单选题Speech, whether oral or written, is a used commodity. If we are to be heard, we must (1) our words from those (2) to us within families, peer groups, societal institutions, and political networks. Our utterances position us both in an immediate social dialogue (3) our addressee and, simultaneously, in a larger ideological one (4) by history and society. We speak as an individual and also, as a student or teacher, a husband or wife, a person of a particular discipline, social class, religion, race, or other socially constructed (5) . Thus, to varying degrees, all speaking is a (6) of others' words and all writing is rewriting. As language (7) , we experience individual agency by infusing our own intentions (8) other people's words, and this can be very hard. (9) , schools, like into churches and courtrooms, are places (10) people speak words that are more important than they are. The words of a particular discipline, like those of "God the father" or of "the law," are being articulated by spokespeople for the given authority. The (11) of the addressed, the listener, is to acknowledge the words and their (12) . In Bakhtin's (13) , "the authoritative word is located in a distanced zone, organically connected with a (14) that is felt to be hierarchally higher." (15) , part of growing up in an ideological sense is becoming more "selective" about the words we appropriate and, (16) , pass on to others. In Bakhtin's (17) , responsible people do not treat (18) as givens, they treat them as utterances, spoken by particular people located in specific ways in the social landscape. Becoming alive to the socio-ideological complexity of language use is (19) to becoming a more responsive language user and, potentially, a more playful one too, able to use a (20) of social voices, of perspectives, in articulating one's own ideas.

单选题It can be inferred from the passage that the book Keep Your Brain Alive

单选题Noreen Welte seems to suggest that some people

单选题We have been asked to defend ourselves and what we hold dear in cooperation with ______ who share with us the same endangered air and the same endangered oceans.

单选题{{B}}Text 4{{/B}} Space enthusiasts look to the day when ordinary people, as well as professional astronauts and members of Congress, can leave Earth behind and head for a space station resort, or maybe a base on the moon or Mars. The Space Transportation Association, an industry lobbying group, recently created a division devoted to promoting space tourism, which it sees as a viable way to spur economic development beyond Earth. The great stumbling block in this road to stars, however, is the sheer difficulty of getting anywhere in space. Merely achieving orbit is an expensive and risky proposition. Current space propulsion technologies make it a stretch to send probes to distant destinations within the solar system. Spacecraft have to follow multi-laver, indirect trajectories that loop around several planes in order to gain velocity from gravity assists. Then the craft lack the energy to come back. Sending spacecraft to other solar systems would take many centuries. Fortunately, engineers have no shortage of inventive plans for new propulsion systems that might someday expand human presence, literally or figuratively, beyond this planet. Some are radical refinements of current rockets or jet technologies. Others harness nuclear energies or would ride on powerful laser beams. Even the equivalents of "space elevators" for hoisting cargoes into orbit are on the drawing board. "Reach low orbit and you are halfway to anywhere in the Solar System," science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein memorably wrote, and virtually all analysts agree that inexpensive access to low Earth orbit is a vital first step, because most scenarios for expanding humankind' s reach depend on the orbital assembly of massive spacecraft or other equipment, involving multiple hunches. The need for better launch systems is already immediate, driven by private and public sector demand. Most commercial payloads are destined either for the now crowed geo-stationary orbit, where satellites jostle for elbow room 36,000 kilometers above the equator, or for low-Earth or bit, just a few hundred kilometers up. Low-Earth orbit is rapidly becoming a space enterprise zone, because satellites that close can transmit signals to desktop or even handheld receivers. Scientific payloads are also taking off in a big way. More than 50 major observatories and explorations to other solar systems' bodies will lift off within the next decade. The pressing demand for launches has even prompted Boeing's commercial space division to team up with RSC—Energia in Moscow and Kvaerner Maritime in Oslo to refurbish an oil rig and create a 34,000—ton displacement semi-submersible launch platform that will be towed to orbitally favorable launch sites.

单选题For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing. I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I'm NOT French, I'm not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach. For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah 'ab or sooken. Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.

单选题Which of the following seems to be the overall attitude of Microsoft toward subscription plan?

