Cast your mind back to the past twenty years and hardly did anyone have their own email account. The Internet had just taken off in 1991 and people were only using office and PC­based email exchanges.

In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and web­based email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. And Microsoft took note of and bought Hotmail for $400 million on December 30, 1997, a nice birthday present for Bhatia who turned 29 that day. It was relaunched as MSN Hotmail and in 2007 was relaunched again as Windows Live Hotmail.

Fast forward the present day and most of us have at least a personal web­based email account. It seems impossible to live without them. One of the biggest advantages of email is the fact that communication has become so much easier, especially with those across different time zones. Email takes seconds to send a message whereas letters, as we used to communicate by, could take weeks. Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.

In conclusion, one of the best inventions from the 1990s has to be email. But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a compulsion to check it several times a day. At work, people have become lazy and instead of going to speak to the person sitting next to them, they send an email,causing an in box to pile up with more time spent reading email and responding rather than working. Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.

1.The earliest web-based email came into being probably _______.

A. in 1991                            B. in 1996                   C. in 1997                   D. in 2007

2.The author mentions “fax” in the third paragraph in order to tell us that _______.

A. it is exactly as good as email

B. it is much better than email

C. it is less convenient than email

D. it is easier and faster than email

3.The underlined word “compulsion” in Paragraph 4 probably means “_______”.

A. strong desire                  B. common sense               C. special curiosity          D. general idea

4.Which is the main idea of the last paragraph?

A. We should check email boxes frequently.

B. Lazy people like sending an email.

C. Email brings us great convenience.

D. Good inventions also cause problems.

 

The most frightening words in the English language are, “Our computer is down.” You hear it more and more when you are on business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington and the girl in the ticket office said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a ticket. Our computer is down.”

“If your computer is down, just write me out a ticket.”

“I can’t write you out a ticket. The computer is the only one allowed to do so.”

I looked down on the computer and every passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black screen. Then I asked her, “What do all you people do?”

“We give the computer the information about your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not.”

So when it goes down, you go down with it.”

“That’s good, sir.”

“How long will the computer be down?” I wanted to know.

“I have no idea. Sometimes it’s down for 10 minutes, sometimes for two hours. There’s no way we can find out without asking the computer, and since it’s down it won’t answer us.”

After the girl told me they had no backup(备用) computer, I said. “Let’s forget the computer. What about your planes? They’re still flying, aren’t they?”

“I couldn’t tell without asking the computer.”

“Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask the pilot if he’s flying to Washington, ” I suggested.

“I wouldn’t know what gate to send you to. Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn’t take you if you didn’t have a ticket.”

“Is there any other airline flying to Washington within the next few hours?”

“I wouldn’t know, ” she said, pointing at the dark screen. “Only ‘IT’ knows. ‘It’ can’t tell me.”

By this time there were quite a few people standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer was down. Some people went white, some people started to cry and still others kicked their luggage.

1.The best title for the article is _______.

A.When the Computer Is Down

B.The Most Frightening Words

C.The Computer of the Airport

D.Asking the Computer

2.What could the girl in the ticket office do for the passengers without asking the computer?

A.She could sell a ticket.

B.She could write out a ticket.

C.She could answer the passengers’ questions.

D.She could do nothing.

3.Why do you think they had not a backup computer?

A.Because it was easy down

B.Because it was very expensive.

C.Because it was not advanced enough.

D.Because it was not as big as the main computer.

4.The last paragraph suggests that _______.

A.a modern computer won’t be down.

B.computers can take the place of humans

C.sometimes a computer may bring suffering to people

D.there will be great changes in computers

 

There is a small village named Bugu in the mountains of Shanglin County, Guangxi. The place is so small that it can’t be found in the map of the county of Shanglin. However, the place has strongly interested experts(专家) both at home and abroad.

There are altogether 81 families in the village with more than 540 people. Among them as many as 156 villagers have a university education. Take this year’s college entrance examination for example. Six out of nine students from the village who took the examination were taken into universities.

Going to school has been a great thing for the whole village. To encourage children to study hard and become useful people, the village has set up a special group made up of four old villagers. Every day, the four villagers go round the village. If they find any child who is not going to school, the child’s parents will be punished(惩罚).

When university students come back to the village for the Spring Festival,the old villagers of the special group always ask them to make up test papers and let the children take the special “Village Test”. Those who are taken into university can receive money from the village’s education fund. The whole village also helps the poor families send their children to school.

1.The main idea of the news story is __________.

A. how Bugu villagers get education.

B. how Bugu villagers pay attention to education.   

C. how many students go to university in Bugu village.    

D. how Bugu villagers encourage children to study hard..

2.The four old villagers’ job is________.

    A. to collect the children together in the village.

    B. to go around the village to keep it safe.

    C. to take care of children’s education.

    D. to solve family problems in the village.

3.If a child who is not going to school is found by the four villagers,________.

A. his parents are punished        

B. the child is punished

C. the four old villagers are punished        

D. the child’s whole family members are punished.

4.We can infer from the last paragraph that _______.

A. The villagers respect those with knowledge   

B. The villagers are rich enough in this village.

    C. All the children prefer to go to university         

    D. Poor families are supported by the other villagers.

 

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