单选题 Questions 6～10 Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones was a teenager before he saw his first cow in his first field. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old grew up in inner-city Birmingham before making a career as a television producer and launching his own marketing agency. But deep down he always nurtured every true Englishman's dream of a rustic life, a dream that his entrepreneurial wealth has allowed him to satisfy. These days he's the owner of a thriving 12-hectare farm in deepest Devon with cattle, sheep and pigs. His latest business venture: pushing his brand of Black Fanner gourmet sausages and barbecue sauces. "My background may be very urban," says Emmanuel-Jones. "But it has given me a good idea of what other urbanites want. " And of how to sell it, Emmanuel-Jones joins a herd of wealthy fugitives from city life who are bringing a new commercial know-how to British farming. Britain's burgeoning farmers' markets—numbers have doubled to at least 500 in the last five years—swarm with specialty cheese makers, beekeepers or organic smallholders who are redeploying the business skills they learned in the city. "Everyone in the rural community has to come to terms with the fact that things have changed. " says Emmanuel-Jones. "You can produce the best food in the world, but if you don't know how to market it, you are wasting your time. We are helping the traditionalists to move on. " The emergence of the new class of super peasants reflects some old yearnings. If the British were the first nation to industrialize, they were also the first to head back to the land. "There is this romantic image of the countryside that is particularly English," says Alun Howkins of the University of Sussex, who reckons the population of rural England has been rising since 1911. Migration into rural areas is now running at about 100,000 a year, and the hunger for a taste of the rural life has kept land prices buoyant even as agricultural incomes tumble. About 40 percent of all farmland is now sold to "lifestyle buyers" rather than the dwindling number of traditional farmers, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. What's new about the latest returnees is their affluence and zeal for the business of producing quality foods, if only at a micro-level. A healthy economy and surging London house prices have helped to ease the escape of the would-be rustics. The media recognize and feed the fantasy. One of the big TV hits of recent years, the "River Cottage" series, chronicled the attempts of a London chef to run his own Dorset farm. Naturally, the newcomers can't hope to match their city salaries, but many are happy to trade any loss of income for the extra job satisfaction. Who cares if there's no six-figure annual bonus when the land offers other incalculable compensations? Besides, the specialist producers can at least depend on a burgeoning market for their products. Today's eco-aware generation loves to seek out authentic ingredients. "People like me may be making a difference in a small way," Jan McCourt, a onetime investment banker now running his own 40-hectare spread in the English Midlands stocked with rare breeds. Optimists see signs of far-reaching change: Britain isn't catching up with mainland Europe, it's leading the way. "Unlike most other countries, where artisanal food production is being eroded, here it is being recovered," says food writer Matthew Fort. "It may be the mark of the next stage of civilization that we rediscover the desirability of being a peasant. And not an investment banker. "

单选题He has impressed his employers considerably and ______ he is soon to be promoted. A. nevertheless B. however C. yet D. accordingly

