There are many American expressions about insects--- like bees, for example. Bees are known as very hard workers. They appear to be busy, moving around their homes, or hives. So you might say you were as busy as a bee if you spent your weekend cleaning your house. In fact, you might say your house was a beehive of activity if your whole family was helping you clean. You also might say you made a beeline for something if you went there right away. When we go to see a movie, my friend always make
s a beeline for the place where they sell popcorn .
Here is an expression about bees that is not used much any more, but we like it anyway. We think it was first used in the 1920s. If something was the best of its kind, you might say it was the bee’s knees. Now, we admit that we do not know how this expression developed. In fact, we do not even know if bees have knees!
If your friend cannot stop talking about something because she thinks it is important, you might say she has a bee in her bonnet. If someone asks you a personal question, you might say “that is none of your beeswax”. This means none of your business.
Speaking of personal questions, there is an expression when their children ask, “Where do babies come from?” Parents who discuss sex and reproduction say this is talking about the birds and bees.
Butterflies are beautiful insects, but you would not want to have butterflies in your stomach. That means to be nervous about having to do something, like speaking in front of a crowd. You would also not want to have ants in your trousers. That is, to be unable to sit still.If you make a beeline for something, you _____ .
| A．are as busy as a bee | B．go quickly and directly towards it |
| C．always go to the same place | D．buy something at a certain place |
The un
derlined expression “ it is the bee’s knees” ______ .
| A．is not used at all now | B．was first used in the 1820s |
| C．reminds us that bees have knees | D．means “it is very good” |
If you ask your American friend Jack “H
ow old is your wife?” he may say “_____.”
| A．It is none of your beeswax | B．You have a bee in your bonnet |
| C．It is the bee’s knees | D．You are talking about the birds and bees |
When you have butterflies in your stomach, you _____ .
| A．are too sick to sit still | B．have ants in your trousers |
| C．are nervous about something | D．have a stomachache |
As for older people, some of the applications（应用程序）are hard to use because they didn't grow up with them. They don't have simple models of how it should work. They don't know what to do when it doesn't work.
I think there is huge potential, so I have designed some for them. The ability to connect to friends, who remember the same movies, news and music, is really important, especially as people get older. They end up in retirement homes and they aren't always close to their friends. Allowing the network to help them connect with friends and family members is a really powerful thing.
My wife likes using the Internet, although it took me years to get her to use e-mail. She was born with normal hearing, but lost it when she was three years old. She was totally deaf for many years until 53 when she got ear implants（移植）．They work really well. That is a big change for her. Before then, her friends couldn't call her on the phone, so they insisted that she use e-mails to communicate with them.
The younger people don't even think of this as technology. It's just there, and they use it .There's been a very interesting change in communication styles between the old and the young .A woman named Sharryturkle wrote about this phenomenon（现象）．There are some kids who are now in their teens and are tending not to make phone calls. And they think of e-mail as old-fashioned and slow.
The reason why teens don't make phone calls seems to be that they don't know what to say. When they call they often pause for a while. On the other hand, texting is considered proper, and it's OK if you don't answer. You might have been distracted（心烦意乱的）．It's not considered rude, but it's considered unusual if you're in this kind of voice conversation and simply stop talling. We can infer from the text that the author is a____.
| A．company manger | B．program designer |
| C．college professor | D．family doctor |
Why did the author's wife connect with others by e-mail? Because she______.
| A．didn't like to talk on the phone |
| B．didn't know how to use the phone |
| C．couldn't move or meet with her friends |
| D．was deaf and couldn't hear others on the phone |
What do the young people think of the Internet according to the text?
| A．Interesting. | B．Amazing. |
| C．Common. | D．Dull. |
What is the best way for the teens to communicate with others?
| A．Sending e-mail. | B．Making phone call. |
| C．Writing letters. | D．Sending text messages. |
A British-designed electronic newspaper which is made of plastic and no larger than a table mat(垫子) is to enter the market next year. The new newspaper was conceived(想出) by Cambridge University scientists. They came up with the idea of replacing silicon chips (硅片) with plastic ones. it is being developed by Plastic Logic, a company based in Dresden, Germany.
"It looks just like a table mat, and is as light as a magazine. But you can download hundreds of newspapers at the touch of a button, and read them quite safely," the BBC reported on its website.
The plastic paper is produced in a safe "clean room" at the Plastic Logic factory, which opened last month as the world's first plastic-electronics factory. Every part of the product, from the screen to the electronics, is made of plastic. And it is described by engineer Dean Baker as "top quality". Baker says the plastic newspaper could help solve the problem of waste material associated with traditlional newspapers.
"There's a huge amount of waste . We have paper distributed（分发） all over the country each day and then thrown into the bin. This doesn't need to happen any more. All of the copies could be made electronically and stored on a single e-reader with the appearance of paper." he says.
People can expect to see the plastic newspaper next year, the BBC says. According to the first paragraph, the electronic newspaper _____.
| A．is made of silicon chips |
| B．is smaller than a table mat |
| C．was developed by a company in England |
| D．was designed by more than one person |
What's special about the electronic newspaper compared with traditional ones?
| A．It looks like a table mat |
| B．It's as light as a magazine. |
| C．People can download and read lots of newspapers on it |
| D．People can receive the BBC report at the touch of a button. |
What can we learn about the electronic newspaper from the last two paragraphs?
| A．It will produce a huge amount of plastic waste. |
| B．It will be harder to distribute than before. |
| C．It will have no visual (视觉的) appearance. |
| D．It will save a huge amount of paper. |
What's people's attitude towards the electronic newspaper according to the BBC?
| A．Hopeful. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Disappointed. | D．Worried |
Patty Griffin
Patty Griffin is a songwriter, and has been highly respected for her works in music. Her childhood. was full of music because both her mother and her grandmother liked singing. She bought her first guitar at 16, began writing songs in high school and soon started playing with a band called Patty the Executive.
