In the United States and several other countries, 2.5 million children play baseball in an organization called Little League. They play on teams in their hometowns. Their parents and other adults in the community coach or instruct them and serve as umpires to make sure that everyone follows the rules. Local businesses give money for the ball fields and the uniforms. Local teams compete against each other and the winners get to play teams that are more distant. Eventually, the top teams go to the Little League World Series.
One hundred years after Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, Little League got started in Pennsylvania. Three men started the game for neighborhood boys with a smaller playing field and fewer innings than adult baseball. Little League became popular after World War II when the game spread across the United States. By 1955 it was played throughout North America and within five years it had spread to Europe. Children’s baseball really caught on in Japan and Taiwan of China and teams from those areas won the World Series seven out of eight years. After this, the organization tried banning foreign teams from the World Series, but the ban came to an end after one year.
At first, Little League was only for boys aged nine to twelve. However, in 1974, the parents of girl baseball players brought a law suit. The courts ruled that Little League had to include both boys and girls. Later Little League added on softball and other games for teenagers up to age eighteen. Occasionally a Little Leaguer becomes a professional player. For example, Gary Carter went from Little League to play nineteen seasons in the Major Leagues, ten of them as an All-Star player. But, by and large, youngsters play baseball for fun and because their parents are proud of them.The mothers and fathers of Little League players ______.
| A．help run the games | B．travel in coaches |
| C．give the teams money | D．play in the World Series |
In what year was Little League established?
| A．1839 | B．1939 | C．1955 | D．1960 |
Why do most players take part in Little League?
| A．To play in the Major League. |
| B．To have fun and please their parents. |
| C．They expect a profit from All-Star games |
| D．They want to learn how to serve as umpires. |
What is true about players today?
| A．Little League is only for neighbourhood boys. |
| B．Girl players have to buy their suits. |
| C．Girls and boys can participate to age eighteen. |
| D．Children can only play until age twelve. |
Dear Customers,
I love slipping (滑落) into a comfortable chair for a long read—as I relax into the chair, I also relax into the author’s words, stories and ideas. The physical book is so elegant that it disappears into the background, and what remains is the author’s world.
Today, we at Amazon are excited to announce Mindle, a wireless, portable reading device with instant access to more than 90,000 books, magazines and newspapers.
We’ve been working on Mindle for more than three years. Our top design objective was for Mindle to disappear in your hands—to get out of the way—so you can enjoy your reading. We also wanted to go beyond the physical book. Mindle is wireless, so whether you’re lying in bed or riding a train, you can think of a book, and have it in less than 60 seconds. No computer is needed—you do your reading directly from the device.
We chose the same wireless technology used in advanced mobile phones. But unlike mobile phones, there are no monthly wireless bills, no service or data plans, and no yearly contracts. There is no software to install (安装，设置)。 We want you to get lost in your reading and not in the technology.
Mindle uses a new kind of display called electronic paper. Sharp and natural with no strong light, reading on Mindle is nothing like reading from a computer screen. Mindle weighs only 10.3 ounces—less than paperback—but can carry two hundred books.
Enjoy learning about Mindle and many thanks!
Jeff Bezos Founder & CEOThis passage most probably is a(n)________.
| A．advertisement |
| B．news story |
| C．lab report |
| D．letter of thanks |
From the passage we learn that Mindle is a device which ________.
| A．has neither wires nor weight |
| B．is operated by a computer |
| C．disappears while you read |
| D．can find a book within one minute |
With the device, the reader is able to ________.
| A．enjoy reading when driving a car |
| B．improve reading skills |
| C．gain access to free software |
| D．get rid of heavy books made of paper |
Different from mobile phones, Mindle________.
| A．has a much more friendly screen |
| B．can work in the absence of electricity |
| C．doesn’t involve regular bills |
| D．is wireless and can be used anywhere. |
Make a five-minute film and win!
Do you love the winter holidays but hate being bored? Then why don’t you enter the Film Street Summer Shorts Competition by making a short film this winter with your family and friends?
What you have to do
To enter the competition, you have to make a short film that is around 5 minutes long (It can be shorter but not longer!) on a digital camera, or mobile phone.
