单选题The relationship between the last paragraph and the other paragraphs can best be described as______.

单选题Thanks to their new financial planner, the couple ______.

单选题Questions 14—16 are based on the following passage. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14—16.

单选题Read the following text. Answer the questions below the text by choosing A, B, C or D. Centers of the Great European Cities The centers of the great cities of Europe are meeting places by tradition. People gather there to drink coffee and chat late into the night. A mixture of locals and tourists make for an exciting, metropolitan atmosphere. Squares, plazas and arcades form the heart of Europe's cities. Venice in Italy has the Piazza San Marco—a beautiful square surrounded by shops, churches, restaurants and cafes. In Barcelona, Spain, La Bosqueria is a lively market with hundreds of stalls selling all kinds of goods. London's Covent Garden is filled with fruit and vegetable stalls by day and musicians, acrobats and artists by night. The government buildings at the center of many cities often are architecturally impressive. In London, they serve as a beautiful backdrop to the coffee tables that line the streets and the banks of the Thames. These vibrant hearts are the product of centuries of evolution, social historian Joe Garreau told US News and World Report recently. "The reason people think Venice is so great today is you don't see all the mistakes," said Garreau. "Those have all been removed." Most European cities were laid out before the invention of the car, so bars, restaurants and cafes were near to people's homes. Today, the focus of many Europeans' life has moved away from the centers. They live in the suburbs and outskirts, driving to supermarkets to get their supplies. But on a continent where people treasure convention, there are still those who hold onto traditional ways, living and shopping locally. These people, together with tourists, provide the city centers with the reason for existence. Coffee culture plays a part in keeping these city centers flourishing. This is particularly true of Paris whose citizens are famous enthusiastic conversationalists. This skill is developed over many hours spent chatting over espressos and cigarettes. Religion also plays a role in developing sociable atmosphere. People in Roman Catholic countries used to visit the church on an almost daily basis. Entire communities would gather in the same building and then move out to the markets, cafes and bars in the surrounding streets. An enormous example of this relationship between church and society is the Duomo. The huge marble cathedral is in Florence. Italy is surrounded by bakeries and coffee shops, and caters not only to the tourist crowds, but also the local community.

单选题 Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which information is disseminated, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizens' patterns of response to politics. By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television diminished the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By centering politics on the person of the candidate, television accelerated the citizen's focus on character rather than issues. Television has altered the forms of political communication as well. The messages on which most of us rely are briefer than they once were. The {{U}}stump speech{{/U}}, a political speech given by traveling politicians and lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, which characterized nineteenth-century political discourse, has given way to the 30 second advertisement and the 10 second "sound bite" in broadcast news. Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a snippet (片断) of the speech on the news. In these abbreviated forms, much of what constructed the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issues in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. In snippets, politicians assert but do not argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it required a changed political style that was more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach us to analyze words and print. However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills. Recognizing the power of television's pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events, called pseudo-events, designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.

单选题Boeing Co's Sonic Cruiser, a proposed faster airliner, would be mostly blended material, program director Walt Gillette said recently. In its quest for the (21) to fly 15 to 20 per cent faster than (22) airliners, the US company says about 60 per cent of the new plane's (23) , including the wing, would be a carbon-fiber-reinforced composite material that is lighter than aluminum for the same (24) . "Composites would (25) almost all of the airplane that you could see from the outside," Gillette said. Composites are well regarded among aeronautical engineers and have been in (26) use since the 1970s. Each generation of planes has more composites, and Gillette (27) that about 10 per cent of Boeing's (28) civil aircraft, the early-1990s 777, is built (29) the material. (30) still only a proposal, the Sonic Cruiser has (31) the interest of many airlines, which expressed unusual enthusiasm for the aircraft (32) the September 11 attacks forced most of them to scale back operations. When Boeing (33) the Sonic Cruiser last year it said the plane might enter service (34) 2006 and 2008. Gillette said the (35) date now is 2008, by which time the market and technology are expected to have developed (36) Wind-tunnel tests (37) the company's computer calculations of optimal cruising speed for the plane at 95 to 98 per. cent of the speed of sound. Going faster than sound would use too much fuel and (38) great (39) on the aircraft's engines. Gillette said the Sonic Cruiser (40) be offered as a family of aircraft with 200 to 250 seats and a range of 6,500 to 9,000 nautical miles (12,000 to 16,700 kilometers).

单选题Henry,don't spend too much time ______TV. You'd better do your homework. [A] watching [B] to watch [C] on watching

单选题 {{I}} Questions 14-17 are based on the following dialogue between classmates about their presentation. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 14-17.{{/I}}

单选题

单选题According to the passage, to be told to do something is generally ______.

单选题According to ______, intelligence is something inborn, not something attained through effort.

单选题 In our lifetime, we should suffer from a lot of hardship, setback and misery. Perhaps no body could free from these unhappy things. Accidents and illnesses are unhappy things to talk about, but no one can expect to live a lifetime without having some kind of accident or becoming ill. Some accidents and illnesses are serious and may result in long periods of invalidism. The newspapers contain spectacular accounts of accidents in the street and highways and public places, but nearly as many accidents occur around the home. Somebody trips on a rug. Somebody falls off a stepladder. Somebody is careless in cooking dinner, and is burned. Accidents incurred in the playing of sports and swimming also accounts for a large number of injuries, big and little. Despite constant campaigns to reduce the number of accidents, there are still approximately 100,000 accidental deaths and nearly 9,000,000 non-fatal injuries in the United States each year. In has been estimated that around 3,000,000 people are constantly ill in the United States throughout the year and that over half the illness is caused by respiratory diseases, chiefly colds and influenza. The pain and suffering caused by accidents and illness tell only half the story. Loss of time from school and work and medical and hospital expenses often make the pain seem worse. Money spent in this country for doctors, services, hospitalization, nursing care, drugs, medicines, X-rays, and special treatments, amounts to a huge annual sum. Added to this expense is another much larger amount that is lost to wage earners throughout the nation by reason of their loss of wages or income while sick or otherwise disabled. Accident and health insurance is a form of insurance devised to protect against these economic losses. It protects the earnings of wage earners and finishes financial aid to the family of the breadwinner by the payment of his doctor and hospital bills. Today, business and professional men, farmers, industrial workers, clerks, and those engaged in various occupations, whose earning power is shut off for a week, a month, or sometimes years, because of accidents or illness can insure themselves against this financial loss by accident and health insurance. Protection is available to all types of workers and the cost (called the premium) ranges from a few cents a day for small or limited policies to a month for policies paying larger amounts (called indemnities). Policy is another name for an insurance contract. Most accidents and health policies are cancelable policies--that is, they are sold for a definite term such as a week, a month, or a year, similar to contracts of fire insurance and automobile liability insurance. There are, however, policies which cannot be canceled or terminated by the insurance company until the policyholder reaches an age at which he usually has no further earning power--most often at sixty or sixty-five years. These non-cancelable policies cost more than the cancelable policies.