题目内容

Despite rising education levels, Americans of every age are reading less and less for pleasure these days, according to an analysis by the National Endowment for the Arts. The decline (下降) could have bad effects as people tune out books, tune in popular culture and become less socially engaged.

“We’ve got a public culture which is almost entirely commercial (商业化) and novelty – driven (追新),” says NEA chairman Dana Gioia. “I think it’s letting the nation down.”

The study gathers years of data on Americans’ reading habits and finds that, at every age group, we’re reading less.

Most of the data have appeared in private, government and university surveys, but today’s report is the first to combine them into a single portrait. It suggests that the demands of school, work and family and the decisive advantage of other forms of entertainment have caused the decline in reading for millions of Americans.

·Only 38% of adults in 2006 said they had spent time reading a book for pleasure.

·65% of college freshmen in 2005 said they read little or nothing for pleasure.

·30% of 13 – year – olds in 2004 said they read for fun “almost every day,” down from 35% in 1984.

According to Gioia, a poet, they decline is probably the single most important social issue in the United States today. The findings should be a wake – up call to educators to change the way they teach literature at every level. It was once believed that if someone went to college, they would become a lifelong reader. What we’re seeing right now is that we’re no longer producing readers. We’re producing B. A. s and M. A. s and Ph. D. s.

Cioia also wants main media to wake up to how they can promote good books in many ways. He notes that when a character in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral recited a few lines of W. H. Auden’s poem Funeral Blues, the poet briefly became a best seller.

1.The underlined phrase “tune out” in the first paragraph probably means        .

       A.close                   B.publish                C.prove                  D.read

2.According to Dana Gioia, the change of Americans’ reading habit       .

       A.is positive and valuable                         B.does harm to the nation

       C.is caused only by popular culture           D.can make poets best sellers

3.Which of the following is NOT the cause for the change in reading habit?

       A.Demands of getting a B. A., M. A. or Ph. D.

       B.Demands of family, school and work.

       C.The change in the way the literature is taught.

       D.Advantages of the entertainment.

4.We can infer that the number of teenagers reading for pleasure reduced by       in 20 years.

       A.30%         B.38%         C.65%         D.5%

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When I was 17, I read a quote: “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made a(n)   36  on me,and since then,for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the   37  day of my life,would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to   38  something.

Remembering that I’ll be   39  soon is the most important tool to help me make the big choices in life,   40   almost everything—all expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—just falls away in the face of death,   41  only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to   42 . You are already naked.There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to   43  don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever   44  it, because Death is very likely to be the single best invention of Life. It clears out the old to   45  for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will   46  become the old and be cleared away.

Your time is   47 , so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.Everything else is secondary.

1.                A.surprise        B.impression      C.choice    D.call

 

2.                A.last            B.first            C.worst    D.best

 

3.                A.change         B.supply          C.provide   D.achieve

 

4.                A.dead           B.fired           C.murdered     D.failed

 

5.                A.despite         B.because        C.though   D.if

 

6.                A.including       B.possessing       C.leaving   D.facing

 

7.                A.value          B.reach          C.gain D.lose

 

8.                A.sky            B.space          C.universe D.heaven

 

9.                A.experienced     B.encountered     C.escaped D.observed

 

10.               A.make good      B.make up        C.make way D.make clear

 

11.               A.dramatically     B.gradually       C.regularly   D.likely

 

12.               A.important       B.narrow         C.perfect    D.limited

 

 

While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail miserably often flourish (繁荣) more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. Researchers have found that people missing their goals perform much better in the long run. That is because they gain more knowledge from their failures than their successes and the lessons are more likely to stay longer in their minds.

“We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years,” said professor Desai, who led the study. “But companies often ignore failure. Managers may fire people or turn over the whole workforce while they should treat the failure as a learning opportunity.”

Prof Desai compared the flights of the space shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger. During the Atlantis flight last year, a piece of insulation (绝缘体) broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster (助推火箭) but didn’t influence the program. There was little investigation. The Challenger was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off. This time the shuttle and its seven–person crew were destroyed. The disaster led to a major investigation resulting in 29 changes to prevent future disasters.

The difference in response in the two cases came down to this: Atlantis was considered a success and the Challenger a failure.

“Despite crowded skies, airlines are extremely reliable,” he said. “The number of failures is extremely small. And past researches have shown that older airlines, those with more experience in failure, have a lower number of accidents.”

Prof Desai doesn’t recommend finding out failure in order to learn. Instead, he advises organizations to analyze small failures to collect useful information rather than wait for major failures.

1. Why did experts pay little attention to the problem of Atlantis?

A.Because it worked perfectly.

B.Because the right booster was still OK.

C.Because nothing serious happened then.

D.Because fewer people died in the flight.

2.Fewer accidents happen to older airlines in that ________.

A.their planes couldn’t fly high in the sky

B.they gained much from experience in failure

C.their planes were often checked by the experts

D.they were unpopular among passengers

3.The passage is written mainly to ________.

A.show failure is a better teacher than success

B.explain why Challenger failed

C.introduce something about Prof Desai

D.tell managers how to achieve success

4. Which writing strategy is NOT used in developing the passage?

A.Giving definitions.

