摘要:-You speak very good English. - . A. And so do you B. Far from very good C . Worse than you do D . Thanks for your praise

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  Take a look at the following list of numbers:4, 8, 5, 3, 7, 9, 6.Read them loud.Now look away and spend 20 seconds memorizing them in order before saying them out loud again.If you speak English, you have about a 50% chance of remembering those perfectly.If you are Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time.Why is that?Because we most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within a two-second period.And unlike English, the Chinese language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.

  That example comes from Stanislas Dahaene's book The Number Sense.As Dahaene explains:Chinese number words are remarkably brief.Most of them can be spoken out in less than one-quarter of a second(for instance, 4 is“si”and 7“qi”).Their English pronunciations are longer.The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length.

  It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed.In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and fiveteen.But we don't.We use a different form:eleven, twelve, thirteen and fifteen.For numbers above 20, we put the“decade”first and the unit number second(twenty-one, twenty-two), while for the teens, we do it the other way around(fourteen, seventeen, eighteen).The number system in English is highly irregular.Not so in China, Japan, and Korea.They have a logical counting system.Eleven is ten-one.Twelve is ten-two.Twenty-four is two-tens-four and so on.

  That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children.Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to 40.American children at that age can count only to 15.By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian friends in the most fundamental of math skills.

  The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily.Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to change the words to numbers(37+22).Only then can she do the math:2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59.Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation(等式)is right there, in the sentence.No number translation is necessary:it's five-tens-nine.

  When it comes to math, in other words, Asians have a built-in advantage.For years, students from China, South Korea, and Japan-outperformed their Western classmates at mathematics, and the typical assumption is that it has something to do with a kind of Asian talent for math.The differences between the number systems in the East and the West suggest something very different-that being good at math may also be rooted in a group's culture.

(1)

What does the passage mainly talk about?

[  ]

A.

The Asian number-naming system helps grasp advanced math skills better.

B.

Western culture fail to provide their children with adequate number knowledge.

C.

Children in Western countries have to learn by heart the learning things.

D.

Asian children's advantage in math may be sourced from their culture.

(2)

What makes a Chinese easier to remember a list of numbers than an American?

[  ]

A.

Their understanding of numbers.

B.

Their mother tongue.

C.

Their math education.

D.

Their different IQ.

(3)

Asian children can reach answers in basic math functions more quickly because ________.

[  ]

A.

they pronounce the numbers in a shorter period

B.

they practice math from an early age

C.

English speaking children translate language into numbers first

D.

American children can only count to 15 at the age of four

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Most Americans are turning to charm school to gain an advantage over competitors in a job market stricken by the longest economic slowdown since the Great Depression.

Etiquette (礼节) trainers report business growing from clients who believe that good manners could be the key selling point that helps them get hired or keeps them off the unemployment line.

“People are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep their job”, said Gloria Starr, an adviser on image, etiquette and communications in North Carolina. Starr, who says business is up 40 percent in the past year at her school, said people were “realizing that it takes more than just ability and knowledge” to keep or win a job.

Peggy Newfield, who had been teaching etiquette for 30 years and runs a charm school, said business was “booming.” “When the economy is down etiquette training will always be up. They’re focusing on‘What I can do to survive, I really have to keep up my game because the competition is keen.’”

Proper business manners, however, extend far beyond greeting or thanking a would-be employer. Etiquette classes deal with the basics of presentation in an interview, including what to say and how to dress.

“It’s so much more than writing the thank-you note at the end,” Newfield said. “It’s about walking in for the job interview, every hair is in place, your clothes are perfectly pressed, your shoes are polished, you’re groomed to the nines, you speak the part, and your English is correct.”

It’s great that we have seen this renewal in etiquette and manners and self respect.

Studies have shown that 85 percent of the reason a person gets a job, keeps a job and moves up is related to their personal skills. There are very few jobs out there where your manners, where your socials skills, are not a big piece of being successful. If you have manners you can walk into any business or social situation.

Teaching etiquette has become a tougher task. Some people point to bad public behavior by athletes and celebrities as a factor in ruining good manners in US society. Hotel owner Paris Hilton, actress Lindsay Lohan and singer Britney Spears are among those who have been charged with setting a poor example, especially for children and adolescents. Hilton is infamous for a sex tape that became an Internet hit, Lohan has long been gossip stuff due to her quarrels with the law and Spears was photographed partying without underwear.

61. The writer wants to tell the readers____________.

A. the etiquette training in America         B. the ways to avoid failure

C. good manners count in keeping a job      D. how to keep business up

62. From the passage we learn that the charm school____________.

A. helps those who are unemployed        B. deals with moral problems

C. becomes more popular with people      D. does good to the economy

63. The underlined sentence “you’re groomed to the nines” probably means “you’re ____________”.

A. dressed in the best way               B. fully understood

C. greeted with good manners            D. very concerned

64. We can infer from the last paragraph that ____________.

A. good examples contribute to etiquette teaching

B. good public behavior doesn’t exist any more

C. teaching etiquette has become a tougher task

D. some famous people don’t have good manners

65. Which of the following can you NOT learn in Peggy Newfield’s charm school?

A. How to dress in a job interview

B. How to hack into the company central database.

C. How to maintain an edge over other competitors in the job market.

D. How to improve your communicative skills with your colleagues.

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第一节 完形填空(共10小题;每小题2分,满分20分)

  阅读下面短文,掌握其大意,然后从21~30各题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中,选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

I have said enough to you about the fact that no two native speakers of English speak it alike, but perhaps you are clever enough to ask me whether I myself speak it in the same way.

I must    21     at once that I do not. Nobody does. I am at present speaking to an audience of many thousands of gramophonists(学话者), many of    22     are trying hard to follow my words, syllable by syllable. If I were to speak to you as carelessly as I speak to my wife at home, this record would be    23    ; and if I were to speak to my wife at home as carefully as I am speaking to you, she would think that I was going mad.

As a public speaker I have to take care that every word I say is heard clearly at the far    24    of large halls containing thousands of people. “But at home, when I have to consider only my wife sitting    25     six feet of me at breakfast, I take so little pains with my speech that very often,    26     giving me the expected answer, she says, “Don’t mumble, and don’t turn you head away when you speak. I can’t hear a word you are saying.” And she also is a little careless. Sometimes I have to say “what” two or three times during our meal. And she    27     me of growing deafer and deafer, though she does not say so, because, as I am now over seventy, it might be true.

We all have company manners. If you were to    28     a strange family and to listen through the keyhole before going in — not that I would suggest for a moment that you are capable of doing such a very unladylike or ungentlemanlike thing; but still, if, in your enthusiasm for studying languages you could bring yourself to do it just for a few seconds to hear how a family speak to one another when there is    29     listening to them, and then walk into the room and hear how very    30     they speak in your presence, the change would surprise you. Even when our home manners are as good as our company manners — and of course they ought to be better — they are always different; and the difference is greater in speech than in anything else.

21.  A. admit              B. accept                   C. refuse            D. deny

22.  A. them                B. who                         C. whom           D. us

23    A. useful               B. important                 C. useless              D. helpful

24.  A. side                 B. end                          C. distance             D. length

25.   A. within               B. at                                C. from                 D. by

26.   A. other than         B. except for                 C. apart form      D. instead of

27.   A. excuses             B. suspects                    C. thinks            D. accuses

28.  A. call at                     B. drop by                    C. drop in              D. call on

29.   A. nobody else       B. nobody                    C. someone else     D. someone

30.   A. strangely           B. politely                    C. differently      D. calmly

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