请认真阅读下列短文,从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中,选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

A

Homonym: a word that has the same spelling and the same pronunciation as another world, but a different meaning

Same spelling, different meaning

Imagine, then a situation where two words are spelt and pronounced exactly the same way, but have completely different meanings.Welcome to the world of homonyms.Take, for example, the word ‘fail’ --- it can be a kind of festival, and adjective to describe the color of your hair or how you should play a game.

Don’t take it literally

So how do you know which meaning someone is referring to? --- You don’t, except by the context.Obviously, if someone asks you to ‘give them a hand’, they don’t want you to remove what is at the end of your arm.

What’s in a name?

Sometimes even the context doesn’t help much --- the result can be amusing.These sentences play with the double meaning of a noun:

I used to be a banker, but I lost interest.

Have you heard about the cross-eyed teacher who couldn’t control his pupils?

A small boy swallowed some coins and had to go to hospital.When his grandmother phoned to ask how he was, the nurse said: ‘No change yet’.

More ambiguity

And these examples play with the different meanings of a verb:

I wondered why the ball was getting bigger.Then it hit me.

No one knew she had a dental implant until it came out in a conversation.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

Double trouble

And sometimes a word can be a noun and a verb, but have different meanings.Can you work this one out?

Time flies like an arrow.Fruit flies like a banana.

If you like these homonyms, you will be pleased to know that English has plenty more!

Explanations of jokes in the text

I used to be banker, but I lost interest.(I became bored with the job / I lost money)

Have you heard about the cross-eyed teacher who couldn’t control his pupils? (students / parts of his eyes)

A small boy swallowed some coins and had to go to hospital.When his grandmother phoned to ask how he was, the nurse said: ‘No change yet’.(no difference in the situation / no money)

I wondered why the ball was getting bigger.Then it hit me.(the ball hit me / I suddenly realized)

No one knew she had a dental implant until it came out in a conversation.(became known / fell out)

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.(can’t be better / difficult to mix with a fork)

Time flies like an arrow.(time goes quickly) Fruit flies like a banana. (insects enjoy eating fruit.)

1.Which of the following statements about homonyms is NOT true?

A. They share the same spellings regardless of meanings.

B. We can’t know their meanings without context.

C. We may still feel confused even with context.

D. Their ambiguity brings great trouble to our life.

2.The “beat” in the sentence “A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat, making for a satisfying breakfast.” has a similar meaning to _____.

A. The rain was beating down on the tin roof.

B. Taking the bus sure beats walking.

C. The doctor could feel no pulse beating.

D. You’ve been working too hard, you look dead beat.

A four-year-old girl sees three biscuits divided between a stuffed crocodile and a teddy bear.The crocodile gets two; the bear one.“Is that fair?” asks the experimenter.The girl judges that it is not.“How about now?” asks the experimenter, breaking the bear’s single biscuit in half.The girl cheers up: “Oh yes, now it’s fair.They both have two.” Strangely, children feel very strongly about fairness, even when they hardly understand it.

Adults care about fairness too --- but how much? One way to find out is by using the ultimatum (最后通牒) game, created by economist Werner Guth.Jack is given a pile of money and proposes how it should be divided with Jill.Jill can accept Jack’s “ultimatum”, otherwise the deal is off, and neither gets anything.

Suppose Jack and Jill don’t care about fairness, just about accumulating cash.Then Jack can offer Jill as little as he likes and Jill will still accept.After all, a little money is more than no money.But imagine, instead, that Jack and Jill both care only about fairness and that the fairest outcome is equality.Then Jack would offer Jill half the money; and Jill wouldn’t accept otherwise.

What happens when we ask people to play this game for real? It turns out that people value fairness a lot.Anyone offered less than 20-30% of the money is likely to reject it.Receiving an unfair offers makes us feel sick.Happily, most offers are pretty equitable; indeed, by far the most common is a 50-50 split.