单选题 Just as world oil scarcity is already causing international conflicts, so will the scarcity of water reach a point where wars will break out. The statistics on water are already scary. Already well over 1 billion people suffer from water shortages and 30 countries get more than a third of their water from outside their borders-an obvious source of disputes and instability especially as the climate changes. The whole of the sub-Saharan Africa, most of South Asia and western South America are most at risk. The reason: the rapid melting of glaciers due to global warming. At the meeting of the coalition of 27 International charities last month, Gareth Thomas, minister of International Development of the British government, wrote to prime minister Gordon Brown demanding action to ensure fresh water to 1.1 billion people with poor supplies. "If we do not act now, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead. We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future." Thomas said. The department warned that two-thirds of the word's population will live in water-stressed countries by 2025. The coalition of charities has appealed for a global effort to bring running water to the developing world and supply sanitation to a further 2.6 billion people. It said that international investment is needed now to prevent competition for water to destabilize communities and escalate into conflicts. Tackling the water and sanitation crisis is essential if the Millennium Development Goal Call to Action is to be a success. Otherwise, progress on health, education, and environment sustainability will be undermined. Each year 443 million school days are lost globally to diarrhea and 1.8 million children die from these diseases. In fact, it is often not realized that investing in sanitation and water brings the greatest public health gains, more than any other single development intervention and delivers enormous economic gains. Already, some Asian countries have put tackling these issues at the forefront of their development efforts. The Millennium Development Goals aim to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015. To achieve that urgent action needs to be taken. There is no doubt that climate change is potentially the most important factor affecting water shortage. This, compounded with a growing and increasingly urbanized global population will put pressure on food and water. For a temperature rise of 2 C, which is likely to happen by 2050, there would be a catastrophic 2 to 3 billion people suffering from water stress.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题In colonial days, huge flocks of snowy egrets inhabited coastal wetlands and marshes of the southeastern United States. In the 1800s, when fashion dictated fancy hats adorned with feathers, egrets and other birds were hunted for their plumage. By the late 1800s, egrets were almost extinct. In 1886 the newly formed Audubon Society began a press campaign to shame feather wearers and end the terrible folly. The campaign caught on, and gradually, attitudes changed and new laws followed. Florida and Texas were the first states to pass laws protecting such birds. Then, in 1900, the United States Congress passed the Lacey Act, forbidding interstate commerce to deal in illegally killed wildlife, making it more difficult for hunters to sell their kill. Since then, numerous wildlife refuges have been established to protect the birds" feeding habitats. With millions of people visiting these refuges and seeing the birds in their natural locales, attitudes have changed significantly. Today the thought of hunting these birds would be abhorrent to most people, even if official protection were removed. Thus protected, egret populations were able to recover substantially. In the mean time, the Lacey Act has become the most important piece of legislation protecting wildlife from illegal killing or smuggling. Congress took another major step when it passed a series of acts to protect endangered species. The most comprehensive and recent of these acts is the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 (reauthorized in 1988). An endangered species is a species that has been reduced to the point where it is in imminent danger of becoming extinct if protection is not provided. The act also provides for the protection of threatened species, which are judged to be in jeopardy but not on the brink of extinction. When a species is officially recognized as being either endangered or threatened, the law specifies substantial fines for killing, trapping, uprooting (plants), or engaging in commerce in the species or its parts. The legislation forbidding commerce includes wildlife threatened with extinction anywhere in the world. The ESA requires the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), under the Department of the interior, to draft recovery plans for protected species. Habitats must be mapped and a program for the preservation and management of critical habitats must be designed, such that the species can rebuild its population. Some critics of the ESA believe that the act does not go far enough. A major shortcoming is that protection is not provided until a species is officially listed as endangered or threatened by the USFWS and a recovery plan is established. Species usually will not make the list until their populations have become dangerously low. Over the past years, the USFWS has been working intensely on listing species and developing recovery plans for them. One of the species recently removed from the list, and an amazing recovery story, is that of the American peregrine falcon. The bald eagle also is scheduled to be removed from the list soon. Both the peregrine falcon and the bald eagle were driven to extremely low numbers because of the use of DDT as a pesticide from the 1940s through the 1960s. Carried up to these predators through the food chain, DDT caused a serious thinning of the birds" eggshells that led to nesting failures in the two species and in numerous other predatory birds. By 1975 a survey indicated that there were only 324 pairs of nesting peregrines in North America. DDT use was banned in both the United States and Canada in the early 1970s and the stage was set for recovery of the bird. Working with several nonprofit captive-breeding institutions such as the Peregrine Fund, the USFWS sponsored efforts that resulted in the release of some 6,000 captive-bred young falcons in 34 states over a period of 23 years. There are now about 1,600 known breeding pairs in the United States and Canada- well above the targeted recovery population of 631 pairs.

