单选题Where is the second centre of Hollywood film making in Europe. after London*. Paris. or perhaps Berlin? Try Prague. Last year, Hollywood spent over $200m on shooting movies, commercials and pop videos in the Czech capital. This year. all the big studios will be in town. MGM has "Hart's War" starring Bruce Willis; Disney is shooting "Black Sheep" with Anthony Hopkins; and Fox has just finished filming "From Hell", a Jack the Ripper saga starring Johnny Depp. Praguers take Tinseltown in their stride. Old ladies looked only slightly confused last month when the cobbled streets of Mala Strana, Prague's old quarter, were cleared of real snow and sprayed with a more cinematically pleasing chemical alternative for Universal's "Bourne Identity", a $50m thriller starring Matt Damon. The film's producer, Pat Crowley, reckons a day filming in Prague costs him $100.000, against $250,000 in Paris. Czech crews, he says, are professional, English-speaking and numerous. They are also a bargain—40% cheaper than similar crews in London or Los Angeles, points out Matthew Stillman. the British boss of Stillking, a Prague-based production firm. Mr. Stillman founded Stillking in 1993 after arriving in Prague with $500 and a typewriter. Today, Hollywood producers come to the company for crews, catering, lights and much more. It claims to have about half of the local film-production business and this year hopes for revenues of over $50m. The biggest draw to Prague, however, is Barrandov—one of the largest film studios in Europe, with 11 sound-stages, onsite photo labs and top-notch technicians. It was founded during Czechoslovakia's pre-war first republic by Milos Havel, an uncle of the present Czech president, Vaclav Havel. The Nazis expanded it as a production centre for propaganda flicks—the sound-stages are courtesy of Joseph Goebbels. Then came the Communists with their own propaganda and, admittedly, a few impressive homegrown directors such as Milos Forman, who began Hollywood's march to Prague by filming "Amadeus" there. But it is partly thanks to Barrandov that Prague remains some way behind London as a film centre. The studio has suffered from doubtful management and is already stretched to capacity ("You can't even get an office there," moans one producer). Its present owner, a local steel company, is keen to sell but talks with a Canadian institution have been thorny, not least because the Czech government holds a golden share. Should the Canadian deal fall through, Stillking says it would consider a bid of its own.

单选题Mrs. Peters stopped playing the piano ______.

单选题Historians tend to tell the same joke when they are describing history education in America. It's the one (51) the teacher standing in the schoolroom door (52) goodbye to students for the summer and calling after them. "By the way, we won World War Ⅱ. " The problem with the joke, of course, is that it's not funny. The recent surveys on (53) illiteracy are beginning to numb: nearly one third of American 17-year-olds cannot even (54) which countries the United States fought against in that war. One third have no idea when the Declaration of Independence was (55) . One third thought Columbus reached the New World after 1750. Two thirds cannot correctly (56) the Civil War between 1850 and 1900. Even when they get the answers right, some are just guessing. Unlike math or science, ignorance of history cannot be (57) connected to loss of international competitiveness. But it does affect our future (58) a democratic nation and as individuals. The good news is that there is growing agreement on what is wrong with the (59) of history and what needs to be done to fix it. The steps are tentative (尝试性的) (60) yet to be felt in most classrooms.

单选题Do you ever automatically say "God bless you" when someone sneezes? Did you ever cross your fingers when making a wish? Most people who do these things never think about why they do them. They just do them. But there is a reason. Both acts are meant to insure good luck. They are little superstitions that have come down to us from an earlier time, when everybody believed in good and evil spirits. And even in our modern world, when men are traveling to the moon, we are still practicing some of these ancient habits in our daily lives. In ancient times, men believed that the soul lived in the head. Every time someone sneezed, he was risking the danger of dislodging that soul and blowing it out the nose into the outside world. So, as insurance against a lost soul, people would say "God bless you" to be sure that God would catch the soul and return it to its rightful owner. Some people today toss a bit of salt over their left shoulder if they happen to spill any at the dinner table. This practice once had a serious purpose. In an earlier time, men believed that evil spirits always stood on their left side and good sprits on the right. So any time they spilled some of the precious stuff, they would throw a bit of it over their left shoulder to keep away the evil spirits. Since the evil spirits stood on the left, and the good spirits on the right, the right side was considered the lucky side of the body. Putting your best foot forward meant starting out on the lucky side, with your right foot first. That was a guarantee of good luck at whatever you were about to do. We still speak of "putting your best foot forward," although we don't always start walking with the right foot.

