Scientists say they now have proof to support the old-fashioned advice that it’s best to sleep on a problem．They say sleep strengthens the memory and helps the brain organize the masses of information we receive each day．
The lead researcher Bob Stickgold at the Harvard Medical School said, “Sleep helps us draw rules from our experiences．It’s like knowing the difference between dogs and cats even if it’s hard to explain．”
The US research team studied how well students remembered connections between words and symbols, reports New Scientist．They compared how the students performed if they had had a sleep between seeing the words and having the test, and if they had not slept．They found that people were better able to remember lists of related words after a night’s sleep than after the same time spent awake during the day．They also found it easier to remember themes that the words had in common．But they forgot around one in four more themes if they had been awake．
Prof．John Groeger, of Survey University’s Sleep Research Centre, said, “People have been trying for years to find out what the purpose of sleep is, as we know that only certain parts of it have a restorative （促使康复的）value．”
“We form and store huge numbers of experiences in the head every day, and sleep seems to be the way the brain deals with them all．”The phrase “to sleep on a problem” in Paragraph 1 most likely means “________”．
| A．to pay full attention to a problem |
| B．to wait until the next day for a decision |
| C．to sleep to forget a problem |
| D．to have difficulty in sleeping |
In the study by the US research team, students were asked to ________．
| A．put together words of similar meanings |
| B．remember words and their meanings |
| C．show their knowledge of words |
| D．make up lists of related words |
Which of the following may be easier to remember?
| A．Themes learned right before the test． |
| B．Rules from personal experiences． |
| C．Words learned before a good sleep． |
| D．Ideas stored together in the brain． |
What may be the importance of the research?
| A．It shows that sleep may help us manage information． |
| B．It helps find out the common themes of words． |
| C．It tells us that more sleep can improve health． |
| D．It proves the value of old-fashioned advice． |
When you meet someone for the first time, you will form an impression in your mind of that person in the first moment. Your reactions to other people, however, are really just barometers (晴雨表) for how you perceive(理解) yourself. Your reactions to others say more about you than they do about others. You cannot really love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate yourself. We are usually drawn to those who are most like us and tend to dislike those who display those aspects of ourselves that we dislike.
Therefore, you can allow others to be the mirror to illuminate (阐明;照亮) more clearly your own feelings of self-worth. Conversely, you can view the people you judge negatively as mirrors to show you what you are not accepting about yourself.
To survive together peacefully with others, you will need to learn tolerance. A big challenge is to shift your perspective from judgment of others to a lifelong exploration of yourself. Your task is to assess all the decisions, judgments you make onto others and to begin to view them as clues to how you can heal yourself and become whole.
Several days ago I had a business lunch with a man who displayed objectionable table manners. My first reaction was to judge him as rude and his table manners as annoying. When I noticed that I was judging him, I stopped and asked myself what I was feeling. I discovered that I was embarrassed to be seen with someone who was chewing with his mouth open and loudly blowing his nose. I was astonished to find how much I cared about how the other people in the restaurant perceived me.
Remember that your judgment of someone will not serve as a protective shield against you becoming like him. Just because I judge my lunch partner as rude does not prevent me from ever looking or acting like him. In the same way, extending tolerance to him would not cause me to suddenly begin chewing my food with my mouth open.
When you approach life in this manner, those with whom you have the greatest dissatisfactions as well as those you admire and love can be seen as mirrors, guiding you to discover parts of yourself that you reject and to embrace your greatest quality.The purpose of the author writing this passage is to advise people to _______.
| A．avoid inappropriate manners |
| B．learn tolerance towards others |
| C．pay attention to others’ needs and feelings |
| D．judge others favorably in any case |
The underlined word “objectionable” in Paragraph 4 has the closest meaning to __________.
| A．discouraging | B．disappointing | C．disgusting | D．disturbing |
According to the passage, the following statements are all true except ______.
| A．You can’t really love or hate others if they are similar to you. |
| B．We are easily attracted by someone who is similar to us. |
| C．Our first judgment of a person mostly comes from our personal opinion. |
| D．The moment we see a stranger, our mind forms an impression of that person. |
It can be implied from the text that __________.
| A．the writer’s first reaction to the man was to judge him as offensive |
| B．we will need to learn tolerance to co-exist with others |
| C．we shouldn’t focus on judging others but should constantly reflect on our own |
| D．the writer didn’t care about other people’s view of him |
To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督教徒) ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the man were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the "introduction of this wonderful new fruit -- or is it a vegetable?" As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an "evil fruit".