Her song l,000 Kisses won her a Grammy nomination(提名) although she lost the award.
Judy Collins
Judy Collins was an important artist in the peace movement of the 1960s. She started her own record company, Wildflower. Records. She began as a classical pianist at 13. In the 40 years that followed, Judy became known as an important American folk singer.
Odetta
One thing you always hear when people talk about Odetta is the excellent power of her voice. Known for her powerful stage presence and her skillful ability to command the simplest instruments -- her voice as well as her guitar. Odetta rose to fame singing the classic African-American folk songs and spirituals.
She has also touched the blues.
Joan Baez
Joan Baez is one of the most remarkable singers in American folk music in the 20th century. Her Father was a physicist and was forced to move the family often throughout Joan's childhood. Inspired by her experiences as a could traveling the world, Joan's music includes the peace and civil rights movement
She has been a constant voice for peace and social justice . What can we know about Patty Griffin?
| A．She has created the best works in the world. |
| B．Her mother and her grandmother taught her to sing. |
| C．Her song l,000 Kisses didn't win the Grammy award |
| D．She founded her first band Patty & the Executive. |
Who started her own record company?
| A．Patty Griffin. | B．Judy Collins. |
| C．Odetta. | D．Joan Baez. |
According to the paragraph 3, we can infer that Odetta is good at_____ .
| A．using her voice and her guitar |
| B．writing African-American songs |
| C．mixing folk music with the blues |
| D．performing various classical songs |
What was Joan's music mainly influenced by?
| A．Her father. |
| B．Her traveling as a child. |
| C．The civil rights movement |
| D．The social justice. |
I had a very good teacher named Leon Sultan .I liked him very much.
Mr. Sultan had just got a job at my high school but his name wasn't in the school's system. So when I got my schedule（课表），it read: Staff F. It was during roll-call that I realised that "Staff F" was Mr. Sultan. When he called my name, he asked if I remembered him. Then I realised that he was the teacher who had taught me English when I was in primary school.
Mr. Sultan was a very special teacher. Even though he was older and had been to college, but he was Still ready to learn from others. He would listen to your opinion carefully before expressing his opinion.
I think what he taught me more than anything else is to have an open mind Another thing I couldn't forget was his teaching method -group work
There were four members in the group. Each group had its own topic. Everyone in the group would play a certain role. One would keep the discussion moving, the other one would write down the thoughts of the group, another one would be responsible for gathering information, and another one would share everything the group had discovered with the rest of the class. This allowed us to become "experts" on one topic and teach the rest of our classmates.
Now ,I have become a more open-minded boy. That is because of my two and a half years in Mr. Sultan's class.The underlined word, "roll-call ",in the second paragraph ,is closest in meaning to "_____"．
| A．making a call | B．calling one's name |
| C．having a meeting | D．handing in homework |
What was strange about the author's schedule?
| A．It was picked up by Mr. Sultan |
| B．It was taken away by Mr. Sultan. |
| C．It didn't show Mr. Sultan's name. |
| D．t didn't have the courses that he had chosen. |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．Mr Favourite Teacher一Mr. Sultan |
| B．My Childhood Memories |
| C．My Dream--To Be a Teacher |
| D．A Good Learning Method |
I'm not so sure I like my friends any more. I used to like them—to be honest. We'd have lunch，talk on the phone or exchange e-mails，and they all seemed normal enough. But then came Facebook and I was introduced to a sad fact：many of my friends have dark sides that they had kept from me.
Today my friends show off the unpleasant aspects of their personalities via Facebook. No longer hidden，they're thrown in my face like TV commercials—unavoidable and endless advertisements for the worst of their personalities.
Take Fred. If you were to have lunch with him，you'd find him warm，and down-to-earth. Read his Facebook and you realize he's an unbearable，food-obsessed bore. He'd pause to have a cup of coffee on his way to save a drowning man—and then write about it.
Take Andy. You won't find a smarter CEO anywhere，but now he's a CEO without a company to run. So he plays “Mafia Wars” on Facebook. He's doing well-level 731.Thanks to Facebook，I know he's playing about 18 hours a day. Andy，you've run four companies—and this is how you spend your downtime? What happened to golf? What happened to getting another job?
Take Liz. She is positive that the H1N1 vaccine will kill us all and that we should avoid it. And then comes Chris who likes to post at least 20 times a day on every website he can find，so I get to read his thoughts twice，once on Facebook and once on Twitter.
In real life，I don't see these sides of people. Face to face，my friends show me their best. They're nice，smart people. But facing Facebook，my friends are like a blind date which goes horribly wrong.
I'm left with a dilemma. Who is my real friend? Is it the Liz I have lunch with or the anti-vaccine lunatic(狂人) on Facebook? Is it the Fred I can grab a sandwich with or the Fred who weeps if he's at a party and the wine isn't up to his standards?According to the text，Facebook tends to ________．
| A．present another side of people |
| B．offer some food for free |
| C．show endless advertisements |
| D．get you to attend more parties |
The text is developed mainly by ________．
| A．giving examples | B．following the time order |
| C．listing figures | D．raising questions |
The author focuses on the question of “________”．
| A．what is Facebook? | B．what happened to golf? |
| C．who is my real friend? | D．who can help me? |