请阅读下列短文, 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。
Do you think you could learn a language in an hour?
We know, we know! We would expect you to be skeptical. It’s ridiculous to think you can learn a language in 60 minutes. You wouldn’t even get through the As in a bilingual dictionary in that amount of time! Best-case situation: in an hour, most of us could probably stuff a few words and ready-made phrases into our short-term memory (with a high likelihood of forgetting it all by the following day). Accomplishing anything more than that in one hour? Impossible. Unless…
We posed the one-hour language challenge to four polyglots (通晓数种语言的人) who are experts on how to study languages. To keep the challenge from becoming completely impossible, we gave them a bit of a break: to learn Romanian in one hour. Why Romanian? Because it’s a Romance language and shares many similarities with the languages that the polyglots already know: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. And to make sure their hour of learning was as effective as possible, all of them were assigned a personal Romanian tutor to help coach them on their way to success.
Although each polyglot has a different technique for picking up and remembering a new language, all four methods offer valuable insights to anyone, from casual learners to hard-core language enthusiasts.
Alex Rawlings — Learn the verbs first
With only an hour until he had to start demonstrating his grasp of Romanian, Alex knew he had to start talking quickly. He chose to focus first on commonly used verbs and how to conjugate(动词变形)them. Once he had some verbs down, he could start collecting nouns from his tutor and plugging them in to make more interesting and relevant sentences.
Luca Lampariello — Start speaking right away
Speaking doesn’t mean speaking perfectly. Speaking even a little bit is a huge confidence boost. When you can say something in a new language and people actually understand you, it’s very motivating. Yes, you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll also learn faster than if you try to get it all perfect in your head first.
Michael Youlden — Write everything down
Language learning is about recall; there’s no use learning something if you don’t remember it. Speaking new words aloud is very important, but so is writing them down — after all, words exist as sounds and in written form. Taking notes is a proven way to put new vocabulary and grammar into your memory. Writing supports memorizing which supports speaking… it’s a cycle. Plus, you have an easy reference when you want to review what you’ve learned.
Matthew Youlden — Look for cognates
Cognates are words in different languages that look and sound similar and have the same meaning, due to a common origin. Almost every language combination contains cognates (even if two languages aren’t seemingly related), but languages from the same language family have many more. Whichever language you are learning, identify the familiar words and then use them to anchor the new words that aren’t so familiar. To use English as an example, because it’s a sort of Germanic-Romance hybrid, English already has many words that cognate with German, Dutch and Swedish on one hand, and on the other hand it also has lots of words that cognate with French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and, of course, Romanian!
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Four Learning Methods From Four Language 1.: How To Make Meaningful Progress In Your First Hour | |
The people who are 2. | Four polyglots who are good at learning languages |
The language they are to study | Romanian |
3. limits | 1 hour |
The reason for choosing the target language | Romanian has much in 4. with their familiar languages |
The 5. to learning the language | Alex: give 6. to commonly used verbs; add some 7. to make sentences |
Luca: attach great 8. to speaking; don’t be afraid to make mistakes | |
Michael: take notes to keep new words and grammar in 9. | |
Matthew: try to 10. similar words and patterns with familiar languages |
My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. America was where all my mother’s hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
“Of course you can be a prodigy, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “You can be best at anything.” We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. We’d watch Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother would poke my arm and say, “Ni kan” — You watch. And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying, “Oh my goodness.”
Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to a beauty training school and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz. My mother dragged me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.
“You look like Negro Chinese,” she complained, as if I had done this on purpose.
In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, trying each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtains, waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.
In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.
But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned. “And then you’ll always be nothing.”
Every night after dinner, my mother and I would sit at the Formica kitchen table. She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children she had read and a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. She would look through them all, searching for stories about remarkable children.
The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states and even most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying the little boy could also pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly.
“What’s the capital of Finland?” my mother asked me, looking at the magazine story.
All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown. “Nairobi!” I guessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if that was possibly one way to pronounce “Helsinki” before showing me the answer.
The tests got harder—multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London.
And after seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Before going to bed that night, I looked in the mirror and when I saw only my face staring back—and that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.
And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me—because I had never seen that face before. I looked at my reflection, blinking so I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’ts. I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not.
1.The underlined word “prodigy” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ________.
A. talent B. professor C. leader D. superstar
2.Why did the mother and the girl watch Shirley’s old movies on TV?
A. Because the mother was a fan of Shirley Temple.
B. Because Shirley Temple’s hairstyle was popular among children.
C. Because the girl resembled Shirley Temple in appearance.
D. Because the mother wanted her daughter to be a Chinese Shirley Temple.
3.How did the girl feel about the tests she did every night?
A. She felt confident and finished it smoothly.
B. She got through the tests successfully, but painfully.
C. She failed the tests and began to lose confidence.
D. She eventually sadly found herself ordinary and ugly.
4.What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 13 mean?
A. The mother was not sure about the answer and wanted to confirm it.
B. The mother expected her daughter to know the right answer.
C. The answers were more than one and the mother checked them.
D. The mother was so disappointed as to give up her daughter.
5.What might happen after the last paragraph?