But children, and adults, also care about a very different sort of (un)fairness, namely cheating.Think how many games of snakes and ladders have ended in arguments when one child “accidentally” miscounts her moves and another child objects.But this sense of fairness isn’t about equality of outcome: games inevitably have winners and losers.Here, fairness is about playing by the rules.

Both fairness-as-equality and fairness-as-no-cheating matter.Which is more important: equality or no-cheating? I think the answer is neither.The national lottery(彩票), like other lotteries, certainly doesn’t make the world more equal: a few people get rich and most people get nothing.Nevertheless, we hope, it is fair --- but what does this mean? The fairness-as-no-cheating viewpoint has a ready answer: a lottery is fair if it is conducted according to the “rules”.But which rules? None of us has the slightest idea, I suspect.Suppose that buried in the small print at lottery HQ is a rule that forbids people with a particular surname (let’s say, Moriarty).So a Ms Moriarty could buy a ticket each week for years without any chance of success.

How would she react if she found out? Surely with anger: how dare the organisers let her play, week after week, without mentioning that she couldn’t possibly win! She’d reasonably feel unfairly treated because ___________________.

To protest(抗议) against unfairness, then, is to make an accusation of bad faith.From this viewpoint, an equal split between the crocodile and the bear seems fair because (normally, at least), it is the only split they would both agree to.But were the girl to learn that the crocodile doesn’t like biscuits or that the bear isn’t hungry, I suspect she’d think it perfectly fair for one toy to take the whole.Inequality of biscuits (or anything else) isn’t necessarily unfair, if both parties are happy.And the unfairness of cheating comes from the same source: we’d never accept that someone else can unilaterally(单方面地) violate agreements that we have all signed up to.

So perhaps the four-year-old’s intuitions(直觉) about fairness is the beginnings of an understanding of negotiation.With a sense of fairness, people will have to make us acceptable offers (or we’ll reject their ultimatums) and stick by the (reasonable) rules, or we’ll be on the warpath.So a sense of fairness is crucial to effective negotiation; and negotiation, over toys, treats etc, is part of life.

1.It can be inferred that in the ultimatum game, _____.

A. Jack keeps back all the money

B. Jill can negotiate fair division with Jack

C. Jack has the final say in the division of money

D. Jill has no choice but to accept any amount of money

2.From Paragraph 2 to 4, we can conclude _____.

A. people will sacrifice money to avoid unfairness

B. fairness means as much to adults as to children

C. something is better than nothing after all

D. a 30-70 split is acceptable to the majority

3.Which of the following does fairness-as-no-cheating apply to?

A. divisions of housework

B. favoritism between children

C. banned drugs in sport

D. schooling opportunities

4.Which of the following best fits in the blank in Paragraph 7?

A. the lottery didn’t follow the rules

B. she was cheated out of the money

C. the lottery wasn’t equal at all

D. she would never have agreed to those rules

5.The chief factor in preventing unfairness is to _____.

A. observe agreements

B. establish rules

C. strengthen morality

D. understand negotiation

6.The main purpose of the passage is to ______

A. declare the importance of fairness

B. suggest how to achieve fairness

C. present different attitudes to fairness

D. explain why we love fairness

George Gershwin,born in 1898,was one of America’s greatest composers.He published his first song when he was eighteen years old.During the next twenty years he wrote more than five hundred songs.

Many of Gershwin’s songs were first written for musical plays performed in theatres in New York City.These plays were a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s and 1930s.Many of his songs have remained popular as ever.Over the years they have been sung and played in every possible way—from jazz to country.

In the 1920s there was a debate in the United States about jazz music.Could jazz,some people asked,be considered serious music? In 1924 jazz musician and orchestra leader Paul Whiteman decided to organize a special concert to show that jazz was serious music.Gershwin agreed to compose something for the concert before he realized he had just a few weeks to do it.And in that short time,he composed a piece for piano and orchestra which he called Rhapsody in Blue.Gershwin himself played the piano at the concert.The audience were thrilled when they heard his music. It made him world-famous and showed that jazz music could be both serious and popular.