B.Making comparisons.

C.Analyzing causes.

D.Providing different examples.

 

Despite the great progress in medical science, human beings are constantly attacked by cancer, which means death. A woman named Bonnie suffered a   36  of discomforts caused by the treatment of cancer. She didn’t regard cancer as a   37  disease, but a laughing matter. She treated it in a humorous way. To put it in   38  way, she is teaching people that even though cancer isn't   39 , we can treat it in a humorous way.

Her second child was going to be born three months away   40  she was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly, a   41  mother turned into a helpless woman afraid for her own   42 . It was after she had had her baby   43  that she had an operation.   44  came chemo(化疗)and her life seemed to be made up of fears and   45 . But the   46  moment in her life came after she lost all her hair and a free wig(假发) arrived. She   47  it on as her older son Kyler watched.

“That was when I decided how to   48  it: crying over this bad wig or laughing about it.   49  way would make   50  remember it.” Bonnie said. She spent a lot of time looking for anything funny from cancer patients. She got a lot out of collecting   51  stories. She started laughing a lot, finding it the perfect medicine. Using herself as a bald (光头) model, Bonnie   52   to design her own greeting cards and calendars, making fun of the sufferings of chemo.

"To have joy, we badly   53  to laugh," she said.

Clearly, you can increase your confidence to   54  over any disease and trouble   55   laughing.

1.                A.set            B.way            C.series    D.pack

 

2.                A.deadly         B.seriously        C.terribly   D.fearfully

 

3.                A.the other       B.another         C.other D.others

 

4.                A.serious         B.painful         C.fierce    D.fun

 

5.                A.before         B.when          C.while D.until

 

6.                A.happy          B.sad            C.fortunate D.sick

 

7.                A.son            B.illness          C.life D.operation

 

8.                A.made          B.delivered       C.attended  D.opened

 

9.                A.Here           B.Later           C.Thus D.Then

 

10.               A.failures         B.loneliness       C.tears D.wonders

 

11.               A.highest         B.lowest         C.great D.ugly

 

12.               A.wore          B.carried         C.fastened   D.tried

 

13.               A.deal with       B.do with         C.go with    D.meet with

 

14.               A.All            B.Any           C.Either D.Both

 

15.               A.myself         B.my son         C.everyone  D.my husband

 

16.A. detective  B romantic  C. humorous      D. different  

17.               A.set out         B.get down       C.set about  D.set down

 

18.               A.need          B.ought          C.want  D.long

 

19.               A.think          B.get            C.run   D.take

 

20.

A.in terms of                            B.by the way of

C.through the method of                   D.by means of

 

Did you know that women’s brains are smaller than men’s? The average women’s brain weighs 10% less than men’s. Since research has shown that the bigger the brain, the cleverer the animal, men must be more intelligent than women. Right? Wrong. Men and women always score similarly on intelligence tests, despite the difference in brain size. Why? After years of study, researchers have concluded that it’s what’s inside that matters, not just the size of the brain. The brain consists of “grey matter” and  “white matter”. While men have more of the latter, the amount of “thinking” brain is almost exactly the same in both sexes.

It has been suggested that smaller brain appears to work faster, perhaps because the two sides of the brain are better connected in women. This means that little girls tend to learn to speak earlier, and that women can understand sorts of information from different sources(来源)at the same time. When it comes to talking to the boss on the phone, cooking dinner and keeping an eye on the baby all at the same time, it’s women who come out on top every time.

There are other important differences between two sexes. As white matter is the key to spatial (空间的) tasks, men know better where things are in relation to other things. “A great footballer always knows where he is in relation to the other players, and he knows where to go,” says one researcher. That may explain one of life’s great mysteries: Why men refuse to ask for directions … and women often need to!

The differences begin when fetuses (胎儿) are about nine weeks old, which can be seen in the action of children as young as one. A boy would try to climb a barrier before him or push it down while a girl would attract help from others. These brain differences also explain the fact that more men take up jobs that require good spatial skills, while more women speech skills. It may all go back to our ancestors, among whom women needed speech skills to take care of their babies and men needed spatial skills to hunt, according to one research.

If all this disappoints you, it shouldn’t. “The brain changes throughout our lives according to what we do with it,” says a biologist.

1.Which of the following is TRUE according to the first paragraph?

A.Women’s brain is 10% less than men’s.

B.Grey matter controls thinking in the brain.

C.Grey matter plays the same role as white matter.

D.Both sexes have the same amount of white matter.

2.What can we infer from the second and third paragraphs?

A.Women don’t need to tell directions.

B.Women prefer doing many things at a time.

C.Men have weaker spatial abilities.

D.Men do better dealing with one job at a time.

3.Which of the following do you agree with according to the fourth paragraph?

A.Young boys may be stronger than young girls.

B.Women may have stronger feelings than men.

C.More women take up jobs requiring speech skills.

D.Our ancestors needed more spatial skills.

4.What is the writer’s attitude in writing this passage?

A.Defensive.

B.Persuasive.

C.Supportive.

D.Objective.

 

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