单选题The State of Marriage Today Is there something seriously wrong with marriage today? During the past 50 years, the rate of divorce in the United States has exploded; almost 50% of marriages end in divorce now, and the evidence suggests it is going to get worse. If this trend continues, it will lead to the breakup of the family, according to a spokesperson for the National Family Association. Some futurists predict that in 100 years, the average American will marry at least four times, and extramarital affairs will be even more common than they are now. But what are the reasons for this, and is the picture really so gloomy? The answer to the first question is really quite simple: marriage is no longer the necessity it once was. The institution of marriage has been based for years partly on economic need. Women used to be economically dependent on their husbands as they usually didn"t have jobs outside the home. But with the rising number of women in well-paying jobs, this is no longer the case, so they don"t feel that they need to stay in a failing marriage. In answer to the second question, the outlook may not be as pessimistic as it seems. While the rate of divorce has risen, the rate of couples marrying has never actually fallen very much, so marriage is still quite popular. In addition to this, many couples now cohabit and don"t bother to marry. These couples are effectively married, but they do not appear in either the marriage or divorce statistics. In fact, more than 50% of first marriages survive. The statistics are deceptive because there is a higher number of divorces in second and third marriages than in-first marriages. So is marriage really an outdated institution? The fact that most people still get married indicates that it isn"t. And it is also true that married couples have a healthier life than single people: they suffer less from stress and its consequences, such as heart problems, and married men generally consider themselves more contented than their single counterparts. Perhaps the key is to find out what makes a successful marriage and apply it to all of our relationships!

单选题The nursery is bright and cheerful .

单选题You can research the topic by cooperating with others.

单选题下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每道题后面有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}} Medical Journals Medical journals are publications that report medical information to physicians and other health professionals. In the past, these journals were available only in print. With the development of electronic publishing, many medical journals now have Web sites on the Internet, and some journals publish only online. A few medical journals, like the Journal of the American Medical Association, are considered general medical journals because they cover many fields of medicine. Most medical journals are specialty journals that focus on a particular area of medicine. Medical journals publish many types of articles. Research articles report the results of research studies on a range of topics varying from the basic mechanisms of diseases to clinical trials that compare outcomes of different treatments. Review articles summarize and analyze the information available on a specific topic based on a careful search of the medical literature. Because the results of individual research studies can be affected by many factors, combining results from different studies on the same topic can be helpful in reaching conclusions about the scientific evidence for preventing, diagnosing or treating a particular disease. Case conferences and case reports may be published in medical journals to educate physicians about particular illnesses and how to treat at them. Editorials in medical journals are short essays that express the views of the authors, often regarding a research or review article published in the same issue. Editorials provide perspective on how the current article fits with other information on the same topic. Letters to the editor provide a way for readers of the medical journal to express comments, questions or criticisms about articles published in that journal.

单选题There was a simultaneous trial taking place in the next building.

单选题Their sole fault was a failure to recognize all the factors involved. A．maximum B．usual C．initial D．only

单选题He was persuaded to give up the idea. A. mention B. accept C. consider D. drop

单选题 {{B}}Fridge{{/B}} The fridge is considered a necessity. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food first appeared with the label: "store in the refrigerator." In my fridgeless Fifties childhood, I was fed well and healthily. The milkman came daily, the grocer, the butcher (肉商), the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times a week. The Sunday meat would last until Wednesday and surplus (剩余的) bread and milk became all kinks of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and we were never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on, food deliveries have ceases, fresh vegetables are almost unobtainable in the country. The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. A vast way of well-tried techniques already existed—natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling... What refrigeration did promote was marketing—marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the glode in search of search of a good price. Consequently, most of the world's fridges are to be round, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the wealthy countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically amost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house—while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charg. The fridge's effect upon the environment has been evident, while its contribution to human happiness has been insignificant. If you don't believe me, try it yourself, invest in a food cabinet and turn off your fridge next winter. You may miss the hamburgers (汉堡包), but at least you'll get rid of that terrible hum.

单选题His professional career spanned 16 years.

