CourseDetailsCrazyCreatures(3

Americans: Restless? Illiterate（文盲）？
Americans are queer people; they can’t rest. They have more time, more leisure, shorter work hours, more holidays, and more vacations than any other people in the world. But they can’t rest. They rush up and down across their continent as tourists; they move about in great herds to conventions（大会）; they search the wilderness; they flood the mountains; they keep the hotels full. But they can’t rest. The scenery rushes past them. They learn it, but they don’t see it. Battles and monuments are announced to them on a tour bus. They hear them, but they don’t get them. They never stop moving; they rush up and down as Shriners, Masons, Old Graduates, Bankers—they are a new thing each day, always rushing to a reunion or something. So they go on rushing about till eventually the undertaker（殡葬工）gather them to a last convention.
Americans are queer people; they can’t read. They have more schools, and better schools and spend more money on schools and colleges than all Europe. But they can’t read. They print more books in a year than the French print in ten. But they can’t read. They cover their country with one hundred thousand tons of Sunday newspapers every week. But they don’t read them. They’re too busy. They use them for fires and to make more paper with. They buy eagerly thousands of new novels at two dollars each. But they read only page one. Their streets are full of huge signs. They won’t look at them. Their streetcars are filled with advertising; they turn their eyes away. Transparent colors, cart wheels, and mechanical flares whirl and flicker in the crowded streets at night. No one sees them. Tons of letters pour into the mail boxes, through the houses, and down the garbage cans. No one reads them.
The underlined word“queer”mean _________________.

A．strange

B．difficult

C．forgetful

D．friendly

According to the text, when do the Americans stop rushing about?

A．When they are not allowed to.

B．When they feel tired and sleepy.

C．When they stop breathing eventually.

D．When they are seriously ill in bed.

The Americans know the places of battles and monuments ______________.

A．by driving there in person

B．when they are on the tour bus

C．from books and magazines

D．from their friends and co-workers

Why does the writer write this passage?
A. To tell people the Americans are illiterate.
B. To prove the Americans to be a queer nation.
C. To make fun of the American way of life.
D. To give the readers information about USA.

There is an English saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Until recently, few people took the saying very seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to study laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found facts that laughter really can improve people’s health.
Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart rate and the rate of breathing. it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.
Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produce pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programmes. The group which tolerated(忍受) the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny programme. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce endorphins(内啡肽) in the brain. These are natural chemicals which diminish both stress and pain.
There is also some fact to suggest that laughter helps the body’s immune （免疫的）system, that is , the system which fights infection. In an experiment, one group of students watched a funny video while another group of students served as the control group--- in other words, a group with which to compare the first group. Doctors checked the blood of the students in both groups and found that the people in the group that watched the video had an increase in the activity of their white blood cells, that is, the cells which fight infection.
As a result of these discoveries, some doctors and psychiatrists( 精神病医生) in the United States now hold laughter clinics, in which they try to improve their patients’ condition by encouraging them to laugh.
They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing , making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.
It can be learnt from the passage that laughter can ______.

A．make people feel younger	B．change people’s habits
C．improve people’s health	D．make people love their lives

The underlined word “diminish” refers to _______.

A．test

B．reduce

C．stop

D．find

Smiling can produce____.

A．the same effects as laughter	B．more effects than laughter
C．less effects on the human body	D．no effects on the human body

The main idea of this passage is that _____.

A．there are several ways of studying the benefits of laughter.

B．laughter and physical exercise have the same effects on human body.

C．tests show that laughter can produce beneficial effects on human body.

D．the doctors should learn how to make people laugh.

Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers advised, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.” How right they were!
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang on there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” When others shout, “No, you can’t!” It took years for the early work of Barbara Mclintock, a geneticist who won the Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn’t stop working on her experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.
We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder and it is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such youthful air, whatever their age. At 90, pianist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, joy would reappear in his eyes. As author and poet Samuel Ulman once wrote, “Years wrinkle(使皱) the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
Enthusiastic people also love what they do, without being affected by money or title or power. Patricia Mellratl, retired director of the Missouri Repertory Theater in Kansas City, was once asked where she got her enthusiasm. She replied, “My father, long ago, told me, ‘I never made a penny until I stopped working for money.’”
If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a hobby. Elizabeth Layton was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended periods of depression that troubled her for at least 30 years and the quality of her work led one critic to say, “I am tempted into a genius.”
We can’t afford to waste tears on “might-have-been”. We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be”．We need to live each moment whole-heartedly, with all our senses—finding pleasure in the sweet smell of a back-yard garden, the simple picture of a six-year-old, and the beauty of a rainbow.
The author mainly wants to say that _________

A．enthusiastic people will never get old

B．enthusiasm can make you succeed and enjoy life

C．enthusiasm is more important than experience

D．enthusiasm can give people more success and fame

Which of the following can best explain the underlined sentence in the second paragraph?

