GAOMI, Shandong, Oct．11（ Xinhua）—Chinese writer Mo Yan said last Thursday that he was "very surprised" at winning the Nobel Literature Prize．
Speaking to reporters at a hotel in his hometown Gaomi city in east China's Shandong Province, Mo said, "（I was）very surprised upon winning the prize because I felt I was not very senior in terms of qualification（among Chinese writers）．There are many good writers and my ranking was not so high．"
"I am very happy," he said．"I was having dinner when I received the news．I was surprised．”
"Thank you for coming all the way to Gaomi．This should be a season of red sorghum, but no such crop is planted any more．I believe none of you have seen the crop," he said．
"The Nobel Literature Prize is a very important literature prize, but not the top award．It represents the opinions of the jury（评审团 ）．I am satisfied with my major works and I still keep writing by hand．My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature．They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country's unique culture and folk customs．Meanwhile, my novels described human beings in the broad sense．I wrote in the perspective of a human being．These works stand beyond regions and ethnic groups," he said．
"The folk arts and folk culture accompanied my growth and I was influenced by the cultural elements I witnessed through my childhood．When I picked up the pen for literature creation, the folk cultural elements inevitably entered my novels and affected and even determined the artistic styles of my works," he added．
Mo's win brought joy to other writers and readers throughout the country as he is the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Literature Prize in its century--long history．
Born into a farmer's family in a village in Gaomi, Mo has been known since the late 1980s for his novels such as Big Breasts and Wide Hips and Red Sorghum, which was later adapted into a film by director Zhang Yimou．Mo Yan was surprised at winning the Nobel Prize because he felt ．
| A．he was not the best writer in China |
| B．he was not as famous as other writers |
| C．he was born in a farmer's family |
| D．he didn't have good education |
By reading Mo Yan's works, we can ．
| A．increase our sense of national pride |
| B．learn a lot about the Chinese folk culture |
| C．form a vivid picture of his childhood |
| D．learn more about the history of the Nobel Prize |
Which of the following words can best describe Mo Yan?
| A．romantic | B．self--confident |
| C．modest | D．humorous |
Where might you find the article?
| A．In a novel． | B．In a travel book． |
| C．In a student book． | D．In a newspaper． |
Being connected to the Internet has become a necessary part of modern life. Some people actually need it as they cannot do their jobs without it, and others simply feel they need it as they cannot imagine life without it.
To think that something that did not even exist 50 years ago has come to play a crucial role in our lives like this in just about 15 years makes one wonder – just what will the future bring?
In 2004, a survey was conducted in the US asking a group of technology experts their opinions on the Internet in the next ten years. 57% of them agreed that virtual classes will be more widely adopted in schools, allowing students to learn with those at the same level and with interests in the same subjects. It’s quite possible that, by the year 2030, every child in every school will do all their schoolwork on their own laptop with all their textbooks available（现成可使用的）on the Internet. No more heavy books to carry around and no more pens and paper!
At work, we already use email to deal with people both inside and outside our offices and video conferencing（电话会议） is occurring more frequently. This means that meetings can be held between offices in different countries without the trouble caused by business travel. Business travel will not exist in the future, and so will offices as people all start to work from home.
It has also become a trend for people to use pocket computers such as Blackberries. With this helpful equipment, people can send and receive emails, surf the Web, and read multimedia files from absolutely anywhere even if we are on a beach holiday.
The Internet will have a revolutionary（突破性的）effect on entertainment in the future. Already we can buy and download music and movies from the Internet but it is still possible for us to buy a CD or go to the DVD stores to rent the latest movies. However, it’s quite possible that in the future, CD shops and DVD rental stores will close and cinemas will no longer exist. Entertainment will become completely virtual although hopefully people will still want to get outside to play sports and entertain themselves in more healthy ways.
