One day a mime(哑剧演员) is visiting the zoo and tries to earn some money as a street performer. As soon as he starts to draw a crowd, a zookeeper pulls him into his office. The zookeeper explains that the zoo’s most popular attraction, a gorilla(大猩猩), has died suddenly and the keeper fears that attendance(出席人数) at the zoo will fall off. He offers the mime a job to dress up as the gorilla. The mime accepts.
The next morning the mime puts on the gorilla suit and enters the cage before the crowd comes. He soon discovers he can sleep, play and make fun of people and he draws bigger crowds than he ever did as a mime — the job he likes but loses.
However, with days going by, he begins to notice that the people are paying more attention to the lion in the cage next to his. Not wanting to lose the attention of his audience, he climbs to the top of his cage, crawls across a partition(隔墙), and dangles(悬挂) from the top to the lion’s cage. The lion gets angry at this. The scene is a fuel to the crowd.
At the end of the day he is given a raise for being such a good attraction — well, this continues for some time. The crowds grow larger, and the mime’s pay keeps going up.
Then one day when he is dangling over the lion he slides and falls. The mime is terrified. He starts screaming “Help me!”, but the lion is quick. The mime soon finds himself flat on his back looking up at the angry lion and the lion says, “Shut up you fool! Do you want to get us both fired?”
1.The mime accepts the zookeeper’s offer because __________.
A. he has been out of work
B. he doesn’t like being a mime
C. he likes performing at the zoo
D. he is offered a higher pay there
2.How does the mime find the job dressing up as the gorilla?
A. Hard and tiring. B. Dangerous but exciting.
C. Easy and funny. D. Boring but well-paid.
3.The mime’s first contact with the lion is to __________.
A. find pleasure for himself B. get the lion’s attention
C. get his pay raised D. win back his audience
4.The underlined words “a fuel” in Paragraph 3 can be replaced by __________.
A. frightening B. disappointing
C. exciting D. Familiar
Carol Vaness, the well-known American opera singer, was born in San Diego and began her professional performance in San Francisco. She has sung at many of the major opera houses in the world. Unlike other world-famous male opera singers, she was particularly known for her Mozart operatic roles.
At the Metropolitan Opera in New York City where she often sings, Carol’s voice must be loud enough to be heard by four thousand people. It must reach every person in the theater, without a microphone, even when she’s singing softly. The reason Carol can project her voice that far is the way she breathes.
“When you breathe, it’s like a swimmer taking a deep breath before going underwater,” Carol explains. “You have to take a lot of air into your lungs.”
According to Carol, the main difference between pop singing and opera is “how you breathe, how much air you take in, and how you control it coming out. Regular singing is more like speaking, and it’s a lot softer.
Ever since she started piano lessons at the age of ten, Carol has loved music. As she got older, she decided to become a music teacher. When she went to college, she took singing lessons as part of her studies. Her voice teacher discovered that nineteen-year-old Carol had an exceptionally beautiful soprano(女高音) voice – the highest singing voice for women.
Today, Carol performs throughout the United States and Europe and she has sung for almost twenty years. But she has never forgotten why she started singing in the first place. “Put your heart into your singing and enjoy it,” says Carol, “because singing is a great joy. That’s why I sing. In fact, that’s why everybody sings.”
1.What is the best title for this passage?
A. The Way a Star Sings
B. An Opera Star
C. Opera Singing and Pop Singing
D. Singing without a Microphone
2.Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. A pop singer breathes more deeply than an opera singer when he or she sings.
B. Opera singing is more like speaking.
C. A pop singer takes in much more air than an opera singer when singing.
D. An opera singer breathes differently from a pop singer when singing.
3.From the passage you can conclude all the following EXCEPT that __________.
A. Carol once learned to play the piano
B. Carol has been singing opera for 20 years or so
C. Carol worked as a music teacher
D. Carol is popular with Americans and Europeans
书面表达
Human Flesh Search—thousands of individuals working to find and make public someone’s personal information, mostly online—will be ruled as leaking personal data, which is against the law, according to China’s top court.
Internet users or network service providers who leak people’s personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, and clinical data will have to hold legal responsibility.
Network service providers will also be held responsible if they are aware that their users have violated others’ rights but have failed to take action.
The decision comes after years of arguments over whether it’s right for the public to try those who behave wrongly.
On the one hand, cyber hunting does have its positive influences. Some public officials have been removed from their positions after human flesh searches led to corruption investigations. During disasters like the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, the search method also helped many people to find their loved ones.
