A school master of Thurso in Caithness, William Munro, wrote in a report in THE TIMES on September 8, 1809 that twelve years earlier he had been walking along Sandside Bay shore when he saw what he first thought was a naked woman, sitting on a rock and combing her light brown hair. The face was fatty round, with reddish cheeks and blue eyes. If the rock where the woman sat had not been so dangerous for swimmers, Munro would have thought it was human. After a few minutes it dropped into the sea and swam away. Others had seen it too.
The island of Benbecula in the outer Hebrides, about 1830, women cutting seaweed reported they had met a creature of female form playing happily off the shore. A few days later her dead body was found two miles from where she had first been seen. The description of the creature was recorded thus, “the upper part of the creature was about the size of a well-fed child of three or four years of age, with an extraordinarily developed breast. The hair was long, dark and glossy(有光泽), while the skin was white, soft and tender. The lower part of the body was like a salmon(鲑鱼). ”
1.From the description given by the witnesses, we know that .
A. mermaids did exist
B. mermaids shaped like females
C. mermaids looked terrible
D. mermaids shaped like fish
2. This passage most probably comes from .
A. scientific books B. tales collection
C. travel guideD. fishing webpages
3. Which of the following is TRUE?
A. The school master and the women saw a mermaid in the same year.
B. The school master saw a mermaid swimming in the sea.
C. The women saw a mermaid swimming in the sea.
D. It was said that mermaids developed from salmons.
4. Which of the following is WRONG?
A. Not all the people believe they were mermaids.
B. People have taken photos of the creature.
C. The creature in the second case looked like a woman with a fish’s tail.
D. Both of these two tales may not be true.
Every people uses its own special word to show its ideas and feelings. Some of these expressions are commonly used for many years. Others are popular for just a short time. One such American expression is “Where’s the beef? ”It is used when something is not as good as it is said to be. In the early 1980s“Where’s the beef? ”was one of the most popular expressions in the United States. It seemed as if everyone using it at the time.
Beef, of course, is the meat from a cow, and this kind of food is more popular in America than a hamburger made from beef. In the 1960s a businessman named Ray began building small restaurants that sold hamburgers at a low price. Ray called this “McDonald’s”. Ray became one of the richest businessmen at last in America.
Other business people watched his success. Some of them opened their own hamburger restaurants. One company called “Wendy’s” said its hamburgers were bigger than those sold by McDonald’s or anyone else. The Wendy’s Company began to use the expression “Where’s the beef ? ”to make people know that Wendy’s hamburgers were the biggest. The Wendy’s television advertisement showed three old women eating hamburgers. The bread that covered the meat was very big, but inside there was only a bit of meat. One of the women said she would not eat a hamburger with such a little piece of beef. “Where’s the beef? ”she shouted in a funny way. The advertisement for Wendy’s hamburger restaurants was success. As we said, it seemed everyone began using the expression “Where’s the beef? ”.
1. started McDonald’s restaurant.
A. RayB. McDonald
C. WendyD. Three old women
2. Other people wanted to open hamburger restaurants because they thought
.
A. they could sell hamburgers at a low price
B. hamburgers were easy to make
C. beef was very popular in America
D. they could make a lot of money
3.Wendy’s made the expression known to everybody .
A. with many old women eating hamburgers
B. by a television advertisement
C. while selling bread with a bit of meat in it
D. at McDonald’s restaurant
4. We can learn from the passage that the expression “Where’s the beef ? ” means .
A. The beef in hamburgers is not as much as it is said to be
B. The hamburgers are not as good as they are said to be
C. It is used when something is not as good as it is said to be
D. Wendy’s is the biggest
One night in March 1999, a man was driving from California to Oregon, US, to visit some friends. He had stopped his car to have some food when he started to hear strange noises. Turning on the headlights, he saw an 8-foot-tall creature covered in thick, dark hair. The creature stared at him for a minute, turned in the road and walked off slowly into the woods.
In the past 50 years alone, there have been thousands of reported sightings of similar creatures in the US, Canada, the Himalayas(喜马拉雅山地区)and even Hubei Province in China. The creature is known as bigfoot.
Bigfoot is said to be a very tall(between 2 and 4. 5 metres), ape-like(类人猿似的)creature that is covered in hair and walks upright on two legs. It is very wary(警惕的)of human beings.
Believers think bigfoot is a direct descendent(后代)of ancient gigantopithecus(巨猿). But it remains one of the planet’s undiscovered secrets. There is a little evidence(证据)to support the believers’ theory: traces of hair, footprints and body prints as well as the reported sightings. Some people have even showed what they say with photos or films of bigfoot.
But so far, no one has found bones or any other definite proof that the giant creature exists.
As a result many people believe the evidence is just part of a big trick.
The footprints are easy to make and they say: all you need to do is to make two large feet out of plaster(石膏), attach them to the bottom of your shoes and walk with big steps. As for the photos and films, they are just people dressed in ape suits.
They also say the sightings are not real, just people making mistakes. For example, bigfoot could be a bear living in the wild that sometimes stands up on its back legs.
1. So far what we can be sure about is that .
A. there exist savages(野人)in several places in the world
B. there are some traces of hair, footprints and body prints of the “bigfoot”
C. bigfoot is a direct descendent of ancient gigantopithecus
D. all the big foot discovered have the same look
2.It was in that man first found the ape-like creature.
A. 1999B. the 1960’s
C. the 1950’sD. the 1940’s
3. The article infers but doesn’t say so that some people bigfoot’s existence.
A. may fool the world into believing
B. have definite evidences to prove
C. refuse to believe
D. will soon offer proofs of
4.If bigfoot is just a misunderstanding, what they saw might NOT be .
