There is one word that is on the lips of...

In some urban centers, workholism is so common that people do not consider it unusual: they accept the lifestyle as normal. Government workers in Washington D. C., for example, frequently work sixty to seventy hours a week. They don’t do this because they have to; they do it because they want to.

Workholism can be a serious problem. Because true workaholics (工作狂) would rather work than do anything else, they probably don’t know how to relax.

Is workholism always dangerous? Perhaps not. There are, certainly, people who work well under stress. Some studies show that many workaholics have great energy and interest in life. Their work is so pleasurable that they are actually very happy. For most workaholics, work and entertainment keep them busy and creative.

Why do workaholics enjoy their jobs so much? There are several advantages to work. Of course, it provides people with paychecks, and this is important. But it offers more than financial security. It provides people with self-confidence; they have a feeling of satisfaction when they’ve produced a challenging piece of work and are able to say, “I made that.” Psychologists claim that work gives people an identity through participation in work, they get a sense of self and individualism. In addition, most jobs provide people with a socially acceptable way to meet others. Perhaps some people are compulsive about their work, but their addiction seems to be a safe-even an advantageous-one.

1.The passage indicates that workaholics ______.

2.One of the reasons that some people are not willing to quit their jobs even in their eighties and nineties is that ______.

A. they are in the need of financial security

B. they would rather work than be disturbed by domestic affairs

C. they long for a sense of identity and being accomplished

C. they may have health problems from sheer boresom

3.This passage is mainly about ______.

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

There is no doubt about it. The best way to learn new words is to do it unconsciously. I don’t mean while you’re unconscious. I mean while you are unconscious of the fact that it is sinking in.

That is how I learnt the 30,000 words in my vocabulary by living in an English-speaking world, mother tongue. I just pick them up. But some of them may be misunderstood. Now, to misunderstand does not mean not to understand. To misunderstand is to understand but incorrectly.

The 5% mislearnt of all the words we “know” will be the least frequently used words, as the more frequently used words are less likely to be mislearnt. Some of the misunderstanding may live with all our lives, without knowing that we got them wrong.

Many English teachers think that this natural method of learning words in one’s own mother tongue can be used for a second language learning. They teach their students how to play the Guessing Game. “There is no time to look up in your dictionaries all the new words you come across,” they will say. “You have to practice guessing what the word means from the context.”

This method of guessing in a second language learning does not work. It may succeed in many cases, but results in hundreds or thousands of wrongly-guessed meanings of words.

And what’s more, there are more separate meanings than there are words themselves. Our learners’ dictionaries usually have many meanings. A good dictionary is what makes self-learning possible.

Don’t guess! Look it up!

1. It is certain that the best way to learn new words is ______.

2.The underlined word “them” in Paragraph 2 refers to ______.

3.Which of the following is most likely NOT true?

4.It can be inferred that ______.

As the sea ice melts sooner each swimmer,polar bears are forced to come ashore earlier and face food shortages _____ they have stored enough fat to last them through the season.

—What did he want to know,Anne?

—_______I could finish writing the report.

Ladies and gentlemen,please fasten your seat belts,the plane______.