Jesse Owens is recognized as a hero not just because he is fast. Some people might say that they know him for just that reason. However, there are lots of fast people who are not known. Jesse Owens is known because Chancellor Adolf Hitler did not shake the hand of Jesse Owens or even recognize his feat of winning four gold medals, because Owens was an African American.
Jesse Owens owed much of his success to his coach Charles Riley, who probably was the most important one making him have the career that he did. Owens came from a background that required him to work after school in a shoe shop. He couldn’t attend the regularly scheduled track practices organized by his school. However, Charles Riley saw the boy had both a passion(热情) and a talent for running, and so arranged for him to be able to practice before school instead.
Jesse Owens achieved this success despite(尽管) his racial background, which at the time was a huge limitation to him. He could only eat in certain restaurants and sleep in certain hotels, as could all African Americans of the time. He was also never offered a scholarship for school despite setting records for NCAA(美国全国大学生体育协会) championships.
The Berlin Olympics in 1936 is where his star rose as high as it would ever be able to. These Olympics were during the height of Hitler’s rule. It took courage to race in front of Hitler and many other racist(种族主义者). It took time, determination, and perseverance(坚持不懈) to race like him. He won four gold medals at those Olympics. It would take almost fifty years for someone else to walk away from the Olympics with four gold medals. He passed away at the age of 66 from lung cancer.The underlined word “feat” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to “ .”
A.chance | B.happiness | C.success | D.hope |
We know from paragraph 2 that Jesse Owens .
A.did not need to work after school |
B.took part in the regular track practices |
C.did not get along well with his coach |
D.was arranged to practice before school |
Jesse Owens was well-known around the world mainly because he .
A.sets records for NCAA championships |
B.was brave enough to race in front of Adolf Hitler |
C.didn’t want to shake hands with Hitler |
D.is recognized as a hero of the white Americans |
According to the passage, which of the following about Jesse Owens is true?
A.Hitler recognized his feat of winning four gold medals. |
B.He was offered a scholarship for setting records for NCAA championships. |
C.He could only eat in certain restaurants like many other African Americans. |
D.It took him almost fifty years to walk away from the Olympics with four gold medals. |
What is the best title for the passage?
A.Sport hero ---- Jesse Owens | B.The Berlin Olympics in 1936 |
C.Charles Riley ---- Jesse Owens’ s coach | D.Jesse Owens’s childhood |
My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I was born and raised in America, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren’t quite ready to let me in yet.
“Please wait in here, Ms Abujaber,” the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I’d flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent “in back” once again.
The officer behind the counter called me up and said, “Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who’s on our wanted list. We’re going to have to check you out with Washington.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hard to say ... a few minutes,” he said. “We’ll call you when we’re ready for you.” After an hour, Washington still hadn’t decided anything about me. “Isn’t this computerized?”
I asked at the counter. “Can’t you just look me up?”
Just a few more minutes, they assured me.
After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. “No phones!” he said. “For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”
“I’m just a university professor,” I said. My voice came out in a squeak.
“Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.”
I put my phone away.
My husband and I were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flight attendant.
I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: “I’m an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children.” Or would that all be counted against me?
After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. “You’re free to go,” he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock.
Then we leaped to our feet.
“Oh, one more thing.” He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. “If you weren’t happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.”
“Will they respond?” I asked.
“I don’t know --- I don’t know of anyone who’s ever written to them before.” Then he added, “By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.”
“What can I do to keep it from happening again?”
He smiled the empty smile we’d seen all day. “Absolutely nothing.”
After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I’ve heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn’t stick me in what he called “the ethnic ghetto” --- a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone’s personal and professional identity -just like the town you’re born in and the place where you’re raised.
Like my father, I’ll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.The author was held at the airport because __________.
A.she and her husband returned from Jamaica. |
B.her name was similar to a terrorist’s. |
C.she had been held in Montreal. |
D.she had spoken at a book event. |
We learn from the passage that the author would __________ to prevent similar experience from happening again.