A．Enthusiasm can give you courage and strength in difficult times.

B．If you don’t have enthusiasm, you can achieve nothing.

C．Enthusiastic people never consider money and fame.

D．Enthusiastic people can gain great fame and honor.

The author mentions cellist Pablo Casals in the third paragraph to show that____

A．music can arouse people’s enthusiasm

B．enthusiasm can give people inspiration needed to succeed

C．enthusiasm can make people feel young

D．enthusiasm can keep people healthy

How many examples are given in the passage to show the importance of enthusiasm?

A．Three

B．Two

C．Four

D． Five

People travel for a lot of reasons. Some tourists go to see battlefields or other historic remains. Others are looking for culture, or simply want to have their pictures taken in front of famous places. Most European tourists are looking for a sunny beach to lie on.
Northern Europeans are willing to pay a lot of money for the sun because they have so little of it. People of cities like London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam spend much of their winter in the dark because the days are so short, and much of the rest of the year in the rain . This is the reason why the Mediterranean has always attracted them. Every summer many people travel to Mediterranean resorts（度假胜地）and beaches for their vacation. They all come for the same reason: sun!
The huge crowds mean lots of money for the economics of Mediterranean countries. Italy's 30,000 hotels are booked every summer. And 13 million people camp put on French beaches, parks and roadsides. Spain's long sandy coastline attracts more people than anywhere else. 37 million tourists visit there yearly, or one tourist for each person living in Spain.
But there are signs that the area is getting more tourism than it can deal with. The Mediterranean is already one of the most polluted seas on earth. None of these,　however, is mining anyone's fun. Obviously, they don't go there for clean water. They allow traffic jams and seem to like crowded beaches. They don't even mind the pollution. No matter how dirty the water is, the coastline still looks beautiful. And as long as the sun shines, it's still better than sitting in the cold rain in Berlin, London, or Oslo.
The writer seems so imply that Europeans travel mostly for the reason that ________.

A．they want to see historic remains

B．they wish to escape from cold, dark and rainy days

C．they would like to take pictures in front of famous places

D．they are interested in different cultural and social customs

According to the passage, which of the following countries attracts more tourists than the others?

A．Italy

B．Greece.

C．France.

D．Spain.

The underlined part "one tourist for each person living in Spain" means ________.

A．all the 37 million people living in Spain are tourist

B．every person living in Spain has to take care of a tourist

C．every year almost as many tourists visit Spain as there are people living in that country

D．every family in Spain is visited by a tourist every year

According to the passage, which of the following might ruin the tourists' fun at Mediterranean resorts and beaches?

A．Polluted water

B．Crowded buses.

C．Rainy weather.

D．Traffic jams.

Weather Report（8:00 a.m．December 17 ----- 8:00 a.m．December18）
Influenced by a cold front, northern Xinjiang, the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the northern and eastern parts of Heilongjiang are expected to experience light snow today．Drizzle （小雨） is forecast for most areas of Sichuan and western costal areas of South China．Northerly winds of force 4—6 are expected to affect western and southwestern Inner Mongolia, and most parts of Northeast China while northerly winds of force 5—7 will sweep across the Bohai Sea, the northern parts of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits, and the central and northern parts of the South China Sea.
Weather forecast for major Chinese cities

City	Max（℃）	Min（℃）	Weather
Beijing	10	－2	clear
Changchun	0	－6	clear
Changsha	19	5	clear
Chengdu	9	4	drizzle
Chongqing	10	5	overcast
Dalian	12	3	clear
Fuzhou	18	－12	cloudy
Guangzhou	23	15	cloudy
Guilin	19	4	clear
Haikou	19	14	overcast
Hangzhou	18	5	clear
Harbin	－3	－8	clear
Hong Kong	21	16	cloudy
Jinan	14	3	clear

According to the weather report, we know it doesn’t rain in many areas except _____.

A．Xinjing

B．Qinghai-Tibet

C．Heilongjiang

D．Chengdu

From December 17 to December 18, if you go to ____, you may be caught in the snow.

A．Northern Xinjiang and Tibet

B．Sichuan and South China

20090616

C．Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang

D．Qinghai and Sichuan

On December 17, the East China Sea will be swept by _____.

A．a cold front	B．northerly winds of force 4—6
C．light snow	D．northerly winds of force 5—7

The temperature in Harbin Min（℃）is ____ lower than that in Guangzhou Min（℃）.

A．23

B．31

C．26

D．7

A．singing skills	B．social skills
C．English skills	D．computer skills