A characteristic of American culture that has become almost a tradition is to respect the self made man—the man who has risen to the top through his own efforts,usually beginning by working with his hands.While the leader in business or industry or the college professor occupies a higher social position and commands greater respect in the community than the common labourer or even the skilled factory worker,he may take pains to point out that his father started life in America as a farmer or labourer of some sort.
This attitude toward manual(体力的) labour is now still seen in many aspects of American life.One is invited to dinner at a home that is not only comfortably but even luxuriously(豪华地)furnished and in which there is every evidence of the fact that the family has been able to afford foreign travel,expensive hobbies,and college education for the children;yet the hostess probably will cook the dinner herself,will serve it herself and will wash dishes afterward,furthermore the dinner will not consist merely of something quickly and easily assembled from contents of various cans and a cake or a pie bought at the nearby bakery.On the contrary,the hostess usually takes pride in careful preparation of special dishes.A professional man may talk about washing the car,digging in his flowerbeds,painting the house.His wife may even help with these things,just as he often helps her with the dishwashing.The son who is away at college may wait on table and wash dishes for his living,or during the summer he may work with a construction gang on a highway in order to pay for his education.
1.From paragraph 1,we can know that in America_________.
A.people tend to have a high opinion of the selfmade man
B.people can always rise to the top through their own efforts
C.college professors win great respect from common workers
D.people feel painful to mention their fathers as labourers
According to the passage,the hostess cooks dinner herself mainly because_________.
A.servants in America are hard to get
B.she takes pride in what she can do herself
C.she can hardly afford servants
D.it is easy to prepare a meal with canned food
3.The expression“wait on table” in the second paragraph means“_________”.
A.work in a furniture shop
B.keep accounts for a bar
C.wait to lay the table
D.serve customers in a restaurant
4.Which of the following may serve as the best title of the passage?
A.A Respectable Self made Family B.American Attitude toward Manual Labour
C.Characteristics of American Culture D.The Development of Manual Labour
Americans love their cars. There are more than eight cars for every 10 Americans, but most of the time, they sit idle(闲置的), parked in a driveway or on the street. Now, several companies on the U. S. West Coast are helping people rent their personal car to someone else when they don’t need it.
Eric Loebel is one of those people. For a small price, he wants to let his Oregon neighbors “borrow” his car. It’s a dark blue, model year 2000 Volvo car. The sales and marketing consultant says he doesn’t use it much. “My wife and I are huge bike commuters and almost don’t need a car,” he says.
Loebel is one of the first car owners in Portland to list his wheels for rent through a so-called
“peer-to-peer car sharing” service called Getaround. Com. “Cars are so expensive to own,” he says “This can definitely offset(弥补) some of the cost.” The website lets car owners decide for themselves how much to charge borrowers to rent by the hour, day or week.
Person-to-person rentals began in Germany a decade ago, and there are a handful of similar companies in Europe and Australia. The concept caught on quickly in California over the past year according to John Atcheson, vice president of Getaround, one of four carsharing startups in the San Francisco area.
“We have had amazing cars leaping into our system,” Atcheson says. “Not just 1995 pickup trucks but we have had late model Mercedes, Audis, any type of car you can imagine. We actually have a Tesla Roadster—a $150,000 sports car.”
Another service called JustShareIt plans to stand out by going beyond cars. Its founder says the company will offer person-to-person rentals of power boats, jet skis and snowmobeles(雪地机 动车) too.What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．There are too many cars in America. |
| B．Most cars are rarely used in America. |
| C．Commuting by bike is popular in America. |
| D．Americans try renting their cars to strangers. |
Which of the following is true of Getaround.com?
| A．It gives tips on saving costs on cars. |
| B．It provides a platform for car sharers. |
| C．It provides advice on driving. |
| D．It answers drivers’ questions person-to-person. |
We learn form Atcheson’s words that.
| A．they offer international services |
| B．they first formed in San Francisco |
| C．they offer cars of different types |
| D．their customers prefer new cars |
JustShareIt wants to make itself more attractive by.
| A．providing lower rent |
| B．providing extra sports equipments |
| C．offering person-to-person service |
| D．offering other things for rent |
Bright red post boxes, the Queen and queuing---what do they all have in common? They are all important parts of British life. At least I thought so.
However, the ability to queue for long periods of time, once believed to be a traditional characteristic of British, is no longer tolerated by people in the UK, according to a survey done by British bank Barclays.
Once upon a time, queuing was seen as normal. During World War Ⅱ, everyone had to queue up to receive their daily supply of foods. In fact, if you didn’t stand up and wait in line with all the others, it was seen as uncivilized(不文明的).
The famous English double-decker buses, with only one entrance, might also help explain why queuing was seen as part of British life. Almost always, there is a queue to get in.
But perhaps the British are tired of being pushed past by the Spanish, the Italian or the French as they queue up to get a table at a restaurant. The people of these other European countries have more than one entrance to their buses, which explains their more relaxed attitude to the queue.
Two minutes is now the longest time most British people are prepared to stand and wait. But could it be that the Internet, which allows us to carry out tasks quickly, is the main reason why British people are no longer prepared to queue?
“Used to buying without delay, customers are even giving up purchases rather than wait their turn,” says Stuart Neal of Barclaycard. “Shoppers are also less likely to queue for long if the item they are buying is of low value.”