But many think that online cyber hunting is creating a threat to privacy. “People’s ‘unusually high enthusiasm’ makes the human flesh search engine phenomenon unique,” Xujun Eberlein, a Chinese American author and commentator, told Forbes. “Participants often ‘reach out their hands’ thoughtlessly, violating people’s rights instead of being righteous(正直).”
【写作内容】
1. 以约30个词概括短文大意；
2. 以约120个词就“Human Flesh Search（人肉搜索）”这一主题谈谈你的看法，内容包括：
1）你是否赞同文章提及的“禁止人肉搜索”的法案，请说明你的理由；
2）“网络时代，个人隐私如何才能得到保障？”请就此问题，提出你的建议（至少两点）。
【写作要求】
1. 可以参照阅读材料内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称。
请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格只填1个单词。请将答案写在答题卷上相应题号的横线上。
If You Get In, Make College Count
As tuition costs rise, with post-undergraduate (本科毕业后) jobs difficult to find, is higher education worth the cost?
Here is an unfortunate truth: For far too many incoming freshmen, college－any college－is not worth it. Year after year, students fail to get the full value of their tuition.
Many critics blame this cost/value problem on the universities, though each critic might point to a different reason: teachers always think of difficult research, the high costs of athletics, or the popularity of majors that are supposedly not suited to the new job market, to name some of their favorites.
But these are symptoms and not the illness itself. In our experience, the source of the wasted university experience begins with the student. Too often, students make bad choices or, frankly, just not enough great choices.
Too often we meet students who are so exhausted by the business of getting into college that they don’t work hard once they arrive－one of the most common wastes of time and tuition. A poorly constructed transcript (成绩单) can be destructive to a student’s education. Failure to engage and build professional working relationships with professors in office hours (which may lead to continued study, internships and more) also hurts the student’s experience.
Another mistake is failing to make use of the many support networks on today’s college campuses. It’s almost embarrassing how many good offerings are rolled into each tuition dollar, but most students don’t know they exist.
Another common point of failure is filling the schedule with too many extracurricular activities as students once did in high school, rather than getting intensely involved in one or two at most. The same can be said of overburdened course loads.
The final great failure we frequently see is the approach students (and their parents) take to selecting a major and accurately seeing its impact on a future career. University systems are not vocational schools. While critics nowadays complain about the attraction of useless majors — and some do exist — more frequently we see too many students pursue a course of study that is not their strength, simply because it seems to have obvious connections to a potential job after graduation.
Rather than perform poorly in a “practical” major and be of little interest as a future job candidate, we say it is better to major in a subject where a student would do well and master the tools of communication and analysis. Students who choose a unique major should complement (使更具有吸引力) that with some well-chosen skill courses, internships and other co-curricular activities that help them with career opportunities after college.
So, is college worth it? It can be. Studies show that college graduates have many advantages — material, social and emotional — that can lead to greater success later in life.
To get the full value out of college, students must be as diligent and creative about getting out of college as they were about getting in. After all, the most beautiful, Olympic saltwater pool does you no good if you don’t know how to swim.
Introduction | Students in college are 1. to get the full value of the constantly rising tuition. Critics hold that the universities are responsible for the problem, but actually it is students themselves that are to 2. . |
Students’ mistakes | ● Students tend to stop working hard after3. to college. |
● Students fail to take advantage of the 4. that colleges provide. | |
●5. in too many extracurricular activities makes students overburdened with course loads | |
● Students can’t adopt a correct6. to select a major and accurately see its future potential. | |
Author’s advice | ● Take personal 7. and strength into account. |
● Learn the skills of communication and analysis. | |
● Choose some skill courses, internships and other co-curricular activities to 8. future career chances. | |
● Most importantly, 9. and creativity. | |
10. | Students, and only students themselves, can get the best out of college, as long as they learn the skills to swim in the beautiful pool of college. |
When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard.
Joe was a man with a genius for art. Delia did things in six octaves(音阶) promisingly.
Joe and Delia became in love with one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time were married – for (see above), when one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard.
They began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat, but they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other.
Joe was learning painting in the class of the great Magister — you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light — his high–lights have brought him fame. Delia was studying under Rosenstock — you know his reputation as a disturber of the piano keys.
They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted.
After a while Art flagged. Everything going out and nothing coming in, money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to make the ends meet.
For two or three days she went out looking for pupils. One evening she came home overjoyed “Joe, dear,” she said, cheerfully, “I’ve a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General — General Pinkney’s daughter Clementina — on Seventy-first street.”
