The first people who gave names to hurricanes were those who knew them best — the people of Puerto Rico. The small island of Puerto Rico is in the West Indies, off the coast of Florida. This is where all the hurricanes begin that strike the east coast of the United States. Often they pass near Puerto Rico or cross it on their way north. The people of Puerto Rico expect some of these unwelcome visitors every year. Each one is named after the Saint’s Day on which it arrives. Two of the most destructive storms were the Santo Ana in 1840 and the San Ciriaco in 1899.
Giving girls’ names to hurricanes is a fairly new idea. It all began with a story called “Storm”, written by George Stewart in 1941. In it a weatherman amused himself by naming storms after girls he knew. He named one Maria. The story describes how she Maria grew and developed, and how she changed the lives of people when she struck the United States.
Weathermen of the U.S. Army and Navy used the same system during World WarⅡ. They were studying weather conditions over the Pacific Ocean. One of their duties was to warn American ships and planes when a storm was coming. Whenever they spotted one, they gave it a girl’s name. The first one of the year was given a name beginning with [A]. The second one got a name beginning with [B]. They used all the letters from A to W, and still the storms kept coming. They had to use three lists from A to W to have enough names to go around. This was the first list of hurricane names that followed the alphabet. It served as a model for the system the Weather Bureau (局) introduced in 1942.
Before 1950 the Weather Bureau had no special system for naming hurricanes. When a hurricane was born down in the West Indies, the Weather Bureau simply collected information about it. It reported how fast the storm was moving and where it would go next. Weather reports warned people in the path of the hurricane, so that they could do whatever was necessary to protect themselves.
This system worked out fine as long as weather reports talked about only one hurricane at a time. But one week in September 1950 there were three hurricanes at the same time. The things began to get confused. Some people got the hurricanes mixed up and didn’t know which was which. This convinced the Weather Bureau that it needed a code for naming the storms in order to avoid confusion in the future.
1．Hurricanes were first named after the _________.
A. date on which they occurred
B. place where they began
C. amount of destruction they did
D. particular feature they have
2．The practice of giving girls’ names to hurricanes was started by _________.
A. a radio operator B. an author C. a sailor D. local people
3．The purpose for which weathermen of the army and navy began using girls’ names for hurricanes was _________.
A. to keep information from the enemy
B. to follow the standard method of the United States
C. not given in the article
D. to remember a certain girl
4．The Weather Bureau began naming hurricanes because it would help them _________.
A. collect information more rapidly
B. warn people more efficiently
C. make use of military (军事的) records
D. remember them
If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars，we would go in darkness happily，the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal(夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead，we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it's the only way to explain what we've done to the night: We've engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences 一 called light pollution 一 whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design，which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. III-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels 一 and light rhythms - to which many forms of life, including, ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected .
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze(霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We've grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit nigh, - dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth, is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We've lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further form the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing, Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet(磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being "captured" by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times righter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint including most other creatures ,we do need darkness .Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our making,we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage-the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night .In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way-the edge of our galaxy arching overhead.
| 1． |
According to the passage, human being
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| 2． |
What does "it"(Paragraph 1) most probably refer to?
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| 3． |
The writer mentions birds and frogs to
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| 4． |
It is implied in the last paragraph that
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| 5． |
What might be the best title for the passage?
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Graph can be a very useful tool for conveying information especially numbers， percentages, and other data . A graph gives the reader a picture to interpret. That can be a lot more pages and pages and pages explaining the data .
Graphs can seem frightening, but reading a graph is a lot like reading a story. The graph has a title ,a main idea ,and supporting details .You can use your active reading skills to analyze and understand graphs just like any other text .
Most graphs have a few basic parts: a caption or introduction paragraph, a title , a legend or key, and labeled axes. An active reader looks at each part of the graph before trying to interpret the data. Captions will usually tell you where the data came from (for example, a scientific study of 400 African elephants from 1980 to 2005). Captions usually summarize the author's main point as well. The title is very important. It tells you the main idea of the graph by stating what kind of information is being shown. A legend, also called a key ,is a guide to the symbols and colors used in the graph. Many graphs, including bar graphs and line graphs, have two axes that form a corner, Usually these axes are the left side and the bottom of the graph .Each axis will always have a label. The label tells you what each axis measures.