单选题Questions 11～15 As environment protection becomes a global issue, a new term—"Green EFL" is working its way into our vocabulary. What does it mean? The Project in the English Country School in southern England gives you some idea and shows how environment protection and language teaching can be combined together. In this school, there are projects on the classification of trees and their leaves, on insects and other invertebrates, pond and river life, flowers and hedgerows. There are air pollution surveys, litter surveys, recycling projects, acid rain surveys, farm visits, countryside walks, sculptures and colleges created from natural materials. It is all backed up in the classroom with EFL materials about the environment—the rain forests, biological diversity, global warming—and with materials which concentrate on the students" immediate environment under the general heading of "Health". smoking, alcohol and during abuse, diet and exercise. For example, the topic of pollution will involve the students searching the local environment to find out what has been thrown away. This is then classified according to the type of material found and whether it is recyclable or not. The students follow instructions to set up simple experiments to detect air and water pollution. They investigate mosses and lichens, looking up their findings in field guides, to determine the number and quality of species. They compare and collate their findings, producing diagrams, writing up their results and drawing conclusions. They then practice language work on topics such as the Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming. How do the students benefit from this? In common with all project work, learner autonomy, cooperation and motivation is fostered. The language practice takes place in a natural and enjoyable setting. As a result the students develop an appreciation of and an alertness and sensitivity toward their surroundings. Another advantage of Green EFL is that the environment is a global issue: What happens in one country affects what happens in another. The environment thus spans borders and cultures. We can teach the language, English, through the environment, without teaching "Englishness", or "Americanness", or whatever other culture values we might accidentally or deliberately put across to our students. Finally, through an understanding of the global environment, and the issues which affect it, students will be better able to meet challenges in the future. For the teacher interested in teaching English through environmental studies, there is a surprising amount of material available. The Cambridge Advanced English Exam, with its emphasis on scientific/authentic English, had encouraged authors to include texts on various environmental issues. Sue O Connell"s "Focus on Advanced English", for example, includes a chapter called "Paradise Lost" about the rain forests; "Passport to Cambridge Advanced English" discusses the Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming; "Cambridge Advanced English" by Leo Jones, has a chapter about green peace and the Antarctic; and so on. Environmental topics in Children"s EFL textbooks are also catching on. Book 3 of Collin "Mode" series is particularly useful.

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单选题 The period of adolescence, i.e., the person between childhood and adulthood, may be long or short, depending on social expectations and on society's definition as to what constitutes maturity and adulthood. In primitive societies adolescence is frequently a relatively short period of time, while in industrial societies with patterns of prolonged education coupled with laws against child labor, the period of adolescence is much longer and may include most of the second decade of one's life. Furthermore, the length of the adolescent period and the definition of adulthood status may change in a given society as social and economic conditions change. Examples of this type of change are the disappearance of the frontier in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the United States, and more universally, the industrialization of an agricultural society. In modem society, ceremonies for adolescence have lost their formal recognition and symbolic significance and there no longer is agreement as to what constitutes initiation ceremonies. Social ones have been replaced by a sequence of steps that lead to increased recognition and social status. For example, grade school graduation, high school graduation and college graduation constitute such a sequence, and while each step implies certain behavioral changes and social recognition, the significance of each depends on the socioeconomic status and the educational ambition of the individual. Ceremonies for adolescence have also been replaced by legal definitions of status roles, right, privileges and responsibilities. It is during the nine years from the twelfth birthday to the twenty-first that the protective and restrictive aspects of child-hood and minor status are removed and adult privileges and responsibilities are granted. The twelve-year-old is no longer considered a child and has to pay full fare for train, airplane, theater and movie tickets. Basically, the individual at this age loses childhood privileges without gaining significant adult rights, At the age of sixteen the adolescent is granted certain adult rights, which increases his social status by providing him with more freedom and choices. He now can obtain a driver's license; he can leave public schools; and he can work without the restrictions of child labor laws. At the age of eighteen the law provides adult responsibilities as well as fights; the young man can now be a soldier, but he also can marry without parental permission. At the age of twenty-one the individual obtains his full legal rights as an adult. He now can vote, he can buy liquor, he can enter into financial contracts, and he is entitled to nm for public office. No additional basic rights are acquired as a function of age after majority status has been attained. None of these legal provisions determine at what point adulthood has been reached but they do point to the prolonged period of adolescence.

