You must have a favorite line or pet phrase you repeat often in your conversations. Studies say that pet phrases can reflect our changing society and reveal information about a person’s personality. Here are some of the most popular pet phrases among young people.

脑残---nuts

I love the word and use it whenever I think a person is stupid, or a behavior is crazy. I learned the term from one of my classmates. Once, we saw two high school girls wearing miniskirts on a very cold winter day and my classmate called the two girls “nuts”. I don’t think the word reflects my personality. I use it because it sounds cool.

Diao Yujie, 22, computer science major at Nanjing University.

汗---stunning

I use this word very often. Once, my classmates and I were discussing how amusing QQ is. One guy suddenly burst out, “I have MSN too”. This comment had no relation with the topic we were discussing. I used this word and everybody laughed. I think it is a fantastic word that can change awkwardness to amusement.

Mu Li, 20, journalism major at Beijing Normal University.

晕死---I’m giddy!

I use this word a lot---more often than my classmates. It has became a symbol of me, as my friends sometimes refer to me as the guy who often says the word. I am a person who wants to be different and this word gives me that feeling.

Chen Zhou, 21, Nanjing University.

雷---stunning

I only use this word with my friends. My parents don’t understand it. The word, which is only used among people of my age, is intimate. I think it stands for being young and energetic. And I want to be young forever, so I like the word.

Chen Jianjun, 23, senior at Nanjing University.

If a man wearing suit and a tie is climbing a mountain, what can we say to him according to the passage?

A. nuts                B. I’m giddy.       C. 汗---stunning   D. 雷---stunning

What’s the meaning of “pet phrase” in the first paragraph?

A. 习惯用语       B. 宠物语言       C. 口头禅               D. 座右铭

What’s young people’s attitude to pet phrase?

A. indifferent      B. crazy              C. reasonable         D. against

Pet phrase can ________ according to studies.

A. reflect our changing society  

B. reveal information about a person’s personality

C. make young people popular  

D. both A and B

Googlefight is a simple service available on the Internet which offers you the chance to compare two different items and see how many hits they get on the Google search engine. The seemingly simple device has proved invaluable to users, especially to help win arguments.
For example, imagine that you and your friends are arguing about who are the most popular music or movie stars, you can decide the argument by writing the names in the Googlefight boxes. Let’s say that you are arguing about Jackie Chan and Jet Li. You will quickly discover that Jet Li is mentioned 16 million times on Google pages, whereas Jackie Chan is mentioned a mere 12 million times! In this unscientific way, you can claim victory for one Star over another.
But teachers have come up with ways of using Googlefight which are much more useful from an academic point of view, particularly when it comes to studying languages. You can, for example, find out the frequency of two words with the same meaning, and deduce (推断) from the answers which one is more common. For example, let’s take the words “buy” and “purchase”, which mean the same thing (although “buy” is only a verb and “purchase” is both a verb and a noun). It is immediately clear from Googlefight that “buy” is much more commonly used, with a massive three and a half billion hits, compared to only one billion occurrences for the more formal word.
But the real value of Googlefight to the language learner is in determining which is the more common of two phrases. For example, “raining cats and dogs” is an old-fashioned English expression about the weather. Do English speakers still use it? Or are they more likely to say “pouring down”? Googlefight suggests the latter. “Pouring down” has 898,000 Google hits, whereas “raining cats and dogs” only has 326,000.
With phrases, it’s important to remember that you need to use quote marks to make the search more accurate. For example, if you type in the similar phrases “look after” and “take care of “ without quote marks, the second phrase seems to be more common, but with quote marks, the result is reversed.
【小题1】What is Googlefight?

A.A fight between two people on Google.
B.A way to make sure you win an argument.
C.A website showing how many hits two different things have.
D.A list of all the websites on Google.
【小题2】Language teachers find it useful because _______.
A.there are a lot of words on Googlefight
B.it can tell them which of the two words with the same meaning appears more often
C.some words mean the same thing
D.common words have a billion hits
【小题3】What must you remember to do if you are checking phrases by Googlefight?
A.Make sure they mean be same thing.
B.Make sure they are different.
C.Remember to put quote marks round the phrase.
D.Don’t put quote marks round the phrase.
【小题4】Which statement is NOT true according to the passage?
A.Googlefight is effective to determine the more common of two phrases.
B.Googlefight is a scientific way to decide an argument.
C.Quote marks can make the search more accurate.
D.Googlefight is invaluable to help win arguments.

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