单选题She ______ thousands of dollars from the charity while appearing to be its best fundraiser. A. embellished B. embroiled C. embezzled D. embargoed

单选题As delicate and______as insect bodies are, it is remarkable that over the ages enough of them have ______, preserved in amber, for scientists to trace insect evolution.

单选题People in prehistoric times created paints by grinding materials such as plants and clay into powder ______.

单选题Stealing a book or a toy is a minor ______ which, if left uncorrected, will get worse.

单选题 The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx, once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Government financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most successful of Europe's regional languages, spoken by more than a half-million of the country's three million people. The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since $404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union. The Welsh showed little enthusiasm for devolution. Whereas the Scots voted overwhelmingly for a parliament, the vote for a Welsh assembly scraped through by less than one percent on a turnout of less than 25 percent. Its powers were proportionately limited. The Assembly can decide how money from Westminster or the European Union is spent. It cannot, unlike its counterpart in Edinburgh, enact laws. But now that it is here, the Welsh are growing to like their Assembly. Many people would like it to have more powers. Its importance as figurehead will grow with the opening in 2003, of a new debating chamber, one of many new buildings that are transforming Cardiff from a decaying seaport into a Baltimore-style waterfront city. Meanwhile a grant of nearly two million dollars from the European Union will tackle poverty. Wales is one of the poorest regions in Western Europe—only Spain, Portugal, and Greece have a lower standard of living. Newspapers and magazines are filled with stories about great Welsh men and women, boosting self-esteem. To familiar faces such as Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton have been added new icons such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie star, and Bryn Terfel, the opera singer. Indigenous foods like salt marsh lamb are in vogue. And Wales now boasts a national airline, Awyr Cymru. Cymru, which means "land of compatriots", is the Welsh name for Wales. The red dragon, the nation's symbol since the time of King Arthur, is everywhere—on T-shirts, rugby jerseys and even cell phone covers. "Until very recent times most Welsh people had this feeling of being second-class citizens," said Dyfan Jones, an 18-year-old student. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on the grass with a group of young people in Llanelli, an industrial town in the south, outside the rock music venue of the National Eisteddfod, Wales's annual cultural festival. The disused factory in front of us echoed to the sounds of new Welsh bands. "There was almost a genetic tendency for lack of confidence," Dyfan continued. Equally comfortable in his Welshness as in his membership in the English-speaking, global youth culture and the new federal Europe, Dyfan, like the rest of his generation, is growing up with a sense of possibility unimaginable ten years ago. "We used to think. We can't do anything, we're only Welsh. Now I think that's changing."

单选题We are looking forward to______your reply.

单选题We are going to London next month. This will be the first time I ______there.

单选题Outside people were cheering and awaiting the arrival of the New Year while inside Harry was lying severely ill in bed feeling thoroughly ______.

单选题A bilingual person is someone who speaks two languages. A person who speaks more than two languages is called "multilingual" (although the term "bilingualism" can be used for both situations). Multilingualism isn't unusual; in fact, it's the norm for most of the world's societies. It's possible for a person to know and use three, four, or even more languages fluently. People may become bilingual either by acquiring two languages at the same time in childhood or by learning a second language sometime after acquiring their first language. Many bilingual people grow up speaking two languages. Often in America such people are the children of immigrants; these children grow up speaking their parents' native language in their childhood home while speaking English at school. Many bilinguals, however, are not immigrants; it is not uncommon for people born in the U. S. to speak English at school or work and another language at home. Children can also become bilingual if their parents speak more than one language to them, or if some other significant person in their life (such as a grandparent or caretaker) speaks to them consistently in another language. Sometimes a child will grow up in a household in which each parent speaks a different language; in that case, the child may learn to speak to each parent in that parent's language. In short, a young child who is regularly exposed to two languages from an early age will most likely become a fluent native speaker of both languages. The exposure must involve interaction; a child growing up in an English-speaking household who is exposed to Spanish only through Spanish-language television won't become a Spanish-English bilingual, but a child who is regularly spoken to in both English and Spanish will. It is also possible to learn a second language sometime after early childhood, but the older you get, the harder it is to learn to speak a new language as well as a native speaker. Many linguists believe there is a "critical period" (lasting roughly from birth until puberty) during which a child can easily acquire any language that he or she is regularly exposed to. Under this view, the structure of the brain changes at puberty, and after that it becomes harder to learn a new language. This means that it is much easier to learn a second language during childhood than as an adult. In some countries, nearly everybody is bilingual or multilingual. In parts of India, for example, a small child usually knows several languages. In many European countries, children are encouraged to learn a second language — typically English. In fact, the U. S. is quite unusual among the countries of the world in that many of its citizens speak only English, and they are rarely encouraged to become fluent in any other language. There is no evidence to suggest that it's any harder for a child to acquire two languages than it is for the child to acquire one language. As long as people are regularly speaking with the child in both languages, the child will acquire them both easily. A child doesn't have to be exceptional or have any special language ability to become bilingual; as long as the child is exposed to two languages throughout early childhood, he or she will acquire them both. Some people worry that learning more than one language is bad for a child, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there are a lot of advantages to knowing more than one language. First, many linguists feel that knowing a second language actually benefits a child's cognitive development. Second, if the child comes from a family that has recently immigrated to the U. S. , the family may speak a language other than English at home and may still have strong ties to their ethnic roots. In this case, being able to speak the language of the family's ethnic heritage may be important for the child's sense of cultural identity. To be unable to speak the family's language could make a child feel like an outsider within his or her own family; speaking the family's language gives the child a sense of identity and belonging. Third, in an increasingly global marketplace, it's an advantage for anyone to know more than one language — regardless of whether one's family is new to the U. S. And finally, for people of any age or profession, knowing a second language encourages cross-cultural awareness and understanding. Some people may wonder whether bilingualism in America threatens the English language. Well, English is in no danger of disappearing any time soon; it is firmly established both in America and in countries throughout the world. In fact, no language has ever held as strong a position in the world as English does today. Some people worry when they see Spanish showing up on billboards and pay phones, but in a neighborhood with a high Spanish-speaking population, it makes perfectly good sense for public information and instructions to be printed in both English and Spanish. This doesn't mean that the English language is in danger. The truth is that there will probably always be immigrants in the U. S. , coming from a wide variety of countries, who cannot speak English but whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren will end up being native English speakers. The reason for this is, again, the fact that it is much easier for children to learn another language than it is for adults. Adults who immigrate to the U. S. , especially later in life, may never really become fluent in English. It's not that they don't want to speak English; it's simply much more difficult for them to learn it well. Their children, however, will be able to pick up English easily from their friends and the society around them. These second-generation immigrants, the children of the adult immigrants, are likely to be bilingual, speaking their parents' language at home and English at school and in the English-speaking community. When they grow up and have children of their own, those children — the third generation — will most likely speak only English, both at home with their bilingual parents and in the English-speaking community. This three-generation pattern has been repeating itself for many years, through wave after wave of immigrants. Many adults today who speak only English can remember grandparents and great-grandparents who spoke very little English, who instead spoke mostly Polish, Italian, German, or Swedish — the language of the country they grew up in. In sum, bilingualism isn't a danger either to the English language or to the bilingual speakers themselves. On the contrary, there are many advantages to bilingualism, both for the individual and for the society as a whole. English enjoys tremendous dominance in the U. S. and in the world. But if history is any indication, there will always be people in the U. S. who cannot speak English — and they will have grandchildren who do. Answer the following questions:

单选题In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fighters. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I've twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids' college background as a prize demonstrating how well we've raised them. But we can't acknowledge that our obsession is more about us than them: So we've contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn't matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford. We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won't be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible — and mostly wrong. We haven't found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don't systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures — professors' feedback and the number of essay exams — selective schools do slightly worse. By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates' lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2% ～4% for every 100-point increase in a school's average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke. A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools. Kids count more than their colleges. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it's not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. The reason: so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college isn't life's only competition. In the next competition — the job market and graduate school — the results may change. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph. D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees of prestigious universities didn't. So, parents, lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated. Up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that, other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints.

单选题The twins are so much ______ that it is difficult to tell one from the other.

单选题Monthly job growth has picked up this year, factory output and business investment have advanced, consumer spending and the housing market have been mixed.

单选题When we consider great painters of the past, the study of art and the study of illusion cannot always be separated. By illusion I mean those contrivances of color, line, shape, and forth that lead us to see marks on a flat surface as depicting three-dimensional objects in space. I must emphasize that 1 am not making a plea, disguised or otherwise, for the exercise of illusionist tricks in painting today, although I am, in fact rather critical of certain theories of non-representational art. But to argue over these theories would be to miss the point. That the discoveries and effects of representation that were the pride of earlier artists have become trivial today I would not deny for a moment. Yet I believe that we are in real danger of losing contact with past masters if we accept the fashionable doctrine that such matters never had anything to do with art. The very reason why the representation of nature can now be considered something commonplace should be of the greatest interest to art historians. Never before has there been an age when the visual image was so cheap in every sense of the word. We are surrounded and assailed by posters and advertisements, comics and magazine illustrations. We see aspects of reality represented on television, postage stamps, and food packages. Painting is taught in school and practiced as a pastime, and many modest amateurs have mastered tricks that would have looked like sheer magic to the 14" century painter Giotto. Even the crude colored renderings on a cereal box might have made Giotto"s contemporaries gasp. Perhaps there are people who concluded from this that the cereal box is superior to a Giotto; I do not. But I think that the victory and vulgarization of representational skills create a problem for both art historians and critics. In this connection it is instructive to remember the Greek saying that to marvel is the beginning of knowledge and if we cease to marvel we may be in danger of ceasing to know. I believe we must restore our sense of wonder at the capacity to conjure up by forms, lines, shades, or colors those mysterious phantoms of visual reality we call "pictures. " Even comics and advertisements , rightly viewed, provide food for thought. Just as the study of poetry remains incomplete without an awareness of the language of prose, so, I believe, the study of art will be increasingly supplemented by inquiry into the "linguistics" of the visual image. The way the language of art refers to the visible world is both so obvious and so mysterious that it is still largely unknown except to artists who use it as we use all language—without needing to know its grammar and semantics.

单选题In children"s story books, a policeman is sometimes depicted as a ______ figure but, as a matter of fact, he is very helpful in enforcing law and order.

单选题Despite a tendency to be overtly ______, the poetry of the Middle Ages often sparks the imagination and provides lively entertainment, as well as pious sentiments. A. diverting B. emotional C. didactic D. romantic

单选题Mary is so__________about her weight that she doesn"t eat staple food at all.

单选题That old man is more than 80 years old, but he is as fit as a______.

单选题The elderly need special care in winter, as they are _______ to the sudden change of weather. A. sensitive B. sensible C. sensational D. flexible

单选题Though having lived abroad for years, many Chinese still ______ the traditional custom. A. perform B. possess C. observe D. support

单选题Is there any possible ______ explanation for his bad health since he seems to have no obvious disease? A. psychiatric B. psychological C. surgical D. physical