Perhaps I will have to replace “queuing” with “impatience” in my list of things I relate to the British.What can we learn about the tradition of queuing in Britain?
| A．It was a product of the slow pace of life. |
| B．It was a long time tradition as old as the Queen. |
| C．It was considered a symbol of a civilized behavior. |
| D．It has made the British different from other Europeans. |
According to the passage, the British gradually stopped queuing because.
| A．they prefer shopping online |
| B．they follow the example of foreigners |
| C．British buses have more than one entrance |
| D．the Internet has changed their way of life |
It can be learned from the text that .
| A．the British get impatient with queuing for long |
| B．the British have to queue to receive foods |
| C．the British like to eat in foreign restaurants |
| D．the British prefer to take double-decker buses |
The author’s main purpose of writing the passage is .
| A．to tell us the influence of the Internet on the British ways of life |
| B．to compare the cultural differences between Britain and other European countries |
| C．to talk about the changes in the attitude to queuing in Britain |
| D．to report his research on the British ways of life |
Starting a bank a child’s play? Absolutely, if you ask some enterprising youngsters in India, who have not only managed to establish one, but also, unlike many of the large International banks, run it successfully since 2001. What’s even more impressive is that the young bankers and their 90,004---clients are all homeless!
The Children’s Development Khazana (treasure) opened its first branch in 2001 at a homeless shelter in New Deli as a way to help the street children protect their hard-earned money from thieves. Since then, the idea has caught on like wildfire.
Today, Khazana has 12 branches all across New Deli, with a total of Rupees 12lakh (about 22,000USD) in deposits. Not only that, there are now 77 affiliated branches in other parts of Asia, ranging from Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to the island of Sri Lanka, and even Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. While no deposit or balance is too small for the bank, they do have strict regulations about where the money is earned from. Funds obtained by begging or selling drugs are not welcomed at this bank !
Also, unlike the real banks, all employees are volunteers, which means that they go to school or a paying job during the day and work at the bank in the evening. To ensure that everybody gets a chance to participate in running the branch, two volunteer managers are elected from the clients base every six months.
Karan, the current manager is just 14-year-old. During the day he earns a living by helping out the cleaning crew at wedding banquets and other big parties. In the evening, he handles the deposits（存款）and withdrawals（取款）in the bank. After the bank closes, he along with an adult volunteer from the shelter head over to a regular bank and deposit the funds collected into Khazana’s interest-bearing bank account and though it started with one single purpose. The Children’s Development Khazana is today a well-developed bank, one kids can not only deposit money which earns them 5% interest, but also, request loans for family emergencies, to start a business or even to pay for school.The initial aim of starting the Children’s Development Khazana is to______.
| A．provide for jobs for homeless children |
| B．help homeless families with emergencies |
| C．sponsor homeless children to go to school |
| D．safeguard homeless children’s hard-earned money |
The children’s Development Khazana is different from regular banks in that_______.
| A．all its workers are street children |
| B．it pays its customers no interest |
| C．customers can be made its managers |
| D．it opens in the evening six month a year |
According to the passage, the Children’s Development Khazana________.
| A．welcomes all money, however small it is |
| B．offers more and better service than before |
| C．is run by a 14-year-old boy, Karan alone |
| D．has more than 70 branches across India |
People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions---and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
“We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions,” Jack said. “Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect the mouth.”
According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used reliably to convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the facial movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 Eastern Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than did Westerners. “The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions,” Jack said. “Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less.”
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.The discovery shows that Westerners______.
| A．pay equal attention to the eyes and the mouth |
| B．consider facial expressions universally reliable |
| C．observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways |
| D．have more difficulty in recognizing facial expression |
What were the people asked to do in the study?
| A．To make a face at each other |
| B．To get their faces impressive |
| C．To classify some face pictures |
| D．To observe the researchers’ faces |
What does the underlined word “they” in paragraph 6 refer to?
| A．The participants in the study |
| B．The researchers of the study |
| C．The errors made during the study |
| D．The data collected from the study |
In comparison with the Westerners, Easterners are likely to______.
| A．do translation more successfully |
| B．study the mouth frequently |
| C．examine the eyes more attentively |
| D．read facial expressions more correctly |
Last July, my 12-year-old car died on California’s Santa Ana Freeway. It was hour before sunset, and I was 25 miles from home. I couldn't reach anyone to pick me up, so I decided to take a bus. Not knowing the routes, I figured I’d just head east. A bus pulled up, and I asked the driver how far she was going. “Four more lights,” she said. There was another bus I could take from there. This clearly was going to be a long night. She dropped me off at the end of her route and told me which bus to look for. After waiting 30 minutes, I began to think about a very expensive taxi ride home. Then a bus pulled up. There was no lighted number above its windshield. It was out of service. But the door opened, and I was surprised to find that it was the same driver. “I just can’t leave you here,” she said. “This isn’t the nicest place. I will give you a ride home.” “You will drive me home in the bus?” I asked, perplexed. “No, I’ll take you in my car,” she said. “It’s a long way,” I protested. “Come on,” she said. “I have nothing else to do.” As we drove from the station in her car,, she began telling me a story. A few days earlier, her brother had run out of gas. A good Samaritan（乐善好施者）picked him up, took him to a service station and then back to his car. “I’m just passing the favor along,” she said. When I offered her money as a thank you, she wouldn’t hear of it . “That wouldn’t make it a favor,” she said. “Just do something nice to somebody. Pass it along.”Why did the writer say that he would have a long night?
| A．He wondered how long he had to wait for the next bus. |
| B．No driver would give him a ride. |
| C．He didn’t know the routes. |
| D．He perhaps would have to take a taxi. |
Why did the writer change his mind after waiting for 30 minutes at the end of the route?
| A．No bus would come at the time. |
| B．A taxi ride would be more comfortable. |
| C．He became impatient and a bit worried. |
| D．He knew the driver would never return |
The bus driver drove the writer home later because______.
| A．she happened to go in the same direction |
| B．she wanted to do something good for other people |
| C．her brother told her to do so |
| D．she wanted to earn more money |
The bus driver hoped that the writer_____.
| A．would do as she did | B．would keep her in memory |
| C．would give the money to others | D．would do her a favor |