Our boat floated on between walls of forest. It was too thick for us to get a view of the land we were passing through, though we knew from the map that our river must be passing through chains of hills from time to time. Nowhere did we find a place where we could have landed: although the jungle did not actually spread right down into the river, banks of soft mud prevented us from going ashore. In any case, what would we have gained by landing? The country was full of snakes and other dangerous creatures and the jungle was so thick that one would be able to advance slowly, cutting one's way with knives the whole way. So we stayed in the boat, hoping that when we reached the sea, a friendly fisherman would pick us up and take us to civilization.
As for water, there was a choice. We could drink the muddy river water, or die of thirst. We drank the water. Men who have just escaped from what appeared to be certain death lost all worries about such small things as diseases caused by dirty water. In fact, none of us suffered from any illness as a result.
One day we passed another village, but fortunately nobody saw us. We did not wish to risk being taken prisoners a second time: we might not be so lucky as to escape in a stolen boat again.
【小题1】 TOC \o "1-3" \h \z What they could see on the boat was only.

A.high wallsB.chains of hills
C.heavy woodsD.vast land
【小题2】They couldn't land because.
A.the mud on the shore was too soft
B.they could not find anyone
C.they could not find the mark on the map
D.the forest was too thick to go through
【小题3】From the passage, we can learn that.
A.they were in an uninhabited area
B.they were on a journey home happily
C.the country was a civilized society
D.the country was a tropical jungle coutry
【小题4】The best title for this passage might he______
A.I he Problem of LandingB.Escape in the Jungle
C.An Entirely New ExperienceD.Exploration of a River

I needed to buy a digital camera, one that was simply good at taking good snaps (快照), maybe occasionally for magazines. Being the cautious type, I fancied a reliable brand. So I went on the net, spent 15 minutes reading product reviews on good websites, wrote down the names of three top recommendations and headed for my nearest big friendly camera store. There in the cupboard was one of the cameras on my list. And it was on special offer. Oh joy. I pointed at it and asked an assistant, “Can I have one of those?”? He looked perturbed (不安). “Do you want to try it first?” he said. It didn’t quite sound like a question. “Do I need to?” I replied ,“There is nothing wrong with it?” This made him look a bit insulted and I started to feel bad. “No, no. But you should try it,” he said encouragingly. “Compare it with the others. ”
I looked across at the others: shelves of similar cameras placed along the wall, offering a wide range of slightly different prices and discounts, with each company selling a range of models based around the same basic box. With so many models to choose from, it seemed that I would have to spend hours weighing X against Y, always trying to take Z and possibly H into account at the same time. But when I had finished, I would still have only the same two certainties that I had entered the store with: first, soon after I carried my new camera out of the shop, it would be worth half what I paid for it; and second, my wonderful camera would very quickly be replaced by a new model.
But something in the human soul whispers that you can beat these traps by making the right choice, the clever choice, the wise choice. In the end, I agreed to try the model I had chosen. The assistant seemed a sincere man. So I let him take out of my chosen camera from cupboard, show how it took excellent pictures of my fellow shoppers… and when he started to introduce the special features, I interrupted to ask whether I needed to buy a carry-case and a memory card as well.
Why do we think that new options still offer us anything new? Perhaps it is because they offer an opportunity to avoid facing the fact that our real choices in this culture are far more limited than we would like to imagine.
【小题1】The shop assistant insisted that the writer should________.

A.try the camera to see if there was anything wrong with it.
B.compare the camera he had chosen with the others.
C.get more information about different companies.
D.trust him and stop asking questions.
【小题2】What does the writer mean by “it would be worth half what I paid for it ”(paragraph 2)
A.He should get a 50% discount.
B.The price of the camera was unreasonably high.
C.The quality of the camera was not good.
D.The camera would soon fall in value.
【小题3】 The writer decided to try the model he had chosen because he________.
A.knew very little about it.
B.didn’t trust the shop assistant
C.wanted to make sure the one he chose would be the best.
D.had a special interest in taking pictures of his fellow shoppers.
【小题4】It can be inferred from the passage that in the writer’s opinion__________.
A.people waste too much money on cameras
B.cameras have become an important part of our daily life
C.we don’t actually need so many choices when buying a product
D.famous companies care more about profit than quality

Motorists who used to listen to the radio or their favorite tunes on CDs may have a new way to entertain themselves, after engineers in Japan developed a musical road surface.
A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of“melody roads,”which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.
The concept works by using grooves(凹槽).They are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. The melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.
Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, and designers are able to create a distinct tune.
Paten documents for the design describe it as notches “formed in a road surface so as to play a melody without producing simple sound or rhythm and reproduce melody-like tones”.
There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan—one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Reports say the system was invented by Shizuo Shinoda. He scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer before driving over them and found that they helped to produce all kinds of tones.
The optimal speed for melody road is 44kph,but people say it is not always easy to get the intended sound.
“You need to keep the car windows closed to hear well,”wrote one Japanese blogger.“Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph[20km/h]has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car-sick.”
【小题1】According to the passage, melody roads use        to create different notes.

