The practice of magic includes special words, actions, and objects. Most magic involves a person called a magician, who claims to have supernatural powers. Magic words.
To work most magic, the magician sings or speaks special words in a certain order. These words are called incantations or spells. Some spells form prayers to demons(魔鬼), spirits, or other supernatural forces. Many societies believe the magic will not work unless the magician recites the spells perfectly. Other magic words have no meaning, though they supposedly possess power when spoken by a magician. Magic actions accompany the words spoken in performing much magic. Many of these movements act out the desired effect of the magic. For example, a magician trying to make rain fall may sprinkle(洒) water on the ground. The magician's combined words and actions form a ceremony. Magic objects include certain plants, stones, and other things with supposed supernatural powers. Any such object may be called a fetish(物神). But this term often refers to an object—for example, a carving or a dried snake—honored by a tribe for its magic powers. Many tribes believe fetishes have magic power because spirits live in these objects. Many people carry magic objects called amulets(护身符)to protect themselves from harm. Many amulets are stones or rings engraved(雕刻) with magic symbols.
The magician, in some societies, nearly everyone knows how to work some magic. In other societies, only experts practice magic. Magicians may be called medicine men, medicine women, shamans, sorcerers, or witch doctors. In many societies, magicians must inherit(遗传) their powers. In others, any person may become a magician by studying the magical arts.
Many societies believe magicians must observe certain rules and taboos (forbidden actions) for their spells to work. For example, they may be required not to eat various foods or to avoid sexual activity for a certain period before the ceremony. What do magic words mean to people in some society?
| A.They have the power to kill devils. |
| B.They have power if magician recites the right spells. |
| C.They have no effect at all. |
| D.They can be used whenever they want. |
Why do many people believe in a fetish?
| A.Because it is often a ring which is worth a lot of money. |
| B.Because it is carved with magic symbols. |
| C.Because people think spirits live in it. |
| D.Because it can help them with many things. |
What's the best title of the passage?
| A.How Magicians make Magic Work | B.The Power of Magic |
| C.How to Practice Magic | D.The Choice of Magicians |
C
“Regardless of social class, race, age, men say they hate to shop,” says Zukin, City University of New York sociology professor. “Yet when you ask them deeper questions, it turns out that they like to shop. Men generally like to shop for books, music and hardware. But if you ask them about the shopping they do for books or music, they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s not shopping. That’s research.’”
In other words, what men and women call “buying things” and how they approach that task are different.
Women will wander through several 1,000-square-meter stores in search of the perfect party dress. Men will wander through 100 Internet sites in search of the perfect digital camcorder(摄录像一体机).
Women see shopping as a social event. Men see it as a special task or a game to be won.
“Men are frequently shopping to win,” says Ann, a marketing professor at Loyola University of Chicago. “They want to get the best deal. They want to get the best one, the latest one and if they do that it makes them happy.”
When women shop, “They’re doing it in a way that they want everybody to be very happy,” says Ann. “They’re kind of shopping for love.”
“Teenage girls learn to shop from their moms and older sisters, but they also learn to shop by examining articles in magazines like Seventeen,” City University Zukin says.
“And although men’s magazines such as GQ and Esquire have long had shopping articles, it’s TV that has the eye of young male shoppers,” says Ann and Zukin.
“Television shows are used by young men in the same way Seventeen magazine or Lucky are used by girls,” says Zukin, “to help make clothing and toiletry(化妆品) choices.”
“Of course, there are men who love to shop and are proud of it,” Loyola’s Ann says.
And that is important no matter whether you buy a car or a frying pan. All men love to buy but don’t want to get cheated.
Ann adds, “There actually are men who are interested, for example, in cooking or shopping or chinaware or things around the home --- they become kind of girl magnets. Women like it.”
78. From the first paragraph we can find that ______.
A. men are all dishonest B. men are all book lovers
C. men hate to shop actually D. men like to shop in fact
79. Compared to women men usually treat shopping ______.
A. honestly B. seriously C. frequently D. foolishly
80. The underlined word “magnets” in the last paragraph means ______.
A. magazines that attract young women B. persons that have a powerful attraction
C. tools that can help housewives much D. vegetables that make women beautiful
B
One of the most difficult questions to answer is how much a job is worth. We naturally expect that a doctor’s salary will be higher than a bus conductor’s wage. But the question becomes much more difficult to answer when we compare, say, a miner with an engineer, or an unskilled man working on an oil-rig(钻油机) in the North Sea with a teacher in a secondary school. What the doctor, the engineer and teacher have is many years of training in order to obtain the necessary qualifications for their professions. We feel instinctively that these skills and these years, when they were studying instead of earning money, should be rewarded. At the same time we recognize that the work of the miner and the oil-rig laborer is both hard and dangerous, and that they must be highly paid for the risks they take.