A.write to the agency | B.change her name |
C.avoid traveling abroad | D.do nothing |
Her experiences indicate that there still exists __________ in the US.
A.hatred | B.discrimination |
C.tolerance | D.diversity |
The author sounds __________ in the last paragraph.
A.impatient | B.bitter | C.worried | D.ironic |
On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily, and he realized the fact that the time had come for him to provide against the coming winter.
The winter ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no dreams of Mediterranean voyages or blue Southern skies. Three months on the Island was what his soul desired. Three months of assured board and bed and good company, safe from north winds seemed to Soapy the most desirable thing.
Just as the more fortunate New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach each winter, Soapy had made his arrangements for his annual journey to the Island. And now the time had come.
There were many institutions of charity in New York where he might receive lodging and food, but to Soapy’s proud spirit the gifts of charity were undesirable. You must pay in humiliation of spirit for everything received at the hands of mercy. So it was better to be a guest of the law.
Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. He left his bench and went up Broadway. He stopped at the door of a glittering cafe. He was shaven and his coat was decent. If he could reach a table in the restaurant, the portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. A roasted duck, with a bottle of wine, a cigar and a cup of coffee would be enough. Such a dinner would make him happy, for the journey to his winter refuge.
But as Soapy entered the restaurant door, the head waiter’s eye fell upon his shabby trousers and old shoes. Strong hands pushed him in silence and haste out into the street.
Some other way of entering the desirable refuge must be found.
At a corner of Sixth Avenue Soapy took a stone and sent it through the glass of a glittering shop window. People came running around the corner, a policeman at the head of them. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of the policeman.
“Where is the man that has done that?” asked the policeman.
“Don’t you think that I have had something to do with it?” said Soapy, friendly.
The policeman paid no attention to Soapy. Men who break windows don’t remain to speak with policemen. They run away. He saw a man running and rushed after him, stick in hand. Soapy, disgusted, walked along, twice unsuccessful.
On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant for people with large appetites and modest purses. Soapy entered this place without difficulty. He sat at a table and ate beefsteak and pie. And then he told the waiter he had no money.
“Go and call a cop,” said Soapy. “And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.”
“No cop for you,” said the waiter. “Hey!”
Then Soapy found himself lying upon his left ear on the pavement. He arose with difficulty, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed a rosy dream. The Island seemed far away.
After another unsuccessful attempt to be arrested for harassing a young woman, Soapy went further toward the district of theatres.
When he saw a policeman standing in front of a glittering theatre, he thought of “disorderly conduct”. On the sidewalk Soapy began to sing drunken songs at the top of his voice. He danced, cried, and otherwise disturbed the peace.
The policeman turned his back to Soapy, and said to a citizen, “It is one of the Yale boys celebrating their football victory. Noisy, but no harm.”
Sadly, Soapy stopped his useless singing and dancing. The Island seemed unattainable. He buttoned his thin coat against the north wind.
In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man who had set his silk umbrella by the door. Soapy entered the store, took the umbrella, and went out with it slowly. The man with the cigar followed hastily.
“My umbrella,” he said.
“Oh, is it?” said Soapy. “Well, why don’t you call a policeman? I took your umbrella! Why don’t you call a cop? There stands one on the corner.”
The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise. The policeman looked at them curiously.
“Of course,” said the umbrella man, “well, you know how these mistakes occur…if it’s your umbrella I hope you’ll excuse me – I picked it up this morning in a restaurant – if it’s yours, I hope you’ll…”
“Of course it’s mine,” said Soapy.
The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to help a well-dressed woman across the street.
Soapy threw the umbrella angrily. He was angry with the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. They seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.
At last Soapy stopped before an old church on a quiet corner. Through one window a soft light glowed, where, the organist played a Sunday anthem. For there came to Soapy’s ears sweet music that caught and held him at the iron fence.
The moon was shining; cars and pedestrians were few; birds twittered sleepily under the roof. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends.
The influence of the music and the old church produced a sudden and wonderful change in Soapy’s soul. He thought of his degraded days, dead hopes and wrecked faculties.
