It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax, which is a shortening of facsimile originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. So, nouns turn into verbs in two easy stages. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun. I wasn’t really sure whether people said this, but someone told me recently that they had favorited a site I was looking for and so they could easily give me its address.
In the late 1980s I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like “I’ll page you as soon as I know what time we’re meeting”. They couldn't say it to me, though; I refused to have one. So my children bought me a mobile phone, now known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message （either spoken or written）for them on their phone．Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!
60. “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means .
| A．it was a firm arrangement |
| B．it was an uncertain arrangement |
| C．the arrangement should be written as a diary |
| D．he prefers a pencil to a pen |
61. A website address can be easily found if it has been .
| A．emailed | B．messaged | C．favorited | D．texted |
62. Which of the following has not been used as a verb yet?
| A．message | B．page | C．email | D．mobile |
63. The best title for this passage is ．
| A．New Verbs from Old Nouns |
| B．The Development of the English language |
| C．New Technology and New words |
| D．Technology and Language |
There ’re eight countries waiting to join the European Union.Croatia and Turkey started talks on 3 October 2005.Turkey could complete them in 15 years，Croatia by 2011.The other Balkan Countries have been told they can join the EU one day，if they meet the standards.
Albania isn’t expected to join the EU until 2015 at the earliest.It applied (申请) to become an EU member on 28 April 2009.The European Commission (委员会) has agreed to allow Albanians to travel freely within the EU.In December 2009 the EU said the rule of law and the fight against organized crime were still the “big problems” for Albania.
The EU and Albania reached the SAA (稳定和联合协议)，seen as the first step towards becoming a member，in June 2006.The talks took threeandahalf years，three times longer than those between the EU and Croatia.This is because the EU thought Albania was moving too slowly in its fight against organized crime.The EU also has doubts about Albania’s energy department，which suffers from bad supplies.
BosniaHerzegovina isn’t expected to join the EU until 2015 at the earliest.More than ten years after the 1992～1995 war，it signed an SAA with the EU in June 2008.The EU was satisfied with progress in four important areas，including public broadcasting (广播)．But in December 2009 the EU asked strongly for some other changes, and worried about the country’s future.
Iceland is the latest country to want to become an EU member.It applied in July 2009 and the talks began in July 2010.But progress will depend on whether Iceland can deal with a longrunning problem with the UK and the Netherlands.But some Icelanders think they would be better off outside the EU，fearing the EU’s effect on their traditional fishing.Which of the following countries is expected to join the EU the earliest?
| A．Turkey. | B．Albania. |
| C．Croatia. | D．BosniaHerzegovina. |
What may prevent BosniaHerzegovina from becoming an EU member?
| A．Its large population. |
| B．Its energy department. |
| C．Its organized crime. |
| D．Its worrying future. |
Why don’t some Icelanders want their country to become an EU member?
| A．They are worried about their fishing. |
| B．They are worried about relations with the UK. |
| C．They are afraid they will lose a lot of job opportunities. |
| D．They are afraid their country won’t be independent. |
What is the best title of the passage?
| A．EU enlargement: The next eight |
| B．The last eight countries that joined EU |
| C．The relationships among EU countries |
| D．Economic development of EU countries |
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is a popular saying in the United States. Other countries have similar sayings. It is true that all of us need recreation. We cannot work all the time if we are going to keep good health and enjoy life.
Everyone has his own way of relaxing. Perhaps the most popular way is to take part in sports. there are team sports, such as baseball, basketball, and football. There are individual sports, also, such as golf and swimming. In addition hiking, fishing, skiing, and mountain climbing have a great attraction for people who like to be outdoors.
Not everyone who enjoys sports events likes to take part in them. Many people prefer to be onlookers, either watching them on television, or listening to them on the radio. When there is an important baseball game or boxing match it is almost impossible to get tickets; everyone wants to attend.
Chess, card-playing, and dancing are forms of indoor recreation enjoyed by many people. It doesn’t matter whether we play a fast game of ping-pong, concentrate over the bridge table, or go walking through the woods on a brisk autumn afternoon. It is important for every one to relax from time to time and enjoy some form of recreation.The underlined word “recreation”(paragraph 1)here means_______.
| A．walking and climbing |
| B．form of play or amusement |
| C．creating something |
| D．joy and happiness |
according to the passage, perhaps the followings are our ordinary ways of relaxation for common people except______.
| A．listening to music | B．playing card |
| C．going out for fishing | D．boxing match |
Which of the following statements is TRUE to the passage?
| A．The popular British saying mentioned in the passage has familiar doing in other countries. |
| B．All of us need recreation in our lives if we cannot work all the time. |
| C．Sometimes those who enjoy sports events like to take part in them, too. |
| D．It is almost impossible for everyone who wants to watch an important baseball to get a ticket. |
Like fine food, good writing is something we approach with pleasure and enjoy from the first taste to the last. And good writers, like good cooks, do not suddenly appear full-blown. Quite the opposite, just as the cook has to undergo a particular training, mastering the skills of his trade, the writer must sit at his desk and devote long hours to achieving a style in his writing, whatever its purpose is—schoolwork, matters of business, or purely social communication.
