Americans have contributed to many art forms, but Jazz a type of music, is one that was not started in the United States. Blacks, who sang and played the music of their homeland, created jazz.
Jazz is a mixture of the music of Africa, the work songs the slaves sang and religious(宗教的) music. Improvisation is an important part of jazz. This means that musicians make the music up as they go along, or create the music on the spot. This is why a jazz song might sound a little different each time it is played
Jazz bands formed in the late 1800s. They played in bars and clubs in many towns and cities of the South, especially in New Orleans. New Orleans is an international seaport, and people from all over the world came to New Orleans to hear jazz.
Jazz became more and more popular. By the 1920s, jazz was popular all over the United States. By the 1940s, you could hear jazz not only in clubs and bars, But in concert halls as well. Today, people from all over the world play jazz. Jazz musicians from the United States, Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe meet and share their music at festivals on every continent. In this way jazz continues to grow and change.What can be the best title of the passage?
| A．American Art Forms |
| B．The Development of Jazz |
| C．The Music of Black Americans |
| D．The Birthplace of Jazz |
Which of the following is true?
| A．Jazz is now popular all over the world. |
| B．Jazz is now a kind of religious music. |
| C．Jazz is now played only in bars and clubs. |
| D．Jazz is now played in the same way as before. |
From the text it can be inferred that
| A．New Orleans is the place where jazz was first produced |
| B．the American people are all jazz lovers |
| C．jazz is merely sung by the black when working |
| D．jazz may become more popular as time goes on |
It took about _____years to make jazz popular in the United States.
| A．200 | B．120 | C．80 | D．40 |
As you research music, you will find music that is familiar to you. You will find music which tells of interesting places and exciting things to do. You will find music which expresses feelings that are often your own.
Music is an expression of the people. As you research, you will find music of people at work and play. You will find music expressing love of the country, love of nature, and love of home.
Music is also an expression of the composer(作曲家). The composer expresses his own musical ideas. He studies the materials of music and discovers ways of using them. He looks for new kinds of musical expression.
Music can suggest actions and feelings which we all share. We can enjoy playing and singing music, dancing and listening to the music of the people and the composers of different times and places. In the first paragraph, the author tells us to_______.
| A．find entertainment(娱乐) in music | B．be friendly to music |
| C．express your feelings in music | D．discover the things and places in music |
From the second paragraph, we know that ________.
| A．if we love music, we will love the country, nature and home |
| B．music sings of the country, nature and home |
| C．you may listen to music at work or at play |
| D．music can express how people live, work and think |
By means of music, the composer wishes that ________.
| A．you would study with them |
| B．you would share his feelings and ideas |
| C．you would express your own feelings |
| D．you help discover ways of using music and new kinds of musical expression |
The last paragraph shows that music makes it possible ________.
| A．the music can express actions and feelings at the same time |
| B．bring understanding between people of different times and places |
| C．that people can enjoy playing and singing music, dancing and listening to the music at the same time |
| D．that people of different time and places can get together |
Which of the following statements is NOT true. Music expresses ________.
| A．the feelings of our own | B．people’s love of the country |
| C．the composer’s feelings | D．people’s musical ideas |
Surfing—the art of riding a wave on a pointed board—is the wildest, fastest natural water sport known to man. In recent years, it has developed into a major sport around the world, from Australia to South Africa. Australians brave(挑战) men—eating sharks to ride the green waves Down Under, Hawaiian experts risk(冒…之险) their lives on huge, thirty foot swells(浪涛) against the wind of Oahu; Californians of all ages go out the year-round. In the winter, surf-riders put on life-suits to ride grave waves so cold that their flesh turns blue.