Another factor we must take into consideration is how socially useful a man’s work is, regardless of the talents he may bring to it. Most people would agree that looking after the sick or teaching children is more important than, say, selling secondhand cars or improving the taste of toothpaste by adding a red stripe to it. Yet it is almost certain that the used car salesman earns more than the nurse, and that research chemist earns more than the school teacher.
Indeed, this whole question of just rewards can be turned on its head. You can argue that a man who does a job which brings him personal satisfaction is already receiving part of his reward in the form of a so-called “psychic(精神的) wage”, and that it is the man with the boring, repetitive job who needs more money to make up for the soul-destroying monotony(单调) of his work. It is significant that that those jobs which are traditionally regarded as “vocations” --- nursing, teaching and the Church, for example --- continue to be poorly paid, while others, such as those in the world of sport or entertainment, carry financial rewards out of all proportion to their social worth.
Although the amount of money that people earn is in reality largely determined by market forces, this should not prevent us from seeking some way to decide what is the right pay for the job. A starting point for such an investigation would be to try to decide the ratio which ought to exist between the highest and the lowest paid. The picture is made more complicate by two factors: firstly by the “social wage”, i.e, the welfare benefits which every citizen receives; and secondly, by the taxation system, which is often used as an instrument of social justice by taxing high incomes at a very high rate indeed. Allowing for these two things, most countries now regard a ratio of 7:1 as socially acceptable. If it is less, the highly-qualified people carrying heavy responsibilities become disillusioned, and might even end up by emigration(移民) (the so-called “brain-drain” is an evidence that this can happen). If it is more, the gap between rich and poor will be so great that it will lead social tensions and ultimately to violence.
74. The professional man, such as the doctor, should be well paid because ______.
A. he has spent several years learning how to do his job
B. his work involves much great intelligence than, say, a bus conductor’s
C. he has to work much harder than most other people
D. he knows more than other people about his subject
75. The “brain-drain” is an evidence that ______.
A. well-educated people are prepared to emigrate whenever they can get a better paid job
B. people with jobs or responsibility expect to be highly paid
C. high taxation is a useful and effective instrument of social justice
D. the poor are generally more patriotic(爱国的) than the rich
76. As far as rewarding people for their work is concerned, the writer, believes that ______.
A. we should pay for socially-useful work, regardless of the person’s talent
B. we should pay people according to their talents
C. market forces will determine how much a person is paid
D. qualified people should be the highest paid
77. The argument of the “psychic wage” is used to explain why ______.
A. people who do socially important work are not always well paid
B. people who do monotonous jobs are highly paid
C. you should not try to compare the pay of different professions
D. some professional people are paid more than others
III. 阅读理解:(共10题,满分20分;每小题2分)
阅读下列短文,从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中,选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A
Generations of children who sat through endless lessons of "chalk and talk" in front of a bossy teacher could take some relief. But the "chalk and talk" method helped them achieve better exam results. Modern classroom techniques may make school days a great deal happier, but contentment(满意) is not the road to success in examinations, according to university researchers.
Their three-year study, monitoring the progress of 2,000 teenagers, tried to measure the influence of the "boredom factor" in 17 selected schools in the north of England. The researchers also found that the old-fashioned approach of teachers ordering pupils about is still alive and producing results. Their conclusions were welcomed yesterday by educationists who were worried by the shift to less formal lessons.
The pupils in the latest study were asked to award teachers marks to measure how frequently they followed or ignored today's fashion for "child-centred" education. A five-point scale was given to spot the teachers who always told them what they should know and what to write down. "It was significant and not something you would get by chance or accident. Certainly, when you compare the pupil's interest and attitude to school, there is a quite definite and highly significant difference," one of the researchers said. But the rankings were turned upside down when the team of four researchers looked at how the children did in examinations. The sort of methods now frowned upon (不认同) actually improve the final grades.
The researchers said, "There is nothing wrong with old-fashioned, didactic(说教式的) teaching in the right place, even if it isn't the flavor at the moment." However, he insisted the best teachers had always mixed the two techniques to match the needs of pupils, although certain examinations forced some to concentrate more on dictation and learning by rote(死记硬背).
