题目内容
It is a typical case. A young professional has just moved to a new city. She is very active in her new job but wishes to meet people socially outside of work. How does she do this?
Signing up for a night class is always a good starting point. Not only is it an ideal way to meet like-minded people,it can also be a great new learning experience. Pubs and clubs can be a good meeting place but can be a bit hard if you are on your own.
Join a gym
GL-14 health club in Manchester city centre is a gym which also has lots of member activities outside the gym from charity fashion shows to dinner dances giving members a chance to socialize away from the treadmill(繁忙的工作). Or if you want a gym with a difference,try a“Green Gym”for people who want to exercise but wish to be outdoors and doing something that will benefit the environment at the same time. The“work out”could involve such activities as practical conservation or gardening work. It’s a great way to get people’s heart and muscle working. And many agree that meeting other people and having a matter and a laugh is a big attraction of the scheme.
Reading groups
In the Reading Groups,Jenny Hartley suggested that there may be as many as 50,000 people in reading groups in the UK. They range from informal groups of friends or colleagues who meet in someone’s home or at the local pub,to discuss a book. If you want something a bit more structured,lots of libraries have reading groups and could have a broader group of members.
Statistics
The BBC recently conducted a survey called Going solo:single life in the 21st century. You can look at the overall results or search by area. It found that:
*69% of people thought that the gym was a good place to meet new
*Pubs or clubs were considered to be good meeting places by 58% of people in the UK
*68% thought that work was a good place to meet people
*72% thought that internet chat was not an ideal way to meet people
( )56.“Green Gym”in Paragraph 3 refers to an activity in which you can________.
A.have night classes with like-minded people
B.do something good for the environment on your own
C.discuss a book with other members at a pub
D.benefit the environment while doing outdoor exercise
( )57.Which of the following is a Green Gym activity?
A.Gardening work. B.Chatting on the Internet.
C.A charity fashion show. D.A dinner dance away from the treadmill.
( )58.What’s the most popular place to meet new people outside of work?
A.Pubs or clubs. B.The Internet. C.The working place. D.The gym.
56-58DAD
【解析】略
In a few years,you might be able to speak Chinese,Korean,Japanese,French,and English-and all at the same time. This sounds incredible,but Alex Waibel,a computer science professor at US's Car-negie Mellon University (CMU) and Germany's University of Karlsruhe,announced last week that it may soon be reality. He and his team have invented software and hardware that could make it far easier for people who speak different languages to understand each other.
One application,called Lecture Translation,can easily translate a speech from one language into an-other. Current translation technologies typically limit speakers to certain topics or a limited vocabulary. Us-ers also have to be trained how to use the programme.
Another machine can send translations of a speech to different listeners depending on what languagethey speak. “It is like having a simultaneous translator right next to you but without disturbing the person next to you,”Waibel said
Prefer to read? So- called Translation Glasses transcribe(转录) the translations on a tiny liquid-crystal display(LCD) screen.
Then there's the Muscle Translator. Electrodes capture the electrical signals from facial muscle movements made naturally when a person is mouthing words. The signals are then translated into speech.The electrodes could be replaced with wireless chips implanted in a person's face,according to research-ers.
During a demonstration held last Thursday in CMU's Pittsburgh campus,a Chinese student named Sang Jun had 11 tiny electrodes attached to the muscles of his cheeks,neck and throat. Then he mouthed-without speaking aloud- a few words in Mandarin(普通话) to the audience. A few seconds later,the phrase was displayed on a computer screen and spoken out by the computer in English and Spanish: “Let me introduce our new prototype.”
This particular instrument,when fully developed,might allow anyone to speak in any number of lan-guages or,as Waibel put it,“to switch your mouth to a foreign language”. “The idea behind the universi-ty's prototypes is to create'good enough' bridges for cross- cultural exchanges that are becoming more common in the world,”Waibel said.
With spontaneous(自发的) translators,foreign drivers in Germany could listen to traffic warnings on the radio; tourists in China could read all the signs and talk with local people;leaders of different coun-tries could have secret talks without any interpreters there.
【小题1】What can't be learned from the text?
A.The spontaneous translators will help us a lot. |
B.There is no Muscle Translator in the world now. |
C.Muscle Translators can translate what you think into speech if you just move your mouth. |
D.A lecture translation can translate what you said into other languages easily. |
A.happening at at the same time. | B.happening by itself. |
C.similar in size. | D.Similar in quality. |
A.To make cultural exchanges between different countries easier. |
B.To help students learn foreign languages more easily. |
C.To make people live in foreign countries more comfortably. |
D.To help people learn more foreign languages in the future. |
A.The translator is so good that it can translate any language into the very language you need. |
B.The translator is becoming more and more common in the world as a bridge. |
C.With the help of the translator,you only need to open your mouth when you want to say something without saying the exact words at all. |
D.The translator needs to be improved before being put into market. |
A.A newspaper. | B.A magazine on science. |
C.A fairy tale. | D.A scientific fantasy book. |
12-year-old John Thomas Robertson is a born train fan. "I’ve liked trains probably from the day I was born," he told Good Morning America. "When I was very little," he said, "my grandpa got me a train model. I would just watch it go round for hours and hours."
When Robertson finally had the opportunity to ride on a train, he felt great. His journey was so mind-blowing that he couldn’t keep it to himself: he decided to take all his classmates to go on a ride with him. When he found that some of his classmates couldn’t pay the fare, he collected cans (罐子) and bottles and raised more than $1,000 for them.
That trip was such a happy one that he made it a yearly action. "It never gets boring for some reason; it’s just fun," he said. "It really lets people get away from their busy life and have fun.
Every October, Robertson takes a new group of children to ride on the train —but now, he has a problem. Several disabled children were refused because the train was not accessible (可用的) to disabled people. "He was angry to think that children of his own age couldn’t ride a train," his mother said.
But he wouldn’t say no: he recently sent a letter to the train office for help. To his surprise, the leader, Ty Pennington, accepted the letter in person. He said that he and his workers would work on making a train accessible to disabled people.
【小题1】The first time John Thomas Robertson took a train, ________.
A.he was frightened by it |
B.he acted as a driver |
C.he watched it for hours |
D.he fell in love with it |
A.was greatly attracted to trains since early childhood |
B.said so in Good Morning America |
C.took a group of disabled children to travel by train |
D.was taken to a train the day he was born |
A.important | B.terrible | C.amazing | D.disappointing |
A.the trains then weren’t accessible to the disabled |
B.Robertson had not saved enough money for the tickets |
C.they couldn’t afford the train tickets |
D.the driver would not allow them to do so |
A.helpful and crazy | B.kind and clever |
C.kind but boring | D.lazy but kind |