单选题 The Spanish Flu Epidemic If you're worried about the possibility of a coming bird flu epidemic, you can take comfort in the fact that humanity has survived a similar influenza epidemic in the past. Starting its rounds at the end of World War Ⅰ, the 1918 flu killed an estimated 50 million people. Popularly known as the Spanish Flu, this type of influenza was far worse than your common cold. Normally, influenza only kills those who are more vulnerable to disease, such as newborns, the old or the sick. However, the Spanish Flu was prone to killing the young and healthy. Often it would disable its victims in hours; within a day, they would be dead, typically from extreme cases of pneumonia (肺炎). The Spanish Flu was quite nasty-fast-spreading and deadly. It managed to spread across the globe, devastating the world. Then suddenly, after two years ravaging (蹂躏) the Earth, it disappeared as quickly as it had arisen. Despite its nickname, the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. Its true origins are unknown. Some believe it started in US forts and then spread to Europe as America joined the war; others think that it populated the trenches of the English and the French and eventually broke out in 1918. Regardless of where it started, eventually a fifth of the world population suffered the disease, with a global mortality rate (死亡率) estimated at 2.5% of the population. Modernity was partly to blame for the quick spread of the disease. It passed throughout the world on trade routes and shipping lines. It hit Northern America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the South Pacific. The war did not help at all-the movement of supplies and troops aided the spread of the Spanish Flu, as well as the trench warfare. Imagine the speed at which a virus can spread in a crowded ditch. The fast emergence of the virus in the trenches caused some soldiers to believe that the Spanish Flu was a new form of biological warfare. Luckily, the Spanish Flu simply vanished by 1920. It is believed the flu simply ran out of fuel to spread.

单选题TV Games Shows One of the most fascinating things about television is the size of the audience. A novel can be on the "best sellers" list with a sale of fewer than 100,000 copies, but a popular TV show might have 70 million TV viewers. TV can make anything or anyone well known, overnight. This is the principle behind "quiz" or "game" shows, which put ordinary people on TV to play a game for the prize and money. A quiz show can make anyone a star, and it can give away thousands of dollars just for fun. But all of this money can create problems. For instance, in the 1950s, quiz shows were very popular in the U. S. and almost everyone watched them. Charles Van Doren, an English instructor, became rich and famous after winning money on several shows. He even had a career as a television personality. But one of the losers proved that Charles Van Doren was cheating. It turned out that the show"s producers, who were pulling the strings, gave the answers to the most popular contestants beforehand. Why? Because if the audience didn"t like the person who won the game, they turned the show off. Based on his story, a movie under the title "Quiz Show" is on 40 years later. Charles Van Doren is no longer involved with TV. But game shows are still here, though they aren"t taken as seriously. In fact, some of them try to be as ridiculous as possible. There are shows that send strangers on vacation trips together, or that try to cause newly-married couples to fight on TV, or that punish losers by humiliating them. The entertainment now is to see what people will do just to be on TV. People still win money, but the real prize is to be in front of an audience of millions.

单选题下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每道题后面有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}} New Foods and the New World In the last 500 years, nothing about people—not their clothes, ideas, or languages—has changed as much as what they eat. The original chocolate drink was made from the seeds of the cocoa tree(可可树) by South American Indians, The Spanish introduced it to the rest of the world during the 1500's. And although it was very expensive, it quickly became fashionable. In London, shops where chocolate drinks were served became important meeting places. Some still exist today. The potato is also from the New World. Around 1600, the Spanish brought it from Peru to Europe, where it soon was widely grown. Ireland became so dependent on it that thousands of Irish people starved when the crop failed during the "Potato Famine (饥荒)" of 1845-1846, and thousands more were forced to leave their homeland and move to America. There are many other foods that have traveled from South America to the Old World. But some others went in the opposite direction. Brazil is now the world's largest grower of coffee, and coffee is an important crop in Colombia and other South American countries. But it is native to Ethiopia, a country in Africa. It was first made into a drink by Arabs during the 1400's. According to an Arabic legend, coffee was discovered when a person named Kaldi noticed that his goats were attracted to the red berries on a coffee bush. He tried one and experienced the "wide-awake" feeling that one-third of the world's population now starts the day with.

单选题They are unwilling to invest any more money in the project.

单选题Mike Wilson worked as a low rank official in the War Office during the early 1940s. Though he didn't hold an important position, he got along very well with almost everybody, and was believed in by most of his leaders. One day, Wilson arrived at his office in an expensive Car. Little as his pay was, he appeared to have got a lot of money to spend. He bought an expensive car... When did the story take place?A. During the First World War.B. During the Second World War.C. During the Civil War.D. During the Gulf War.

