When I was learning calligraphy (书法), my teacher told me a story.
A calligrapher taught handwriting. One of his students who often practiced handwriting with old sheets of newspaper complained that he made very little progress though he had learned it with the calligrapher for a long time. His teacher said to him, “Try to use the best paper. Maybe you'll write better.”
The student did as he was told. It really worked. He made headway not long afterwards and felt curious. He asked his teacher about the reason. The calligrapher answered，“When you used old newspaper to practice handwriting, you would think you were writing a draft. It didn't matter if you wrote badly as old newspaper was plenty in supply. In that case you wouldn't pay much attention to it. Now you use the best paper and you'll treasure it. Each time you write you feel strongly about the rarity of chances and you'll devote to it with all your heart and soul; you'll do the handwriting much more attentively than practicing. Of course you've made rapid progress.”
Indeed, we spend our ordinary days just as they are worthless “old newspaper”．We don't care if we scrawl and waste it, thinking that it will come endlessly—the “old newspaper” is inexhaustible. In such a mood we may each day pass by opportunities but fail to catch any of them.
Life is not a military exercise but an actual war in which real weapons are used. In everyday life there's no chance for us to draft. That's because what we call “draft” actually is the answer sheet we write that cannot be changed.
Every day of our life is something new. Let us take every day as a sheet of the best paper.The calligrapher in the story told the student to write on the best paper because he thought ________.
| A．the student would practice more carefully on the best paper |
| B．it was comfortable to write on the best paper |
| C．the student had enough money to buy the best paper |
| D．the student could write more on the best paper |
The student didn't make much progress at first because ________.
| A．he didn't follow his teacher's advice |
| B．he was too poor to buy better paper to write on |
| C．he regarded his writing on old newspaper just as a draft |
| D．he was not used to the calligrapher's teaching manner |
We learn from the passage that ________.
| A．the student finally gave up |
| B．the student made rapid progress by practicing more carefully |
| C．the calligrapher was strict with his students |
| D．old newspaper is not useful |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．What teachers say is always true. |
| B．Success calls for attentiveness. |
| C．Handwriting is easy to practice. |
| D．New things are always better than old ones. |
The writer wants to tell us that ________.
| A．there are some good ways to practice handwriting |
| B．life is like old newspaper |
| C．we should learn from the student in the story |
| D．life will not give us a chance to draw a draft |
Less than one year after France imposed a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places, it will, from Jan. 1, 2009, extend the ban to bars, restaurants, hotels, nightclubs—and the most cherished of all: cafés.
Ireland and Italy show that countries with long-standing smoking traditions may introduce bans fairly smoothly, as they did in 2004 and 2005. In Germany, where regulations vary locally, Berlin will join France on Jan 1. But fierce critics of the new law in France say it all but destroys the café's basic function: to serve as the socio-economic glue of society.
Cécile Perez, owner of La Fronde, a typical Parisian neighborhood café, said: “In the morning, street cleaners in bright green uniforms sip coffee next to well-dressed businessmen; at lunch hour, working-class types rub shoulders with those of the latest fashion at the bar, while couples of all ages rub noses over salads; during the after-work rush, there is a steady soundtrack of clinking glasses combined with conversation; the constant, no matter what time of day, is the smoke that drifts through the air in curls and clouds, seemingly unnoticed.”
“Our motto in France is: liberty, equality, fraternity,” Olivier Seconda, a regular at the café, said. “The café is the place that represents that. You’re free to smoke, everyone pays the same price for a beer and different kinds of people talk with one another. This new law goes against that.”
Seconda expects the ban to be felt even more strongly in small villages far from Paris, where the café is often the only means of social activity. “People already miss the space that allows people of all walks of life to share something—even if it is sometimes no more than a few words and the smoke floating between them.”Cécile Perez mentions the curls and clouds of smoke drifting through the air to ______.
| A．describe a friendly atmosphere |
| B．show the beauty of his own café |
| C．support the ban on smoking |
| D．remind us of something unnoticed |
Olivier Seconda implies that ______.
| A．the café provides people with enough liberty, equality, and fraternity |
| B．people, regardless of their social classes, enjoy equal rights in a café |
| C．the new ban on café smoking should be put in effect only in villages |
| D．people would not find fun in a café without smoking a cigarette |
The passage is written to _______.
| A．show the writer’s personal opinion against a new law |
| B．provide information for law-makers to pass a new law |
| C．tell why some people are unhappy about smoking ban in cafés |
| D．compare attitudes to a law, held by people from different countries |
The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.
Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.
He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”
“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘citay ’ and ‘dutay’ , rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’ and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”
The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch.
The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.
| A．she has been Queen for many years. |
| B．she has a less upper-class accent now. |
| C．her speeches are familiar to many people. |
| D．her speeches have been recorded for 50 years. |
Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?
| A．“dutay” | B．“citee” | C．“hame” | D．“lorst” |
We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on _________.
| A．speech sounds | B．Christmas customs |
| C．TV broadcasting | D．personal messages |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV. |
| B．The relationship between accents and social classes. |
| C．The changes in a person’s accent. |
| D．The recent development of the English language. |
Dear SJ,
Losing a best friend is never easy.
Your problem, is not just that you miss your best friend, it is that you feel empty and lost without her friendship.
It takes time to get over a lost, and during that time, your mind is getting used to a new way of being. This is usually a good thing, even if it feels like a bad thing.
Now that you are on your own, you are being forced to learn to be by yourself and to rely upon your own inner voice for guidance. I am sure that this feels strange for you, but if you can hang on for a bit longer, it may work to your advantage.
