72.The passage is mainly about 　　　　.

A.celebrity and personal style

B.celebrity and market potential

C.celebrity and fashion design

D.celebrity and clothing industry

答案　 69.A　 70.D　 71.A　 72.B

Passage 25

(08·四川A篇)

The meaning of the word “volunteer” may be a little different in different countries,but it usually means “one who offers his or her services.”There are many different ways in which people can volunteer,such as taking care of sick people,working in homes for homeless children,and picking up garbage(垃圾)from beaches and parks.Volunteers may work within their own countries or in other countries.They are often people with a strong wish to help those who are less fortunate than themselves.Volunteers don’t expect any kind of pay.

At the root of volunteering is the idea that one person may have the ability to offer services that can help other people.Tracy,a good friend of mine,however,recently came back from India with a new idea of what being a volunteer means.She worked for two and a half weeks in one of Mother Teresa’s homes in Calcutta.The following is her story.

“I first heard about Mother Teresa in my high school,we watched a video(录像)about her work in India and all over the world. I was so moved by her spirit to help others and her endless love for every human being that after I graduated from high school,I too wanted to try her kind of work.So with two friends I flew to Calcutta for a few weeks.”

“I was asked to work in a home for sick people.I helped wash clothes and sheets,and pass out lunch.I also fed the people who were too weak to feed themselves and tried to cheer the up.I felt it was better to share with them than to think that I have helped them.To be honest,I don’t think I was helping very much.It was then that I realized that I had not really come to help,but to learn about and experience another culture(文化)that helped improve my own understanding of life and the world.”

71.The underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 indicates that any wrong step will possibly 　　　　.

A.decrease the popularity of a celebrity and the sales of his products

B.damage the image of a celebrity in the eyes of the general public

C.cut short the artistic career of a celebrity in show business

D.influence the price of a celebrity’s products

70.A change in the consumer market can be found today that 　　　　.

A.price rather than brand name is more concerned

B.producers prefer models to celebrities for advertisements

C.producers prefer TV actresses to film stars for advertisements

D.quality rather than the outside of products is more concerned

69.Fashion magazines today 　　　　.

A.seldom put models on the cover

B.no longer put models on the cover

C.need not worry about celebrities’market potential

D.judge the market potential of every celebrity correctly

48.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.

答案　 45.D　 46.B　 47.A　 48.C

Passage 24

(08·湖南D篇)

Celebrity(名人) has become one of the most important representatives of popular culture.Fans used to be crazy about a specific film,but now the public tends to base its consumption(消费) on the interest of celebrity attached to any given product.Besides,fashion magazines have almost abandoned the practice of putting models on the cover because they don’t sell nearly as well as famous faces.As a result,celebrities have realized their unbelievably powerful market potential,

moving from advertising for others’ products to developing their own.

Celebrity clothing lines aren’t a completely new phenomenon,but in the past they were typically aimed at the ordinary consumers,and limited to a few TV actresses.Today　 they’re started by first-class stars whose products enjoy equal fame with some world top brands.The most successful start-ups have been those by celebrities with specific personal style.As celebrities become more and more experienced at the market,they expand their production scale rapidly,covering almost all the poducts of daily life.

However,for every success story,there’s a related warning tale of a celebrity who overvalued his consumer appeal.No matter how famous the product’s origin is,if it fails to impress consumers with its own qualities it begins to resemble an exercise in self-promotional marketing.And once the initial(最初的) attention dies down,consumer interest might fade,loyalty(忠诚) returning to tried-and-true labels.

Today,celebrities face even more severe embarrassment.The pop-cultural circle might be bigger than ever,but its rate of turnover has speeded up as well.Each misstep threatens to reduce a celebrity’s shelf life,and the same newspaper or magazine that once brought him fame has no problem picking him to pieces when the opportunity appears.Still,the ego’s(自我的) potential for expansion is limitless.Having already achieved great wealth and public recognition,many celebrities see fashion as the next frontier to be conquered.As the saying goes,success and failure always go hand in hand.Their success as designers might last only a short time,but fashion-like celebrity-has always been temporary.

47.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

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

A.“Dutay”.　　　　　　　 B.“Citee”.　　　　　　　 C.“Hame”.　　　　　　 D.“Lorst”.

45.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

75.We can infer that the text is　　　　 .

A.a description of natural resources

B.a research report

C.a book review

D.an introduction to a scientist

答案　 72.B　 73.A　 74.D　 75.C

Passage 23

(08·全国ⅡB篇)

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(口音) 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.

74.Wilson suggests that one way to keep biodiversity is to　　　　 .

A.learn how to farm scientifically　 B.build homes for some dying species

C.make it clear what to eat　　　　　　　　　　 D.use more species for food