阅读理解If given a second chance, the writer would probably choose to ________.

阅读理解People have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories in pictures. About 5,000 years ago the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as a kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet. The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture-writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic strip(连环漫画) stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it. By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world. These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawing, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers, in the street, and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily, and they can make a story much more interesting.

阅读理解Space is a dangerous place, not only because of meteors (流星) but also because of rays from the sun and other stars. The atmosphere again acts as our protective blanket on earth. Light gets through, and this is essential for plants to make the food which we eat. Heat, too, makes our environment endurable. Various kinds of rays come through the air from outer space, but enormous quantities of radiation from the sun are screened off. As soon as men leave the atmosphere they are exposed to this radiation but their spacesuits or the walls of their spacecraft, if they are inside, do prevent a lot of radiation damage. Radiation is the greatest known danger to explorers in space. The unit of radiation is called "rem". Scientists have reason to think that a man can put up with far more radiation than 0.1 rem without being damaged; the figure of 60 rems has been agreed on. The trouble is that it is extremely difficult to be sure about radiation damage-a person may feel perfectly well, but the cells of his or her sex organs may be damaged, and this will not be discovered until the birth of deformed (畸形的) children or even grandchildren. Missions of the Apollo flights have had to cross belts of high radiation and, during the outward and return journeys, the Apollo crew accumulated a large amount of rems. So far, no dangerous amounts of radiation have been reported, but the Apollo missions have been quite short. We simply do not know yet how men are going to get on when they spend weeks and months outside the protection of the atmosphere, working in a space laboratory. Drugs might help to decrease the damage done by radiation, but no really effective ones have been found so far.

阅读理解What is the main idea of the passage?

阅读理解What is the main idea of the passage?

阅读理解When families gather for Christmas dinner, some will stick to formal traditions dating back to Grandma''s generation. Their tables will be set with the good dishes and silver, and the dress code will be Sunday-best. But in many other homes, this china-and-silver elegance has given way to a stoneware-and-stainless in formality, with dresses assuming an equally casual-Friday look. For hosts and guests, the change means greater simplicity and comfort. For makers of fine china in Britain, it spells economic hard times. Last week Royal Doulton, the largest employer in Stoke-on-Trent, announced that it is eliminating 1,000 jobs--one-fifth of its total workforce. That brings to more than 4,000 the number of positions lost in 18 months in the pottery region. Wedgwood and other pottery factories made cuts earlier. Although a strong pound and weak markets in Asia play a role in the downsizing, the layoffs in Stoke have their roots in earthshaking social shifts. A spokesman for Royal Doulton admitted that the company "has been somewhat slow in catching up with the trend" toward casual dining. Families eat together less often, he explained, and more people eat alone, either because they are single or they eat in front of television. Even dinner parties, if they happen at all, have gone casual. In a time of long work hours and demanding family schedules, busy hosts insist, rightly, that it'' s better to share a takeout pizza on paper plates in the family room than to wait for the perfect moment or a "real" dinner party. Too often, the perfect moment new ex comes. Iron a fine-patterned tablecloth? Forget it. Polish the silver? Who has time? Yet the loss of formality has its down side. The fine points of etiquette that children might once have learned at the table by observation or instruction from parents and grandparents (" Chew with your mouth dosed." "Keep your elbows off the table.") must be picked up elsewhere. Some companies now offer etiquette seminars for employees who may be competent professionally but clueless socially.

阅读理解University teaching in the United Kingdom is very different at both undergraduate and graduate levels from that of many overseas countries. An undergraduate course consists of a series of lectures, seminars and tutorials and, in science and engineering, laboratory classes, which in total account for about 15 hours per week. Arts students may well find that their official contact with teachers is less than this average, while science and engineering students may expect to be timetabled for up to 20 hours per week. Students studying for a particular degree will take a series of lecture courses which run in parallel at a fixed time in each week and may last one academic term or the whole year. Associated with each lecture course are seminars, tutorials and laboratory classes which draw upon, analyze, illustrate or amplify, the topics presented in the lectures. Lecture classes can vary in size from 20 to 200 although larger size lectures tend to decrease as students progress into the second and third year and more options become available. Seminars and tutorials are on the whole much smaller than lecture classes and in some departments can be on a one-to-one basis (that is one member of staff to one student). Students are normally expected to prepare work in advance for seminars and tutorials and this can take the form of researching a topic for discussion, by writing essays or by solving problems. Lectures, seminars and tutorials are all one hour in length, whilst laboratory classes usually last either 2 or 3 hours. Much emphasis is put on how to spend as much time if not more studying by themselves as being taught. In the UK it is still common for people to say that they are "reading" for a degree! Each student has a tutor whom they can consult on any matter whether academic or personal. Although the tutor will help, motivation for study is expected to come from the student.