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单选题 Question 16-20 Racket, din clamor, noise, whatever you want to call it, unwanted sound is America's most widespread nuisance. But noise is more than just a nuisance. It constitutes a real and present danger to people's health. Day and night, at home, at work, and at play, noise can produce serious physical and psychological stress. No one is immune to this stress. Though we seem to adjust to noise by ignoring it, the ear, in fact, never closes and the body still responds--sometimes with extreme tension, as to a strange sound in the night. The annoyance we feel when faced with noise is the most common outward symptom of the stress building up inside us. Indeed, because irritability is so apparent, legislators have made public annoyance the basis of many noise abatement programs. The more subtle and more serious health hazards associated with stress caused by noise traditionally have been given much less attention. Nevertheless, when we are annoyed or made irritable by noise, we should consider these symptoms fair warning that other thing may be happening to us, some of which may be damaging to our health. Of many health hazards to noise, hearing loss is the most clearly observable and measurable by health professionals. The other hazards are harder to pin down. For many of us, there may be a risk that exposure to the stress of noise increases susceptibility to disease and infection. The more susceptible among us may experience noise as a complicating factor in heart problems and other diseases. Noise that causes annoyance and irritability in health persons may have serious consequences for these already ill in mind or body. Noise affects us throughout our lives. For example, there are indications of effects on the unborn child when mothers are exposed to industrial and environmental noise. During infancy and childhood, youngsters exposed to high noise levels may have trouble falling asleep and obtaining necessary amounts of rest. Why, then, is there not greater alarm about these dangers? Perhaps it is because the link between noise and many disabilities or diseases has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. Perhaps it is because we tend to dismiss annoyance as a price to pay for living in the modern world. It may also be because we still think of hearing loss as only an occupational hazard.

单选题You have seen them in movies: scientists who are infallible and coldly objective--little more than animated computers in white lab coats. They take measurements and record results as if the collection of data were the sole object of their lives. The assumption= If one gathers enough facts about something, the relationships between those facts will spontaneously reveal themselves. Nonsense! The myth of the infallible scientist evaporates when one thinks of the number of great ideas in science whose originators were correct in general but wrong in detail. The English physicist John Dalton gets credit for modern atomic theory, but his mathematical formulas for calculating atomic weights were incorrect. The Polish astronomer Copernicus, who corrected Ptolemy"s ancient concept of an Earth-centered universe, nevertheless was mistaken in the particulars of the planets" orbits. Luck, too, has played a determining role in scientific discovery. The French chemist Pasteur demonstrated that life does not arise spontaneously from air. But it may have been luck that he happened to use an easy-to-kill yeast and not the hay bacillus that another, long-forgotten, investigator had chosen for the same experiment. We now know that hay bacillus is heat-resistant and grows even after the boiling that killed Pasteur"s yeast. If Pasteur had used the hay bacillus, his "proof" would not have materialized. Gregor Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, epitomizes the humanness of the scientist. Plant hybridization intrigued and puzzled Mendel, an Augustinian monk with some training in mathematics and the natural sciences. He had read in the professional literature that crosses between certain species regularly yielded many hybrids with identical traits; but when hybrids were crossed, all kinds of strange new combinations of traits cropped up. The principle of inheritance, if there was one, was elusive. Mendel had the basic idea that there might be simple mathematical relationships among plants in different generations. To pursue this hypothesis, he decided to establish experimental plots in the monastery garden at Brunn, raise a number of varieties of peas, interbreed them, count and classify the offspring of each generation, and see whether any reliable mathematical ratios could be deduced. After many years of meticulously growing, harvesting, and counting pea plants, Mendel thought he had something worth talking about. So, in 1865, he appeared before the Brunn Society for the Study of Natural Science, reported on his research, and postulated what have since come to be called the Mendelian laws. Society members listened politely but, insofar as anybody knows, asked few questions and engaged in little discussion. It may even be that, as he proceeded, a certain suspicion emerged out of the embarrassed silence. After all, Mendel lacked a degree and had published no research. Now, if Pasteur had advanced this idea... Mendel"s assertion that separate and distinct "elements" of inheritance must exist, despite the fact that he couldn"t produce any, was close to asking the society to accept something on faith. There was no evidence for Mendel"s hypothesis other than his computations; and his wildly unconventional application of algebra to botany made it difficult for his listeners to understand that those computations were the evidence. Mendel undoubtedly died without knowing that his findings on peas had indeed illuminated a well-nigh universal pattern. Luck had been with him in his choice of which particular traits to study. We now know that groups of genes do not always act independently. Often they are linked, their effect being to transmit a package of traits. Knowing nothing about genes, let alone the phenomenon of linkage, Mendel was spared failure because the traits that he chose to follow were each controlled separately. The probability of making such a happy choice in random picks is only about 1 in 163!

