Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.
Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because_______ .
| A．they are close in style to works in ancient times |
| B．they look like works by 19th-century painters |
| C．they draw attention to common things in life |
| D．they depend heavily on color photography |
What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?
| A．It will not be found in future works of art. |
| B．It does not have a long-lasting standard. |
| C．It is expressed in a fixed artistic form. |
| D．It is lacking in modern works of art. |
What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?
| A．They express people's curiosity about the past. |
| B．They make people interested in everyday experience. |
| C．They are considered important for variety in form. |
| D．They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation. |
In Daniel Gilbert’s 2006 book "Stumbling(跌撞) on Happiness," the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital(婚姻的) satisfaction decreases after the birth of the first child and increases only when the last child has left home. He also declares that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our kids. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor.
Simon received plenty of hate mail in response to her research，which isn’t surprising. Her findings shake the very foundation of what we’ve been raised to believe is true. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, 50 percent of Americans said that adding new children to the family tends to increase happiness levels. But which parent is willing to admit that the greatest gift life has to offer has in fact made his or her life less enjoyable?
Is it possible that American parents have always been this disillusioned(有幻觉的)? In pre-industrial America, parents certainly loved their children, but their kids also served a purpose—to work the farm, contribute to the household. Today, we have kids more for emotional reasons, but an increasingly complicated work and social environment has made finding satisfaction far more difficult. Raising children has not only become more complicated, it has become more expensive as well. The National Marriage Project’s 2006 report says that parents have significantly lower marital satisfaction than nonparents because they experienced more single and child-free years than previous generations.
As for those of us with kids, all the news isn’t bad. Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who’ve never had kids. And there are other rewarding aspects of parenting that are impossible to quantify..
What’s the main idea of the book Stumbling on Happiness?
| A．Parents are happier shopping than looking after their children. |
| B．Once they have children, the couples can never be as happy as before. |
| C．Compared with their childless peers, parents are leading a sad life. |
| D．The adding of children at home brings down marital satisfaction. |
.
. What can we infer from Para.3?
| A．The Newsweek Poll shows that people think Prof. Simon’s finding is right. |
| B．Many people can’t accept the fact that they are not happy with their children. |
| C．It isn’t surprising that Professor Simon’s controversial research made her famous. |
| D．Simon’s findings are based on the belief passed down from generation to generation. |
.
What can we learn about American’s families in the past?
| A．People had very good parents-children relationship in the family. |
| B．Having children could be partly out of some practical purposes. |
| C．Parents loved their children but they still asked them to work a lot. |
| D．Children had to work very hard to make their parents love them. |
.
What’s the author’s opinion about having children?
| A．The author doesn’t think having children is a good thing to the family. |
| B．The author feels children make the life of a family happy. |
| C．The author thinks parenting can still be rewarding in a certain way. |
| D．The author believes that parents sacrifice a lot for having children. |
Dear Michelle:
My Dad hates my Mom. He tells me that she is a liar and that I should not trust her. Of course, they are divorced but they have “joint custody(共同监护)”. What a joke! I am 15, my brother is nine, and we have a life of hell, frankly.
We live one week on and one week off. This was the brilliant idea of both of my parents, which was fair to them but ruining my life. I can’t get away from his voice and his putting my mom down. Sometimes I think about running away.
A Hopeless Ant
Dear Hopeless Ant:
First, thank you for trusting me with your problem. If all you said is correct, then there are several
things that you can and should do to help yourself, your brother, and your parents.
● You need a family counselor(顾问). Such a person could listen to each family member alone and
then meet together to talk about the situation.
If refused, you need to talk to a counselor in your school. You need to be heard, and you need an
adult who will listen. A school counselor can organize a meeting with your parents.
● Perhaps you need to write to her. Writing things down allows people to go over it more than one
time.
I cannot imagine that she will stand passively by and do nothing at all to help once she reads how
you feel. Your father needs a letter as well. He may not realize the destructive effect that it has on his
children.
● Lastly, have a plan in mind when all else fails that is not self-destructive. Life passes very quickly, and you will grow up and have your own life.
Above all, you need to keep yourself safe. Never doubt that it will get better. Write back and let me know how everything is going.
The Hopeless Ant wrote the letter to _______.
A. complain about the problems
B. ask for advice
C. make his father punished
D. just play a joke.
The Hopeless Ant hated his father because __________.
| A．his father always told a lie |
| B．his father wasn’t friendly to his mother |
| C．his father divorced his mother |
| D．the Hopeless Ant couldn’t stay with his parents |
.
According to the text, which of the following advice is in greatest need for the Hopeless Ant?
| A．Keep himself safe. | B．Have a talk with his parents. |
| C．Have his own family plan. | D．Write letters to families. |
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In which part of a website may the passage appear?
| A．Entertainment. | B．Advertisement. | C．Life. | D．Education. |
Any observant person has noticed that a wild animal will allow a man or other potential enemy to approach only up to a given distance before it flees. “Flight distance” is the term used for this interspecies spacing. As a general rule, there is a positive relationship between the size of an animal and its flight distance—the larger the animal, the greater the distance it must keep between itself and the enemy. An antelope will flee when the enemy is as much as five hundred yards away. The wall lizard’s(壁虎) flight distance, on the other hand, is about six feet. Flight is the basic means of survival for mobile creatures.
