阅读理解A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly, courteous, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fair, this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians ,and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small- minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment. 　　For a long period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion, and brought news of the outside world. 　　The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone travelling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement. It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily life: if you didn''t take in the stranger and take care of him, there was no one else who would. And someday, remember, you might be in the same situation. 　　Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the weary traveler. Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US, especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails. "I was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner―amazing. "Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial, but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition. 　　As is true of any developed society, in America a complex set of cultural signals, assumptions, and conventions underlies all social interrelationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fail to" translate" cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example, when an American uses the word "friend", the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor''s language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest. Yet, being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.

阅读理解A is for always getting to work on time

阅读理解Passage Four Do you have a phobia (恐惧症)？Does it spread? No, it is not a infectious (传染的) disease, but it can make you quite as bad

阅读理解 Texting has long been lamented as the downfall of the written word, 'penmanship for illiterates,' one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL. Texting properly isn't writing at all-it's actually more akin to spoken language. And it's a 'spoken' language that is getting richer and more complex by the year. Historically, talking came first; writing is just an artifice that came along later. While talk is largely subconscious and rapid, writing is deliberate and slow. Over time, writers took advantage of this and started crafting sentences such as this one, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: 'The whole engagement lasted above 12 hours, till the gradual retreat of the Persians was changed into a disorderly flight, of which the shameful example was given by the principal leaders and the Surenas himself. ' No one talks like that casually-or should. But it is natural to desire to do so for special occasions. In the old days, we didn't much write like talking because there was no mechanism to reproduce the speed of conversation. But texting and instant messaging do-and a revolution has begun. It involves the brute mechanics of writing, but in its economy, spontaneity and even vulgarity, texting is actually a new kind of talking. There is a virtual cult of concision and little interest in capitalization or punctuation. The argument that texting is 'poor writing' is analogous, then, to one that the Rolling Stones is 'bad music' because it doesn't use violas. Texting is developing its own kind of grammar. Take LOL. It doesn't actually mean 'laughing out loud' in a literal sense anymore. LOL has evolved into something much subtler and sophisticated and is used even when nothing is remotely amusing. Jocelyn texts 'Where have you been?' and Annabelle texts back 'LOL at the library studying for two hours.' LOL signals basic empathy between texters, easing tension and creating a sense of equality. Instead of having a literal meaning, it does something— conveying an attitude—just like the -ed ending conveys past tense rather than 'meaning' anything. LOL, of all things, is grammar. Civilization is fine—people banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use .in actual writing, and there is no evidence that texting is ruining composition skills. Worldwide people speak differently from the way they write, and texting-quick, casual and only intended to be read once—is actually a way of talking with your fingers.

阅读理解AIf “you'd like to go sightseeing,the following Word Heritage Sites may be your best choices. Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area.Jiuzhaigou Valley,which lies in the northern part of Sichuan Province,reach a height of more than 4,800metres ,whit a series of different forest ecosystems. There you can enjoy watching excellent waterfalls .About 140 kinds of birds also live in the valley,as well as a number of endangered plants and animals ,including the giant panda For more in formation, please visit http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/637.Khami Runins NationaI MonumentThe city of Khami, which developed after the capital of Great Zimbabwe had been given up in the mid-16th century,is great archaeological(考古的） interest .The discovery of objects from Europe and china shows that Khami was a major centre for trade over a long period of time. For more in formation ,please visit http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/365.Henderson IslandHenderson Island,which lies in the eastern South Pacific, is one of the few atolls(环礁) in the world whose  ecology(生态) has not been touched by human beings. It is especially famous for the ten kinds of plants and four species of land birds that can only be seen on the island For more in formation, please visit http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/487.The Old City of JerusalemAs a holy city for three different religions in the Middle East, Jerusalem has always been of great religious .Importance .It was given a World Heritage status in 1981 and placed on the "List of World Heritage in Danger" the following year. For more in form ation, please visit http://whc. unesco. org/en/list/148.Which of the following World Heritage Sites has different forest ecosystems ?（）