单选题I am not Ucertain/U whether he will come.

单选题{{B}}第三篇{{/B}} {{B}} Humour{{/B}} Humour, which ought to give rise to only the most light-hearted and gay feelings, can of- ten stir up vehemence and animosity. Evidently it is dearer to us than we realize. Men will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that they have no sense of humour. A man will admit to being a coward or a liar or a thief or a poor mechanic or a bad swimmer, but tell him he has a dreadful sense of humour and you might as well have slandered his mother. Even if he is civilized enough to pretend to make light of your statement, he will still secretly believe that he has not only a good sense of humour but are superior to most. He has, in other words, a completely blind spot on the subject. This is all the more surprising when you consider that not one man in ten million can give you any kind of intelligent answer as to what humour is or why he laughs. One day when I was about twelve years old, it occurred to me to wonder about the phenomenon of laughter. At first I thought it is easy enough to see what I laugh at and why I am amused, but why at such times do I open my mouth and exhale in jerking gasps and wrinkle up my eyes and throw back my head and halloo like an animal? Why do I not instead rap four times on the top of my head or whistle or whirl about? That was over twenty years ago and I am still wondering, except that I now no longer even take my first assumption for granted, I no longer clearly understand why I laugh at what amuses me nor why things are amusing. I have illustrious company in my confusion, of course. Many of the great minds, of history have brought their power of concentration to bear on the mystery of humour, and, to date, their conclusions are so contradictory and ephemeral that they cannot possibly be classified as scientific. Many definitions of the comic are incomplete and many are simply rewording of things we already know. Aristotle, for example, defined the ridiculous as that which is incongruous but represents neither danger nor pain. But that seems to me to be a most inadequate sort of observation, for of at this minute I insert here the word rutabagas, I have introduced something in congruous, something not funny. Of course, it must be admitted that Aristotle did not claim that every painless in congruity is ridiculous but as soon as we have gone as far as this admission, we begin to see that we have come to grips with a ghost when we think have it pinned, it suddenly appears behind us, mocking us. An all-embracing definition of humour has been attempted by many philosophers, but no definition, no formula had ever been devised that is entirely satisfactory. Aristotle's definition has come to be known loosely as the "disappointment" theory, or the "frustrated expectation", but he also, discussed another theory borrowed in part from Plato which states that the pleasure we derive in laughing is an enjoyment of the misfortune of others, due to a momentary feeling of superiority or gratified vanity in appreciation of the fact that we ourselves are not in the observed predicament.

单选题Hundreds of buildings were wrecked by the earthquake A. shaken B. fallen C. damaged D. trembled

单选题All living organisms, regardless of their unique identity, have certain biological, chemical, and physical characteristics in common. A. as result of B. considering C. on purpose D. whatever

单选题Smoking is banned in public places in big cities. A. restricted B. confined C. criticized D. forbidden

单选题 Goal of American Education Education is all enormous and expensive part of American life. Its size is matched by its variety. Differences in American schools compared with those found in the majority of other countries lie in the fact that education here has long been intended for everyone—not just for a privileged elite. Schools are expected to meet the needs of every child, regardless of ability, and also the needs of society itself. This means that public schools offer more than academic subjects. It surprises many people when they come here to find high schools offering such courses as typing, sewing, radio repair, computer programming or driver training, along with traditional academic subjects such as mathematics, history, and languages. Students choose their curricula depending on their interests, future goals, and level of ability. The underlying goal of American education is to develop every child to the utmost of his or her own possibilities, and to give each one a sense of civic and community consciousness. Schools have traditionally played an important role in creating national unity and "Americanizing" the millions of immigrants who have poured into this country from many different backgrounds and origins. Schools still play a large role in the community, especially in the small towns. The approach to teaching may seem unfamiliar to many, not only because it is informal, but also because there is not much emphasis on learning facts. Instead, Americans try to teach their children to think for themselves and to develop their own intellectual and creative abilities. Students spend much time, learning how to use resource materials libraries, statistics and computers. Americans believe that if children are taught to reason well and to research well, they will be able to find whatever facts they need throughout the rest of their lives. Knowing how to solve problems is considered more important than the accumulation of facts. This is America's answer to the searching question that thoughtful parents all over the world are asking themselves in the fast-moving time: "How can one prepare today's child for a tomorrow that one can neither predict nor understand?"