“Colour” and “color”, “favourite” and “favorite”···Have you ever wondered why Americans spell those words without a “u”? Is it because they are lazy?
Of course not. In fact, the difference in spelling was created by Noah Webster (1758—1843). He is a teacher who reformed English to make American identity stronger. Linguists（语言学家） celebrated his 250th birthday on October 16. After the Revolutionary War(1775—1783), Webster believed that Americans should have their own dictionary, rather than rely on British versions（版本）. He dropped the British “u” in some words. And he changed “centre” into “center” for children to learn English by spelling words more like they sounded.
Webster wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions. In defining（定义） preposterous, he wrote: “A republican government in the hands of females is preposterous.”
Webster spent 28 years on the project before completing the 70,000-word dictionary in 1828 with his American-style spellings. He also added local words. His dictionary was widely used in schools. Linguists believed it helped a new nation achieve unity and cultural independence at a time when most were focused on political freedom.
“He was the shaper of our language and the shaper of American identity,” said Joshua Kendall, who is working on a biography（传记） about Webster. “He at last bonded（联合） us through our language.” According to the passage, when he worked on his dictionary, Noah Webster did all of the following EXCEPT______.
| A．dropping “u” in all the British words |
| B．changing “centre” into “center” |
| C．adding local words |
| D．expressing his opinion. |
When did Noah Webster probably begin his project of the dictionary?
| A．In 1758 | B．In 1783 | C．In 1800 | D．In 1828 |
Why did Noah Webster create these differences in his dictionary?
| A．Because he wanted to make English simple and easy. |
| B．Because he wanted American English to have it own characteristics（特征）. |
| C．Because he wanted to make American English the best in the world. |
| D．Because he wanted to show that the USA is stronger than the UK. |
Which of the following word can best describe Noah Webster’s work?
| A．Interesting | B．Boring | C．Unfinished | D．Meaningful |
Which of the following would probably be the best title for the passage?
| A．Webster |
| B．American identity |
| C．The shaper of American English |
| D．Spelling difference between American and British English. |
Attractions in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Historical Museum
30 N. Carroll Street on Madison’s Capitol Square
Discover Wisconsin’s history and culture(文化) on four floors of exhibits. Open for public program. Admission is free.
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 9:00am -- 4:00 pm.
(608) 264-6555 www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum
Swiss historical village
612 Seventh Ave., New Glarus
The Swiss Historical Village offers a delightful look at pioneer life in America’s heartland. 14 buildings in the village give a full picture of every day life in the nineteenth-century Midwest.
Tue.—Fri., May 1st –October 31st , 10:00 am—4:00 pm. Admission is $20.
(608) 527-2317 www.swisshistoricalvillage.com
Artisan Gallery & Creamery Café
6858 Paoli Rd., Paoli, WI
One of the largest collections of fine arts and crafts(手工艺品) in Wisconsin. Over 5000 sq. ft. of exhibition space in a historic creamery. While visiting enjoy a wonderfully prepared lunch at our café overlooking the Sugar River. Just minutes from Madison!
Gallery open Tue. –Sun., 10:00 am—5:00 pm.
Café open Wed. –Sat., 11:00 am –3:00 pm.
Sun. brunch with wine, 10:00—3:00 pm.
(608) 845-6600 www.artisangal.com
Christopher Columbus Museum
239 Whitney St., Columbus
World-class exhibit –2000 quality souvenirs(纪念品) marking Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exhibition. Tour buses are always welcome.
Open daily, 8:15 am – 4:00 pm.
(920) 623-1992 www.columbusantiquemall.com Which of the following is on Capitol Square?
| A．Wisconsin Historical Museum. | B．Swiss Historical Village. |
| C．Artisan Gallery & Creamery Café. | D．Christopher Columbus Museum. |
Where can you go for a visit on Monday?
| A．Wisconsin Historical Museum. |
| B．Swiss Historical Village. |
| C．Artisan Gallery & Creamery café. |
| D．Christopher Columbus Museum. |
Where can visitors have lunch?
| A．At Wisconsin Historical Museum. |
| B．At Swiss Historical Village. |
| C．At Artisan Gallery & Creamery Café. |
| D．At Christopher Columbus Museum. |
We learn from the text that___________.
| A．Swiss Historical Village is open for half a year |
| B．Christopher Columbus Museum overlooks a river |
| C．tickets are needed for Wisconsin Historical Museum |
| D．Artisan Gallery & Creamery Café are open daily for 4 hours |
When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.
Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.
And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes—at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.
Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow. If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible; they make growth and improvement possible.
By trial and error—trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes—we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.
Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.
Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away. Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing, then you make mistakes and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something. That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Mistakes are how we learn to do something new—because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success—at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.
So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.Why do most of us feel bad about making mistakes?
| A．Because mistakes make us suffer a lot. |
| B．Because it’s a natural part in our life. |
| C．Because we’ve been taught so from a young age. |
| D．Because mistakes have ruined many people’s careers. |
According to the passage, what is the right attitude to mistakes?
| A．We should try to avoid making mistakes. |
| B．We should owe great inventions mainly to mistakes. |
| C．We should treat mistakes as good chances to learn. |
| D．We should make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction. |
The underlined word “toddler” in Paragraph 6 probably means .
| A．a small child learning to walk |
| B．a kindergarten child learning to draw |
| C．a primary pupil learning to read |
| D．a school teenager learning to write |
We can learn from the passage that .
| A．most of us can really grow from success |
| B．growing and improving are based on mistakes |
| C．we learn to make mistakes by trial and error |
| D．we read about something and know how to do it right away |
A
Guide to Stockholm University Library
Our library offers different types of studying places and provides a good studying environment.
Zones
The library is divided into different zones. The upper floor is a quiet zone with over a thousand places for silent reading, and places where you can sit and work with your own computer. The reading places consist mostly of tables and chairs. The ground floor is the zone where you can talk. Here you can find sofas and armchairs for group work.
Computers
You can use your own computer to connect to the wi-fi specially prepared for notebook computers, you can also use library computers, which contain the most commonly used applications, such as Microsoft Office. They are situated in the area known as the Experimental Field on the ground floor.
Group-study places
If you want to discuss freely without disturbing others, you can book a study room or sit at a table on the ground floor. Some study rooms are for 2-3 people and others can hold up to 6-8 people. All rooms are marked on the library maps.
There are 40 group-study rooms that must be booked via the website. To book, you need an active University account and a valid University card. You can use a room three hours per day, nine hours at most per week.
Storage of Study Material
The library has lockers for students to store course literature. When you have obtained at least 40 credits(学分), you may rent a locker and pay 400 SEK for a year’s rental period.
Rules to be Followed
Mobile phone conversations are not permitted anywhere in the library. Keep your phone on silent as if you were in a lecture and exit the library if you need to receive calls.
Please note that food and fruit are forbidden in the library, but you are allowed to have drinks and sweets with you.The library’s upper floor is mainly for students to .
| A．read in a quiet place |
| B．have group discussions |
| C．take comfortable seats |
| D．get their computers fixed |
Library computers on the ground floor __________.
| A．help students with their field experiments |
| B．are for those who want to access the wi-fi |
| C．contain software necessary for schoolwork |
| D．are mostly used for filling out application forms |
What condition should be met to book a group-study room?
| A．Group must consist of 8 people. |
| B．One should have an active University account. |
| C．Three-hour use per day is the minimum. |
| D．Applicants must mark the room on the map. |
A student can rent a locker in the library if he ____________.
| A．has earned the required credits |
| B．attends certain course |
| C．has nowhere to put his books |
| D．can afford the rental fee |
What should NOT be brought into the library?
| A．Mobile phones. | B．Orange juice. |
| C．Candy. | D．Sandwiches. |
People diet to look more attractive. Fish diet to avoid being beaten up, thrown out of their social group, and getting eaten as a result. That is the fascinating conclusion of the latest research into fish behavior by a team of Australian scientists.
The research team have discovered that subordinate fish voluntarily diet to avoid challenging their larger competitors. “In studying gobies we noticed that only the largest two individuals, a male and female, had breeding （繁殖） rights within the group,” explains Marian Wong. “All other group members are nonbreeding females, each being 5-10% smaller than its next largest competitor. We wanted to find out how they maintain this precise size separation.”
The reason for the size difference was easy to see. Once a subordinate fish grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it causes a fight which usually ends in the smaller goby being driven away from the group. More often than not, the evicted fish is then eaten up.