阅读理解 The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional “paid” media–such as television commercials and print advertisements–still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a product may create “owned” media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media. Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For earned media , such marketers act as the initiator for users' responses. But in some cases, one marketer's owned media become another marketer's paid media–for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend ,which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson Johnson, for example, has created Baby Center, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies' marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned. The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them. If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the company's response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

阅读理解Yellow, when golden, connotes quality, but in its more garish shades evokes the cut-rate, not always an undesirable effect

阅读理解 In general, our society is becoming one of the giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and 'human relations' experts; yet all this oiling does not aver the fact that man has become powerless, that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-collar and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management. The. worker and employee are anxious not only because they might find themselves out of a job, they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction of interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings. Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on then are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior,soeia bitity, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow competitor ereates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness. Am I suggesting that we should return to the pre-industrial mode of production or to nineteenth century 'free enterprise' capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically-man-aged industrialism in which maximal production and eonsumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of all love and of reason-are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

阅读理解Human Beings are odd creatures sometimes

阅读理解 A little information is a dangerous thing. A lot of information, if it's inaccurate or confusing even more so. This is a problem for anyone trying to spend or invest in an environmentally sustainable way. Investors are barraged with indexes purporting to describe companies eco-credentials, some of dubious quality Green labels on consumer products are ubiquitous, but their claims are hard to verify. The confusion is evident from the New Scientists' analysis of whether public perception of companies' green credentials reflect reality. It shows that many companies considered 'green' have done little to earn that reputation, while others do not get sufficient credit for their efforts to reduce their environmental impact. Obtaining better information is crucial, because decisions by consumers and big investors will help propel us towards a green economy. At present, it is too easy to make unverified claims. Take disclosure of greenhouse gas emission, for example. There are voluntary schemes such as a Carbon Disclosure Project, but little scrutiny of the figures companies submit, which means investors may be misled. Measurements can be difficult to interpret, too, like those for water use. In this case, context is crucial: a little from rain-soaked Ireland is not the same as a little drawn from the Arizona desert. Similar problems bedevil 'green' labels attached to individual products. Here, the computer equipment rating system developed by the Green Electronics Council show the way forward. Its criteria come from the IEEE, the world's leading, professional association for technology. Other schemes, such as the 'sustainability index' planned by US retail giant Walmart, are broader. Devising rigorous standard for a large number of different types of product will be tough, placing a huge burden on the academic-led consortium that is doing the underlying scientific work. Our investigation also reveals that many companies choose not to disclose data. Some will want to keep it that way. This is why we need legal requirements for full disclosure of environmental information, with the clear message that the polluter will eventually be required to pay. The market forces will drive companies to lean up their acts. Let's hope we can rise to this challenge. Before we can have a green economy we need a green information economy—and it's the quality of information, as well as the quality, that will count.

阅读理解Questions 31 to 40 are based on the following passage

阅读理解I think of good manners as a sort of hidden beauty secret

阅读理解Passage 4 I was just a boy when my father brought me to Harlem for the first time, almost 50 years ago

阅读理解Passage 4 Jill Ker Conway, president of Smith, echoes the prevailing view of contemporary technology when she says thatanyone in todays world who doesnt understand data processing is not educated, But she insists that the increasingemphasis on these matters leave certain gaps