Surfing is no sport for weak persons. Swimming a quarter of a mile or more, and pushing a surfboard out to where the swells are just right for riding, can be real work. Then, at exactly the right moment, you climb up the wave and go fast across the face of a powerful swell with the white water jumping at your feet. The huge wave bites at your shoulder, threatening(威胁) at any moment to smash your flat. In the next several seconds, a cool head and lightning—quick action back to the pressure of the attacking wave will bring your board under control for that great ride down the back of the great, green mountain of water. Once on the beach, you know why surfing is growing in popularity as an international sport, and you’re glad to be a member of this new water world.The first paragraph mainly tells us ______.
| A．people around the world go surfing all the year round |
| B．the definition(定义) of the sport |
| C．how to surf in the sea |
| D．where to surf around the world |
The author believes that surfing _______.
| A．is not an easy sport | B．can be done by anyone |
| C．should be done by everyone | D．does not require courage |
In order to experience what real surfing is, _______.
| A．you must first swim a quarter of a mile to warm your body |
| B．you will first ride on a board to reach the swells |
| C．you must first put on your life-suits before doing surfing |
| D．you must first swim to the swells with your board |
I love charity(慈善) shops and so do lots of other people in Britain because you find quite a few of them on every high street. The charity shop is a British institution, selling everything from clothes to electric goods, all at very good prices. You can get things you won’t find in the shops anymore. The thing I like best about them is that your money is going to a good cause and not into the pockets of profit-driven companies, and you are not damaging the planet, but finding a new home for unwanted goods.
The first charity shop was opened in 1947 by Oxfam. The famous charity’s appeal to aid postwar Greece had been so successful it had been flooded with donations(捐赠物). They decided to set up a shop to sell some of these donations to raise money for that appeal. Now there are over 7,000 charity shops in the UK. My favourite charity shop in my hometown is the Red Cross shop, where I always find children’s books, all 10 or 20 pence each.
Most of the people working in the charity shops are volunteers, although there is often a manager who gets paid. Over 90% of the goods in the charity shops are donated by the public. Every morning you see bags of unwanted items outside the front of shops, although they don’t encourage this, rather ask people to bring things in when the shop is open.
The shops have very low running costs: all profits go to charity work. Charity shops raise more than ￡110 million a year, funding（资助）medical research, overseas aid, supporting sick and poor children, homeless and disabled people, and much more. What better place to spend your money? You get something special for a very good price and a good moral sense. You provide funds to a good cause and tread lightly on the environment.The author loves the charity shop mainly because of _______.
| A．its convenient location | B．its great variety of goods |
| C．its spirit of goodwill | D．its nice shopping environment |
The first charity shop in the UK was set up to ____.
| A．sell cheap products | B．deal with unwanted things |
| C．raise money for patients | D．help a foreign country |
Which of the following is TRUE about charity shops?
| A．The operating costs are very low. | B．The staff are usually well paid. |
| C．90% of the donations are second-hand. | D．They are open twenty-four hours a day. |
Which of the following may be the best title for the passage?
| A．What to Buy a Charity Shops. | B．Charity Shop: Its Origin & Development. |
| C．Charity Shop: Where You Buy to Donate. | D．The Public’s Concern about Charity Shops. |
As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friend’s house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone(语气) of airy acceptance. It’s similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.
We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though, seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.
Often we got “lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly----tall beeches, easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.
It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us has reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence（青春期）. In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that were really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.The author and his fiends were often out in the woods to _______.
| A．spend their free time | B．play gold and other sports |
| C．avoid doing their schoolwork | D．keep away from their parents |
What can we infer from Paragraph 2?
| A．The activities in the woods were well planned. |
| B．Human history is not the result of exploration. |
| C．Exploration should be a systematic activity. |
| D．The author explored in the woods aimlessly. |
The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.
| A．calm | B．doubtful | C．serious | D．optimistic |
How does the author feel about his childhood?
| A．Happy but short. | B．Lonely but memorable. |
| C．Boring and meaningless. | D．Long and unforgettable. |
We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively（被动地）. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning.
We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it's not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers.
Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem. It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay and rumor(谣言).
Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn't show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. Typically, the original message has changed.
That's what happens in daily life. The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story. Then, too, most people listen imperfectly. And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping（打上标记）it with their own personal style. Yet those who hear it think they know.
This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be re-stated as fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts.
| 1． |
According to the passage, passive learning may occur in.
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| 2． |
The underlined word "it" in Paragraph 2 refers to.
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| 3． |
The author mentions the game Rumor to show that.
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| 4． |
What can we infer from the passage?
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