题目内容
People who put a smiley face at the end of a message, in an attempt to show feeling, show no feeling. I wish there was a symbol for two fingers in the air.
I had some bad news this week. My manager informed me of this news via email. It was like hearing about the death of a loved one via pigeon. Bad news should only ever be delivered face to face or voice to voice.
We seem to celebrate our numerous methods of communication, but really there is no communication at all. I talk to my plants more than I talk to my neighbors, I get text messages that take me three hours to read because they’re written like this: “Hi, I ope you av a gr8 day. Call me La8tr.” I had an email from someone this week that read, “Da ut ov 2day are really annoying me!” Ut? I had to say this 20 times before I understood it. Youth has now become ut. Haven’t we taken enough from them—now we have to take their letters?
I had an email recently from a girl who used to live over the road from me as a child. She wrote, “Hi Shazia, howz u? Im sure u used 2 live across the road from me. We sumtimes played tennis 2 gever at the park and you was in your eliment. I am married now wif 3 daughters.” Then, to my horror, she ended the email with: “Im now teachin in Leeds. Luv Clare.”
Teaching? With English like this. It’s like saying you’re a train driver when you’ve never seen a train. It was like reading modern Morse code.
Getting bad news via email makes it seem so much worse than it actually is. Just a few lines, no emotion, no comfort, not really an explanation. Just a few cold hard words. It’s an excuse. Just write a few words and the problem of delivering it is no longer yours. A close friend recently told me she was very happy to announce she was getting married—and made the announcement by email. I don’t know how she didn’t fall off her chair with excitement while writing it. If you are really happy or really sad to announce something important, wouldn’t you like a human reaction? Some euphoria, elation, tears, a punch in the face?
I receive long text messages every day with information and explanations that I don’t bother reading. They’re boring, and annoy me. In the time it took someone to write me three laborious texts, they could have called, spoken to me, made some tea. People who put a smiley face at the end of a sentence, in an attempt to show feeling, show no feeling. I wish there was a symbol for two fingers in the air, because that’s the one I’d send back.
The telegram has been responsible for reporting world-shattering events when there were very few other options(选择权). Now we have options, and people opt for the least humane one. My mum, in an attempt to get down with the ut of today, asked me to teach her to text. Now she constantly texts me in block capitals, so it looks as if she is still angry and annoyed with me after all these years.
People don’t even write by hand any more. My doctor prints out prescriptions from his computer; even my mechanic prints out a receipt. I get typed Christmas cards and my friends send me emails. I get very excited when hand-written letters come through my door, only because they rarely do.
When I was at school, the girls used to write letters to each other, even though we sat side by side and spoke to one another all day. I think it was a way of expressing private things we were afraid to say when we were 14 and too shy. We used to write things like, “You are my best friend, can’t wait to sit next to you in math.”
I miss the personal method of communication. Once the pen was mightier than the sword, now it seems the keyboard is mightier than the pen.
【小题1】We can learn from paragraph 3 and paragraph 4 that the writer wants to say ________.
| A．the spelling mistakes in the messages make her very annoyed |
| B．only writing letters will bring friends and neighbors much closer |
| C．she talks to plants more because no one shares her joys and sorrows |
| D．gestures and the pen can express a lot more than the cold keyboard |
| A．She has been separated from all his classmates many years. |
| B．No doctors write prescriptions by hand because of computers. |
| C．In communication, we should write more letters than send messages. |
| D．Less shy than school girls, boys rarely write letters to their friends. |
| A．the writer is a person full of emotions and treasures friendship and affections |
| B．the writer becomes excited when she gets priceless gifts from other people |
| C．her classmates would write to each other because they couldn’t send messages |
| D．people put a smiley face at the end of a message just to show they are happy |
| A．The writer wastes much time in reading many rubbish text messages every day. |
| B．Few people can write letters well in modern society owing to texting messages. |
| C．Now people are too busy to communicate with each other face to face often. |
| D．The writer prefers personal communication rather than electronic equipment. |
| A．Because she thinks the annoyance of reading text messages is originated from it. |
| B．Because we have more options to keep in touch with each other than ever before. |
| C．Because advanced technology partly takes the blame for lacking the human touch. |
| D．Because she thinks humans today become colder with the development of society. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Critic. | C．Sympathetic. | D．Pessimistic. |
【小题1】D
【小题2】C
【小题3】A
【小题4】D
【小题5】C
【小题6】B
解析
请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格只填1个单词。请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。
Health researchers have noticed that some groups of people are more consistently healthy than others, and wondered… Is it race? Income? Where you live? In the United States, these disagreements in health outcomes have been the focus of intense research for the past several decades.
Harvard University health policy researcher Ellen Meara says scholars have found some clues as to why some groups of people have more or less disease than others. She says one important factor in people’s health is the amount of education they have.
In her most recent paper, Meara looked at data from the United states census. These counts of people occur every 10 years. Meara and her colleagues examined data from several decades.
“We looked at life expectancy(预测寿命) at age 25,” Meara says.
“How many additional years can you expect to live if you arrive at age 25 and your education has stopped at high school, or sooner? Versus how many years, can you expect to live if you’ve reached aged 25 and you’ve gone on to at least some college…”
Meara says they found that in 1990, a 25-year-old who only had some secondary school could expect to live for a total of 75 years. In 2000, a 25-year-old with some secondary education could also expect to live to the age of 75.
In contrast, for a better educated 25-year-old, they could expect to live to the age of 80 in 1990. Someone with a similar education level in the year 2000, could expect to live to be more than 81 years, 81.6 years to be exact.
Meara says, not only do better-educated people live longer to begin with, but in the past ten years, more educated people have made gains in the length of their lives. Meanwhile, the life expectancy hasn’t changed for less educated people.
Some of these gains can be explained. Meara says researchers know that people who are more educated are more likely to quit smoking cigarettes, or not start at all, compared to people with less education.
“I think it’s a reminder not to be satisfactory,” Meara says. “Just because a population overall appears to be getting healthier, it doesn’t always mean that those advantages and successes that many people have enjoyed really extend into all parts of the population. And I think that’s something to really pay attention to regardless of whether you live in the US or elsewhere.”
Meara points out that education can often determine income---people with more education frequently make more money. This makes them aware of health care, and purchase other resources and services that can keep them healthier. But the data on income do NOT show that people who make more money are automatically healthier.
Meara says education is key. People need to be educated in order to take advantage of opportunities for better health.
| Title | The Amount of Contributes to People’s Health | ||||
| The less educated people | The ______ educated people | ||||
| Comparisons | In 1990 | They could live for 75 years | They could live to the age of 80 | ||
| In 2000 | Their life expectancy was the same as in 1990. | They could live to the age of 81.6 ____ | |||
| ___ of the research | In the past ten years | Their life expectancy remained _____. | They’ve made gains in the length of their lives, partly due to their __ smoking. | ||
| People are getting healthier, but it doesn’t mean that the advantages and successes extend into all parts of the ____. | |||||
| Education____income. | People with more education make more money | ||||
| Getting more money helps to increase their___ of health care, which can keep them healthier. | |||||
| ____ | Education is the key to better health. | ||||