A.carsB.groovesC.spaces between intervalsD.bulldozers
【小题2】We can learn from the passage that the highness of notes is depended on        .
A.how far the grooves areB.how big the grooves are
C.the number of the groovesD.the speed of the car
【小题3】The underlined word “optimal” in the passage might mean        .
A.fastestB.possibleC.bestD.suitable
【小题4】In order to hear the music well, you have to        .
A.drive very fastB.drive slowly
C.open the windows wideD.keep the windows closed
【小题5】What’s the best title of the passage?
A.A New Type of MusicB.Melody Roads in Japan
C.A Musical Road SurfaceD.A New Invention in J


Modcm inventions have speeded up people’s lives amazingly. Motor-cars cover a bundred miles in little more than an hour. Aireraft cross the world a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every ycar motor-cars are produced which go even faster each new computer boasts(吹嘘)of saving preeious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves timc, but at a prick.When we lose or gain half a day in speeding aeross the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfoerable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel tlru they have been left bebind in anot ar nine zoors Again pending too long at compulers resul’s in painti ninrts and fingers. Mobile phones also to dange according to some seientists; too much uss may thesmit h bul radiation into our brains, a we do not like to think about.
Howave, what do we do with the time we have saved?Certainly not or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Pcrhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imavination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people’s lives were devotcd simply to the cultivation of the land or the eare of eattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives wenl on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so ,we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faeed;:they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modem machinery has freed peope fre that primitive existcnee.
1.The new rooucts opcome more and more time-saving beeause_________.
A.our love of speed secure never-ending
B.time is limited
C.theprices are increasingly high
D.the manufacturers boast a lot
2.What does“the days”in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A.I maginary life               B.Simple life in the past
C.Times of inventions           D.Time for constant activity
3.What is the author’s attitude towards the modem teehnology?
A.Critical            B.Objective        C.Optimistic            D.Negative
4.What does the pa mge mainly diseuss?
A.The present and past times             B.Machinary and human beings
C.Imaginations and inventions            D.Modem technology and its influenec

This brief book is aimed at high school students, but speaks to anyone learning at any stage of life.

       Its formal, serious style closely matches its content, a school-masterly book on schooling.The author, W.H.Armstrong, starts with the basics: reading and writing.In his opinion, reading doesn’t just mean recognizing each word on the page; it means taking in the information, digesting it and incorporating it into oneself just as one digests a sandwich and makes it a part of himself.The goal is to bring the information back to life, not just to treat it as dead facts on paper from dead trees.Reading and writing cannot be completely separated from each other; in fact, the aim of reading is to express the information you have got from the text.I’ve seen it again and again:some-one who can’t express an idea after reading a text is just as ineffective as someone who hasn’t read it at all.

Only a third of the book remains after that discussion, which Armstrong devotes to specific tips for studying languages, math, science and history.He generally handles these topics thoroughly and equally, except for some weakness in the science and math sections and a bit too much passion regarding history to his students, that was a hundred times more than my history teachers ever got across.To my disappointment, in this part of the book he ignores the arts.As a matter of fact, they demand all the concentration and study that math and science do, though the study differs slightly in kind.Although it’s commonly believed that the arts can only be naturally acquired, actually, learning the arts is no more natural than learning French or mathematics.

My other comment is that the text aged.The first edition apparently dates to the 1960s—none of the references seem newer than the late 1950s.As a result, the discussion misses the entire computer age.

These are small points, though, and don’t affect the main discussion.I recommend it to any student and any teacher, including the self-taught student.

1.According to Armstrong, the goal of reading is to________

A.gain knowledge and expand one’s view

B.understand the meaning between the lines

C.express ideas based on what one has read

D.get information and keep it alive in memory

2.What is a shortcoming of Armstrong’s work according to the author?

A.Some ideas are slightly contradictory

B.There is too much discussion on studying science

C.The style is too serious

D.It lacks new information

3.This Passage can be classified as________.

A.an advertisement        B.a book review

C.a feature story    D.A news report

4.Which of the following words can best describe the author’s attitude towards the book________

A.positive           B.neutral         C.negative        D.objective

 

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