A. apes
B. bears
C. gigantopithecus
D. people dressed in animal skins
It was July 1976. An unmanned spaceship, Viking One, had arrived at Mars. On July 20th, the spaceship . Part of it continued toward a landing on the planet. It fell through the late afternoon Mars’ sky.
Forty kilometers above the planet, the thin began to slow its fall. Six kilometers above the planet a big parachute(降落伞)opened. The landing craft fell more slowly. Then, three rocket engines . And the landing craft set down on the surface. in the Viking One Lander immediately sent a message to the earth. It said, “I am here. I am down safely. I am beginning my work. ”
The message at the speed of light. It took twenty minutes to reach the earth, more than three hundred and twenty million kilometers . Scientists and engineers at the control center .
Moments later, television receiver in the control center began to the first picture from Viking One. People at the center could see the feet of the landing craft sitting firmly on the 11 soil of Mars. Those pictures were our first look at the planet. They showed a red surface, full of rocks, with no sign of . It was our first look at a planet that is full of surprises, mysteries and promise. Viking One was launched toward Mars in August, 1975. The spaceship had two : an orbiter(轨道飞行器)and a lander(着陆器). The orbiter would circle Mars. It would take pictures of Mars’ surface. It would the atmosphere.
The would go down to the surface. It would carry to dig up and study soil and .
It also would report about any evidence of life on the planet. The lander would send this to the orbiter and then back to the earth.
1.A. separated B. appeared
C. workedD. started
2. A. correctly B. slowly C. quickly D. directly
3. A. airB. universe
C. spaceD. atmosphere
4.A. firedB. fellC. openedD. floated
5. A. heavilyB. softly
C. suddenlyD. immediately
6. A. A computerB. A rocket
C. A pilotD. An astronaut
7.A. spreadB. traveledC. shotD. moved
8. A. farB. longC. distantD. away
9.A. shoutedB. watched
C. cheeredD. welcomed
10. A. makeB. takeC. showD. search
11. A. redB. brownC. grayD. black
12.A. carefulB. closeC. realD. clear
13. A. menB. lifeC. treesD. air
14.A. partsB. rocketsC. enginesD. centers
15. A. throughB. towardsC. overD. around
16. A. enterB. examine
C. collectD. discover
17. A. orbiterB. lander
C. spaceshipD. rocket
18. A. engineersB. astronauts
C. parachutesD. instruments
19. A. surfaceB. treesC. rocksD. pictures
20.A. spaceshipB. rocket
C. landerD. information
Today, more and more high school student publish their own blogs on the Internet. For one thing, it can provide colorful platform to show their talents, and for another, it is also a way to release their pressure. And this make it popular to high school students. But many parents and teachers hold a same view, and they think that managing a blog will take a lot of time and energy, while this should be used study which is their main duty. Personally, I do approve of this activity. Open and organizing an eye-catching blog needs various abilities such like writing, designing and so on. Only if that we have those abilities can we make a good blog. And also, we can improve themselves during the procedure of organizing our blogs.
If you want to help children develop language and speech skills, UCLA researchers say, listening to what they have to say is just as important as talking to them.
The effect of a conversation between a child and an adult is about six times as great as the effect of adult speech input(输入)alone, the researchers found. “Adults speaking to children helps language develop, but what matters much more is the interaction, ”said the study’s lead author, Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers also found that TV viewing didn’t have much of an effect—positively or negatively—as long as it wasn’t displacing conversations between an adult and a child.
The UCLA study included 275 families with children between 2 months and 48 months old. They represented a variety of incomes and education. The researchers found that, in an average day, children heard about 13, 000 spoken words from adults and participated in about 400 adult-child conversations a day.
Assessed separately, factors positively associated with language development included each additional 100 conversations a day and each 1, 000 words increase in the number of words spoken by adults and heard by children. When looked at alone, TV was negatively associated with language development. But, when these three factors were analyzed together, the only one that stood out was conversation between adults and children.
“The more a child speaks and interacts with an adult, the better idea a parent has about where the child is”, Zimmerman said. “Although it’s mostly done unconsciously, parents will provide feedback and correct mistakes. They’ll also tailor their speech to the child. Parents can give the children words by talking to them about what they’re doing, such as, ‘I’m putting on your pajamas now’. But give your child the opportunity to talk, hopefully without the rest of the noise in the environment, ”she added. “If parents can carve out some conversation time—maybe at bath time or at dinner time—that’s a wonderful thing. ”
1. The researchers also found that TV viewing .
A. could have a positive effect on a child’s language development
B. had a little effect on a child’s language development
C. affected a child’s language development more negatively than positively
D. affected a child’s language development both negatively and positively
2.Frederick Zimmerman would probably agree that .
A. parents should let their children talk most of the time
B. children should watch TV programs selectively
C. the conversation between parents and children should be two-way
D. it’s no good for parents to correct their children’s mistakes when they are speaking
3. We can conclude from the last paragraph that .
A. parents should let a child repeat what he or she says
B. bath time or dinner time is the best chance for parents to talk to a child
C. parent-child conversation can be carried out at any proper time
D. parents should leave a child talking alone
4. What would be the best title for the passage?
A. Talk with kids, not at them
B. Let your children voice their own opinions
C. How to develop a child’s language ability
D. The importance of early child language development
5.The underlined word “tailor” in the last paragraph can be best replaced by .
A. controlB. improve
C. passD. adjust