单选题What do you think of American health care system? Most people would be 1 by the high quality of medicine 2 to most Americans. There is a lot of specialization, a great deal of 3 to the individual, a 4 amount of advanced technical equipment, and 5 effort not to make mistakes because of the financial risk which doctors and hospitals must 6 in the courts if they 7 things badly. But the Americans are in a mess. To the problem is the way in 8 health care is organized and 9 . 10 to pubic belief it is not just a flee competition system. To the private system has been joined a large public system, because private care was simply not 11 the less fortunate and the elderly. But even with this huge public part of the system, 12 this year will eat up 84.5 billion dollars—more than 10 percent of the U.S. Budget—a large number of Americans are left 13 . These include about half the 11 million unemployed and those who fail to meet the strict limits 14 income fixed by a government trying to make savings where it can. The basic problem, however, is that there is no central control 15 the health system. There is no 16 to what doctors and hospitals charge for their services, other than what the public is able to pay. The number of doctors has shot up and prices have climbed. When faced with toothache, a sick child, or a heart attack, all the unfortunate persons concerned can do is to pay 17 . Two thirds of the population are 18 by medical insurance. Doctors charge as much as they want 19 that the insurance company will pay the bill. The rising cost of medicine in the U.S.A. is among the most worrying problems facing the country. In 1981 the country"s health bill climbed 15.9 percent—about twice as fast as prices 20 general.

单选题The question of where insights come from has become a hot topic in neuroscience, despite the fact that they are not easy to induce experimentally in a laboratory. Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Sheth have taken a creative approach. They have selected some brain-teasing but practical problems in the hope that these would get closer to mimicking real insight: To qualify, a puzzle had to be simple, not too widely known and without a methodical solution. The researchers then asked 18 young adults to try to solve these problems while their brainwaves were monitored using an electroencephalograph (EEG). A typical brain-teaser went like this. There are three light switches on the ground-floor wall of a three-storey house. Two of the switches do nothing, but one of them controls a bulb on the second floor. When you begin, the bulb is off. You can only make one visit to the second floor. How do you work out which switch is the one that controls the light? This problem, or one equivalent to it, was presented on a computer screen to a volunteer when that volunteer pressed a button. The electrical activity of the volunteer’s brain (his brainwave pattern) was recorded by the EEG from the button’s press. Each volunteer was given 30 seconds to read the puzzle and another 60 to 90 seconds to solve it. Some people worked it out; others did not. The significant point, though, was that the EEG predicted who would fall where. Those volunteers who went on to have an insight (in this case that on their one and only visit to the second floor they could use not just the light hut the heat produced by a bulb as evidence of an active switch) had had different brainwave activity from those who never got it. In the right frontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with shifting mental states, there was an increase in high-frequency gamma waves (those with 47-48 cycles a second). Moreover, the difference was noticeable up to eight seconds before the volunteer realised he had found the solution. Dr. Sheth thinks this may he capturing the “transformational thought” in action, before the brain’s “owner” is consciously aware of it. This finding poses fascinating questions about how the brain really works. Conscious thought, it seems, does not solve problems. Instead, unconscious processing happens in the background and only delivers the answer to consciousness once it has been arrived at. Food for further thought, indeed.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1. Euthanasia has been a topic of controversy in Europe since at least 1936. On an average of six times a day, a doctor in Holland practices "active" euthanasia:{{U}} (1) {{/U}}administering a lethal drug to a{{U}} (2) {{/U}}ill patient who has asked to be relieved{{U}} (3) {{/U}}suffering. Twenty times a day, life prolonging treatment is withheld or withdrawn{{U}} (4) {{/U}}there is no hope that it can{{U}} (5) {{/U}}an ultimate cure. "Active" euthanasia remains a crime on the Dutch statute books, punishable{{U}} (6) {{/U}}12 years in prison. But a series of court cases over the past 15 years has made it clear that a competent physician who{{U}} (7) {{/U}}it out will not be prosecuted. Euthanasia, often called "mercy killing", is a crime everywhere in Western Europe.{{U}} (8) {{/U}}more and more doctors and nurses in Britain, Germany, Holland and elsewhere readily{{U}} (9) {{/U}}to practicing it, most often in the "passive" form of withholding or withdrawing{{U}} (10) {{/U}}The long simmering euthanasia issue has lately{{U}} (11) {{/U}}into a sometimes fierce public debate,{{U}} (12) {{/U}}both sides claiming the mantle of ultimate righteousness. Those{{U}} (13) {{/U}}to the practice see themselves{{U}} (14) {{/U}}sacred principles of respect for life,{{U}} (15) {{/U}}those in favor raise the banner of humane treatment. After years{{U}} (16) {{/U}}the defensive, the advocates now seem to be{{U}} (17) {{/U}}ground. Recent polls in Britain show that 72 percent of British{{U}} (18) {{/U}}favor euthanasia in some circumstances. An astonishing 76 percent of{{U}} (19) {{/U}}to a poll taken late last year in France said they would like the law changed to{{U}} (20) {{/U}}mercy killings. Obviously, pressure groups favoring euthanasia and "assisted suicide" have grown steadily in Europe over the years. (272 words){{B}}Notes:{{/B}} euthanasia安乐死。lethal致命的。statute book 法典。prosecute 起诉。simmering 处于沸腾的状态。mantle 重任，责任。

