单选题
单选题Gloves have been worn since prehistoric time for protection. for ornamentation, ______ social status.
单选题The investigation______evidence of a large-scale illegal trade in wild birds.
单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}}
The single greatest shift in the
history of mass-communication technology occurred in the 15th century, and was
well described by Victor Hugo in a famous chapter of Notre Dame de Paris. It was
a Cathedral. On all parts of the giant building, statuary and stone
representations of every kind, combined with huge widows of stained glass, told
the stories of the Bible and the saints, displayed the intricacies of Christian
theology, adverted to the existence of highly unpleasant demonic winged
creatures, referred diplomatically to the majesties of political power, and in
addition, by means of bells in bell towers, told time for the benefit of all of
Pairs and much of France. It was an awesome engine of communication.
Then came the transition to something still more awesome. The new
technology of mass communication was portable, could sit on your table, and was
easily replicable, and yet, paradoxically, contained more information, more
systematically presented, than even the largest of cathedrals. It was the
printed book. Though it provided no bells and could not tell time, the over-all
superiority of the new invention was unmistakable. In the last
ten or twenty years, we have been undergoing a more or less equivalent
shift--this time to a new life as a computer-using population. The gain in
portability, capability, ease, orderliness, accuracy, reliability, and
information-storage over anything achievable by pen scribbling, typewriting, and
cabinet filing is recognized by all. The progress for civilization is undeniable
and, plainly, irreversible. Yet, just as the book's triumph over the cathedral
divided people into two groups, one of which prospered, while the other lapsed
into gloom, the computer's triumph has also divided the human race.
You have only to bring a computer into a room to see that some people
begin at once to buzz with curiosity and excitement, sit down to conduct
experiments, ooh and ah at the boxes and beeps, and master the use of the
computer or a new program as quickly as athletes playing a delightful new game.
But how difficult it is--how grim and frightful!--for the other people, the
defeated class, whose temperament does not naturally respond to computers. The
machine whirries and glows before them and their faces twitch. They may be
splendidly educated, as measured by book-reading, yet their instincts are all
wrong, and no amount of manual-studying and mouse-clicking will make them right.
Computers require a sharply different set of aptitudes, and, if the aptitudes
are missing, little can be done, and misery is guaranteed. Is
the computer industry aware that computers have divided mankind into two new,
previously unknown classes, the computer personalities and the non-computer
personalities? Yes, the industry knows this. Vast stuns have been expended in
order to adapt the computer to the limitations of non-computer personalities.
Apple's Macintosh, with its zooming animations and pull-down menus and little
pictures of life folders and watch faces and trash cans, pointed the way. Such
seductions have soothed the apprehensions of a certain number of the
computer-averse. This spring, the computer industry's efforts are reaching a
culmination of sorts. Microsoft, Bill Gates' giant corporation, is to bring out
a program package called Microsoft Bob, designed by Mr. Gates' wife, Melinda
French, and intended to render computer technology available even to people who
are openly terrified of computers. Bob's principle is to take the several tasks
of operating a computer, rename them in a folksy style, and assign to them the
images of an ideal room in ideal home, with furniture and bookshelves, and with
chummy cartoon helpers ("Friends of Bob") to guide the computer user over the
rough spots, and, in that way, simulate an atmosphere that feels nothing like
computers.
单选题
单选题Ray: ______. Where was I?
Brenda: You were talking about your trip to South Africa.
单选题The man ( ) was stolen called the police.
单选题
单选题Some of them were well behaved, ______ were insulting.
单选题The author states that birds left the tropics because ______. A. there was not enough food there in the winter B. there were too many birds C. there were too many glaciers D. there was too much daylight
单选题
单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}}
Teaching children to read well from the
start is the most important task of elementary schools. But relying on educators
to approach this task correctly can be a great mistake. Many schools continue to
employ instructional methods that have been proven ineffective. The staying
power of the "look-say" or "whole-word" method of teaching beginning reading is
perhaps the most flagrant example of this failure to instruct
effectively. The whole-word approach to reading stresses the
meaning of words over the meaning of letters, thinking over decoding, developing
a sight vocabulary of familiar words over developing the ability to unlock the
pronunciation of unfamiliar words. It fits in with the serf-directed, "learning
how to learn" activities recommended by advocates of "open" classrooms and with
the concept that children have to be developmentally ready to begin reading.
Before 1963, no major publisher put out anything but these "Run- Spot-Run"
readers. However, in 1955, Rudolf Flesch touched off what has
been called "the great debate" in beginning reading. In his best-seller Why
Johnny Can't Read, Flesch indicted(控诉)the nation's public schools for
miseducating students by using the look-say method. He said-and mere scholarly
studies by Jeane Chall and Rovert Dykstra later confirmed-that another approach
to beginning reading, founded on phonics(声学), is far superior.
Systematic phonics first teaches children to associate letters and letter
combinations with sounds; it then teaches them how to blend these sounds
together to make words. Rather than building up a relatively limited vocabulary
of memorized words, it imparts a code by which the pronunciations of the vast
majority of the most common words in the English language can be learned.
Phonics does not devalue the importance of thinking about the meaning of words
and sentences; it simply recognizes that decoding is the logical and necessary
first step.