Critical distance apparently is present wherever and whenever there is a flight reaction. “Critical distance” includes the narrow zone separating flight distance from attack distance. A lion in a zoo will flee from an approaching man until it meets a barrier that it cannot overcome. If the man continues the approach, he soon penetrates(进入) the lion’s critical distance, at which point the cornered lion turns back and begins slowly to stalk (逼近) the man.
Social animals need to stay in touch with each other. Loss of contact with the group can be fatal(致命的) for a variety of reasons including exposure to enemies. Social distance is not simply the distance at which an animal will lose contact with his group—that is, the distance at which it can no longer see, hear, or smell the group—it is rather a psychological distance, one at which the animal apparently begins to feel anxious when it goes beyond its limits.
Social distance is not always rigidly(刻板的) fixed but is determined in part by the situation. When the young of apes and humans are mobile but not yet under control of the mother’s voice, social distance may be the length of her reach. When added control is needed because of danger, social distance shortens. To show this in man, one has only to watch a family with a number of small children holding hands as they cross a busy street..
Which of the following is the correct explanation of “Flight Distance” in paragraph 1?
| A．Distance between animals of the same species before fleeing. |
| B．Distance between large and small animals before fleeing. |
| C．Distance between an animal and its enemy before fleeing. |
| D．Distance between certain animal species before fleeing. |
.
If a lion’s critical distance is penetrated, it will __________.
| A．begin to attack. |
| B．try to hide. |
| C．begin to jump. |
| D．run away. |
.
. The example of “children holding hands when crossing the street” in the last paragraph shows that ________.
| A．social distance is not always needed. |
| B．there is no social distance among small children. |
| C．humans are different from animals in social distance. |
| D．social distance is sometimes determined by outside factors. |
.
. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?
| A．Critical Distance |
| B．Social Distance |
| C．Relationship Between Animals |
| D．Spacing in Animals |
One of Lewis Gordon Pugh’s first big attempts to put his cold-water skills to the test nearly ended in disaster. On a one-mile swim in Antarctica in December 2005, just yards from the finish, his body began to give in. The temperature inside his thigh muscle dropped to 87.8 degrees, the lowest ever measured in him. He was completely at the limits of his ability.
Despite what he called the “grueling (折磨人的)” Antarctic swim, Pugh scheduled an even more fearsome test for himself at the North Pole. Stepping off the way of the Russian icebreaker that had crunched(咯吱作响的穿过) through floating sea ice for five days to take him to the North Pole, Pugh walked across the ice to a pool of open water over one mile long and two and a half miles deep. The sea temperature was 29 degrees, only a little above the freezing point of salt water.
Pugh quickly took off his padded clothes. In only his bathing suit and cap, his skin already pink, he walked to the water’s edge. “The only place I’m getting out is at the end,” he told himself. Then he removed his earphones and dived in.
The pain was immediate. His entire body felt on fire. The doctor kept pace with him in a boat. Through iced-up goggles(护目镜), Pugh could see the armed guards keeping watch for bears.
His friend Becker had broken down the huge task into manageable parts, each one marked by a flag planted in the ice that represented a friend, family member, or teammate. Fog started to roll in as Pugh headed for the final marker, the flag of Great Britain. He imagined his late father standing beside it--- the man who had done so much to give him an interest in adventure. Then Pugh drove himself to the finish. After 18 minutes 50 seconds in the water, his body was not even hypothermic(体温过低的)..
Why did Lewis Gordon Pugh swim in Antarctica in December 2005?
| A．To train his determination. |
| B．To end a disaster. |
| C．To test his cold-water skills. |
| D．To check the temperature in Antarctica. |
.
. It can be inferred that in the pool at the North Pole Lewis Gordon Pugh __________.
| A．had to suffer from the cold water with his goal to achieve |
| B．dived to the depth of two and a half miles |
| C．broke the records that the Russian kept |
| D．spent nearly 19 minutes walking over one mile |
.
. To make sure of the successful test in the pool at the North Pole, __________.
| A．Lewis Gordon Pugh had to carry flags |
| B．Lewis Gordon Pugh was accompanied by his father |
| C．Pugh took measures to keep his body temperature |
| D．Pugh’s task was separated into several parts |
Life gets noisier every day and very few people can be free from noise of some sort or another. It doesn't matter where you live---in the middle of a modern city or a faraway village---the chances are that you’ll be disturbed by jet planes, transistor radios, oil-powered engines, etc. We seem to be getting used to noise, too. Some people feel quite lonely without background music while they’re working.
Scientific tests have shown that total silence can be a very frightening experience for a human being. However, some people enjoy listening to pop music which is very loud, and this can do harm to their eardrums(耳鼓). The noise level in some discos is far above the usual safety level for heavy industrial areas.
One recent report about noise and concentration suggested that although a lot of people say that any noise disturbs their concentration, what really influences their ability to concentrate is a change in the level of noise. It goes on to say that a background noise which doesn't change too much (music, for example) may even help people to concentrate..
According to this passage, the noise pollution______.
| A．has become the worst in the countryside |
| B．has become better in big cities |
C．has spread from cities to villages |
| D．has been controlled in modern cities |
.
What does background music refer to?
| A．Music played while people are working. |
| B．Music played in the backyard. |
| C．Noise that continues while you’re listening to other noises. |
| D．Music used to help people to concentrate. |
.
. Some people have their hearing harmed______.
| A．while listening to pop music | B．in complete silence |
| C．when speaking loudly | D．while watching TV |