单选题A good marriage is good for the heart, according to new research supported by the Heart and Stroke Foundation. "There"s little question that a harmonious state of matrimony gives a healthy edge when it comes to medical matters of the heart," says Dr. Brian Baker, Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher. But he doesn"t prescribe wedding bells for his patients because, as he points out, not all marriages are happy. The study is being presented today at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2001, hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. The three-year study included 118 men and women with mild high blood pressure (hypertension). One third of the participants were women, two thirds were men. All were married, although there were no spousal couples in the study. At the beginning and the end of the three-year study, participants completed a questionnaire designed to measure how happy or unhappy—they were in their marriages. They also had their blood pressure measured, and underwent echocardiography to measure their hearts. "People with thicker heart walls tend to have higher blood pressure. Thinner heart walls indicate lower blood pressure," explains Dr. Baker, a psychiatrist specializing in cardiovascular medicine. For one 24-hour period the participants wore a device that monitored the daily fluctuations of their blood pressure while they went about their normal working lives. In the group whose marriages were under strain, heart wall thickness increased by an average of 8%. In the group who defined themselves as happily married, heart wall thickness actually decreased 5%. Also the unhappily married group showed higher mean blood pressures both over the 24-hour monitoring and over the entire three year period. "In a marriage that is not under strain, commitment and satisfaction are higher," says Dr. Baker. "But, in order to get the cardio protective effect, you have to have lots of contact. We found that when you have both satisfaction and are able to spend time together, then the blood pressure goes down. In a good marriage you spend more time together. Those people who felt they had strong marital support spent nearly twice as much time with their partners." "When the marriage is in trouble, you tend to avoid your partner." Such a marriage appears to encourage high blood pressure and unhealthy lifestyles, risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Dr. Anthony Graham, spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation says, "This study adds to the growing body of evidence indicating that there is a physiological dimension to unhappiness and stress. Living well should mean more than just physical fitness, important though that is. Feeling good about yourself and your relationships may also be good medicine."

单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

单选题Questions 26～30 It was books that first captured my imagination about faraway places. TV travelogues always seemed the poor relation to the classic written accounts, although of course the pictures were rather better. And then there was the issue of authenticity. All those pretentious theatrical types dying of thirst in the desert, as if we didn't realize there was a camera crew on hand to cater for their every need. These days programme-makers know that the audience is more sophisticated and the presence of the camera is acknowledged. But can a journey with filming equipment ever be anything other than a cleverly constructed fiction? I recently got the chance to find out, when I was asked to present two one-hour programmes for an adventure travel series. The project was the brainchild of the production company Trans-Atlantic Films, which wanted the series presented by writers and adventurers, as well as TV professionals. My sole qualification was as a journalist specialising in "adventure" travel. However, I was thought to have "on-screen" potential. The first programme was filmed in Costa Rica. Within 24 hours of my arrival, I realized that this was going to be very different from my usual "one man and his laptop" expeditions. For a start, there were five of us—director, cameraman, sound recordist, producer and presenter. And then there was the small matter of ￡100,000 worth of equipment. I soon realized that the director, Peter Macpherson, was a vastly experienced adventure film-maker. In his case, the term "adventure" meant precisely that. "Made a film with X," he would say (normally a famous mountaineer or skier), before describing a death-defying sequence at the top of a glacier in Alaska or hand-gliding off the Angel Falls in Venezuela. Invariably, these reminiscences would end with the words: "Had a great deal of respect for X. Dead now, sadly... " Part of the brief for the series was to put the presenter in unusual situations and see how he or she coped. One such sequence was the night we spent in the rainforest canopy near the National Park in Guanacaste province. I don't have a head for heights and would make a poor rock-climber, so my distress is real enough as the camera catches me dangling on a rope some 30 metres up, well short of the canopy platform. Ironically, it was the presence of the camera, looking down on me from above, that gave me the impetus for the final push to the top. By this time, I'd learnt how "sequences" were cut together and realized that one last effort was required. I had to struggle to stay coherent while the camera swooped within a few millimeters of my face for my reaction In the end, it was a magical experience, hightened all the more by the sounds of the forest—a family of howler monkeys in a nearby tree, amplified through the sound recordist's headphones. Learning how to establish a rapport with the camera is vital and it took me a while to think of it as a friend rather than a judge and jury. The most intimidating moments were when Peter strolled up to me, saying that the light would only be right for another 10 minutes, and that he needed a "link" from one sequence to another. The brief was simple. It needed to be 30 seconds long, sum up my feelings, be informative, well-structured and, most important of all, riveting to watch "Ready to go in about five minutes?" he would say breezily.