It appeared that the smaller fish were keeping themselves small in order to avoid challenging the boss fish. Whether they did so voluntarily, by restraining how much they ate, was not clear. The research team decided to do an experiment. They tried to fatten up some of the subordinate gobies to see what happened. To their surprise, the gobies simply refused the extra food they were offered, clearly preferring to remain small and avoid fights, over having a feast.
The discovery challenges the traditional scientific view of how boss individuals keep their position in a group. Previously it was thought that large individuals simply used their weight and size to threaten their subordinates and take more of the food for themselves, so keeping their competitors small.
While the habits of gobies may seem a little mysterious, Dr. Wong explains that understanding the relationships between boss and subordinate animals is important to understanding how hierarchical （等级的） societies remain stable.
The research has proved the fact that voluntary dieting is a habit far from exclusive to humans. “As yet, we lack a complete understanding of how widespread the voluntary reduction of food intake is in nature,” the researchers comment. “Data on human dieting suggests that, while humans generally diet to improve health or increase attractiveness, rarely does it improve long-term health and males regularly prefer females that are fatter than the females’ own ideal.”When a goby grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it .
| A．faces danger | B．has breeding rights |
| C．eats its competitor | D．leaves the group itself |
The underlined words “the evicted fish” in Paragraph 3 refer to .
| A．the fish beaten up | B．the fish found out |
| C．the fish fattened up | D．the fish driven away |
The experiment showed that the smaller fish .
| A．fought over a feast | B．went on diet willingly |
| C．preferred some extra food | D．challenged the boss fish |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．Fish dieting and human dieting. |
| B．Dieting and health. |
| C．Human dieting. |
| D．Fish dieting. |
Science Fiction
The science fiction type of entertainment is considered by most to be fathered by Jules Verne (A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) and H. G. Wells (The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds). Sci-Fi, as it is commonly shortened, is a fictional story in which science and technology have a significant influence on the characters and plot. Many such works are guesswork about what the future holds and how scientific findings and technological advances will shape humankind.
Writing in the late 1800s, Jules Verne was remarkably successful in his 10 guesses about future technologies of air conditioning, automobiles, the Internet, television, and underwater, air, and space travel. Unbelievably, of all places from which to choose, Jules Verne guessed Tampa, Florida, USA as the launching site of the first project to the Moon, which was only 200 kilometers away from the actual 1969 location at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
One of the best-known science fiction books is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Published in 1949, it was not meant as a prediction, but as a warning: Orwell was describing what he saw as the outcome of the ideas, trends, and emerging technologies of his time. Many invented terms from this novel have become common in everyday use, such as “big brother” and “doublethink”. Even the author’s name has been made into an adjective—Orwellian—and has become a warning descriptor for situations where privacy is lost and the individual becomes sacrifice under a totalitarian(极权主义) government. Nineteen Eighty-Four was translated into sixty-five languages within five years of its publication, setting a record that still stands.
What helps bring science fiction into being is usually a new discovery or innovation. The author creates an analysis of the potential influence and consequences and then wraps it in a pleasant story. For example, the beginning of space exploration was followed a few years later by the Star Trek television program and movie series. Advances in genetics(遗传学) cause fantasies of the end of disease, horrors of eugenics(优生学), and thrillers where creatures disappearing long ago are brought back to life. The science fiction author’s self-determined role is that of field glasses for humanity—searching the world of future possibilities upon the road which we are traveling. What can science fiction offer to people?
| A．A forecast of how a new discovery could influence mankind. |
| B．A thoughtful look at the present drawbacks of technology. |
| C．An analysis of why a new technology could be used to harm human. |
| D．A thoughtful look at the past and what brought us to this point in history. |
Which of the following best summarizes the description of Nineteen Eighty-Four?
| A．A prediction of future technologies. |
| B．A warning of cruel and unfair ruling. |
| C．The consequence of scientific findings. |
| D．An imaginary perfect world of freedom. |
From the passage we can learn that _____.
| A．Nineteen Eighty-Four adopted some popular terms |
| B．H.G. Wells predicted the Internet in the late 1800s |
| C．Cape Canaveral was mentioned in Jules Verne’s fiction |
| D．Star Trek movie series were based on space exploration |
According to the author, what is the role of science fiction in society?
| A．A moral compass. |
| B．A reference of technology. |
| C．A record of science development. |
| D．A consideration of possibilities. |