Japanese people,who never miss a chance to be photographed,were lining up to get their pictures on a postage stamp.Vanity(虚荣)stamps with personal photographs went on sale for the first time in Japan as part of an international postage stamp exhibition.The customer’s photo was taken with a digital camera and then printed on stamp sheets,a process that takes about five minutes.Sold in a sheet of 10 stamps for $8.80,little more than the cost of lunch in Tokyo,each stamp printed a different scene from a traditional painting along with the photo.
The stamps can be used normally to mail a letter,and postal officials hope they will help encourage interest in letter writing in the Internet age.“Certainly e-mail is a useful method of communication,but letters are fun in a different way,”said Hatsumi Shimizu an official in the Post Ministry.“We want to show young people that letters can be fun too.”[
While similar stamp sheets appeared in Australia in 1999 and are now sold in some nations and territories,Japan’s fondness for commemorative photos is likely to make them especially popular here.Indeed,officials had prepared 1 000 sheets but they were sold out in less than 30 minutes.Although the stamps are currently only available as a special service during the exhibition,postal officials said they may start selling them on a regular basis in the future.
【小题1】The best title of this passage might be______.

A.Never Miss a Chance to be Photographed
B.Your Own Face on a Postage Stamp
C.First Japanese Postage Stamps with a Photo
D.Letters are as Fun as E-mails
【小题2】By saying“little more than the cost of lunch in Tokyo”,the author really means______.
A.this service is not very expensive
B.the cost of this service is very high
C.food in Tokyo is very dear
D.$8.80 is a very small amount of money
【小题3】The purpose of this activity is______.
A.to make the international postage stamp exhibition more interesting
B.to make more stamps for normal use
C.to draw interest in writing letters
D.to satisfy Japan’s fondness of commemorative photos
【小题4】Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A.Japanese people like to take photos.
B.This kind of stamps must be used to mail letters.
C.Japanese people can get this kind of stamps easily after the stamp exhibition.
D.This service is more popular in Japan than in other places.

In the old days of publishing, getting your manuscript into the hands of an editor often meant mailing the unsolicited finished product to the offices of literary agents or editors, where it would receive a cursory look from an editorial assistant — or none at all.
A modern version of the slush pile is the online “writing community,” a Web site where aspiring novelists can post their ideas, writing samples or manuscripts and open them to comments and reviews from strangers. On Tuesday Penguin Group USA, the publisher of Tom Clancy, Kathryn Stockett and Nora Roberts, will unveil its own venture, Book Country, a Web site for writers of genre fiction. In its initial phase Book Country will allow writers to post their own work — whether it’s an opening chapter or a full manuscript — and receive critiques from other users, who can comment on points like character development, pacing and dialogue. Later this summer the site will generate revenue by allowing users to self-publish their books for a fee by ordering printed copies. (The books will bear the stamp of Book Country, not Penguin, and the site is considered a separate operation from Penguin.) The site will also explain the business of finding an agent, marketing and promoting a book, using social media and handling digital and subsidiary rights.
Penguin hopes the site will attract agents, editors and publishers scouting for new talent, and allow writers to produce work with more polish and direction than they could otherwise. The project has been spearheaded by Molly Barton, the director of business development for Penguin and the president of Book Country. “One of the things I remember really clearly from my early editorial experiences was this feeling of guilt,” Ms. Barton said in an interview. “I would read submissions and not be able to help the writer because we couldn’t find a place for them on the list that I was acquiring for. And I kept feeling that there was something we could do on the Internet to really help writers each other.”
【小题1】 How did an author send unsolicited finished products to editors in the old days of publishing? _______________________________________________
【小题2】 The online “writing community” is where aspiring novelists post their ideas and ___________________________________________________________________________
【小题3】The site uses social media and digital and subsidiary rights to _______________________.[来
【小题4】What’s the real purpose of Penguin creating the web site? _______________________________________________

第二节 语法填空(共10小题;每小题1.5分,满分15分)

阅读下面短文,按照句子结构的语法性和上下文连贯的要求,在空格处填人一个适当的词或使用括号中词语的正确形式填空,并将答案填写在答题卡标号为31~40的相应位置上。

There are fifty-two cards in an ordinary deck. A deck of cards can be arranged in just about 80, 660×100³²ways. And if each deck,   31   (arrange) in different ways, weighed only as much as a single hydrogen atom( the lightest atom), all the decks together   32   (weigh) a billion times as much as the sun.

The design of the king found on all standard playing-card decks has, with slight changes, remained the same for three centuries.   33   is believed to be based on a painting of the English ruler Charles I (1600-1649). The picture of the queen is   34   more doubtful origin,    35   some think it was taken from   36   early painting of Queen Elizabeth I.

Over the centuries, cards have been put to strange uses, some of   37   sound incredible nowadays. Playing-cards, for example, became the first paper money of Canada  38   the French governor, in 1685, employed cards to pay off some war debts. In 1765, the year of the Stamp Act, the University of Pennsylvania used cards for class admission. The students without cards were kept outside. The French Revolution was well-known for the fact   39   the quantity of food was    40    (extreme) in short supply. During that period, Napoleon ordered that people could get limited food according to how many cards a family had.

 

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