单选题 Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose ONE best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 1～5 Why the inductive and mathematical sciences, after their first rapid development at the culmination of Greek civilization, advanced so slowly for two thousand years—and why in the following two hundred years a knowledge of natural and mathematical science has accumulated, which so vastly exceeds all that was previously known that these sciences may be justly regarded as the products of our own times—are questions which have interested the modern philosopher not less than the objects with which these sciences are more immediately conversant. Was it the employment of a new method of research, or in the exercise of greater virtue in the use of the old methods, that this singular modern phenomenon had its origin? Was the long period one of arrested development, and is the modern era one of normal growth? Or should we ascribe the characteristics of both periods to so-called historical accidents—to the influence of conjunctions in circumstances of which no explanation is possible, save in the omnipotence and wisdom of a guiding Providence? The explanation which has become commonplace, that the ancients employed deduction chiefly in their scientific inquiries, while the moderns employ induction, proves to be too narrow, and fails upon close examination to point with sufficient distinctness the contrast that is evident between ancient and modern scientific doctrines and inquiries. For all knowledge is founded on observation, and proceeds from this by analysis, by synthesis and analysis, by induction and deduction, and if possible by verification, or by new appeals to observation under the guidance of deduction—by steps which are indeed correlative parts of one method; and the ancient sciences afford examples of every one of these methods, or parts of one method, which have been generalized from the examples of science. A failure to employ or to employ adequately any one of these partial methods, an imperfection in the arts and resources of observation and experiment, carelessness in observation, neglect of relevant facts, by appeal to experiment and observation—these are the faults which cause all failures to ascertain truth, whether among the ancients or the moderns; but this statement does not explain why the modern is possessed of a greater virtue, and by what means he attained his superiority. Much less does it explain the sudden growth of science in recent times. The attempt to discover the explanation of this phenomenon in the antithesis of "facts" and "theories" or "facts" and "ideas"—in the neglect among the ancients of the former, and their too exclusive attention to the latter—proves also to be too narrow, as well as open to the charge of vagueness. For in the first place, the antithesis is not complete. Facts and theories are not coordinate species. Theories, if true, are facts—a particular class of facts indeed, generally complex, and if a logical connection subsists between their constituents, have all the positive attributes of theories. Nevertheless, this distinction, however inadequate it may be to explain the source of true method in science, is well founded, and connotes an important character in true method. A fact is a proposition of simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true has all the characteristics of a fact, except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means. To convert theories into facts is to add simple verification, and the theory thus acquires the full characteristics of a fact.

单选题 I remember meeting him one evening with his pushcart. I had managed to sell all my papers and was coming home in the snow. It was that strange hour in downtown New York when the workers were pouring homeward in the twilight. I marched among thousands of tired men and women whom the factory whistles had unyoked. They flowed in rivers through the clothing factory districts, then down along the avenues to the East Side. I met my father near Cooper Union. I recognized him, a hunched, frozen figure in an old overcoat standing by a banana cart. He looked so lonely, the tears came to my eyes. Then he saw me, and his face lit with his sad, beautiful smile—Charlie Chaplin's smile. "Arch, it's Mikey," he said. "So you have sold your papers! Come and eat a banana." He offered me one. I refused it. I felt it crucial that my father sell his bananas, not give them away. He thought I was shy, and coaxed and joked with me, and made me eat the banana. It smelled of wet straw and snow. "You haven't sold many bananas today, pop," I said anxiously, He shrugged his shoulders. "What can I do? No one seems to want them." It was true. The work crowds pushed home morosely over the pavements. The rusty sky darkened over New York building, the tall street lamps were lit, innumerable trucks, street cars and elevated trains clattered by. Nobody and nothing in the great city stopped for my father's bananas. "I ought to yell," said my father dolefully. "I ought to make a big noise like other peddlers, but it makes my throat sore. Anyway, I'm ashamed of yelling, it makes me feel like a fool." I had eaten one of his bananas. My sick conscience told me that I ought to pay for it somehow. I must remain here and help my father. "I'll yell for you, pop," I volunteered." "Arch, no," he said, "go home; you have worked enough today. Just tell momma I'll be late." But I yelled and yelled. My father, standing by, spoke occasional words of praise, and said I was a wonderful yeller. Nobody else paid attention. The workers drifted past us wearily, endlessly; a defeated army wrapped in dreams of home. Elevated trains crashed; the Cooper Union clock burned above us; the sky grew black, the wind poured, the slush burned through our shoes. There were thousands of strange, silent figures pouring over the sidewalks in snow, None of them stopped to buy bananas. I yelled and yelled, nobody listened. My father tried to stop me at last. "Nu," he said smiling to console me, "that was wonderful yelling. Mikey. But it's plain we are unlucky today! Let's go home." I was frantic, and almost in tears. I insisted on keeping up my desperate yells. But at last my father persuaded me to leave with him.