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} Real policemen, both Britain and the United States, hardly recognize any resemblance between their lives and what they see on TV - if they ever get home in time. There are similarities, of course, but the cops don't think much of them. The first difference is that a policeman's real life revolves round the law. Most of his training is in criminal law. He has to know exactly what actions are crimes and what evidence can be used to prove them in court. He has to know nearly as much law as a professional lawyer, and what is more, he has to apply it on his feet, in the dark and rain, running down an alley after someone he wants to talk to. Little of his time is spent in chatting to scantily clad ladies or in dramatic confrontations with desperate criminals. He will spend most of his working life typing millions of words on thousands of forms about hundreds of sad, unimportant people who are guilty-or not-of stupid, petty crimes. Most television crime drama is about finding the criminal; as soon as he's arrested, the story is over. In real life, finding criminals is seldom much of a problem: Except in very serious cases like murders and terrorist attacks-where failure to produce results reflects on the standing of the police-little effort is spent on searching. The police have an elaborate machinery which eventually shows up most wanted men. Having made an arrest, a detective really starts to work. He has to prove his case in court and to do that he often has to gather a lot of different evidence. Much of this has to be given by people who don't want to get involved in a court case. So as well as being overworked, a detective has to be out at all hours of the day and night interviewing his witnesses and persuading them, usually against their own best interests, to help him. A third big difference between the drama detective and the real one is the unpleasant moral twilight in which the real one lives. Detectives are subject to two opposing pressures: first as members of a police force they always have to behave with absolute legality, secondly, as expensive public servants they have to get results They can hardly ever do both. Most of the time some of them have to break the rules in small ways. If the detective has to deceive the world, the world often deceives him. Hardly anyone he meets tells him the truth. And this separation the detective feels between himself and the rest of the world is deepened by the simple mindedness-as he sees it-of citizens, social workers, doctors, law makers, and judges, who, instead of stamping out crime punish the criminals less severely in the hope that this will make them reform. The result, detectives feel, is that nine tenths of their work is recatching people who should have stayed behind bars. This makes them rather cynical.

单选题Man: It's raining cats and dogs outside. Did you remember to bring the umbrella? Women: Oops, ______.

单选题The mini-skirt is______.A. in fashionsB. in a fashionC. in fashionD. in the fashion

单选题The President of the United States is head of the______Branch.

单选题It is during his spare time______Johnson has been studying a course in history.

单选题A: I'm so glad that you've come to our wedding. B: Congratulations, and ______ A. all my good wishes! B. all wishes! C. happy forever! D. all my best wishes!

单选题In this factory, suggestions often have to wait fur months before they are fully ______ .

单选题By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "ice-box" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States: The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose: In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.

单选题Man: Marilyn seems happy with her grades. Woman: Happy? She could hardly contain herself. Question: What does the man say about Marilyn?

单选题In the end he realized his dream, but______the cost of his life.

单选题I finally finished ______ this quiz. Now I'm going to watch TV.

单选题Tall-growing crops should be planted where they will not shade or ______ with the growth of small crops.

单选题It"s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-economy, with the "e" standing for electronic, entrepreneurial. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We"re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we"re part-time lawyers-cum-amateur photographers who write on the side. Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops. Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed. This transition is nothing less than a revolution. We haven"t seen a shift in the workforce so significant in almost 100 years since we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Now, employees are leaving the traditional workplace and opting to piece together a professional life on their own. As of 2005, one-third of our workforce participated in this "freelance economy". Statistics show that number has only increased over the past six years. While the economy has unwillingly pushed some people into independent work, many have chosen it because of greater flexibility that lets them skip the dreary office environment and focus on more personally fulfilling projects. These trends will have an enormous impact on our economy and our society: We don"t actually know the true composition of the new workforce. After 2005, the government stopped counting independent workers in a meaningful and accurate way. Studies have shown that the independent workforce has grown and changed significantly since then. Jobs no longer provide the protections and security that workers used to expect. The basics such as health insurance, protection from unpaid wages, a retirement plan, and unemployment insurance are out of reach for one-third of working Americans. Independent workers are forced to seek them elsewhere, and if they can"t find or afford them, then they go without. Therefore, it"s time to build a new support system that allows for the flexible and mobile way that people are working. This new, changing workforce needs to build economic security in profoundly new ways. For the new workforce, the New Deal is irrelevant. When it was passed in the 1930s, the New Deal provided workers with important protections and benefits but those securities were built for a traditional employer-employee relationship. The New Deal has not evolved to include independent workers.

单选题 Passage 9 One of the most interesting of all studies is the study of words and word origins. Each language is {{U}}(1) {{/U}} of several earlier languages, and the words of a language can sometimes be traced {{U}}(2) {{/U}} through two or three different languages to their {{U}}(3) {{/U}} Again, a word from one language may pass into other languages and {{U}}(4) {{/U}} a new meaning. The word "etiquette", which is {{U}}(5) {{/U}} French origin and originally meant a label, {{U}}(6) {{/U}} a sign, passed into Spanish and kept its original meaning. So in Spanish the word "etiquette" today is used to {{U}}(7) {{/U}} the small tags which a store {{U}}(8) {{/U}} to a suit, a dress or a bottle. The word "etiquette" in French, {{U}}(9) {{/U}}, gradually developed a different meaning. It {{U}}(10) {{/U}} became the custom to write directions on small cards or "etiquette" as to how visitors should dress themselves and {{U}}(11) {{/U}} during an important ceremony at the royal court. {{U}}(12) {{/U}}, the word "etiquette" began to indicate a system of correct manners for people to follow. {{U}}(13) {{/U}} this meaning, the word passed into English. Consider the word "breakfast". "To fast" is to go for some period of time without {{U}}(14) {{/U}} . Thus, in the morning, after many hours {{U}}(15) {{/U}} the night without food, one {{U}}(16) {{/U}} one's fast. Consider the everyday English {{U}}(17) {{/U}} "Good-bye". Many years ago, people would say to each other {{U}}(18) {{/U}} parting: "God be with you." As this was {{U}}(19) {{/U}} over and over millions of times, it gradually became {{U}}(20) {{/U}} to "good-bye".