content” conservation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are an advanced reader, our ability to hold a content conservation with a text is usually pretty well developed. Not so our ability to hold a process conservation. It is precisely this kind of conservation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level.