单选题 If the old maxim that the customer is always right still has meaning, then the airlines that fly the world's busiest air route between London and Paris have a flight on their hands. The Eurostar train service linking the UK and French capitals via the Channel Tunnel is winning customers in increasing numbers. In late May, it carried its one millionth passenger, having run only a limited service between London, Paris and Brussels since November 1994, starting with two trains a day in each direction to Paris and Brussels. By 1997, the company believes that it will be carrying ten million passengers a year, and continue to grow from there. From July, Eurostar steps its service to nine trains each way between London and Paris, and five between London and Brussels. Each train carries almost 800 passengers, 210 of them in first class. The airlines estimate that they will initially lose around 15%-20% of their London-Paris traffic to the railways once Eurostar starts a full service later this year (1995), with 15 trains a day each way. A similar service will start to Brussels. The damage will be limited, however, the airlines believe, with passenger numbers returning to previous levels within two to three years. In the short term, the damage caused by the 1 million people-level traveling between London and Paris and Brussels on Eurostar trains means that some air services are already suffering. Some of the major carders say that their passenger numbers are down by less than 5% and point to their rivals-particularly Air France-as having suffered the problems. On the Brussels route, the railway company had less success, and the airlines report anything from around a 5% drop to no visible decline in traffic. The airlines' optimism on returning traffic levels is based on historical precedent. British Midland, for example, points to its experience on Heathrow Leeds Bradford service which saw passenger numbers fold by 15% when British Rail electrified and modernized the railway line between London and Yorkshire. Two years later, travel had risen between the two destinations to the point where the airline was carrying record numbers of passengers.

单选题Questions 6-10 A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about a culture than is possible to learn in general history classes. Most typical history courses concentrate on politics, economics, and war. But art history focuses on much more than this because art reflects not only the political values of a people, but also religious beliefs, emotions, and psychology. In addition, information about the daily activities of our ancestors--or of people very different from our own--can be provided by art. In short, art expresses the essential qualities of a time and a place, and a study of it clearly offer us a deeper understanding than can be found in most history books. In history books, objective information about the political life of a country is presented; that is, facts about politics are given, but opinions are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is subjective: it reflects emotions and opinions. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya was perhaps the first truly "political" artist. In his well-known painting The Third of May 1808, he criticized the Spanish government for its misuse of power over people. Over a hundred years later, symbolic images were used in Pablo Picasso's Guernica to express the horror of war. Meanwhile, on another continent, the powerful paintings of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros--as well as the works of Alfredo Ramos Martines--depicted these Mexican artists' deep anger and sadness about social problems. In the same way, art can reflect a culture's religious beliefs. For hundreds of years in Europe, religious art was almost the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. Although most people couldn't read, they could still understand biblical stories in the pictures on church walls. By contrast, one of the main characteristics of art in the Middle East was (and still is) its absence of human and animal images. This reflects the Islamic belief that statues are unholy.

单选题A.NowAmericanmencanlivefiveyearslongerthanexpected,B.AnordinaryAmericanwomanlivesahappierlife.C.InAmerica,therearemorefemalesthanmales.D.InAmerica,womenlivelongerthanmen.