阅读理解Taken together, income, occupation, and education are good measures of peoples social standing. Using a layered model of stratification, most sociologists describe the class system in the United States as divided into several classes: upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, and lower class. Each class is defined by characteristics such as income, occupational prestige, and educational attainment. The different groups are arrayed along a continuum with those with the most money, education, and prestige at the top and those with the least at the bottom.In the United States, the upper class owns the major share of corporate and personal wealth; it includes those who have held wealth for generations as well as those who have recently become rich. Only a very small proportion of people actually constitute the upper class, but they control vast amounts of wealth and power in the United States. They exercise enormous control throughout society. Most of their wealth is inherited.Despite social myths to the contrary, the best predictor of future wealth is the family into which you are born. Each year, the business magazine Forbes publishes a list of the Forbes 400—the four hundred wealthiest families and individuals in the country. Of all the wealth represented on the Forbes 400 list, more than half is inherited, those on the list who could be called self-made were not typically of modest origins; most inherited significant assets (Forbes, 1997; Sklar and Collins, 1997). Those in the upper class with newly acquired wealth are known as the nouveau riche. Although they may have vast amounts of money, they are often not accepted into old rich circles.The upper middle class includes those with high incomes and high social prestige. They tend to be well-educated professionals or business executives. Their earnings can be quite high indeed—successful business executives can earn millions of dollars a year. It is difficult to estimate exactly how many people fall into this group because of the difficulty of drawing lines between the upper, upper middle, and middle class. Indeed, the upper middle class is often thought of as middle class because their lifestyle sets the standard to which many aspire, but this lifestyle is simply beyond the means of a majority of people.The middle class is hard to define; in part, being middle class is more than just economic position. By far the majority of Americans identify themselves as middle class even though they vary widely in lifestyle and in resources at their disposal. But the idea that the United States is an open-class system leads many to think that the majority have a middle-class lifestyle because, in general, people tend not to want to recognize class distinctions in the United States. Thus, the middle class becomes the ubiquitous norm even though many who call themselves middle class have a tenuous hold on this class position.In the hierarchy of social class, the lower middle class includes workers in the skilled trades and low-income bureaucratic workers, many of whom may actually define themselves as middle class. Examples are blue-collar workers (those in skilled trades who do manual labor) and many service workers such as secretaries, hairdressers, waitresses, police, and firefighters. Medium to low income, education, and occupational prestige define the lower middle class relative to the class groups above it. The term lower in this class designation refers to the relative position of the group in the stratification system, but it has a pejorative sound to many people, especially to people who are members of this class.The lower class is composed primarily of the displaced and poor. People in this class have little formal education and are often unemployed or working in minimum-wage jobs. Forty percent of the poor work; 10 percent work year-round and full time—a proportion that has generally increased over time. Recently, the concept of the underclass has been added to the lower class. The underclass includes those who have been left behind by contemporary economic developments. Rejected from the economic system, those in the underclass may become dependent on public assistance or illegal activities.

阅读理解A few years ago, people in England voted for the greatest person of all time from their country

阅读理解Passage 3 My grandparents believed you were either honest or you werent

阅读理解What is the price of Mixed fruits?

阅读理解Large companies need a way to reach the savings of the public at large. The same problem, on a smaller scale, faces practically every company trying to develop new products and create new jobs. There can be little prospect of raising the sort of sums needed from friends and people we know, and while banks may agree to provide short-term finance, they are generally unwilling to provide money on a permanent basis for long-term projects. So companies turn to public, inviting people to lend them money, or take a share in the business in exchange for a share in future profits. This they do by issuing stocks and shares in the business through The Stock Exchange. By doing so, they can put into circulation the savings of individuals and institution, both at home and overseas. When the saver needs his money back, he does not have to go to the company with whom he originally placed it. Instead, he sells his shares through a stockbroker to some other saver who is seeking to invest his money.Many of the services needed both by industry and by each of us are provided by the Government or by local authorities. Without hospitals, roads, electricity, telephones, railways, this country could not function. All these require continuous spending on new equipment and new development if they are to serve us properly, requiring more money than is raised through taxes alone. The government, local authorities, and nationalized industries therefore frequently needed to borrow money to finance major capital spending, and they, too, come to The Stock Exchange.There is hardly a man or woman in this country whose job or whose standard of living does not depend on the ability of his or her employers to raise money to finance new development. In one way or another, this new money must come from the savings of the country. The Stock Exchange exists to provide a channel through which these savings can reach those who need finance.