单选题 Many video games feature an invincibility power-up that makes the players impervious to damage, at least for a while. As the economic crisis hit in late 2008, some said the same about the industry itself. The theory went that sales of video games, which had been strong in 2008, would also be strong in 2009, because games are a relatively cheap form of entertainment that let people escape from gloomy economic reality. At first glance the sales figures seem to debunk the idea that video games are recession-proof. In June 2009, for example, sales of games in America were 31% lower than in June 2008, according to NPD, a market-research firm. In July sales were down 26% , the fifth successive monthly decline. But the year ended with a record-breaking December, as people bought consoles and games for Christmas. Globally, says Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consuhancy, sales of games were down by 6.3% in 2009. The number of Nintendo Win and Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles sold was flat in 2009 ; sales of Sow's PlayStation 3 were up by 22% after a price cut. In some respects, this stumble reflects gaming's new popularity. When it was less of a mainstream activity it was not so connected to the wider economic cycle. The success of the family-friendly Wii has broadened gaming's appeal, but the new players it has attracted are less fanatical garners who are more likely to cut back in hard times. During 2009 more people turned to mobile, web-based or second-hand games, says Mr Harding-Rofls. Another way of looking at things, however, is to say that spending on gaming is driven by big hits, and that the slight decline in 2009 reflects creative rather than economic weakness. Entertainment industries always have their ups and downs, says Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative force behind many of Nintendo's biggest games. There was an unusually large number of hits in 2008, which boosted sales, and fewer big releases in 2009 until late in the year, which may explain the weak mid-year sales. The biggest hit was "Modern Warfare 2", released in November, which became the fastest-selling game in history, selling 7 million copies worldwide on its first day. The top 20 games took a larger share of sales in 2009 than in 2008, which shows that the games industry is becoming increasingly polarised between hits and misses. Hence the hit-and-miss results of the big publishers of video games. Overall, says Mr Miyamoto, 2009's crop of games may just have been less compelling. "We were not able to produce fun-enough products," he says. That highlights the importance of continued innovation, he says—but it leaves unanswered the question of whether gaming is indeed recession-proof.

单选题It can be inferred that Americans being approached to closely by Middle Easterners would most probably______

单选题Which of the following can be inferred from the text?

单选题The last-minute victory of the Texas Longhorns in this year"s Rose Bowl— America"s college football championship—was the kind of thing that stays with fans forever. Just as well, because many had paid vast sums to see the game. Rose Bowl tickets officially sold for $175 each. On the Internet, resellers were hawking them for as much as $3,000 a pop. "Nobody knows how to control this," observed Mitch Dorger, the tournament"s chief executive. Re-selling tickets for a profit, known less politely as scalping in America or touting in Britain, is booming. In America alone, the "secondary market" for tickets to sought-after events is worth over $10 billion, reckons Jeffrey Fluhr, the boss of StubHub, an online ticket market. Scalping used to be about burly men lurking outside stadiums with fistfuls of tickets. Cries of "Tickets here, tickets here" still ring out before kick-off. But the Internet has created a larger and more efficient market. Some Internet-based ticket agencies, such as tickco. com and dynamiteticketz, corn act as traditional scalpers, buying up tickets and selling them on for a substantial mark-up. But others like StubHub have a new business model—bring together buyers and sellers, and then take a cut. For each transaction, StubHub takes a juicy 25%. Despite its substantial commission—far higher than those charged by other online intermediaries including eBay or Craigslist—StubHub is flourishing. The firm was set up in 2000 and this year"s Rose Bowl was its biggest event ever. The Super Bowl in early February will bring another nice haul, as have U2 and Rolling Stones concerts. Unlike eBay, which is the largest online trader in tickets, StubHub guarantees each transaction, so buyers need not worry about fraud. The company"s revenues, now around $200 million, are tripling annually (despite its start in the dotcom bust). And there is plenty more room to grow. Mr. Fluhr notes that the market remains "highly fragmented", with tiny operations still flourishing and newspaper classified not yet dead. But there are risks. Some events are boosting prices to cut the resale margins; others are using special measures to crack down. This summer, tickets to the soccer World Cup in Germany will include the name and passport number of the original purchaser and embedded chips that match the buyer to the tickets. Then there are legal worries. In America, more than a dozen states have anti-scalping laws of various kinds. New Mexico forbids the reselling of tickets for college games; Mississippi does so for all events on government-owned property. Such laws are often ignored, but can still bite. In Massachusetts, where reselling a ticket for more than $2 above face value is unlawful, one fan brought a lawsuit last autumn against 16 companies (including StubHub) over his pricey Red Sox tickets.