With the Internet we need only relax in the rocking chair. The Internet, however, has problems to be solved. The expression “play a crucial role in” can be understood as “_______”.
| A．change a dull role into | B．play an interesting part in |
| C．act a cruel character in | D．have an important effect on |
According to the passage people are satisfied with all the following changes EXCEPT that
_____________.
| A．CD shops and cinemas will shut down as a result of the adoption of virtual entertainment |
| B．virtual classes can make students’ dream of getting rid of their schoolbags come true |
| C．people can be kept informed anytime and anywhere with the help of convenient equipment |
| D．people won’t have to make business travel any more thanks to the video conference |
What will the writer probably discuss after the last paragraph?
| A．The possible school life in the future. |
| B．Bad effects the Internet can have on us. |
| C．More excitements the Internet will bring us. |
| D．The likely ways to solve the problems. |
What is probably the best title for the passage?
| A．Virtual reality, our best friend! |
| B．Goodbye, textbooks and offices! |
| C．What will future life be like with the Internet? |
| D．How can human beings deal with the Internet? |
IN the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen’s apple and falls victim to a curse; in Shakespeare’s novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pills that contained mercury, believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.
Poison has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?
An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison. The exhibition will continue until Aug 2014, reported The New York Times.
The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars, frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren’t much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered in a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.
The exhibition also features interactive activities. In an iPad-based game, visitors are presented with three puzzling illnesses and asked to identify the poisons based on symptoms. In one case, for example, a pet dog is found sick in a backyard and visitors have to figure out whether it was the toad (蟾蜍), the leaky batteries in the trash or the dirty pond water that did it.
“Poisons can be bad for some things,” Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. “Yet they can also be good for others.”
This is what visitors learn from the last part of the exhibition, which displays how poisons can be used favorably by humans, including for medical treatment.
The blood toxins of vampire bats, for example, can prevent blood from clotting (凝结), which may protect against strokes. A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol. One chemical in the venom of Gila monsters can lower the blood sugar of its victims, so it has been used to treat diabetes.
The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances that we regularly take in – chili, coffee and chocolate, etc. – owe their special flavors or stimulating effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.By mentioning Snow White and Romeo at the beginning of the story, the author intends to.
| A．show that poison has long been involved in literature |
| B．show that poison is always linked with evil and death |
| C．draw readers’ attention to the topic of the article |
| D．get readers to think of more examples of the use of poison in stories |
What is the main purpose of the exhibition The Power of Poison?
| A．To give people more in-depth knowledge about poison. |
| B．To teach people how to handle poisonous animals. |
| C．To inform people about which animals are the most poisonous. |
| D．To show how poison has been used for medical treatment. |
Which of the following statements about the exhibition is TRUE according to the article?
| A．The exhibition will lead visitors to a real rainforest. |
| B．Golden poison frogs are the most poisonous animals on display. |
| C．Those who visit the exhibition can join in some iPad-based interactive games. |
| D．Visitors can listen to lectures on recent studies of poisonous animals. |
Harvard University in the United States has been ranked as the university with the best "reputation" in the world.
The Times Higher Education magazine has listed 200 top universities all over the world based on how they are regarded by a group of international college teachers. That is to say the list measures how universities are regarded, rather than how they actually performed.
A subjective, word-of-mouth（口碑的）quality such as "reputation" has genuine economic value for universities, said Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
"Reputation is not just an impression, though it might be not as reliable as performance by objective indicators（客观指标）," said Prof Marginson.
Based on the views of 13,000 college teachers around the world, it confirms the power of the big US universities, which dominate this list. Seven of the top 10 are US universities, headed by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Furthermore, 14 of the top 20 are from the US. Cambridge is the highest ranking UK university in the list, in third place, with Oxford ranked as sixth.
For students applying to university, reputation might be hard to quantify, but was an important part of the attractiveness, said the president of Cambridge University's students' union, Rahul Mansigani.