A. The girl might try her best to become famous and successful.
B. The girl might follow her heart and do what she really likes.
C. The girl might do whatever her mother asks and becomes a different image.
D. The mother might change her attitude and listen to her daughter’s words.
6.Which of the following can be the best title of the text?
A. Being Myself or Not B. Educational Failure
C. Difficult American Childhood D. Mother’s Experience
A report released this month found that grouping children by ability is on the rise again— teaching students in groups of similar ability has improved achievement for fast and slow learners alike—and who wouldn’t want bright kids to be able to move ahead, or strugglers to get the help they need?
But for most kids, labels (标签) applied early in life tend to stick, even if they are wrong.
Sorting school children by ability has long been controversial. In some countries, especially in Asia, school-wide tracking (分流) remains normal. Children are tested and placed in different schools that direct them toward professional or vocational careers. Movement between the tracks is rare.
School-wide tracking decreased in U.S. schools in the 1960s and ’70s. It never died out, though. Sorting students into separate tracks for math at about junior high school age continues to be common, and other forms of tracking persist as well.
Unlike tracking, which means sorting students into separate classrooms, ability grouping happens within classrooms. When done according to the latest research, it has proven to promote achievement.
Ability grouping is changeable and temporary. Within classrooms, students might be divided into different learning groups dealing with materials of different levels. Any students who master concepts can move upward between groups, and the student groups might look different from subject to subject and unit to unit. For instance, a student who stands out in language arts might be at an average or slower level in math. A student who flies through multiplication tables might need extra help with fractions. Students who lag in reading can be pulled out of the classroom in small groups for practice with a tutor until their reading improves.
Research shows ability grouping within classes has more positive benefits than tracking. However, that must be weighed against the challenges involved. In many regular classrooms, the differences between student ability levels are very big. That presents challenges for teachers and low-performing students to constantly compare themselves with students who seem to fly through school with ease.
The rigid ability groups and tracking of the past are still with us in many schools. Likely, labels are applied with more caution than in the bad old days when some teachers gave reading groups not-so-secret code names like “Bluebirds”, “Robins”, “Crows” and “Buzzards”. But kids still know.
1.Why is grouping children by ability becoming popular again?
A. Because most teachers do not like slower learners.
B. Because grouping children should be done early in life.
C. Because it is academically beneficial to different learners.
D. Because fast learners can move ahead without teachers’ help.
2.By saying “Movement between the tracks is rare.” (Para 3), the writer really means______.
A. tracking children is normal in Asia
B. school-wide tracking has decreased in US
C. professional and vocational careers are unrelated
D. sorted students can hardly change schools
3.The examples in Paragraph 6 are used mainly to illustrate ______.
A. a good language learner promises to be good at maths
B. a student might join different groups for different courses
C. ability grouping benefits gifted students more than slow ones
D. ability grouping presents no challenge for those slow students
4.What might be the challenge in regular classrooms for teachers?
A. Students’ different levels.
B. Students’ low performance.
C. Constant self-comparison.
D. Application of not-so-secret code.
请认真阅读下列短文，从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Wind turbines are efficient sources of cheap energy but also a source of concern as their huge spinning blades (叶片) frequently kill birds and bats. A new type of wind generator developed in Spain offers a creative solution to that problem.
In 2002, Spanish inventor David Yanez saw a short film about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the U.S., collapsing in strong wind. It was a vivid example of the powerful vibrations wind can create when it blows past a long pole, such as a car antenna or even a stick of bamboo. It gave him the idea for a new type of wind-energy generator.
“The initial philosophy or spirit was to create a generator of dreams that had all the qualities one would want: It should be as cheap as possible, need as little maintenance as possible, the setup as simple as possible,” he said.
Yanez and his friend Raoul Martin took the idea to an engineering firm, where they were told it would never work. Undiscouraged, they started experimenting on their own in a small wind tunnel they built.
Good initial results were repeated by a larger working model called Vortex (涡旋) installed in a nearby field. “What we have is a mast (桅杆), which is the top piece and acts as a blade,” Yanez said. “It’s constructed from the same material as a conventional generator, and what it does is it oscillates (振荡), transmitting the oscillation to a conventional alternator, which by its own oscillation converts the wind’s energy into electric energy.”
Yanez said the output of the 6-meter-tall generator, and even that of smaller models, was better than expected. The Vortex creates about 30 percent less energy than a comparable bladed wind turbine, but it is lighter and cheaper to build and maintain. It is made mostly of reinforced plastic and has very few moving parts. Also, it does not create noise and—even more important for many environmentalists—it does not present a threat to passing birds.
The current prototype works at wind speeds ranging from 1.5 to 7 meters per second. The inventors say the next step is building a 12.5-meter tall bladeless generator with a 4-kilowatt capacity that could power small businesses or individual homes, or provide supplemental power to a main grid. The commercial version of the Vortex Bladeless generator should be ready for the market by 2017.
1.The author mentions a short film about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to show ________.