阅读理解The more women and minorities make their way into the ranks of management, the more they seem to want to talk about things formerly judged to be best left unsaid. The newcomers also tend to see office matters with a fresh eye, in the process sometimes coming up with critical analyses of the forces that shape everyone'' s experience in the organization. Consider the novel views of Harvey Coleman of Atlanta on the subject of getting ahead. Coleman is black. He spent 11 years with IBM, half of them working in management development, and now serves as a consultant to the likes of AT image, 30%; and exposure, a full 60%. Coleman concluded that excellent job performance is so common these days that while doing your work well may win you pay increases, it won'' t secure you the big promotion. He finds that advancement more often depends on how many people know you and your work, and how high up they are. Ridiculous beliefs? Not to many people, especially many women and members of minority races who, like Coleman, feel that the scales (障眼物) have dropped from their eyes. "Women and blacks in organizations work under false beliefs," says Kaleel Jamison, a New York-based management consultant who helps corporations deal with these issues. "They think that if you work hard, you'' 11 get ahead --that someone in authority will reach down and give you a promotion." She adds," Most women and blacks are so frightened that people will think they'' ye gotten ahead because of their sex or color that they play down their visibility." Her advice to those folks: learn the ways that white males have traditionally used to find their way into the spotlight.

听力题JamaileMorallywasaccusedofallEXCEPT________.

听力题Welearnfromthepassagethatabouttwo-thirdsofthecoursesaretaughtthrough

听力题Accordingtothepassage,whenarechildrenfirstexpectedtostudyhard?

听力题 Haitian hunger strikers at the US naval base at Cuantanamo Bay, Cuba have begun refusing all fluids and medical treatment. Fifteen of the two hundred sixty-seven Haitians at the base said they are prepared to die, if necessary, to force the US to admit the rest of them. The Haitians are eligible to pursue political asylum in the US, but have been barred from entry, because most have the AIDS virus. The Clinton Administration says it will lift the ban on their entry, but it is not known when. Haitian hunger strikers at the US naval base at Cuantanamo Bay, Cuba have begun refusing all fluids and medical treatment. Fifteen of the two hundred sixty-seven Haitians at the base said they are prepared to die, if necessary, to force the US to admit the rest of them. The Haitians are eligible to pursue political asylum in the US, but have been barred from entry, because most have the AIDS virus. The Clinton Administration says it will lift the ban on their entry, but it is not known when.

听力题Londontaxidriversareveryefficient________.

听力题Themanlosehistemper________.

听力题Linda sounds ______ about the success of the campaign plan.

听力题WhathashappenedtotheCubans?

听力题WhostagedtheprotestonSaturday?

听力题Accordingtothegovernmentsource,theunrestwassparkedby________.

听力题 The combined left-wing opposition in France has defeated President Jacques Chirac''s ruling Conservative coalition in the first round of the country''s parliamentary elections. Projections by French television give the socialist-led opposition 40% of the vote, and Mr. Chirac''s center-right coalition 37%. If the left secures a majority of seats in parliament, socialist leader Lionel Jospin will likely become Prime Minister in a power sharing his arrangement with President Chirac. The combined left-wing opposition in France has defeated President Jacques Chirac''s ruling Conservative coalition in the first round of the country''s parliamentary elections. Projections by French television give the socialist-led opposition 40% of the vote, and Mr. Chirac''s center-right coalition 37%. If the left secures a majority of seats in parliament, socialist leader Lionel Jospin will likely become Prime Minister in a power sharing his arrangement with President Chirac.

听力题Thewinnersofthereportedelectionsare______.