单选题Some Things We Know about Language Many things about language are a mystery, and many will always remain so. But some things we do know. First, we know that all human beings have a language of some sort. There is no race of men anywhere on earth so backward that it has no language, no set of speech sounds by which the people communicate with one another. Furthermore, in historical times, there has never been a race of men without a language. Second, there is no such thing as a primitive language. There are many people whose cultures are undeveloped, who are, as we say, uncivilized, but the languages they speak are not primitive. In all known languages we can see complexities that must have been tens of thousands of years in developing. This has not always been well understood; indeed, the direct contrary has often been stated. Popular ideas of the language of the American Indians will illustrate. Many people have supposed that the Indians communicated in a very primitive system of noises. Study has proved this to be nonsense. There are, or were, hundreds of American Indian languages, and all of them turn out to be very complicated and very old. They are certainly different from the languages that most of us are familiar with, but they are no more primitive than English and Greek. A third thing we know about language is that all languages are perfectly adequate. That is, each one is a perfect means of expressing the culture of the people who speak the language. Finally, we know that language changes. It is natural and normal for language to change; the only languages which do not change are the dead ones. This is easy to understand if we look backward in time. Change goes on in all aspects of language. Grammatical features change as do speech sounds, and changes in vocabulary are sometimes very extensive and may occur very rapidly. Vocabulary is the least stable part of any language.

单选题A complete change in policy is needed if relations are ever to improve.

单选题Although research has shown that asparagus does contain many important nutrients, it is not, as it was once regarded, a panacea.A. an anomalyB. a delicacyC. a life-formD. a cure-all

单选题Knowing that I had been out of work now, they were unwilling to lend me money.A. unhappyB. readyC. preparedD. reluctant

单选题Food is one of the most pleasurable things in life, but may he the most terrible thing when you're traveling with kids. When kids get hungry, they get noisy, and no matter where you are, it's no fun. Food is also a big part of travel expenses for a family. Eating out in restaurants all the time can cost a lot of money and no kids want to wait for a long time to eat a meal. Here are some tips to help you to have fun and save money. Start the day right. Breakfast can be a simple matter. To save money, if you're traveling by car, bring breakfast with you, or shop in a supermarket after you check into your hotel. Many hotels have fridges, so all you need is milk, juice, fruit, bread, cups and plastic containers. After eating in your room, breakfast is out of the way. When you leave your hotel, you're ready to start sightseeing. Have picnics. Picnics are fun for everyone in the family. You don't need to wait for a long time for food to be served, or keep telling your kids to behave. Whatever you're eating, it tastes delicious. Afterwards you can relax while the kids run around. You can have a picnic anywhere-in a grassy city park, at the seaside, sitting next to a stream. And picnics aren't for lunch only-bring a picnic to the beach at sunset. You can have a picnic wherever you are, even in a big city, and picnics don't cost much! Buying your picnic is part of the fun and you can shop to please everyone's tastes in your family. Supermarkets are open day and night, and usually have a deli(熟食店) where you can have everything you need for a picnic.

单选题We can utilize water for producing electric power.A. embraceB. emergeC. emphasizeD. employ

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} {{B}}Global Cancer Rates to Rise by 50% by 2020{{/B}} The number of new cancer cases worldwide is expected to increase by 50% by the year 2020. But a new report suggests that as many as a third of new cancers could be avoided by adopting healthier lifestyles and through public health action. The World Cancer Report, released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, shows that cancer has now emerged as a major public health threat in developing countries as well as rich ones. Overall, cancer was responsible for 12% of all deaths in 2000. But in many countries more than a quarter of all deaths are caused by cancer. The report shows that 10 million new cancers were diagnosed globally in 2000, and that number is expected to rise to 15 million by 2020. Researchers say most of that increase will mainly be due to steadily aging populations in both developed and developing countries and current trends in smoking and other unhealthy habits. "Cancer has emerged as a major public health problem in developing countries for the first time, matching its effect in industrialized (工业化的) countries," said researcher Paul Kleihues, MD, director of IARC, in a news release. "Once considered a 'Western' disease, the Report highlights that more than 50 percent of the world's cancer burden, in terms of both numbers of cases and deaths, already occurs in developing countries." The risk of being diagnosed with cancer in developed countries is double that in less-developed ones. However, the risk of dying from cancer is much higher in developing countries, where 80% of cancer patients already have late-stage incurable tumors (肿瘤) at the time of diagnosis. Researchers say cancer rates have traditionally been higher in developed countries due to greater exposure to tobacco, occupational carcinogens (致癌物), and an unhealthy Western diet and lifestyle. As less-developed countries become industrialized and more prosperous, they tend to adopt the high-fat diet and Iow physical activity levels typically seen in the West, which increase cancer rates.