In 1928,Gershwin went to Paris.He applied to study composition(作曲)with the well-known musician Nadia Boulanger,but she rejected him.She was afraid that classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style.While there,Gershwin wrote An American in Paris.When it was first performed,critics(评论家)were divided over the music.Some called it happy and full of life,to others it was silly and boring. But it quickly became popular in Europe and the United States.It still remains one of his most famous works.

George Gershwin died in 1937,just days after doctors learned he had brain cancer.He was only thirty-nine years old.Newspapers all over the world reported his death on their front pages.People mourned the loss of the man and all the music he might have still written.

1.Many of Gershwin’s musical works were

A.written about New Yorkers

B.composed for Paul Whiteman

C.played mainly in the countryside

D.performed in various ways

2.What did Gershwin do during his stay in Paris?

A.He created one of his best works.

B.He studied with Nadia Boulanger.

C.He argued with French critics.

D.He changed his music style.

3.What do we learn from the last paragraph?

A.Many of Gershwin’s works were lost.

B.The death of Gershwin was widely reported.

C.A concert was held in memory of Gershwin.

D.Brain cancer research started after Gershwin’s death.

4.Which of the following best describes Gershwin?

A.Talented and productive.

B.Serious and boring.

C.Popular and unhappy.

D.Friendly and honest.

Imagine a world in which there were suddenly no emotion — a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate.Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation.People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial.They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotionless world would lack rewards and punishments.Society would soon disappear: people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support.Human relationships would not exist: in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, or bonds among members of groups.Society's economic underpinnings (支柱) would be destroyed: since earning $10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $10, there would be no incentive (动力) to work.In fact, there would be no incentives of any kind, for as we will see, incentives mean a capacity to enjoy them.

In such a world, the chances that the human species would survive are next to zero, because emotions are the basic instruments of our survival and adaptation.Emotions structure the world for us in important ways.As individuals, we categorize objects on the basis of our emotions.True, we consider the length, shape, size or texture, but an object's physical aspects are less important than what it has done or can do to us — hurt us, surprise us, anger us or make us joyful.We also use categorizations colored by emotions in our families, communities, and overall society.Out of our emotional experience with objects and events comes a social feeling of agreement that certain things and actions are "good" and others are "bad", and we apply these categories to every aspect of our social life — from what foods we eat and what clothes we wear to how we keep promises and which people our group will accept.In fact, society uses our emotional reactions and attitudes, such as loyalty, morality, pride, shame, guilt, fear and greed, in order to maintain itself.It gives high rewards to individuals who perform important tasks such as surgery, makes heroes out of individuals for unusual or dangerous achievements such as flying fighter planes in a war, and uses the legal penal (刑法的) system to make people afraid to engage in antisocial acts.

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

A.people would not be able to tell the physical aspects of objects.

B.People would not know what was beneficial and what was harmful to them.

C.$ 10 million is equal to $ 10 in a world without emotions.

D.There would be full of lies, arguments and violence.

2.In can be inferred from the passage that the economic foundation of society is dependent on ________.

A.the ability to make money

B.the capacity to work

C.the motivation to work

D.our emotional experiences

3.Why are the emotional aspects of an object more important than its physical aspects?

A.They help society use its members for more profit.

B.They encourage us to perform important tasks in the war.

C.They help to perfect the legal and penal system to make people afraid.

D.They help us adapt our behaviors to the world surrounding us.

4.What is the text mainly about?

A.People could only live in a world with emotions.

B.People would always do bad things in the emotionless world.

C.Emotions are very important in the world.

D.Emotions structure the world for us in important ways.

阅读下面短文,从短文后各题所给的四个选项 (A、B、C和D)中,选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

Sandy Greenberg came from a poor family.He went to Columbia University on a scholarship and there he met his roommate who also was receiving financial .

Unfortunately, Sandy had a(n) disease during his second year at Columbia University, and finally he became blind.But for Sandy, something else also happened to him — his roommate would his textbooks to him, every night after he lost his sight.