“That’s all right for you, Dele,” said Joe, “but how about me? Do you think I’m going to let you work while I play in the regions of high art?”
Delia came and hung about his neck.
“Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music.”
“All right,” said Joe. “But I may sell some of my pictures as well.”
The next few weeks, they both busied themselves with their own business and brought back a ten, a five, a two and a one — all legal tender notes — and laid them beside each others’ earnings.
One Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.
“How is this?” asked Joe. Delia laughed, but not very joyously. “Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit(一种奶酪) after her lesson. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my wrist. Nothing serious, dear.”
“What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?”
“Five o’clock, I think,” said Dele. “The iron — I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time.”
“Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. “What have you been doing for the last few weeks, Dele?” he asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, but at last down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she wept. “I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. A girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon. I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina. What made you ever suspect that I wasn’t giving music lessons?”
“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until tonight. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry for the last few weeks.”
“And then you didn’t …” said Delia
And then they both looked at each other and laughed, and Joe began:
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems …”
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said – “just ‘When one loves.’”
1.What can we know about the couple from the story?
A. They both became famous for their talents in art.
B. Studying from famous teachers contributed most to their poverty.
C. Art helped them out of the poverty they were faced with.
D. They turned out to be working at the same laundry.
2.What qualities of the couple’s are best conveyed in the story?
A. considerate and giving.
B. faithful and romantic.
C. intelligent and economical.
D. hardworking and loyal.
3.What does the underlined word “flagged” most probably mean?
A. Became weaker.
B. Displayed its power.
C. Went in a wrong direction.
D. Returned to its original condition.
4.Which of the following does NOT give readers a clue that the couple were telling white lies?
A. Joe washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
B. Delia’s right wrist was tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.
C. Delia said she must give music lessons to make the ends meet.
D. “The iron – I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time” said Dele.
5.What can serve as the best title of this story?
A. A Service of Art B. The Love for Art
C. A Service of Love D. No Art No Love
The splendid aurora light displays that appear in Earth’s atmosphere around the north and south magnetic(磁的) poles were once mysterious phenomena. Now, scientists have data from satellites and ground-based observations from which we know that the aurora brilliance is a massive electrical discharge similar to that occurring in a neon sign.
To understand the cause of auroras, first picture the Earth enclosed by its magnetosphere(磁层), a huge region created by the Earth’s magnetic field. Outside the magnetosphere, rushing toward the earth is the solar wind, a speedily moving body of ionized(离子化的) gases with its own magnetic field. Charged particles(粒子) in this solar wind speed earthward along the solar wind’s magnetic lines of force. The Earth’s magnetosphere is a barrier to the solar winds, and forces the charged particles of the solar wind to flow around the magnetosphere itself. But in the polar regions, the magnetic lines of force of the Earth and of the solar wind gather together. Here many of the solar wind’s charged particles break through the magnetosphere and enter Earth’s magnetic field. They then rush back and forth between the Earth’s magnetic poles very rapidly and ionize and excite the atoms of the upper atmosphere of the Earth, causing them to produce aurora radiations of visible light.
The colors of an aurora depend on the atoms producing them. The leading greenish-white light comes from low energy excitation of oxygen atoms. During huge magnetic storms oxygen atoms also undergo high energy excitation and produce pink light. Excited nitrogen(氮) atoms contribute bands of color varying from blue to violet. Viewed from outer space, auroras can be seen as dimly shining belts wrapped around each of the Earth’s magnetic poles. Each aurora hangs like a curtain of light stretching over the polar regions and into the higher latitudes. When the solar flares(闪光) that result in magnetic storms and aurora activity are very strong, aurora displays may extend as far as the southern regions of the United States.
1.What is it that directly gives off aurora light?
A. The Earth’s magnetic field.
B. The solar wind’s magnetic field.
C. The Earth’s ionized particles.
D. The solar wind’s charged particles.
2.What does the third paragraph mainly discuss?
A. The appearance of auroras around the Earth’s poles.
B. The periodic change in the display of auroras.
C. The factors that cause the variety of colors in auroras.
D. The covering area of auroras based on their colors.
3.What can we infer from the passage?
A. The magnetosphere increases the speed of particles from the solar wind.
B. The color of greenish-white appears least frequently in an aurora display.
C. Earth’s magnetic field contributes to the variety and difference of aurora’s colors.
D. The strength of the solar flares has a positive effect on the extending distance of aurora.