Bar Graphs
A bar graph has two axes and uses bars to show amounts. In Graph 1 ,we see that the x-axis shows grades that students earned, and the y-axis shows bow many students earned each grade .You can see that 6 students earned an A because the bar for A stretches up to 6 on the vertical measurement. There is a lot of information we can get from a simple graph like this(See Graph 1).
Line Graphs
A line graph looks similar to a bar graph ,but instead of Bars, it plots points and connects them with a line .It has the same parts as a bar graph - two labeled axes -and can be read the same way .To read a line graph, it's important to focus on the points of intersection rather than the line segments between the points, This type of graph is most commonly used to show how something changes over time.
Here is a graph that charts how far a bird flies during the first Five days of its spring migration (See Graph 2).
The unit of measurement for the x-axis is days. The unit of measurement for the y-axis is kilometers. Thus we can see that ,on the first day, the pipit flew 20 kilometers. The line segment goes up between Day 1 and Day 2,which means that the bird flew farther on Day 2.If the line segment angled dawn, as between Day 4 and Day 5,it would mean that the bird flew fewer kilometers than the day before. This line graph is a quick, visual way to tell the reader about the bird's migration.
Pie Graphs
A typical pie graph looks like a circular pie. The circle is divided into sections, and each section represents a fraction of the data. The graph is commonly used to show percentages; the whole pie represents l00 percent, so each piece is a fraction of the whole.
A pie graph might include a legend，or it might use icons or labels within each slice. This pie graph shows on month's expense, (See Graph 3 ).
Food $ 25
Movies $ 12
Clothing $ 36
Savings $ 20
Books $ 7
| 1． |
When used in a graph，a legend is
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| 2． |
What is the total number of students who earned a C or better ?
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| 3． |
The bird covered the longest distance on
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| 4． |
Which of the following cost Amy most ?
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阅读下列材料，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题纸上将该选项标号涂黑。
A
From the very beginning of school we make books and reading a constant source of possible failure and public humiliation. When children are little we make them read aloud, before the teacher and other children, so that we can be sure they “know” all the words they are reading. This means that when they don’t know a word, they are going to make a mistake, right in front of everyone. After having taught fifth-grade classes for four years, I decided to try at all costs to rid them of their fear and dislike of books, and to get them to read oftener and more adventurously.
One day soon after school had started, I said to them, “Now I’m going to say something about reading that you have probably never heard a teacher say before. I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me. Also I’m not going to ask you what words mean. “
The children sat stunned and silent. Was this a teacher talking? One girl, who had just come to us from a school where she had had a very hard time, looked at me steadily for a long time after I had finished. Then, still looking at me, she said slowly and seriously, Mr Holt, do you really mean that?” I said just as seriously, “I mean every word of it.
During the spring she really astonished me. One day, she was reading at her desk, From a glimpse of the illustrations I thought I knew what the book was. I said to myself, “It can’t be,” and went to take a closer look. Sure enough, she was reading Moby Dick , in edition with woodcuts. I said, “Don’t you find parts of it rather heavy going?” She answered, Oh, sure, but I just skip over those parts and go on to the next good part. “
This is exactly what reading should be and in school so seldom is, an exciting, joyous adventure. Find something, dive into it, take the good parts, skip the bad parts, get what you can out of it, go on to something else. How different is our mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of “understanding” that can be dug out of a book. According to the passage, children’s fear and dislike of books may result from________.
| A．reading little and thinking little |
| B．reading often and adventurously |
| C．being made to read too much |
| D．being made to read aloud before others |
The teacher told his students to read______ .
| A．for enjoyment |
| B．for knowledge |
| C．for a larger vocabulary |
| D．for higher scores in exams |
Upon hearing the teacher’s talk, the children probably felt that________.
| A．it sounded stupid |
| B．it was not surprising at all |
| C．it sounded too good to be true |
| D．it was no different from other teachers' talk |
Which of the following statements about the girl is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．She skipped over those easy parts while reading. |
| B．She had a hard time finishing the required reading tasks. |
| C．She learned to appreciate some parts of the difficult books. |
| D．She turned out to be a top student after coming to this school. |
From the teacher's point of view,_________ .