单选题We've turned the smallest bedroom into a nursery which is bright and {{U}}cheerful{{/U}}.

单选题Active in Old Age Keeps People Mobile People over 70 who aren't active are more likely to develop problems walking or climbing stairs within a few years, according to a new study. These findings suggest that it's very important to stay (51) in old age, study author Dr. Marjolein Visser told Reuters Health.　 　"Physical activity in old age is as important (52) taking your medications(药物), " Visser noted. "You do not need to join an expensive, fancy sports club with high-tech (高科技的) equipment. Your body will already (53) from regular walking." Visser, a Dutch (荷兰的)scholar, explained that (54) active helps prevent people from becoming breathless during simple activities, increase muscle mass and strength, and maintain the balance people need to walk up stairs, for instance. To investigate how important exercise is to older adults, Visser's team interviewed 3,075 men and (55) between the ages of 70 and 79, all of whom said they had no problems walking one-quarter of a mile or climbing (56) . The investigators followed the subjects for 4-1/2 years, noting who developed problems (57) and climbing stairs. During the study, 34 percent of men and 47 (58) of women said they began to struggle with walking and climbing stairs. People (59) were inactive were twice as likely to report these problems as people who said they got regular exercise. People who didn't exercise but had active lifestyles appeared to be at a somewhat higher risk of developing (60) walking and climbing stairs, relative to people who exercised (61) 。 Still, leading an active lifestyle appeared to protect people (62) problems better than being generally inactive, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics (老年医学)Society. Among people who were inactive, (63) who walked even a little bit such as brisk (轻快的)walking for a little over an hour per week - were at a lower (64) of mobility (可动性) problems. "If you do not like to exercise or you cannot exercise (65) of serious health problems or functional limitations, do try to be as active as possible, " Visser advised.

单选题 下面的短文后列出7个句子．请根据短文的内容对每个句子做出判断：如果泫句提供的是正确信息．请选择A；如果该句提供的是错误信息，请选择B：如果该句的信息文中没有提及．请选择C。 {{B}}Easy Learning{{/B}} Students should be jealous. Not only do babies get to doze their days away, but they've also mastered the fine art of learning in their sleep. By the time babies are a year old. They can recognize a lot of sounds and even simple words. Marie Cheour at the University of Turku in Finland suspected that they might progress this fast because they learn language while they sleep as well as when they are awake. To test the theory, Cheour and their colleagues studied 45 newborn babies in the first days of their lives. They exposed all the infants to an hour of Finnish vowel sounds one that sounds like "oo", another like "ee" and a third boundary vowel peculiar to Finnish and similar languages that sounds like something in between. EEG (脑电图) recording of the infants brains before and after the session showed that the newborns could not distinguish the sounds. Fifteen of the babies then went back with their mothers, while the rest were split into two sleep-study groups. One group was exposed throughout their night-time sleeping hours to the same three vowels, while the others listened to the other, easier-to-distinguish vowel sounds. When tested in the morning, and again in the evening, the babies who'd heard the tricky boundary vowels all night showed brainwave activity indicating that they could now recognize this sound. They could identify the sound even when its pitch was changed, while none of the other babies could pick up the boundary vowel at all. Cheour doesn't know how babies accomplish this nighttime learning, but she suspects that the special ability might indicate that unlike adults, babies don't "turn off" their cerebral cortex(大脑皮层)while they sleep. The skill probably fades in the course of the first years of life, she adds. So forget the idea that you can pick up the tricky French vowels as an adult just by slipping a language tape under your pillow. But while it may not help grown-ups, Cheour is hoping to use the sleeping hours to give remedial help to babies who are genetically at risk of language disorders.

单选题We all think that Mary"s husband is a very dull person.

单选题 下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案。{{B}}第一篇{{/B}} {{B}} Egypt Felled by Famine{{/B}} Even ancient Egypt's mighty pyramid builders were powerless in the face of the famine that helped bring down their civilisation around 2180 BC. Now evidence gleaned from mud deposited by the River Nile suggests that a shift in climate thousands of kilometres to the south was ultimately to blame -- and the same or worse could happen today. The ancient Egyptians depended on the Nile's annual floods to irrigate their crops. But any change in climate that pushed the African monsoons southwards out of Ethiopia would have diminished these floods. Dwindling rains in the Ethiopian highlands would have meant fewer plants to stablise the soil. When rain did fall it would have washed large amounts of soil into the Blue Nile and into Egypt, along with sediment from the White Nile4. The Blue Nile mud has a different isotope signature from that of the White Nile. So by analysing isotope differences in mud deposited in the Nile Delta, Michael Krom of Leeds University worked out what proportion of sediment came from each branch of the river. Krom reasons that during periods of drought, the amount of the Blue Nile mud in the river' would be relatively high. He found that one of these periods, from 4,500 to 4,200 years ago, immediately predates the fall of the Egypt's Old Kingdom. The weakened waters would have been catastrophic for the Egyptians. "Changes that affect food supply don't have to be very large to have a ripple effect in societies," says Bill Ryan of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. Similar events today could be even more devastating, says team member Daniel Stanley, a geoarchaeologist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "Anything humans do to shift the climate belts would have an even worse effect along the Nile system today because the populations have increased dramatically."

