单选题The word "whetted" in Paragraph 3 can be replaced by "______".

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单选题The development of silent reading during the nineteenth century indicated ______.

单选题 IQuestions 14-17 are based on a dialogue between two friends about their holiday plans./I

单选题Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick Ⅱ in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously affected. Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed. Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and makes vowel like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can puts into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar. Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man"s brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a toy bear with the sound pattern toy bear". And even more incredible is the young brain"s ability to pick out an group in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways. But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognize the signals in the child"s babbling (咿呀学语), grasping and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only tile obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child"s non-verbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.

单选题Quite a few people frown at the telephone bill, a regular visitor who makes its polite but firm call once a month. Friends frown at it and shake their heads, looking stupidly helpless. The next move that friends make is to swear at the trick the phone company plays with people: letting you use the phone first, encouraging you to use it more, and finally charging you heartlessly. The third move, after swearing, is likely to be picking the phone up and starting a funny long chat with someone somewhere across the whole continent. The bill, in plain words, is a money collector. Household bills include those for electricity, water, gas, garbage pickup, telephone, and cable TV. Credit card holders find more opportunities to frown because they also have bills from banks and companies that may be located in New York City or Nebraska farmlands. Here is a simple addition: suppose you hold three credit cards, plus household bills, you need to take care of nine regular bills a month. Usually, bills come in on different days, giving you two or three weeks to handle them. You seem to be always receiving bills, and sending out payments. You feel that you live to pay bills. There are some irregular or long term bills coming for, say, the car insurance, the health insurance, publication subscriptions, first aid, or a fine for something, like a parking violation, that you did or did not deserve. The principle is that whenever your balance in the bank account is going up, you know it is about time for some special bills to arrive for you to pay off. Because bills are part of everyday mail delivery, going to check the mailbox is no longer a matter of pleasant hope. Some people handle bills in a cool way: forgetting them for a while by throwing them under the couch. Once the bothersome thing has disappeared from you, you tend to stop worrying about it. As a Chinese cynical idiom goes: "The more debts the less concerns./

单选题Even a careful motorist may have the misfortune to commit a motoring offence. In this case, he will appear in a police court. This is a court ruled by a judge without a jury. A judge has powers to pass sentence for relatively minor offences only; serious charges are dealt with by a judge and a jury. In certain cases, the accused may choose to go before a judge and a jury, instead of appearing before just a judge. A court is also used for the conduct of preliminary inquiries to determine whether or not an accused person shall appear for trial in a higher court. When his case comes up in court, the motorist hears his name called by the clerk of the court, and comes forward to identify himself. The judge then calls for the policeman who charged the offender and asks him to give evidence. The officer takes the oath to "tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth." He also is expected to give an account of what happened when the offence was committed and to mention any special circumstances. For example, the offence may have been partly due to the foolishness of another motorist. It would be unwise for the accused motorist to exaggerate this. It will not help his case to try to blame someone else for his own mistake. If you are guilty, it is of course wise to say you're guilty and apologize for committing the offence and taking up the court's time. Judges are not heartless and a motorist may be lucky enough to hear one say: "You've got good reasons, but you have broken the law and I am obliged to impose a fine. Pay five pounds. Next case." Some short-tempered people forget that both policemen and judges have a public duty to perform, and are rude to them. This does not pay! A judge will not let off an offender merely because he is respectful, but a courteous law-breaker may certainly hope that the judge will extend him what tolerance the law permits.

单选题Many people want to become famous, but don't know how. Here I'd like to tell about how to become known or get closer to people. There are certain qualities that you have to remember while (26) people, be it a friend, a neighbour or anybody (27) you. The first thing is to remember their names and birthdays and never (28) them if you want to get closer to them, because this is (29) you start getting closer to people. You will have to reduce (30) about yourself and start listening a lot. One of the important (31) which can be used to get closer to people is to listen to them. (32) in today's management studies, listening is a very basic necessity in (33) such as business negotiations and international exchanges. (34) people to speak about themselves and be (35) interested in them. Another quality you will have to (36) is to appreciate people because everybody needs appreciation, but do not (37) it too far. If you are appreciating, let it be from the (38) of your heart. Everybody has got some good qualities or other which can be (39) So appreciate the good qualities. See to it that they don't feel (40) . Always remember to have a smile (41) your face whenever you meet people, because people don' t like crying faces. Develop a good (42) of humour. Most important of all is to be (43) .So by all these you must know the (44) to reach people. Try those essentials (45) you will see people getting closer to you.