71. We can infer from Paragraph 3 that ______.
A. child-centred education promotes friendship among children
B. the research findings are not significant enough for a conclusion
C. those who show greater interest in school did better in exams
D. those who don't show much interest in school may turn out to score higher in tests
72. The researchers suggest that ______.
A. more old methods be used in teaching
B. students be taught how to score high in exams
C. dictation be used as one of the best teaching methods
D. old and new methods be used together
73. T
he best title for this text would be ______.
A. The Examination-based Teaching B. Rote Learning Was the Winner
C. The Problem of Child-centred Education D. The Problem of the Traditional Method
D
To what degree can a computer achieve intelligence (智力)? The answer to this question may lie in a newly-developed US computer program called Smarter Child and the Internet.
If you ran into Smarter Child online , you would be surprised at this kid’s huge memory.It can recite many facts. For example , Smarter Child knows every baseball player in every team this season.
He knows every word in the dictionary and the weather in every major city areas across the US.However , if you ask Smarter Child other questions , you get stranger answers.A question about Smarter Child’s age returns. “One year, 11 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes, and 47 seconds!” Asking where he lives gets , “In a clean room in a high-tech building in California.”
Smarter Child uses the vast information on the World Wide Web as his memory bank.To answer questions about spelling , for instance , Smarter Child goes to American Heritage Dictionary online.For the weather , he visits www.intellicast.com.
Some scientists believe that by joining the many systems of the Internet , an artificial being with the combined knowledge of , say , Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and Britney Spears could be born.However if Smarter Child wants to think and learn on his own like the boy-computer David in the movie A.I., Artificial Intelligence , he must overcome two problems.
The first is that computers find it difficult to read web pages because the files are labeled in different ways.That’s why programmers need to tell Smarter Child where to look for the weather.It would be a much more difficult task to let him find it himself.
Another problem is that while Smarter Child can process (处理) information more exactly and faster than any human , he lacks common sense—a basic grounding of knowledge that is obvious to any young child.
67.From the text we can infer that www.intellicast.com is a website___________.
A.which is specially designed to help Smarter Child
B.where we people can find Smarter Child
C.where weather forecasts are made
D.which is about artificial intelligence
68.It is probably most difficult for Smarter Child to_______.
A.tell us how to spell a difficult word
B.tell us how the American government is run
C.provide us with a famous poem by Shakespeare
D.learn how to tell right behaviors from wrong ones。
69.Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A.Smart Child has his own memory bank big enough for all kinds of information.
B.A.I.Artificial Intelligence is probably the name of a film about a boy-computer.
C.Smart Child can recognize different files and find information needed on his own.
D.We have similar product now which has the knowledge of Einstein , Nixon and Spears.
70.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A.A New Web Child B.Smarter Child
C.The Future of Internet D.Intelligence Development



C
Everyone’s at it, even my neighbors. I thought I might be the only person left in the world who hadn’t done an eBay deal. So, I decided to try my hand at online auction(网上拍卖).
Buying for Beginners
Sign up on www. eBay. co. uk. Most items (e.g. tables, computers and books) ready for auction will come with a picture and a short description; others may be marked with “Buy It Now ” and have a fixed price. You can buy these right away.
If the item is being auctioned, you offer the highest price you are prepared to pay and eBay bids (出价) for you. The bid will be increased little by little until it goes beyond your highest bid, then you are emailed and asked if you would like to bid again. Auctions last up to 10 days and when they finish, you get an email telling you whether you have won the item.
How to Pay
Sellers decide how they would like to be paid and you need to check this before placing a bid as you might not want to post a check or postal orders. The easiest way is through PayPal, an online payment system that takes the money away from your credit card.
Selling Made Simple
If you plan to sell on eBay, it helps to include a picture of the item. I followed my friends’ advice and put up the items I wanted to sell for a 10-day auction, starting on a Thursday. This way buyers had two weekends to bid.
The big Things in Life
It’s easy to post a small item, but furniture is a big part of eBay and this has to be collectively sent by deliverymen. Check the ways of delivery before you bid.
64. What is the passage mainly about?
A. How to make payment online. B. Ways of making delivery online.
C. How to use an online-auction system. D. Advantages of an online auction system.
65. After bidding for an item, a buyer ________.
A. has chances to make higher bids B. will get what he wants in ten days
C. should make payment immediately D. may check its picture and description
66. The easiest way of making payment mentioned in the passage is ________.
A. through a local banking system B. by sending the money to the seller
C. through an online payment system D. by paying the deliveryman directly