And also in a moment a strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of this pit; he would make a man of himself again. Those sweet notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would be somebody in the world. He would…
Soapy felt a hand on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing.”
“Then come along,” said the policeman.
“Three months on the Island,” said the Judge the next morning.Which of the following is the reason for Soapy’s not turning to charity?
A.His pride gets in the way. |
B.What the institutions of charity offer isn’t what Soapy needs. |
C.He wants to be a citizen who obeys the law. |
D.The institutions of charity are not located on the island. |
From the passage, we can see what the two restaurants have in common is that __________.
A.they are both fancy upper class restaurants |
B.neither of them served Soapy |
C.they both drove Soapy out of the restaurant after he finished his meal |
D.neither of them called cops |
Hearing the Sunday anthem at the church, Soapy was reminded of __________.
A.his good old days and wanted to play the anthem again |
B.his unaccomplished ambition and was determined to get to the Island |
C.his disgraceful past and determined to transform himself |
D.his rosy dream and wished to realize it |
By ending the story this way, the author means to __________.
A.show that one always gets what he/she wants with enough efforts |
B.make a contrast and criticize the sick society |
C.surprise readers by proving justice was done after all |
D.put a tragic end to Soapy’s life and show his sympathy for Soapy |
A classic joke goes like this: A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.” The doctor says, “Tell him I can’t see him.”
Pretty simple, right?
Here’s how I tell it: “A nurse—her name is Joyce—feels a presence in the waiting room. She looks around but sees nothing. She jumps up from her desk, carefully replaces her chair, and runs down the lavender-hued hallway to the doctor’s office. She knocks on the door. No response. He’s not there. Where can he be? She continues down the hall, admiring a lithograph of an 18th-century Mississippi paddleboat along the way.” By this time, my audience has left, but I soldier on. “She bursts into the exam room and says, ‘Doctor, doctor!’ The doctor, I should mention, is a urologist with a degree from Ohio State, which is where my nephew …”
You get the idea. I’m an embellisher. I can’t leave a simple gag alone.
I’m not the only joke-challenged member of the family. My sister’s worse than I am. Her problem: She can’t remember them. “‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says…’Uh, let me start all over again. ‘A nurse rushes into a waiting…’No, it’s not the waiting room. She just came from the waiting room. Let me start all over again. ‘A doctor rushes into…’ No, wait…”
My uncle’s different. He’s guilty of taking a perfectly fine joke and selling it as the second coming of Oscar Wilde, “Okay, this is a good one. Ready? No, really, ready? Okay, fasten your seat belts. Ready?‘A nurse…’Got it? A nurse? Okay, ready?‘A nurse rushes into an exam room and says, “Doctor, doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.”’ Now, this is where it gets funny. Ready?”
No one is ever ready, so they leave before he gets to the punch line.
My father’s on Wall Street, so he hears all the jokes before they hit the Web. And he lets you know he knows them all by telling you all of them. He also knows that most people don’t like jokes. So he slips them in under the radar: “I was chatting with Ben Bernanke the other day. You know Ben, don’t you? The Fed chief? Anyway, we were reviewing the Fed’s policy on long-term interest rates, and he told me it had evolved into its current iteration only after a nurse rushed into an exam room and said, ‘Doctor, doctor, there’s…’ Hey, where are you going?”
My brother Mark understands that the secret to good joke telling is to know your audience. When he entertained my grandmother’s bridge club one evening, he made it a point to adapt the joke to them: “A beautiful blonde nurse rushes into a consulting room…”
No one in my family has ever finished this joke.
But as bad as it is not to be able to tell a joke, there’s something worse: not being able to listen to one. Take my cousin Mitch for example.
“Why couldn’t the doctor see him?” he asked.
“Because he’s invisible,” I said.
“Now, I didn’t get that. I thought the doctor couldn’t see him because he was with a patient.”
“Well, yeah, okay, but the fact that the guy was invisible…”
“Could the nurse see him?”
“No. She’s the one who said he was invisible…”
“How’d she know he was there?”
