题目内容
—Betty promised me to come round to keep you company today.
— But she _______. I’ve been alone all day.
A. won't B. hadn't C. hasn't D. doesn't
C解析:考查动词时态的省略。根据语境,Betty没有来陪我,我已孤单了一整天了。即Betty的行为对现在造成的影响。因此,用But she hasn’t (come round to keep me company.)
Betty and Arthur ____ on separate holidays in a few days’ time.
A.go | B.going | C.are going | D.went |
When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it.
Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.
The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality. Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: The person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell - phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents. " Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends," he says.
If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. Consider that in 1987, there were only l million cell phones in use. Today, something like 300 million Americans carry them. They far outnumber wired phones in the United States.
【小题1】 From the first two paragraphs, we can know________.
A.cell phones have become as addictive as cigarettes |
B.cell phone addiction is good for building personal relationships |
C.people are longing to have their own cell phones |
D.cell phones are the same as cigarettes |
A.a barrier to personal contact | B.fewer friends |
C.an escape from reality | D.a serious illness |
A.ignore | B.control | C.develop | D.rescue |
A.women Use cell phones more often than men |
B.talking on the phone while driving is dangerous |
C.cell phones do not necessarily bring people together |
D.cell phones make one - on - one personal contact easy |
A.Cell phones Are the New Cigarettes |
B.Cell phones Are Harmful to the Society |
C.The New Report about the Cell phone |
D.The Disadvantages of the Cell phone |
Pacing and Pausing
Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn't hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.
Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there's no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That's what was happening with Betty and Sara.
It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.
The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思维定式). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in --- and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.
That's why slight differences in conversational style --- tiny little things like microseconds of pause --- can have a great effect on one's life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems --- even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.
1.What did Sara think of Betty when talking with her?
A.Betty was talkative. |
B.Betty was an interrupter. |
C.Betty did not take her turn. |
D.Betty paid no attention to Sara. |
2.According to the passage, who are likely to expect the shortest pauses between turns?
A.Americans. |
B.Israelis. |
C.The British. |
D.The Finns. |
3.We can learn from the passage that ______.
A.communication breakdown results from short pauses and fast pacing |
B.women are unfavorably stereotyped in eastern cities of the US |
C.one's inability to speak up is culturally determined sometimes |
D.one should receive training to build up one's confidence |
4.The underlined word "assertiveness" in the last paragraph probably means ______.
A.being willing to speak one's mind |
B.being able to increase one's power |
C.being ready to make one's own judgment |
D.being quick to express one's ideas confidently |