"Reputation makes a huge difference. If there is an idea that somewhere is great, it will get lots of good people applying whether it's true or not. Factors such as a sense of history and the presence of outstanding college teachers were part of the reputation of Cambridge," he said. The underlined word “dominate” in Paragraph 5 probably means __________.
| A． affect | B． decide |
| C． control | D． improve |
What can be inferred from the text?
| A．No Asian universities are among the Top 10. |
| B．At least five UK universities are among Top 20. |
| C．The Times Higher Education magazine is from the US. |
| D．Reputation affects students’ decisions when choosing universities. |
Which of the following would be the best title of the passage?
| A．Turning ideas into reputation |
| B．World’s best universities ranked in order of reputation |
| C．The top 200 universities in the USA |
| D．Reputable Universities attractive to more students |
Whatsonstage.com is the UK’s biggest and best online guide to the performing arts including theatre, opera, classical music, dance and so on.
◆The Lion King
Musical: The stage adaptation of the Disney film taken from an original African story. A young lion grows up and learns that taking over the pride requires wisdom and maturity(成熟).
Place: Lyceum Theatre, Wellington Street, London
Telephone: 0870 243 9000
Date: Friday, 18 Nov. 2013
Ticket price:￡37.5
◆Oliver
Musical: Dickens’ story of a boy in a London workhouse and his adventures on the way to discovering his family. The songs include Food glorious food, You’ve got to pick a pocket or two， Who will buy this wonderful morning，I am reviewing the situation and Consider yourself at home.
Place: Theatre Royal, Catherine Street, London
Telephone: 020 7494 5061
Date: Thursday, 17 Nov. 2013
Ticket price: ￡25 but now save 20%
◆Jersey Boys
Musical: It tells the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: the blue-collar kids from New Jersey formed a singing group and became famous. The musical features many of the group’s popular songs such as Big girls don’t cry, Oh, What a night and Can’t take my eyes off you.
Place: Prince Edward Theatre, Old Compton Street, London
Telephone: 0870 850 9191
Date: Saturday, 9 Nov. 2013
Ticket price:￡22.5
◆All’s Well That Ends Well
Play: A romantic story. Helena, daughter of a poor physician, loves Bertram, son of a Countess(女伯爵).
Place: Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Park Street, London
Telephone: 020 7401 9919
Date: Sunday, 20 Nov. 2013
Ticket price: ￡40.5 If Mary is available on Friday, which of the following should she call to buy a ticket?
| A． 0870 850 9191 | B． 020 7494 5061 |
| C． 0870 243 9000 | D． 020 7401 9919 |
If you want to buy a ticket at a discount, you should go to __________.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre B. Theatre Royal
C. Prince Edward Theatre D. Lyceum Theatre
THIS is an excerpt（摘录）from therapist Laura Trice’s speech at TED in 2008:
Hi. I'm here to talk to you about the importance of praise, admiration and “thank you”s, and making them specific and genuine.
The way I got interested in this was, I noticed that when I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, I would want to say thank you to someone. I would want to praise them. I would want to take in their praise of me and then I'd just stop myself. I asked myself: why? I felt shy. I felt embarrassed. And then my question became: am I the only one who does this? So I decided to study that question.
I'm fortunate enough to work in a rehab facility, so I get to see people who are facing life and death with addiction. Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as their core wound is how their father died without ever saying he's proud of them. But then, they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else that he was proud, but he never told the son. It's because he didn't know that his son needed to hear it.
I used to take my bike into the bike store and they'd do something called "truing（校正）" the wheels. The guy said: "You know, when you true the wheels, it's going to make the bike so much better." I get the same bike back, and they'd have taken all the little warps out of those same wheels I've had for two and a half years, and my bike would feel like new. So, I'm going to challenge all of you. I want you to true your wheels: be honest about the praise that you need to hear. What do you need to hear? Go home to your wife and ask her: “What do you need?” Go home to your husband and ask him what he needs. Go home and ask those questions and then help the people around you.
It's simple. But why should we care about this? We talk about world peace. How can we have world peace with different cultures, different languages? I think it starts in each of our households. So, let's make things right in our own backyards.Why did Laura mention truing the wheels of her bike in the speech?
To thank the staff of the bike shop.
To show the importance of praise and admiration.
To advise readers to get their bike wheels trued, too.
To remind readers to renew their relationships with the people around them.The purpose of the speech is most likely to ___________.
| A． surprise | B． persuade |
| C． describe | D． entertain |