A. what the initial philosophy or spirit was
B. what inspired Yanez to create the generator
C. how the bridge was destroyed in strong wind
D. how wind creates powerful vibrations
2.What do we know from the passage?
A. The original idea was considered as practical in an engineering firm.
B. Yanez and Martin’s initial tests by themselves proved to be successful.
C. The material for constructing the mast is different from that of the past.
D. The new generator is better at creating energy than a comparable bladed one.
3. What would be the best title for the passage?
A. Bladeless wind-power generator is friendly to birds.
B. Wind turbines are efficient sources of cheap energy.
C. A new generator will come onto the market by 2017.
D. Yanez has made a generator for the benefit of people.
INTRODUCTION The Omron HEM-780 IntelliSenseTM Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor quickly measures your blood pressure and your measurement reading can be clearly displayed on a large digital panel. |
KNOW YOUR UNIT
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IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTES * Do not use a cell phone near the unit, which may result in operational failure. * Changes or modifications not approved by Omron Healthcare will declare the user warranty invalid. Do not disassemble or attempt to repair the unit or components. |
SUGGESTIONS BEFORE TAKING 1. Avoid eating, smoking, and exercising for 30 minutes before taking a measurement. Rest for at least 15 minutes before taking the measurement. 2. Stress raises blood pressure. Avoid taking measurements during stressful times. 3. Rest your left arm on a table so that the cuff is at the same level as your heart. 4. Wait 2-3 minutes between measurements. The wait time allows the arteries (动脉) to return to the condition prior to taking the blood pressure measurement. |
WARRANTY INFORMATION Your HEM-780 IntelliSenseTM Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor is guaranteed to be free from faults in materials and workmanship appearing within 5 years, when used in accordance with the instructions provided with the monitor. The above warranties extend only to the original retail purchaser. To obtain warranty service, ship the monitor and all of the components, together with proof of purchase and a note explaining the problem with $5.00 for return shipping and insurance to: Omron Healthcare, Inc. Attn: Repair Department 300 Lakeview Parkway Vernon Hills, IL 60061 |
1.Your measure reading might be inaccurate, if ________.
a. you have just finished your meal
b. you have just cycled home from work
c. your child is using the cell phone in the next room
d. your wife has just finished measuring her blood pressure
e. you have just been scolded by your boss because of the delayed work
A. a b c B. a b e C. b c e D. c d e
2.Which of the following monitors is under warranty?
A. The monitor that was bought six years ago.
B. The monitor that goes wrong due to false use.
C. The monitor whose purchase proof is missing.
D. The monitor whose system broke down when first used.
My brother and I were in Orlando Florida to witness our first Space Shuttle Launch. The Discovery was____to soar at 10:14 AM on a blue sky September day. I’d seen it____so many times on television,____now I was only minutes away from seeing it launch. And it’s the final demonstration of the____of success: Success Takes Off Like a Rocket.
Witnessing the Take Off:
Standing close to the Space Shuttle____home one unforgettable point—the Shuttle is the height of a 15-story building—it____4.5 million pounds—and NASA is trying to lift it 200 miles off the ground. On TV the accomplishments look so much____, so much easier.
Crowds of people are standing around with you to watch the Shuttle go. The countdown begins through the small____of hundreds of portable radios all tuned to the NASA station. It’s enough to get your heart beating____
When time is up, the side booster rockets are lit up and the eight explosive bolts____The first things you see are large white____clouds exploding away. Through the steam, you see the fire power. Then the Space Shuttle begins to inch off the pad and climb its way____Thousands upon millions of pounds of____can hardly lift the shuttle at all. But with ever increasing ease, the shuttle picks up and roars into the sky, headed into space attaining a____of over 17,000 mph.
It is within the first two minutes to launch the Space Shuttle that the great success lesson is____Fact: 85% of the shuttle’s fuel is consumed within the first 2 minutes just to get the 15-story super structure to its orbital____
And that’s exactly how success____: The first steps you take towards launching a successful career are the____and will require an enormous consumption of energy—a great big push. However,____you persist through the launch period, which can seem almost____for quite some time, everything gets easier and easier and your results get bigger and bigger.
1.A. advised B. hoped C. scheduled D. reminded
2.A. rise up B. come up C. step up D. go up
3.A. but B. and C. as D. therefore
4.A. universe B. world C. nature D. air
5.A. gets B. drives C. runs D. jumps
6.A. costs B. weighs C. measures D. sells
7.A. smaller B. greater C. bigger D. smoother
8.A. rockets B. workers C. speakers D. actors
9.A. off your mouth B. out of your stomach C. off your mind D. out of your chest
10.A. blow B. follow C. glow D. flow
11.A. gas B. smoke C. mist D. steam
12.A. downward B. upward C. forward D. outward
13.A. pull B. lift C. push D. pressure
14.A. distance B. degree C. height D. speed
15.A. ordinary B. absolute C. apparent D. present
16.A. attitude B. altitude C. route D. rail
17.A. puts off B. pays off C. takes off D. drops off
18.A. hardest B. easiest C. simplest D. biggest
19.A. while B. if C. unless D. until
20.A. useless B. careless C. wireless D. priceless