单选题Futurists love computers. After all, 40 years ago electronic digital computers didn't exist; today microchips as tiny as a baby's fingernail are making all sorts of tasks faster and easier. Surely the future holds still more miracles. Some of the computer experiments now going on inspire exciting visions of the future. For example, scientists are working on devices that can electronically perform some sight and hearing functions, which could make life easier for the blind and deaf. They're also working on artificial arms and legs that respond to the electric impulses produced by the human brain. Scientists hope that some day a person who's lost an arm could still have near-normal brain control over an artificial arm. Video games, computerized special effects in movies, and real-life training machines now being used by the US Army are causing some people to predict new educational uses for computers. Computers could some day be used to simulate travel to other planets, to explore the ocean floor, or to look inside an atom. Experiments with electronic banking and shopping inspire predictions that these activities will soon be done from home computer terminals. Cars, too, might be equipped with computers to help drivers find their way around (Honda has one in an experimental car) or to communicate with home and office computers. Many people, including handicapped workers with limited ability to move around, already are working at home using computer terminals. Each terminal is connected to a system at a company's main office. Some futurists say the day may come when few people will have to leave home to go to work — they'll just turn on a terminal. A growing number of factories such as the General Motors Plant in Newark, Delaware, "hire" computerized robots to perform tasks such as spot welding. Some executives get a gleam in their eyes as they envision the spread of these "perfect workers" — no coffee breaks, no strikes, and no vacations or sick days. These modern and potential computer uses are possible because of the silicon microchip. These chips, which have become increasingly complex since their beginning in 1959, contain a network of information pathways. Electronic impulses travel along the paths. The plans for a chip look much like a city street plan and can be as large as a football field. It can take as long as three months to complete a new chip design. Chips are used to store information, too. An entire "computer" can be put onto one chip — called a microprocessor. As chips become even more complex, easier to make, and less costly, futurists predict limitless possibilities. A group of Japanese scientists is working on a new generation of computers, which they hope will be able to understand vocal instructions, talk back to their users, and automatically try out alternate solutions to a problem to come up with the best answer. Some people say that the humans of the future will never be without their companion — computers. Predicting the future can be tricky, of course. In 1948 an IBM study predicted that there would never be enough demand for computers to justify going into the business!

单选题After age 40, people find it hard to get rewarding jobs because ______.

单选题Howmuchdothejacketscost?

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单选题Fifteen years ago, I entered the Boston Globe, which was a temple to me then. It wasn"t easy getting hired. But once you were there, I found, you were in. Globe jobs were for life-guaranteed until retirement. For 15 years I had prospered there—moving from an ordinary reporter to foreign correspondent and finally to senior editor. I would have a lifetime of security is I struck with it. Instead, I had made a decision to leave. I entered my boss"s office. Would he rage? I wondered. He had a famous temper. "Matt, we have to have a talk," I began awkwardly. "I came to the Globe when I was twenty-four. Now I"m forty. There"s a lot I want to do in life. I"m resigning." "To another paper?" He asked. I reached into my coat pocket, but didn"t say anything. I handed him a letter that explained everything. It said that I was leaving to start a new media company. We were at a rare turning point in history. I wanted to be directly engaged in the change. "I"m glad for you," he said, quite out of my expectation. "I just came from a board of directors meeting and it was seventy-five percent discouraging news. Some of that we can deal with. But much of it we can"t, " he went on. "I wish you all the luck in the world," he concluded. "And if it doesn"t work out, remember, your star is always high here." Then I went out of his office, walking through the newsroom for more good-byes. Everybody was saying congratulations. Everybody—even though I"d be risking all on an unfamiliar venture: all the financial security I had carefully built up. Later, I had a final talk with Bill Taylor, chairman and publisher of the Boston Globe. He had turned the Globe into a billion-dollar property. "I"m resigning, Bill, "I said. He listened while I gave him the story. He wasn"t looking angry or dismayed either. After a pause, he said, "Golly, I wish I were in your shoes."

单选题"Hi there. How's it going?" "Oh, fine, fine. How about this weather, huh?" "Well, I guess we can always use the rain." What's that? This story? Oh, just a little look at small talk. You know, those seemingly meaningless conversations you have dozens of times a day. Maybe you're waiting for the elevator. Or in a line at the bank. It all seems pretty trivial. Idle chatter about traffic doesn't do much more than fill the air with empty words that are quickly forgotten. But you should know that small talk actually has a big place in our lives. Pat Oliver, assistant professor on arts, says that, "Left unchecked, small talk can be an invasion. It's so powerful. It does something to you." "Every morning after spending an hour and a half on the freeway I start the day with small talk with my secretary," Oliver says, "If I don't make small connection with another person, I can't work." What causes it? As a rule, you're either trying to force something into your life, or you're using conversation as an invisible force field to keep them out. You can be wanting to connect with another person, and small talk is your introduction to more meaningful conversation. The way people use small talk is usually determined by where they happen to be at the time. Take the elevator, for instance. Now there's prime territory. Nobody knows anyone and there's no reason to start a conversation, but invariably, someone does. Making conversation in such peaceful social settings, according to Oliver, "can confirm your territory. It's a way of feeling liked and accepted." The topics of small talk don't matter. In fact, you don't want anything more taxing than the weather or the traffic. It's non-threatening talk in a threatening situation. However, the rules change quickly when you're with lots of people doing lots of talking. Let's say you're at a party. Now it's time to use small talk as a way of making others feel more comfortable around you, so you don't look silly standing by the food table alone all night.

单选题{{I}}Questions 22～25 are based on the following dialogue.{{/I}}