As a result, Sandy went on to with honors.He went off to study at Oxford.He was still quite poor, but he had managed to about five hundred dollars as he went along.

His roommate went on to graduate school.One day, Sandy got a from him at Oxford.His former roommate said, "Sandy, I'm really .I really don't like being in graduate school, and I don't want to do this."

"Well, what do you want to do? " Sandy .

His roommate told him, "Sandy, I really love to .I have a high school friend who plays the guitar.And we would really like to our hands in the music business.But we need to make a promo record, and in order to that I need $500."

Sandy took all his life savings without and sent it to his roommate.Well, his roommate was the famous singer, Art Garfunkel, and he up with another musician, Paul Simon.That $500 them make a record that finally became The Sound of Silence.

How we are able to deal with in our lives will be influenced by how we deal with others .the way.What we get will depend a lot on what we .And that's the end of the story of doing well by doing good.

1.A.aid B.advice C.crisis D.pressure

2.A.eye B.ear C.nose D.bone

3.A.finally B.luckily C.sadly D.excitedly

4.A.lend B.offer C.read D.return

5.A.survive B.research C.leave D.graduate

6.A.save B.earn C.keep D.borrow

7.A.never B.still C.either D.also

8.A.message B.call C.card D.report

9.A.unhappy B.unhealthy C.homesick D.lonely

10.A.suggested B.answered C.asked D.laughed

11.A.work B.sing C.dance D.travel

12.A.wave B.wash C.try D.clean

13.A.win B.do C.prove D.earn

14.A.permission B.consideration C.hesitation D.expectation

15.A.other B.present C.former D.later

16.A.teamed B.came C.showed D.let

17.A.saw B.helped C.hoped D.let

18.A.interests B.opportunities C.difficulties D.feelings

19.A.across B.in C.by D.along

20.A.take B.give C.like D.learn

Dr.Michael Prager, a leading Botox expert, said that a growing number of women are developing something called “computer face”.He also mentioned that professionals who worked long hours in front of a screen were ending up with saggy jowls(颚骨), “turkey neck” and deep-set wrinkles on their forehead and around their eyes.

The Botox expert said that, of all his clients, office workers were most likely to show premature(过早的)signs of ageing.“If you are one of the unfortunate people who frown(皱眉)while you are concentrating on the screen then, over time, you will inevitably end up with frown lines,” Dr.Prager said.“What is perhaps more surprising is the number of women with saggy jowls because they are sitting in one position for so long.If you spend most of the time looking down then the neck muscles shorten and go saggy, eventually giving you a second neck.“

Dr.Prager, who has a practice near Harley Street in London, said he encourages his clients to put a mirror next to their computer so they can see if they are frowning at the screen.“When people are stressed or thinking hard about something, then they will often put on a ‘grumpy(脾气暴躁的)face’ without even knowing what they are doing.When my clients put a mirror next to their desk, they are often shocked by the angry, frowning face which stares back at them.”

He said, “The women I am seeing at the moment have only been using computers at work for the last decade or so.But women in their 20s have grown up with them and use them for every single task.I think the problem is going to become much, much worse.In another ten years, they could be looking quite awful.”

Dr.Prager said there were several simple steps which could avoid “computer face” such as regular screen breaks and stretching the neck muscles.And, of course, there was always Botox.He said that, after a couple of sessions of Botox, the habit of “grumpy face” could be broken.

1.In what way do women develop a “computer face”?

A.Frowning every now and then.

B.Concentrating on computers frequently.

C.Working for too long in front of a screen.

D.Sitting in the same place for a long time.

2.According to the passage, which of the following are signs of ageing?

A.Saggy jowls and short necks.

B.Turkey neck and frown lines.

C.Deep-set wrinkles and angry faces.

D.Second neck and stressed muscles.

3.From the last 2 paragraphs, we can learn that ______.

A.“computer face” is avoidable

B.we should give up using computers

C.we should break the habit of “grumpy face”

D.the younger generation is worse at computers

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