You may be sure that the more painstaking the effort, the more effective the writing, and the more rewarding.
There are still some faraway places in the world where you might find a public scribe to do your business or social writing for you, for money. There are a few managers who are lucky enough to have the service of that rare kind of secretary who can take care of all sorts of letter writing with no more than a quick note to work from. But for most of us, if there is any writing to be done, we have to do it ourselves.
We have to write school papers, business papers or home papers. We are constantly called on to put words to papers. It would be difficult to count the number of such words, messages, letters, and reports put into mails or delivered by hand, but the daily figures must be extremely large. What is more, everyone who writes expects, or at least hopes whatever he writes will be read, from first word to last, not just thrown into some “letters-to-be-read” files or into a wastepaper basket. This is the reason we bend our efforts toward learning and practicing the skills of interesting, effective writing. In this passage, good writing is compared to fine food because _______.
| A．both are enjoyable |
| B．both are hard to learn |
| C．both are necessary to life |
| D．both take a long time to prepare |
according to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
| A．Writing skills are less important than experience. |
| B．A good writer should have his own way of writing. |
| C．A good writer should learn to write all kinds of articles. |
| D．The more efforts one makes, the more money one can earn. |
The author thinks that the most important reason for us to practice writing skills is _______.
| A．to earn our living |
| B．to attract others to read |
| C．to do daily reports easily |
| D．to become good secretaries |
The purpose of the author in writing this passage is to _______.
| A．comment and blame |
| B．introduce and describe |
| C．explain and persuade |
| D．interest and inform |
Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding of black culture in America.
During the 1940’s and the 1950’s, Gwendolyn Brooks used her poems to describe conditions among the poor, racial (种族的) inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women.
But her skill was more than her ability to write about struggling black people. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience.
Gwendolyn Brooks once said that she wrote about what she saw and heard in the street. She said she found most of her materials through looking out of the window of her second-floor apartment in Chicago, Illinois.
In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago, where many black people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was “A Street in Bronzeville” that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skills and her powerful descriptions about the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection.
In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She won the prize for her second book of poems called “Annie Allen”. “Annie Allen” is a collection of poetry about a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and a mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death and poverty (贫穷).
Gwendolyn Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life.
Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called “Maud Martha”. “Maud Martha” attracted little attention when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult lives of many women are popular among female writers today.Gwendolyn Brooks became world-famous because .
| A．she was an expert on the language of poetry |
| B．she introduced black culture by writing poems |
| C．she fought for black rights by writing poems |
| D．her poems showed the lives of black women |
Which of the following can we learn from the text?
| A．Gwendolyn Brooks’ poems focused on black people in Africa. |
| B．Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature was important to Brooks. |
| C．Gwendolyn Brooks used to suffer a lot from drugs. |
| D．Gwendolyn Brooks was very strict with herself. |
How did Gwendolyn Brooks get ideas for most of her poems?
| A．By observing life. | B．By having talks. | C．By reading widely. | D．By traveling. |
We can infer that the book “Annie Allen” mainly deals with.
| A．family life | B．inequality | C．adventure | D．failure |
There is an old Chinese tale about a woman whose only son died. Sadly, she went to the holy man and asked, “What magical things do you have to bring my son back to life?”
Instead of sending her away or reasoning with her, he said to her, “Fetch me a mustard (芥菜) seed from a home that has never known sadness. We will use it to drive the sadness out of your life.” The woman happily went off at once in search of that magical mustard seed.
She first came to a splendid house, knocked at the door and said, “I am looking for a home that has never known sadness. Is it such a place? It is very important to me.”
They told her “You’ve certainly come to the wrong place” and began to describe all the tragic things that had happened to them recently.
The woman said to herself, “I have had misfortune of my own. Who is able to help these poor, unfortunate people?” She stayed to comfort them, and then went on in search of a home that had never known sadness. But wherever she went, she found one tale after another of sadness and misfortune. She became so involved in other people’s sorrow that finally she forgot about her search for the magical mustard seed, never realizing that it had, in fact, driven the sadness out of her life. Which of the following does the story lead us to believe?
| A．Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. |
| B．Time passed cannot be called back again. |
| C．You can’t feel happy unless compared with others. |
| D．You can’t expect to know the result until you have tried. |
Instead of sending the woman away, the holy man.
| A．asked her to help him first |
| B．tried to comfort her with kind words |
| C．asked her to look for a thing that didn’t exist at all |
| D．tried to encourage her by talking with her |
Leaving the holy man, the woman.
| A．was full of hope | B．was filled with sadness |
| C．was determined to try again | D．became discouraged |
The best title for the text would be “”.
| A．A woman’s misfortune | B．A nice surprise | C．The holy man’s faith | D．Cure for sadness |