According to US research, it can take up to ten years to become a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools. Fluency obviously doesn’t happen overnight. But time can definitely make you a better speaker.
After testing his own memory, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that humans forget most of what they learn in the first 20 minutes.
So cramming right before a speaking exam is not likely to be as effective as practicing regularly over time. The more you practice, the more familiar new words will become. In the classroom, studies have also shown that repeating oral tasks improves a speaker’s performance.
One of the best repetition exercises is the 4/3/2 technique. Speakers give the same talk to three different listeners with a progressive decrease in delivery time, starting at four minutes, then three, and finally two minutes. This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy. While time dose make a difference when it comes to speaking perfect English, it would not hurt to brush up on your other language skills.
Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary. After one month of an extensive reading program, a 27-year-old student of French became more familiar with 65 percent of the new words.
Aside from choosing the right learning methods, having certain personality traits may also help. US linguistics expert Stephen Krashen believes those with high motivation, self-confidence and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for speaking success.
Krashen says students who don’t have these qualities are more likely to have a “mental block”. “Even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition,” he writes in his book Principles and Practice in second Language Acquisition.According to the passage, if you want to be a near-native speaker, you need _____.
| A．long-term speaking practice and much reading |
| B．speaking practice for ten years only |
| C．long-term speaking practice, much reading and certain qualities |
| D．cramming new words every day |
The author put forward the 4/3/2 technique just to show that _____.
| A．you should speak to 3 different people |
| B．you should speak to 3 different people at 3 different times |
| C．it can prevent you from making grammar mistakes |
| D．it is really a good way to make you a better speaker |
The example of a 27-year-old student of French in the passage mainly means that _____.
| A．reading can enlarge your vocabulary for your speaking |
| B．reading can make you memorize just 65 percent of the new words |
| C．the 27-year-old student of French is very clever |
| D．in one month, you can improve your speaking ability |
The underlined phrase “linguistics expert” means a person who is quite expert at _____.
| A．languages | B．spoken language |
| C．scientific research | D．teaching English |
Americans: Restless? Illiterate（文盲）？
Americans are queer people; they can’t rest. They have more time, more leisure, shorter work hours, more holidays, and more vacations than any other people in the world. But they can’t rest. They rush up and down across their continent as tourists; they move about in great herds to conventions（大会）; they search the wilderness; they flood the mountains; they keep the hotels full. But they can’t rest. The scenery rushes past them. They learn it, but they don’t see it. Battles and monuments are announced to them on a tour bus. They hear them, but they don’t get them. They never stop moving; they rush up and down as Shriners, Masons, Old Graduates, Bankers—they are a new thing each day, always rushing to a reunion or something. So they go on rushing about till eventually the undertaker（殡葬工）gather them to a last convention.
Americans are queer people; they can’t read. They have more schools, and better schools and spend more money on schools and colleges than all Europe. But they can’t read. They print more books in a year than the French print in ten. But they can’t read. They cover their country with one hundred thousand tons of Sunday newspapers every week. But they don’t read them. They’re too busy. They use them for fires and to make more paper with. They buy eagerly thousands of new novels at two dollars each. But they read only page one. Their streets are full of huge signs. They won’t look at them. Their streetcars are filled with advertising; they turn their eyes away. Transparent colors, cart wheels, and mechanical flares whirl and flicker in the crowded streets at night. No one sees them. Tons of letters pour into the mail boxes, through the houses, and down the garbage cans. No one reads them.The underlined word“queer”mean _________________.
| A．strange | B．difficult | C．forgetful | D．friendly |
According to the text, when do the Americans stop rushing about?
| A．When they are not allowed to. |
| B．When they feel tired and sleepy. |
| C．When they stop breathing eventually. |
| D．When they are seriously ill in bed. |
The Americans know the places of battles and monuments ______________.
| A．by driving there in person |
| B．when they are on the tour bus |
| C．from books and magazines |
| D．from their friends and co-workers |
Why does the writer write this passage?