单选题A. secureB. pureC. failureD. cure
单选题The launching of China's first manned-spaceship was televised ______ by CCTV.
单选题It is said ______ Mr. Tom has arrived in New York.A. thatB. whichC. whatD. why
单选题Money, time and health concerns
loom largely in the poll of more than 1,100 women
who have at least one living parent
. About 20 % said they were very happy. More than half of the women were concerned about
an elderly relative"s
health. Those who had sick relatives were much more likely to feel depressed and to
worry about
having enough time
for family member.
单选题When his depression got worse, he decided to seek______in the hospital.
单选题 English as a Foreign Language Who taught you to speak English? Your parents, while you were a young child? Your teachers at school? Perhaps even the BBC as a grown-up. Whoever it was, somehow you have developed an understanding of what is rapidly becoming a truly global language. There are now about 376 million people who speak English as their first language, and about the same number who have learnt it in addition to their mother tongue. There are said to be one billion people learning English now and about 80% of the information on the Internet is in English. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Should we celebrate the fact that more and more of us can communicate, using a common language, across countries and cultures (文化)? Or should we worry about the dangers of "mono-culturalism", a world in which we all speak the same language, eat the same food and listen to the same music? Does it matter if an increasing number of people speak the same language? On the contrary (相反), I would have thought—although I have never accepted the argument that if only we all understood each other better, there would be fewer wars. Ask the people of India (where many of them speak at least some English) and Pakistan (the same situation with India)… If we all speak English, will we then all start eating McDonalds hamburgers? Surely not. If English becomes more dominant(占主导地位的) ,will it kill other languages? I doubt it. When I travel in Africa or Asia, I am always surprised by how many people can speak not only their own language but often one or more other related languages, as well as English and perhaps some French or German as well. When we discussed this on Talking Point a couple of years ago, we received a wonderfully poetic email from a listener in Ireland. "The English language is a beautiful language. Maybe it's like a rose," he said. "But who would ever want their garden just full of roses?" Well, I love roses, and I think they make a beautiful addition to any garden. But the way I see it, just by planting a few roses, you don't necessarily need to pull out everything else. If more and more people want to plant English roses, that's fine by me.
单选题Much of the American anxiety about old age is a flight from the reality of death. One of the striking qualities of the American character is the unwillingness to face either the fact or meaning of death. In the more somber tradition of American literature-from Hawthorne and Melville and Poe to Faulkner and Hemingway—one finds a tragic depth that belies the surface thinness of the ordinary American death attitudes. By an effort of the imagination, the great writers faced problems that the culture in action is reluctant to face—the fact of death, its mystery, and its place in. the back-and-forth shuttling of the eternal recurrence. The unblinking confrontation of death in Greek time, the elaborate theological patterns woven around it in the Middle Ages, the ritual celebration of it in the rich, peasant cultures of Latin and Slavic Europe and in primitive cultures; these are difficult to find in American life. Whether through fear of the emotional depths, or because of a drying up of the sluices of religious intensity, the American avoids dwelling on death or even corning to terms with it; he finds it morbid and recoils from it, surrounding it with word avoidance (Americans never die; they "pass away,") and various taboos of speech and practice. A "funeral parlor" is decorated to look like a bank; everything in a funeral ceremony is done in hushed tones, as if it were something furtive, to be concealed from the world; there is so much emphasis on being dignified that the ceremony often loses its quality of dignity. In some of the primitive cultures, there is difficulty in understanding the muses of death; it seems puzzling and even unintelligible. Living in a scientific culture, Americans have a ready enough explanation of how it comes, yet they show little capacity to come to terms with the fact of death itself and with the grief that accompanies it. "We jubilate over birth and dance at weddings", writes Margaret Mead, "but more and more hustle the death off the scene without ceremony, without an opportunity for young and old to realize that death is as much a fact of life as is birth". And one may add, even in its hurry and brevity, the last stage of an American' s life—the last occasion of this relation to his society—is as standardized as the rest.
单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}}
A new biotechnology procedure that
could become commercially available in as little as two to four years is
"transgenesis", which permits scientists to create an animal with specific
traits by adding, removing, inactivating, or repairing genes in an embryo. The
additional genes can come from any source. For example, if a gene of
interest occurs in mosquitoes—say, one that codes for resistance to a certain
disease—it can be removed and places in the embryo of a farm animal. The several
strains of commercially useful transgenic farm animals that will probably emerge
in the next few years could include leaner pigs, poultry resisting to influenza
or other deadly diseases, sheep with wool that is easier to wash, and goats that
produce valuable pharmaceuticals in their milk. The simplest way
to make transgenic animals is to inject a gene into a one-cell embryo and then
implant the embryo in another animal. Under the right conditions, the new gene
joins one of the embryo's strands of genes. Each cell created as the embryo
divides gets a copy of the new gene. An alternative technique is to
incorporate the gene into a type of virus known as a retrovirus that has bean
modified so it cannot reproduce itself after entering a cell. The virus, which
cannot cause disease, delivers the gene to the cell's nucleus- Often this method
is better than gene injection because a retrovirus always delivers just one
gene, and the gene is always undamaged and
complete.