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. "What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because _______.
| A．it made Christians evil | B．it was the apple of Eden |
| C．it came from a forbidden land | D．it was religiously unacceptable |
What can we infer from the underlined part in Paragraph 3?
| A．The process of ignoring the tomato slowed down. |
| B．There was little progress in the study of the tomato. |
| C．The tomato was still refused in most western countries. |
| D．Most western people continued to get rid of the tomato. |
What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?
| A．To make himself a hero. |
| B．To remove people's fear of the tomato. |
| C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato. |
| D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory. |
What is the main purpose of the passage?
| A．To challenge people's fixed concept of the tomato. |
| B．To give an explanation to people's dislike of the tomato. |
| C．To present the change of people's attitudes to the tomato. |
| D．To introduce the establishment of the first tomato-canning factory. |
William Butler Yeats, a most famous Irish writer, was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. His childhood lacked the harmony that was typical of a happy family. Later, Yeats shocked his family by saying that he remembered "little of childhood but its pain". In fact, he inherited (继承) excellent taste in art from his family — both his father and his brother were painters. But he finally settled on literature, particularly drama and poetry.
Yeats had strong faith in the coming of new artistic movements. He set himself the fresh task in founding an Irish national theatre in the late 1890s. His early theatrical experiments, however, were not received favorably at the beginning. He didn't lose heart, and finally enjoyed success in his poetical drama.
Compared with his dramatic works, Yeats's poems attract much admiring notice. The subject matter includes love, nature, history, time and aging. Though Yeats generally relied on very traditional forms, he brought modern sensibility to them. As his literary life progressed, his poetry grew finer and richer, which led him to worldwide recognition.
He had not enjoyed a major public life since winning the Nobel Prize in 1923. Yet, he continued writing almost to the end of his life. Had Yeats stopped writing at age 40, he would probably now be valued as a minor poet, for there is no other example in literary history of a poet who produces his greatest works between the ages of 50 and 75. After Yeats's Death in 1939, W. H. Auden wrote, among others, the following lines:
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel (船) lie
Emptied of its poetry.Which of the following can describe Yeats's family?
| A．It filled Yeats's childhood with laughter. |
| B．It was shocked by Yeats's choice. |
| C．It was a typically wealthy family. |
| D．It had an artistic atmosphere. |
According to the passage, what do we know about Yeats's life?
| A．Yeats founded the first Irish theater. |
| B．Yeats stuck to modern forms in his poetry. |
| C．Yeats began to produce his best works from the 1910s. |
| D．Yeats was not favored by the public until the 1923 Noble Prize. |
What kind of feeling is expressed in W. H. Auden's lines?