Best friends are cool, but it is important to know the difference between missing someone and being too independent upon them.
At your age, girls do tend to stick together and having a good boyfriend may not yet be the better choice. Your friend is leaving you, her best friend, for a boyfriend. Boyfriends are completely different from best friends. The distinction is that boyfriends come and go, while girl friends often stay in your life throughout high school, and even afterwards. It is a completely different sort of bond.
I suggest that you take advantage of this period in your life to expand your horizons. Enjoy the freedom of having no best friend for a while, and hang with the group. By the time your former best friend breaks up with her boyfriend, you will be in a completely different place, a far better place.
And, by the way, next time you feel empty and lost, try to write about it in a diary. In several months, you will look back and read it with curiosity about yourself. “Who was I then, and what could I have been thinking?”Judging from the letter, SJ’s problem was that she didn’t know _______ .
| A．whether to give up her best friend |
| B．what to do without her best friend |
| C．whom to choose between two friends |
| D．how to stop missing her former friend |
The underlined part “a new way of being” (in Paragraph 3) refers to the situation in which SJ has to _______.
| A．find a new friendship | B．live without her boyfriend |
| C．learn to give up | D．learn to be independent |
The writer believes by the time SJ’s former friend loses her boyfriend, SJ will _______.
| A．take revenge on her former friend |
| B．comfort her former friend |
| C．feel more independent and confident |
| D．continue friendship with her former friend |
What does the last paragraph seem to suggest?
| A．Unhappy experiences are easy to forget. |
| B．Keeping a diary helps correct oneself. |
| C．SJ will get over her problem soon. |
| D．One shouldn’t forget the past experiences. |
While watching the Olympics the other night, I came across an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world record broken, but a show of courage.
The event was swimming and started with only three men on the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them false started, so they were disqualified. That left only one to complete. It would have been difficult enough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock is important.
I watched the man dive off the block and knew right away that something was wrong. I’m not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a good dive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he resurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold—his arms were waving in an attempt at freestyle. The crowd started to laugh. Clearly this man was not a medal competitor.
I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes and you could tell he was worn out.
But in those few awful strokes, the crowd had changed.
No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer. Some even began to stand and shout “Come on, you can do it!” and he did.
A clear minute past the average swimmer, this young man finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought that he had won the gold, and should have. Even though he recorded one of the slowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors.
Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alone race. His country had been invited to Sydney.
In a competition where athletes remove their silver medals feeling they have somehow been cheated out of gold, or when they act so proudly in front of their competitors, it is nice to watch an underdog.The crowd changed their attitudes because _______.
| A．they felt sorry for the young man |
| B．they wanted to show their sympathy |
| C．they were moved by the young man |
| D．they meant to please the young man |
From the passage we can learn that the young man _______.
| A．made his turn to start back pitifully |
| B．was skillful in freestyle in the game |
| C．swam faster than the average swimmer |
| D．was not capable enough to win the medal |
According to the passage, “it is nice to watch an underdog” probably means _______.
| A．it’s amusing to watch a man with awful swimming skills |
| B．it’s amazing to watch an ordinary man challenging himself |
| C．it’s cheerful for athletes to act proudly before their competitors |
| D．it’s brave enough for some athletes to remove the silver medals |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Go for it! | B．Try again！ |
| C．Compete for Gold! | D．Break a Record! |
When you're surfing the Internet on your laptop from your dorm or home, do you know your personal details are being gathered secretly? And would you be surprised to know the information may be sold cheaply to advertisers and marketers?
According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, all it takes is a tiny file in a computer－a single code consisting of a long series of numbers and letters－to record the computer user's age, gender, location, favorite movies and hobbies.
The newspaper reports that Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company, uses an advanced software called “beacon” to capture what people are typing on a website.
Lotame packages that data into profiles (个人资料) about individuals, only without their names, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Batches of such data may be sold for a few dollars.
The Wall Street Journal survey discovered that spying on Internet users is one of the fastestgrowing businesses on the World Wide Web.
The “cookie”－a tiny text file put on your PC by websites or marketing firms which might be used to remember your preferences for one site, or to track you across many sites is already old news. There are new and more complex tools such as “beacon” which scan in real time what people are doing on a webpage. These beacons instantly assess the Internet user's location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions.
Millions of Internet users around the world also face unprecedented (空前的) threats. Private, sensitive, personal and business information is being gathered and sold without their knowledge.
Companies insist the information they gather is anonymous(匿名的) and the data is used harmlessly. But the technology has grown so powerful that even some of the biggest websites in the US don't know that they were installing intrusive files on visitors' computers. These include MSN.com and Yahoo.com.
Next time you visit a webpage and find an ad banner advertising something you've been planning to buy, don't be amazed that your computer can read your mind.The purpose of the passage is to ______.
| A．introduce a tiny file in a computer－a single code |
| B．show how your individual information was let out when you surf the Internet |
| C．show how to protect your privacy |
| D．introduce a sophisticated software called “beacon” |
All of the following statements are not true EXCEPT ______.
| A．Lotame sells the profiles about individuals to companies seeking customers with their age, gender, location, hobbies and names |
| B．spying on Internet users is the fastestgrowing business on the World Wide Web |
| C．some of the biggest websites in the US know they were installing intrusive files on visitors' computers |
| D．a tiny file in a computer－a single code consisting of a long series of numbers and letters can record the user's information |
What’s the writer’s attitude to the issue?
| A．neutral | B．optimistic | C．worried | D．indifferent |