| A．children cannot tell good parts from bad parts while reading |
| B．children should be left to decide what to read and how to read |
| C．reading is never a pleasant and inspiring experience in school |
| D．reading involves understanding every little piece of information |
Conflict is on the menu tonight at the café La Chope. This evening, as on every Thursday night, psychologist Maud Lehanne is leading two of France’s favorite pastimes, coffee drinking and the “talking cure”. Here they are learning to get in touch with their true feelings. It isn’t always easy. They customers-some thirty Parisians who pay just under $2 (plus drinks) per session-care quick to intellectualize (高谈阔论)，slow to open up and connect. “You are forbidden to say ‘one feels,’ or ‘people think’,”Lehane told them. “Say ‘I think,’ ‘Think me’.”
A café society where no intellectualizing is allowed? It couldn’t seem more un-French. But Lehanne’s psychology café is about more than knowing oneself: It’s trying to help the city’s troubled neighborhood cafes. Over the years, Parisian cafes have fallen victim to changes in the French lifestyle-longer working hours, a fast food boom and a younger generation’s desire to spend more time at home. Dozens of new theme cafes appear to change the situation. Cafes focused around psychology, history, and engineering are catching on, filling tables well into the evening.
The city’s psychology cafes, which offer great comfort, are among the most popular places. Middle-aged homemakers, retirees, and the unemployed come to such cafes to talk about lover, anger, and dreams with a psychologist. And they come to Lehance’s group just to learn to say what they feel. There’s a strong need in Paris for communication, says Maurice Frisch, a cafe La Chope regular who works as religious instructor in a nearby church. “People have few real friends. And they need to open up” Lehanne says she’d like to see psychology cafes all over France. “If people had normal lives, these cafes would’t exist”, she says,”If life weren’t a battle, people wouln’t need a special place just to speak.” But them, it wouldn’t be France.What are people encouraged to do at the cafe La Chope?
| A．Learn a new subject |
| B．Keep in touch with friends. |
| C．Show off their knowledge. |
| D．Express their true feelings. |
How are cafes affected by French lifestyle changes?
| A．They are less frequently visited. |
| B．They stay open for longer hours. |
| C．They have bigger night crowds. |
| D．They start to serve fast food. |
What are theme cafes expected to do?
| A．Create more jobs. |
| B．Supply better drinks. |
| C．Save the cafe business. |
| D．Serve the neighborhood. |
Why are psychology cafes becoming popular in Paris?
| A．They bring people true friendship. |
| B．They give people spiritual support. |
| C．They help people realize their dreams. |
| D．They offer a platform for business links. |
Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the most popular of modern artists. The Pompidou Centre in Paris is showing its respect and admiration for the artist and his powerful personality with an exhibition bringing together over 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings and more. Among the works and masterworks on exhibition the visitor will find the best pieces, most importantly The Persistence of Memory. There is also L’Enigme sans Fin from 1938, works on paper, objects, and projects for stage and screen and selected parts from television programmes reflecting the artist’s showman qualities.
The visitor will enter the World of Dali through an egg and is met with the beginning, the world of birth. The exhibition follows a path of time and subject with the visitor exiting through the brain.
The exhibition shows how Dali draws the viewer between two infinities (无限). “From the infinity small to the infinity large, contraction and expansion coming in and out of focus: amazing Flemish accuracy and the showy Baroque of old painting that he used in his museum-theatre in Figueras,” explains the Pompidou Centre.
The fine selection of the major works was done in close collaboration (合作)with the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, and with contributions from other institutions like the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.Which of the following best describe Dali according to Paragraph 1?
| A．Optimistic. | B．Productive |
| C．Generous. | D．Traditional. |
What is Dali’s The Persistence of Memory considered to be?
| A．One of his masterworks. |
| B．A successful screen adaptation. |
| C．An artistic creation for the stage. |
| D．One of the beat TV programmes. |
How are the exhibits arranged at the World of Dali?
| A．By popularity. |
| B．By importance. |
| C．By size and shape. |
| D．By time and subject. |
What does the word “contributions” in the last paragraph refer to?
| A．Artworks. | B．Projects. |
| C．Donations. | D．Documents. |