A. To tell people the Americans are illiterate.
B. To prove the Americans to be a queer nation.
C. To make fun of the American way of life.
D. To give the readers information about USA.
There is an English saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Until recently, few people took the saying very seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to study laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found facts that laughter really can improve people’s health.
Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart rate and the rate of breathing. it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.
Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produce pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programmes. The group which tolerated(忍受) the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny programme. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce endorphins(内啡肽) in the brain. These are natural chemicals which diminish both stress and pain.
There is also some fact to suggest that laughter helps the body’s immune （免疫的）system, that is , the system which fights infection. In an experiment, one group of students watched a funny video while another group of students served as the control group--- in other words, a group with which to compare the first group. Doctors checked the blood of the students in both groups and found that the people in the group that watched the video had an increase in the activity of their white blood cells, that is, the cells which fight infection.
As a result of these discoveries, some doctors and psychiatrists( 精神病医生) in the United States now hold laughter clinics, in which they try to improve their patients’ condition by encouraging them to laugh.
They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing , making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter. It can be learnt from the passage that laughter can ______.
| A．make people feel younger | B．change people’s habits |
| C．improve people’s health | D．make people love their lives |
The underlined word “diminish” refers to _______.
| A．test | B．reduce | C．stop | D．find |
Smiling can produce____.
| A．the same effects as laughter | B．more effects than laughter |
| C．less effects on the human body | D．no effects on the human body |
The main idea of this passage is that _____.
| A．there are several ways of studying the benefits of laughter. |
| B．laughter and physical exercise have the same effects on human body. |
| C．tests show that laughter can produce beneficial effects on human body. |
| D．the doctors should learn how to make people laugh. |
Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers advised, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.” How right they were!
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang on there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” When others shout, “No, you can’t!” It took years for the early work of Barbara Mclintock, a geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn’t stop working on her experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.
We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder and it is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such youthful air, whatever their age. At 90, pianist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, joy would reappear in his eyes. As author and poet Samuel Ulman once wrote, “Years wrinkle(使皱) the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
Enthusiastic people also love what they do, without being affected by money or title or power. Patricia Mellratl, retired director of the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City, was once asked where she got her enthusiasm. She replied, “My father, long ago, told me, ‘I never made a penny until I stopped working for money.’”
If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a hobby. Elizabeth Layton was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended periods of depression that troubled her for at least 30 years and the quality of her work led one critic to say, “I am tempted into a genius.”
We can’t afford to waste tears on “might-have-been”. We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be”．We need to live each moment whole-heartedly, with all our senses—finding pleasure in the sweet smell of a back-yard garden, the simple picture of a six-year-old, and the beauty of a rainbow.The author mainly wants to say that _________
| A．enthusiastic people will never get old |
| B．enthusiasm can make you succeed and enjoy life |
| C．enthusiasm is more important than experience |
| D．enthusiasm can give people more success and fame |
Which of the following can best explain the underlined sentence in the second paragraph?
| A．Enthusiasm can give you courage and strength in difficult times. |
| B．If you don’t have enthusiasm, you can achieve nothing. |
| C．Enthusiastic people never consider money and fame. |
| D．Enthusiastic people can gain great fame and honor. |
The author mentions cellist Pablo Casals in the third paragraph to show that____
| A．music can arouse people’s enthusiasm |
| B．enthusiasm can give people inspiration needed to succeed |
| C．enthusiasm can make people feel young |
| D．enthusiasm can keep people healthy |
How many examples are given in the passage to show the importance of enthusiasm?
| A．Three | B．Two | C．Four | D． Five |
People travel for a lot of reasons. Some tourists go to see battlefields or other historic remains. Others are looking for culture, or simply want to have their pictures taken in front of famous places. Most European tourists are looking for a sunny beach to lie on.