“Because he…”
“When you say he was invisible, does that mean his clothes were invisible too?” Here’s where I tried to walk away.
“Because if his clothes weren’t invisible,” Mitch said, stepping between me and the exit, “then the doctor could see him, right?”
“Yeah, but …”
“At least his clothes.”
“I guess…”
“Unless he was naked.”
“Okay, he was naked!”
“Why would he go to his doctor naked?”
Next time you see my family and someone is telling a joke, do yourself a favor: Make yourself invisible.Which of the following is true according to this article?
A.No one in the writer’s family is good at telling jokes. |
B.Mark is the best at telling jokes in his family. |
C.Mitch is very sensitive to all kinds of jokes. |
D.A typically classic joke should cover all the details. |
What is inappropriate about Mark’s adaptation of the joke?
A.He knows the audience very well. |
B.He shouldn’t have entertained a bridge club. |
C.He shouldn’t have begun the story with a beautiful blond nurse. |
D.He shouldn’t have told old people jokes. |
Mitch stepped between me and the exit because __________.
A.he wanted to go out with me |
B.he wanted to block my way out |
C.he was trying to repay the situation in the consulting room |
D.he wanted to show that the doctor could see the patient |
Which is the best title of the passage?
A.Learn to Amuse Others |
B.Where to Find a Doctor |
C.How to Ruin a Classic Joke |
D.A Story about a Funny Family |
For years I have been asked by several people how and why I came to translate a novel by Virginia Woolf in 1945. I graduated from the University of Ankara in 1941 and my four teachers, including Orphan Burian, are members of the Translation Bureau who prepared a list of works to be translated into Turkish and set themselves to translating some of these, besides shouldering the heavy work of correcting or editing the translations submitted to the Bureau. Orphan Burian, now mostly known for his translations of Shakespeare, had started to translate To the Lighthouse for the Translation Bureau, but at the same time he wanted to do something from Shakespeare. So he transferred it to me.
For me, To the Lighthouse was love at first sight or rather at first reading. To translate a book, I first read it from the beginning to the end. Then I started writing each sentence by hand. When I finished the whole book I read my translation from the beginning to the end, checking it with the original, and making corrections. Then I typed it, and read the typed copy, making changes again. All in all that added up to five readings. I started translating the novel in 1943 and submitted it to the Bureau in 1944. It was published in 1945 under the general title of “New English Literature” in the series called “Translations from World Literature” known as the “Classical Series”.
So, the first book by Virginia Woolf in Turkish appeared in 1945, and it was To the Lighthouse. This was eighteen years after its publication in England in 1927. To me the book itself was pure poetry; I read it as if in a dream. Not trying to dive very deeply into it, I sort of swam on it or over it. Now, years later, I swim in it. Even after so many years, in each reading I become conscious of new layers of which I haven’t been aware before. It keeps pace with my experiences in life as years go by, and each reading is a new reading for me.
In 1982 and again in 1989 I revised it for two new editions and I again did it sentence by sentence checking it with the original. In those years I had thought it was necessary to revise my translations every ten years, but now I think I must do it every three or four years. In a country like Turkey, where we work very hard to clear our language from old and new foreign words, we should try to be up to date as to the words we are using, and of the same importance are the studies being made on the methods or techniques of translation, and new approaches in translation.
While translating, I usually have both the writer and the reader in mind. The novels she wrote after 1920 were especially new for most of the readers. She usually uses very short sentences, followed by rather long ones. I remember sentences of more than ten lines which weren’t easy for me to translate as they were. And in Turkish our having only one word, the word “O”, for “he”, “she”, “it” in English, made me repeat the names of the characters more often than Woolf did. And I changed some long indirect sentences in the original into direct sentences in my translation, thinking it would make an easier reading in Turkish.
When translating, I make use of all kinds of dictionaries. A difficult English word for me is the word “vision”. In To the Lighthouse, the artist Lily Briscoe is trying to finish the picture she has been drawing for some time and the novel ends with the following sentences: “Yes, she thought, laying down her brush extremely tired, I’ve had my vision.” And I’m still thinking about how to translate this remark into Turkish.How and why did the writer come to translate To the Lighthouse?
