The Writers' Strike：Making the Best of the Worst

    By now you are probably feeling the effects of the TV writers’ strike---the decision of television writers to stop working. With few new TV shows, I present to you a list of shows available on DVD worth your viewing time to keep you going during this painful period.

    Arrested Development is one of the funniest and most clever shows ever to have appeared on network TV. With a most perfect cast(全体演员), the show sets out to cover the daily happenings of the Bluth family, a group of selfish staff who manage to still put family first.

For more comedy goodness, I recommend one of the sharpest comedies to have ever broadcast, 30 Rock. Starring Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, two stars with impressive comic timing, the show gives you a glimpse into the making of a sketch show (幽默短剧),similar to Saturday Nigth Live, from the funny writers to the self-centered cast all the way up to the boss.

If you are looking for something more serious, or perhaps Friday Night lights might be more to your liking. If you are a fan of football, this show is probably for you. If you are a fan of great drama, both soapy and serious, this show is probably for you, If you are a fan of good-looking people, this show is definitely for you .

If those shows were not enough for you, might I recommend a show with a more heart-pounding excitement? The Amazing Race, after twelve seasons, still remains one of the most exciting shows on TV. Teams of two travel the globe with little to no money and experience far-out adventures in an attempt to remain the last team standing.

If you are fond of soapy TV shows, you will probably choose to watch       .

    A. Friday Night Lights                 B. 30 Rock

    C. the Amazing Race                  D. Saturday Night Live

From the DVD shows listed above, we can learn that　　　.

    A. two teams won the amazing race

    B. football fans enjoy the Amazing Race

    C. the Bluths care about their family though selfish

    D. 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live have nothing in common

The author writes the passage to tell us that        .

    A. the effects of the TV writers’ strike are great

    B. the strike puts TV shows in the worst situation

    C. watching DVD is a good choice during the strike

    D. we should choose DVD shows according to our tastes

The passage is most probably taken from       .

    A. a book review    B. a newspaper     C. a film poster     D. a DVD menu

The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

  He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”

 “We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘the citay’ and ‘dutay’, rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’, and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”

The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each  Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch (传统火鸡午餐).

    The results were published (发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.

What is the text mainly about?

A. The relationship between accents and social classes.

B. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.

C. The changes in a person’s accent.

D. The recent development of the English language.

The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.

A. she has been Queen for many years

B. she has a less upper-class accent now

C. her speeches are familiar to many people

D. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years

Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

A. “dutay”　　　　　B. “citee”　　　　　      C. “hame”　　　　　D. “lorst”

We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on ______.

A. speech sounds         　　　　　　  B. Christmas customs

C. TV broadcasting       　　　　　      D. personal messages

An Announcement

It was a small town which lay by the coast.Most people there lived by catching fish.The hurricanes often struck the area from July to October.Some of the people died on the sea when their boats were blown over by the high winds.So they paid much attention to the weather forecasts.They were afraid to meet with the hurricanes when they were catching fish on the sea.Each of the families had a radio and people always took them with themselves and listened to them at any time.

It was September.A hurricane attacked the town one night.Plenty of trees were pushed over and all the electric and telephone lines were broken.People couldn’t watch TV,or call their friends,or go to work.To their anger,they couldn’t listen to the weather forecasts the Town Radio Station broadcast.The food and fresh water would soon be short and the patients couldn’t be given medical care—no medicine could be carried there.People didn’t know what would happen and they looked anxious.

On the fourth day they read an announcement（通告）on the Town Weekly.It was written,“Recently we have to stop the weather forecast because of the bad weather.We usually get the forecasts from the airport.But the roads are all blocked by the fallen trees and stones.Whether or not we’ll be able to broadcast the weather forecast tomorrow depends on the weather！”

1.The people in the town often took radios with themselves because______.

A.they felt lonely when catching fish on the sea and listened to the weather forecasts

B.they were interested in the weather forecasts

C.they couldn’t watch TV on the sea

D.they hoped to listen to some good news

2.The writer writes the passage mainly to ______.

A.desrcibe the importance of weather forecast

B.give a news report

C.describe a bad effect of natural disasters

D.to warn people to be careful against hurricane

3.Read the announcement,the people were______.