Northern Europeans are willing to pay a lot of money for the sun because they have so little of it. People of cities like London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam spend much of their winter in the dark because the days are so short, and much of the rest of the year in the rain . This is the reason why the Mediterranean has always attracted them. Every summer many people travel to Mediterranean resorts（度假胜地）and beaches for their vacation. They all come for the same reason: sun!
The huge crowds mean lots of money for the economics of Mediterranean countries. Italy's 30,000 hotels are booked every summer. And 13 million people camp put on French beaches, parks and roadsides. Spain's long sandy coastline attracts more people than anywhere else. 37 million tourists visit there yearly, or one tourist for each person living in Spain.
But there are signs that the area is getting more tourism than it can deal with. The Mediterranean is already one of the most polluted seas on earth. None of these, however, is mining anyone's fun. Obviously, they don't go there for clean water. They allow traffic jams and seem to like crowded beaches. They don't even mind the pollution. No matter how dirty the water is, the coastline still looks beautiful. And as long as the sun shines, it's still better than sitting in the cold rain in Berlin, London, or Oslo. The writer seems so imply that Europeans travel mostly for the reason that ________.
| A．they want to see historic remains |
| B．they wish to escape from cold, dark and rainy days |
| C．they would like to take pictures in front of famous places |
| D．they are interested in different cultural and social customs |
According to the passage, which of the following countries attracts more tourists than the others?
| A．Italy | B．Greece. | C．France. | D．Spain. |
The underlined part "one tourist for each person living in Spain" means ________.
| A．all the 37 million people living in Spain are tourist |
| B．every person living in Spain has to take care of a tourist |
| C．every year almost as many tourists visit Spain as there are people living in that country |
| D．every family in Spain is visited by a tourist every year |
According to the passage, which of the following might ruin the tourists' fun at Mediterranean resorts and beaches?
| A．Polluted water | B．Crowded buses. | C．Rainy weather. | D．Traffic jams. |
Weather Report（8:00 a.m．December 17 ----- 8:00 a.m．December18）
Influenced by a cold front, northern Xinjiang, the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the northern and eastern parts of Heilongjiang are expected to experience light snow today．Drizzle （小雨） is forecast for most areas of Sichuan and western costal areas of South China．Northerly winds of force 4—6 are expected to affect western and southwestern Inner Mongolia, and most parts of Northeast China while northerly winds of force 5—7 will sweep across the Bohai Sea, the northern parts of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits, and the central and northern parts of the South China Sea.
Weather forecast for major Chinese cities
| City |
Max（℃） |
Min（℃） |
Weather |
| Beijing |
10 |
－2 |
clear |
| Changchun |
0 |
－6 |
clear |
| Changsha |
19 |
5 |
clear |
| Chengdu |
9 |
4 |
drizzle |
| Chongqing |
10 |
5 |
overcast |
| Dalian |
12 |
3 |
clear |
| Fuzhou |
18 |
－12 |
cloudy |
| Guangzhou |
23 |
15 |
cloudy |
| Guilin |
19 |
4 |
clear |
| Haikou |
19 |
14 |
overcast |
| Hangzhou |
18 |
5 |
clear |
| Harbin |
－3 |
－8 |
clear |
| Hong Kong |
21 |
16 |
cloudy |
| Jinan |
14 |
3 |
clear |
According to the weather report, we know it doesn’t rain in many areas except _____.
| A．Xinjing | B．Qinghai-Tibet | C．Heilongjiang | D．Chengdu |
From December 17 to December 18, if you go to ____, you may be caught in the snow.
| A．Northern Xinjiang and Tibet | B．Sichuan and South China 20090616 |
C．Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang | D．Qinghai and Sichuan |
On December 17, the East China Sea will be swept by _____.
| A．a cold front | B．northerly winds of force 4—6 |
| C．light snow | D．northerly winds of force 5—7 |
The temperature in Harbin Min（℃）is ____ lower than that in Guangzhou Min（℃）.
| A．23 | B．31 | C．26 | D．7 |