A.It was really a piece of good luck. |
B.She was the only qualified person for it. |
C.Virginia Woolf was very familiar to her. |
D.She was a member of the Translation Bureau. |
What does the underlined part in paragraph 3 mean?
A.The writer prefers the work very much. |
B.The writer likes the sport swimming. |
C.The writer is aware of her advantages. |
D.The writer has digested the book very well. |
Why does the writer revise her translations more often now?
A.Readers make new demands. |
B.Turkish is a language of mobility. |
C.Many mistakes are spotted in the old edition. |
D.She wants to make it more popular in the market. |
While translating, the writer repeated the names of the characters to_________.
A.make full use of the direct sentences |
B.emphasize all of these characters |
C.make her translation clearer in Turkish |
D.make her translation much briefer |
The last paragraph mainly implies that_________.
A.the writer is taking up a difficult job |
B.the writer’s translation needs improving |
C.English is a difficult language in the world |
D.remarks from characters are difficult to translate |
Outdoor air pollution leads to more than 3 million premature deaths each year, and more than two thirds of them occur in China and India, according to new research. The authors estimate that without government intervention, the total number of deaths could double by 2050.
The study, published in the journal Nature, identifies particulate matter(悬浮微粒) as the prime pollutant leading to premature mortality. Particulate matter, a substance formed as a combination of different materials released into the air, is thought to be harmful to human health once it exceeds 2.5 micrometers in diameter. Researchers also identified ozone as a contributor to dangerous air quality.
The causes of air pollution vary dramatically from place to place. In India and China, the study says, emissions from residential heating and cooking drive air pollution by creating unhealthy quantities of smoke. Overall, residential heating emissions cause one third of air pollution-related deaths worldwide.
In highly regulated areas, like the United States, Europe and Japan, emissions from agriculture tend to be primary contributors to air pollution. Fertilizer used in agriculture releases ammonia into the atmosphere, a process that creates harmful particulate matter. Globally, air pollution from agriculture kills more than 600,000 people annually, the study finds.
The findings are consistent with a 2014 report from the World Health Organization that suggested that 7 million deaths occur annually due to both indoor and outdoor air pollution.
The study’s conclusions give a sense of urgency to efforts to reduce air pollution but present challenges because of difficulty regulating heating activity in people’s homes, according to study author Jos Lelieveld. People who live in the most affected areas should be provided with information about less toxic heating methods, he said.
“It’s important to reduce emissions from residential energy use,” Lelieveld said on a conference call for journalists. “You can’t ask people to stop eating and cooking, but you can provide better technologies.”
Air pollution contributes to a variety of ailments that eventually lead to premature mortality like lung cancer, stroke and heart failure, according to the study. Another study published this week in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives reached similar conclusions showing the devastating (毁灭性的) effects of pollution on individual health. Researchers found that chronic exposure to particulate matter increases the chance of early death by 3%. That risk is especially high for heart disease; the chance a person will die of heart disease increases by around 10% with chronic exposure to particulate matter.
Researchers found that the number of deaths is expected to double by 2050 without new government policies. Nearly all of the increase will occur in Asia, according to the report.Which of the following contributes to the air pollution?
A. Particulate matter. B. Ozone.
C. SmokeD. Both A and B.Which of the following is NOT true?
A.Residential heating emissions cause two thirds of air pollution-related deaths worldwide. |
B.7 million deaths occur annually due to air pollution. |
C.Air pollution from agriculture kills more than 600,000 people annually. |
D.The causes of air pollution vary dramatically from place to place. |
What might air pollution lead to?
A.Lung cancer. | B.Stroke. |
C.Heart failure. | D.All above. |
What can be inferred from the article?
A.Residential energy use should be stopped. |
B.Chronic exposure to particulate matter increases the chance of early death by 3%. |
C.The number of deaths is expected to double by 2050 due to air pollution. |
D.It is urgent for the government to take action. |