单选题I'd very much like to know what your Uaim/U in life is.

单选题Lack of money will have an adverse effect on our research programme.

单选题When the writer says "critical period", he means a period when

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} {{B}} High Stress May Damage Memory{{/B}} According to a report issued in May 1998, elderly people who have consistently high blood Ievels of cortisol don't score as well on memory tests as their peers with lower levels of the stress hormone. What's more. high levels of cortisol are also associated with shrinking of the hippocampus, a region of the brain that plays a key role in learning and memory. The findings suggest that even cortisol levels in the normal, "healthy" range can actually accelerate brain aging. The study results "now provide substantial evidenee that long -- term exposure to adrenal stress hormones may promote hippocampal aging in normal elderly humans," write Nada Porter and Philip Land field of the University of Kentucky in Lexington in their editorial. Cortisol is a hormone released in response to stress by the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys. Over a 5 to 6-year period, Dr. Sonia Lupien and his colleagues measured 24-hour cortisol levels in 51 healthy volunteers, most of Whom were in their 70s. Despite wide variation in cortisol levels, the participants could be divided into three Subgroups: those whose corfiso] progressively increased over time and was currently high (increasing/high): those whose cortisol progressively increased over time and was currently moderate (increasing/moderate); and subjects whose cortisol decreased, but was currently moderate (decreasing/moderate). The researchers tested the volunteers' memory on six people in the increasing/high category and five people in the decreasing/moderate group. The groups did not differ on tests of immediate memory, but the increasing/high cortisol group had other memory problems compared with those in the decreasing/moderate group. The researchers also found that the total volume of the hippocampus in those in the increasing/ high group was 14% lower than those in the decreasing/moderate group, although there were no differences in other brain regions. The results suggest that "...brain aging can be accelerated by levels of adrenal hormones that are not generally regarded as pathological and that variation within this normal range is related to variation in the rate of brain aging," write Porter and Landfield. "This further suggests that chronicstress may accelerate the worsening of hippocampus．" cortisol n．皮质醇，考的索，氢化可的松 peer n．同等地位的人，同辈，同事，同龄人 hippocampus n．海马 adrenal adj．肾上腺的；肾上的 pathological adj．病态的；疾病的，由疾病引起的；病理学的，病理的 gland n．腺 progressively adv．逐渐地，累积地，循序渐进地

单选题The latest census is encouraging.

单选题I enjoyed the play—it had a clever plot and very funny dialogues.

单选题We cannot permit such conduct .

单选题Problems of Anxiety Training as mental-health professionals is supposed to be "color blind". That sounds fine but in practice it means that people from black and ethnic groups get an unfair treatment because their particular problems are seldom acknowledged. So a project was piloted involving Bangladeshi women in inner-city London, most of whom migrated to the U.K. in the 1960s and 1970s from a rural background. Many of these women turned to their doctors with common symptoms of anxiety, such as headaches, sleeping difficulties, loss of appetite and lack of energy. They were usually prescribed tranquillizers or even Vitamin C. Since the underlying causes remained, the women visited their doctors with increasing frequency and some were referred on to mental-health professionals. The psychologists wanted to see how normal Western approaches to anxiety problems might work when applied across cultures. However, they found that many things in the standard approach had to be changed. They had to translate many of the usual examples they would normally compare learning to relax with learning to drive, for instance, which would not have been culturally appropriate. At first they asked the women to rate, on a scale one to ten, the effect of relaxation on their level of anxiety. They found numbers an odd way of expressing how they were feeling. So psychologists shifted their focus to words and talked of five stages form "very good" to "very bad". As it was a pilot project, there were shortcomings. Psychologists looked for too little back-up and did not collect as much objective data as they might have done with a white group. They fell into the white stereotype of assuming that Bangladeshi women would find the use of various checklists and written records foreign. Perhaps racism has conditioned the professionals to a greater extent than they expected. Psychologists found that using a Western model across cultures has potential. But it needs political, financial and personal commitment.