Awards
The best short film entered into our competition will be shown in Film Street’s Cinema and you’ll win a Cineworld Cinema pass for yourself and three more for other members of your filmmaking crew (演职员)。 If you have a Cineworld Cinema pass, you can watch as many films as you like for a year, for free, at any Cineworld Cinema.
Rules
We can’t show films that tell others about either your or any other kids’ names or addresses.
We can’t show films that hurt, harm or insult (侮辱) other people.
We can’t show films that have bad languages.
Copyright Checklist (版权清单)
Getting permission to use someone else’s work in your film can be expensive, so check your film to make sure that:
Your film is original and you haven’t copied anyone else’s.
There are no scenes of branding on shop signs, books, magazines or CDs.
There are no scenes of anyone else’s artwork.
Address and Date
Post your finished film on tape, CD or DVD by Monday, October 1st, 2011 to:
Film Street Summer Short Competition
First Light Movies
Unit 6, Third Floor, The Bond
180-182 Fazeley Street
Birmingham
So what’s stopping you? Start making your Film Street Summer Short now!Who is the passage mainly written for?
| A．Students | B．Parents |
| C．Teachers | D．Actors |
How many Cineworld Cinema passes will the winner of the competition be awarded in all?
| A．One | B．Two |
| C．Three | D．Four |
From Paragragh 3, we can learn that _______.
| A．the winner’s short film can be shown in any cinema |
| B．the competition is held by Cineworld Cinema |
| C．the winner can watch films for free for one year at any Cineworld Cinema.\ |
| D．the winner will be paid for his short film |
The underlined word “original” is the closest in meaning to “_______”.
| A．interesting enough |
| B．exciting enough |
| C．good for children |
| D．made by yourself |
Scientists at Harvard University and Bates College find female chimpanzees (黑猩猩) appear to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they have children of their own. Young males engage in such behavior much less frequently.
The new work by Sonya M. Kahlenberg and Richard W. Wrangham, described this week in the journal Current Biology, provides the first evidence of a wild nonhuman species playing with dolls, as well as the first known sex difference in a wild animal’s choice of playthings.
The two researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks. Doll play among humans could have its origins in object—carrying by earlier apes (猿类), they say, suggesting that toy selection is probably not due entirely to socialization.
“In humans, there are obvious sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role to play in activity preferences.”
In 14 years of data on chimpanzee behavior at the Kibale National Park in Uganda, Kahlenberg and Wrangham counted more than 100 examples of stickcarrying. Some young chimpanzees carried sticks into the nest to sleep with them and on one occasion built a separate nest for the stick. “We have seen juveniles occasionally carrying sticks for many years, and because they sometimes treated them rather like dolls, we wanted to know if in general this behavior tended to represent something like playing with dolls,” says Wrangham, a Professor at Harvard. “If the doll hypothesis (假设) was right, we thought that females should carry sticks more than males do, and that the chimpanzees should stop carrying sticks when they had their first child. We have now watched enough young chimpanzees to prove both points.” What does a female chimpanzee do with sticks?
| A．She gives them to her child to play with. |
| B．She treats them as dolls. |
| C．She makes useful tools from them. |
| D．She treats them as weapons. |
What causes the different toy selection of chimpanzees, according to the passage?
| A．Sex difference. | B．Socialization. |
| C．Environment. | D．Cultural difference. |
We can infer from the fourth paragraph that ________.
| A．socialization has nothing to do with human’s choice of playthings |
| B．sex difference is the only factor in human’s choice of playthings |
| C．the biology factor may also influence toy choice |
| D．people choose different toys in different cultures |
It can be concluded from the passage that ________.
| A．both humans and chimpanzees choose their playthings due to sex difference |
| B．different factors cause humans and chimpanzees to choose different playthings |
| C．only female chimpanzees have playthings |
| D．chimpanzees usually choose playthings for their children |
I credit my typing skill to so many hours of chatting online. Unfortunately, as my typing speed increased on the Internet, all grammatical rules went out of the window. You see instant messages have their own shorthand language and grammar isn’t important, of which even a newbie (新手) is aware. They can leave out articles, subjects (主语), pronouns, etc. They can misspell or “respell” almost any word. They often ask “A/S/L” when they first chat. Abbreviations (缩写) and capitalizations (大写) are particularly important. English-speaking instant messengers also refuse to burden themselves with punctuation and capitalization.
