【正文】 . a free puter program by MIT and Harvard　C. a HarvardMIT platform of free online courses　D. a free program online for universities worldwide65. What is said about online education in the text?　A. Universities have been trying online courses　B. About 2,000 online courses have been offered.　C. Over 100 million people have finished courses online　D. Stanford and Yale together have courses similar to edX.66. The underlined part in the text probably means “__________.”　A. Get ready for the difficulties.　B. Get ready for this educational change.　C. Get prepared to plete the online courses.　D. Get prepared to make materials for the edX courses.67. What can be said about MITx according to the text?　A. It is first offered as part of the edX learning program.　B. It is another free MITHarvard online learning program.　C. It is a standard to recognize online learners’ achievement.　D. It is a new kind of free online course of Harvard and MIT.D　　I left university with a good degree in English Literature, but no sense of what I wanted to do. Over the next six years, I was treading water, just trying to earn an ine. I tried journalism, but I didn’t think I was any good, then finance, which I hated. Finally, I got a job as a rights assistant at a famous publisher. I loved working with books, although the job that I did was dull.　　I had enough savings to take a year off work, and I decided to try to satisfy a deepdown wish to write a novel. Attending a Novel Writing MA course gave the structure I needed to write my first 55,000 words.　　It takes confidence to make a new start — there’s a dark period inbetween where you’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re out for dinner and people ask what you do, and you’re too ashamed to say, “Well, I’m writing a novel, but I’m not quite sure if I’m going to get there. My confidence dived. Believing my novel could not be published, I put it aside.　　Then I met an agent（代理商）who said I should send my novel out to agents. So, I did and, to my surprise, got some wonderful feedback. I felt a little hope that I might actually bee a published writer and, after signing with an agent, I finished the second half of the novel.　　The next problem was finding a publisher. After twoandahalf years of no ine, just waiting and wondering, a publisher offered me a book deal — that publisher turned out to be the one I once worked for.　　It feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck — of fate, really. When you set out to do something different, there’s no end in sight, so to find myself in a position where I now have my own name on a contract of the publisher — to be a published writer — is unbelievably rewarding.68. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 mean?　A. I was waiting for good fortune.　B. I was trying to find an admirable job.　C. I was being aimless about a suitable job.　D. I was doing several jobs for more pay at a time.69. The author decided to write a novel _______.　A. to finish the writing course　B. to realize her own dream　C. to satisfy readers’ wish　D. to earn more money70. How did the writer feel halfway with the novel?　A. Disturbed. B. Ashamed. C. Confident. D. Uncertain.71. What does the author mainly want to tell readers in the last paragraph?　A. It pays to stick to one’s goal.　B. Hard work can lead to success.　C. She feels like being unexpectedly lucky.　D. There is no end in sight when starting to do something.E　　Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted（預(yù)測）in reaction to climate change, which could have long damaging effects on food chains and ecosystems.　　Global warming is having a great effect on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some living patterns, scientists say.　　Increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air from burning coal and oil can have an effect on how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and changeable rainfall patterns can change their patterns of growth.　　“Predicting species’ reaction to climate change is a major challenge in ecology,” said the researchers of several . universities. They said plants had been the key object of study because their reaction to climate change could have an effect on food chains and ecosystem services.　　The study, published on the Nature website, uses the findings from plant life cycle studies and experiments across four continents and 1,634 species. It found that some experiments had underestimated（低估）the speed of flowering by times and leafing by 4 times.　　“Across all species, the experiments underpredicted the speed of advance — for both leafing and flowering — that results from temperature increases,” the study said.　　The design of future experiments may need to be improved to better predict how plants will react to climate change, it said.　　Plants are necessary for life on the Earth. They are the base of the food c