| A．Envy | B．Sympathy | C．Emptiness | D．Admiration |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Yeats's literary achievements | B．Yeats's historical influence |
| C．Yeats's artistic ambition | D．Yeats's national honor |
Some years ago, a Miami woman walking through an office building noticed two men standing together．Several minutes after her leaving, the men murdered a person working in the building．The police determined that the woman was the only witness and could possibly describe them．However, her memory of the men proved disappointingly unclear．Several days later, psychologist Ronald Fisher was brought in to obtain a more complete account from the woman．His interview produced a breakthrough—the woman reported a clear picture of one of the suspects．The important information enabled the police to arrest the suspect and close the case．
The police asked Fisher for help because of his rich knowledge in cognitive(认知) interview, a kind of memory - rebuilding process．Memory researchers have found that people trying to remember a past event often only recall part of the relevant information．Human memory is selective and it is often distorted by stress．But a person's accurate recall of an event or understanding of a question can be improved using specific interviewing techniques．The "cognitive interview" was developed in the late 1990s．It encourages the witness to take an active role in recalling information rather than giving answers only to someone else's questions．The witness first describes what happened in his or her own words, with no interviewer interruptions．The interviewer then goes further with specific techniques, such as having the witness tell the details of what happened from different perspectives （角度） ．
The cognitive interview focuses on guiding witnesses through four general recalling techniques: thinking about physical surroundings and personal feelings that existed at the time of past events; reporting everything that connects to mind about those events, no matter how broken it is retelling events in a variety of time orders, such as from beginning to end, end to beginning, forward or backward; and adopting different perspectives while recalling events．
Experiments with police detectives trained in this demanding interview method find that they obtain nearly 50% more information from witnesses than before training, while error rates remain about the same．It is proved that cognitive interviews are quite important tools in improving the accuracy and completeness of witness testimony （证词）．The purpose of the passage is to _____．
| A．give an account of a murder case. |
| B．introduce an idea of cognitive interview. |
| C．prove Fisher was an expert in cognitive interview. |
| D．help a witness to recall information in a cognitive interview. |
What is required to recall in a cognitive interview for a witness?
| A．The exact time at which a murder took place． |
| B．The information about the event in the time order． |
| C．The important things that come to his or her mind． |
| D．The surroundings and feelings at the time of the event． |
The key point in a cognitive interview is that.
| A．the witness is encouraged to take part in recalling information. |
| B．the interviewer should interrupt the witness from time to time. |
| C．the interview should take place outside the police station. |
| D．the witness should recall details at the scene of the event. |
The underlined word "distorted" in the passage probably means " ____
| A．arranged | B．balanced | C．changed | D．examined |
Blind photography sounds strange．But a striking exhibition of photographs in California argues that it develops as a result of the contemporary art．The show "Sight Unseen", at the California Museum of Photography until Aug．29, includes everything: underwater scenes, landscapes, abstracts and everything else you might expect from a "sighted" photographer．
How do the blind take their photographs? Some rely on assistants to set up and then describe the shots （镜头） , and others just point and shoot in the right place．"Just like any good artists," says McCulloh．"They have their unique ways of operating．" One participating photographer is Pete Eckert, an artist with multiple degrees in design and sculpture who only turned to photography after losing his vision in the mid-1990s．He opens the shutter （快门） on his camera and then uses flashlights, lights, and candles to paint his scene on film．A former fashion photographer in Chicago, Weston, lost his vision due to AIDS in 1996 and focuses on images of destruction and disability．His photos are also a star of the show．
What do gallery-goers say? "I was very impressed by it．The technique and experience was amazingly different," says John Hesketh, a printmaker in Anaheim．"You never have a sense of feeling sorry for these people because they've worked very hard to prove their value．"
Beyond the praise, however, the exhibition also makes a great example for disabled people everywhere．That point was explained in early May during a discussion on the TV show．At the very end of the talk, one attendee expressed his opinion．"This exhibition is extraordinary and revolutionary for many reasons．I think that by being an artist with a disability, you are continuing the work of those people who fought for basic civil rights to gain access and to have a voice．In that way, it's so wonderful that your photographs say it all．"From the passage we know that some blind people take photos by.
| A．describing the things to their assistants. |
| B．holding the camera and shooting randomly. |
| C．opening the shutter with the help of others. |
| D．using special equipment designed for them. |
We can learn from the passage that blind photographers ______.
| A．were not born blind. |
| B．do jobs related to art. |
| C．focus on different subjects. |
| D．like photos of destruction. |
What is people's reaction to the blind photography show?
| A．They admire the blind photographers' hard work． |
| B．They feel really sorry for those blind photographers． |
| C．They think some have good techniques while others not． |
| D．They can understand the real meaning of each photograph． |
The significance of the exhibition lies in the fact that ______．
| A．the California Museum of Photography receives praises for holding the show. |
| B．the public have a chance to know what the blind people are concerned about. |
| C．the blind photographers have a good place to show their works. |
| D．the exhibition can be very inspiring to the blind in the world. |