A.encouraged　　　　 B.happy　　　　　　 C.excited　　　　　 D.disappointed

Music is an international language. The songs that are sung or played by instruments are beautiful to all people everywhere.
Popular music in America is what every student likes. Students carry small radios with earphones and listen to music before class, after class, and at lunch. Students with cars buy large speakers and play the music loudly as they drive on the streets.
Adult drivers listen to music on the car radio as they drive to work. They also listen to the news about sports, the weather, politics, and activities of the American people. Most of the radio broadcast is music.
Pop or popular music singers make much money. They make a CD or tape which radio stations use in every state. Once the popular singer is heard throughout the country, young people buy his or her tapes. Some of the money from these tapes comes to the singer. Wherever the singer goes, all the young people want to meet him or her. Now the singer has become a national star. 
There are other kinds of music that are important to Americans. One is called folk music. It tells stories about the common life of Americans. Another is called western or country music. This was started by cowboys who would sing at night to the cows they were watching. Today, any music about country life and the love between a country boy and his girl is called western or country music.
Serious music for the concert halls is called classical music. Music for instruments is called orchestra music (管弦乐), such as the symphonies (交响乐) of Beethoven. There is opera (歌剧) for singers. There is ballet (芭蕾舞剧) for dancers like the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai in China?
67. What can we know about music and people in America?
A. Student drivers carry small radios with earphones when they drive on the streets.
　    B. Students always listen to music before class, after class and at lunch.
　    C. Adult drivers only listen to news except music when they drive to work.
D. Adult drivers never listen to music when they drive to work.
68. How many kinds of music are mentioned in the passage?
　　       A. Six.                    B. Eight.     C. Five.                      D. Seven.
69. Country music ______.
　　 A. is a kind of music that is popular in America
　　 B. has nothing to do with folk music        
C. is only sung by cowboys
　　 D. is not played in the concert halls
70. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
　　      A. All people in America like popular music.
　　      B. Pop singers can get all the money from the tapes.
　　      C. Now, western or country music is a little different from its beginning.
　　      D. Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai is a kind of pop music.

31^st October —— A team of British explorers has announced they are going to the North Pole to measure the ice cap’s thickness. The exploration will take ground-based readings (仪表的读数) of an ice formation which most scientists agree is shrinking at an alarming rate.

    Explorer Pen Hadow’s three-member team will pull a sled-fixed radar device, which measures ice density every eight centimeters, 2,000 kilometers across the Arctic and will produce millions of readings.

    They will leave in February, 2008 and will face temperatures of -50℃ on a journey that will take up to 120 days. They have been testing their equipment in Britain and Canada.

    Hadow is excited about the prospects (前景), “For the first time we will be able to transmit video images — webcam film of the expedition — as it unfolds so people can track us, and the whole idea is to engage as many people as we can in what we’re doing.”

    New fallen snow on top of the ice makes ground-based measurements more accurate than satellite data.

    “It has been in the planning stage for a while,” said Hadow. “We spent the last two years developing impulse radar (冲击雷达), which normally is about 100 kilograms and hangs under an aircraft and so on. We’ve managed to get it down to about 4 kilograms. It’s the size of a briefcase and we are dragging it behind the sled as we go.”

　　　　The ice cap shrank enough in 2007 so that a pathway through the cap known as the Northwest Passage opened up during the melting of the Arctic summer.

    Cambridge University’s Joao Rodrigues explains, “Thickness of the ice cap will determine how much solar radiation will be reflected and the heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere and it is thus a vital component (成分) of climate models.”

    If warming trends continue, some experts predict that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free during the summer within a few decades.

１ What would be the best title for the text?

A. Exploration to the North Pole.

B. Arctic ice cap shrinking.

C. Arctic ice survey announced.

D. Ground-based measurements of ice.

２. What is special about the exploration?

A. It will be broadcast live on the Internet.

B. Explorers will use a sled-fixed radar device.

C. Explorers will travel in extremely cold conditions.

D. Ground-based measurements are more accurate.

３. What is the purpose of the exploration?

A. To measure the ice cap’s thickness.

B. To study whether ice will disappear in the Arctic.

C. To make a film about the Arctic exploration.

D. To make people interested in what they are doing.

４. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A. ice in the Arctic will disappear in ten years

B. the exploration will last for half a year

C. Hadow spent two years developing a kind of radar, which is about 100 kilograms

D. if there is snow on ice, satellites can’t measure the ice thickness accurately enough

５. From the passage, we learn that ________.

A. the explorers will measure ice density every other centimeter

B. people will be able to follow the explorers and see what they are doing  

C. people could go through the Northwest Passage in the 2007 Arctic summer

D. the equipment that Hadow’s team use will be tested in the United States