After I came back China, I discovered not one but two instant messaging crazes. The first, which brought back memories of my previous addiction to the computer, was QQ. I can see evidence that the Chinese have the same kind of separate instant messaging language, even when they chat in English. My first word in this language, for example, was “ft”. This abbreviation for “faint” is used whenever there is a need to express surprise. I also discovered that Chinese use the same kind of abbreviation for a laugh. And there is an extraordinary number of smileys (表情符) to the “vomit” and “army soldier” smileys. There is even a SARA smiley.
After QQ, there is another, perhaps more widespread messaging trend. You guessed it --- cell phone text messaging. I now understand how useful text messaging is and why it is so common. I admit that I have been guilty of sending text messages while walking outside or sitting on the subway. Who hasn’t ? No matter where I go, I see people on their cell phones, messaging. In fact, it’s rare to see someone actually talking on their phone!
So it looks as if there is no escape from the instant messaging crazes, no matter where in the world I go. And that’s plainly not going to change. In the end, though, I can’t complain: instant messaging is quick, it’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s extremely fun too. And after all, everyone’s doing it.The underlined phrase “went out of the window” in Paragraph 1 probably means .
| A．increased | B．occurred | C．disappeared | D．changed |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．Grammar and correct spelling are very important while chatting online. |
| B．There are enough smileys and icons to express yourselves while chatting on line. |
| C．The writer is skilled at typing and once was addicted to online games. |
| D．It is impolite to leave out some unimportant words or letters while chatting online. |
The writer believes that instant messaging is .
| A．full of fun but time-consuming |
| B．widespread but unnecessary |
| C．quick but difficult to do |
| D．common, used and cheap |
Which might be the main idea of the passage?
| A．Who can escape QQ and cell phone text messaging? |
| B．Why is instant messaging so popular? |
| C．Chatting online is good for your typing skill. |
| D．Chatting on QQ is natural for people. |
Memory is the ability to keep track of things that have happened in the past. Memory really is learning. One needs memory to ride a bicycle. A dog needs to remember if it is to come when called.
Memory is said to be stored in the brain as a “memory trace（记忆痕）.” What makes up this trace is not known. Some scientists believe that certain chemical substances may carry certain memories. For example, one substance, when given to rats, causes them to fear the dark.
Other research into memory has to do with how the brain works. Psychologists use three means to find out how a person remembers. For example, give a person a grocery list. Let the person memorize the list, then put it away. The most natural way to find out how much a person remembers of the grocery list is to ask what he or she remembers. This is called the method of recall. Another method is called recognition. Give the person another grocery list. Ask him or her to choose items on the first list from the items that are on only the second list. Often a person will be able to recognize things that he or she cannot recall. A third method of finding how much a person remembers is called relearning. Here the person is asked to read over the first list. The person will probably learn the list the second time faster than he did the first time. The difference in the time it takes to relearn the list is thought of as a measure of how much a person has remembered.
One way of remembering something is to repeat it many times. Interest is very important. Boring lists of facts are much more difficult to remember than something that we understand and are interested in. Motivation, or wanting to do something, is also important. Motivation is linked with reward. For example, a hungry animal quickly learns how to do something if that action gets the animal food. In humans, wanting to learn is often motivation. The praise of a teacher or the knowledge that an answer is correct is rewarding.We can learn from the 2nd paragraph that ___________ .
| A．bad memories may cause rats to fear the dark |
| B．it is hard to tell what a memory trace consists of |
| C．chemical substances carry certain memories |
| D．memory is stored in the brain as a substance |
The way to pick out the items on the first list from the second is known as ________ .
| A．recognition | B．recall | C．memorization | D．relearning |
What is considered as a measure of how much one has remembered?
| A．The length of the list. |
| B．The type of list items. |
| C．The time difference of relearning. |
| D．The time difference of brain working. |
A good way to train an animal to do something quickly is to ________.
| A．make the action easy | B．praise it in words |
| C．reward it with food | D．weaken its motivation |