Car Talk
When I got the driving license last summer, Mom and I took our first trip around an empty parking lot. Then I found that my mother was not the best teacher for me. It wasn't that she shouted, or told me that I was doing poorly. As you can imagine, my mother's "helpful instructions" only managed to make me more nervous.
Since I could no longer practice with her, the job was placed in the hands of my father. The idea of learning from Dad was not one that thrilled me. I loved him dearly, but I just did not see Dad as someone I could be comfortable learning from. He almost never talked. We shared a typical father-daughter relationship. He'd ask how school was, and I'd say it was fine. Unfortunately, that was the most of our conversations. Spending hours alone with someone who might as well have been a stranger really scared me.
As we got into the car that first time, I was not surprised at what happened. Dad and I drove around, saying almost nothing, aside from a few instructions on how to turn. As my lessons went on, however, things began to change. Dad would turn the radio up so I could fully appreciate his favorite Stones music. And he actually began talking. I was soon hearing about past failed dates, "basic body" gym class, and other tales from his past, including some of his first meeting with Mom.
Dad' s sudden chattiness was shocking until I thought about why he was telling me so much in the car. In all the years that I had wondered why my father never spoke that much, I had never stopped to consider that it was because I had never bothered to listen. Homework, friends, and even TV had all called me away from him, and, consequently, I never thought my quiet father had anything to say.
Since I began driving with him, my driving skill has greatly increased. More important, though, is that my knowledge of who my father is has also increased. Just living with him wasn't enough—it took driving with him for me to get to know someone who was a mystery.The author couldn't practice driving with her mother because .
| A．she couldn't talk with her mother | B．her father wanted to teach her |
| C．her mother made her nervous | D．she didn't trust her mother |
At first, the idea of learning driving from her father made her .
| A．happy | B．uneasy | C．satisfied | D．disappointed |
What surprised the author when the driving lessons went on?
| A．Her Dad liked modern music. | B．Her Dad was the best teacher. |
| C．Her Dad was a chatty person. | D．Her Dad told her his sad stories. |
With her story "Car Talk", the author indicates that .
| A．fathers love their daughters dearly |
| B．mothers are less patient than fathers |
| C．family members need real communication |
| D．it takes time to improve the father-daughter relationship |
阅读短文，从每题所给的A、B、C和D项中，选出最佳选项。
The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly-held image （形象）of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.
An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious（叛逆的）and selfish .but actually they have other things on their minds: they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation（商议）and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don’t want to rock the boat.”
So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me," says 17-year-old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I’m going out clubbing. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”
Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenage rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over.”What is the popular image of teenagers today?
| A．They worry about school. |
| B．They dislike living with their parents. |
| C．They have to be locked in to avoid troubles. |
| D．They quarrel a lot with other family members. |
The study shows that teenagers don’t want to__________ .
| A．share family responsibility | B．cause trouble in their families |
| C．go boating with their family | D．make family decisions |
Compared with parents of 30 years ago, today’s parents__________ .
| A．go to clubs more often with their children |
| B．are much stricter with their children |
| C．care less about their children’s life |
| D．give their children more freedom |
According to the author, teenage rebellion__________ .
| A．may be a false belief | B．is common nowadays |
| C．existed only in the 1960s | D．resulted from changes in families |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Negotiation in family. | B．Education in family. |
| C．Harmony in family. | D．Teenage trouble in family. |
Sports shoes that work out whether their owner has done enough exercise to warrant time in front of the television have been devised in the UK.
The shoes — named Square Eyes — contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter(传话器) passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day’s efforts.
The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University to London, UK. “We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out,” she says. “And I wanted to tackle that with my design.”
Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.
Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals precisely one minute of TV time.
Existing pedometers （计步器） normally clip onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. “It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort,” she says. “That was one of my main design considerations.” According to Swan, the purpose of her design project is to ________.
| A．keep a record of the steps of the wearer |
| B．deal with overweight among teenagers |
| C．enable children to resist the temptation of TV |
| D．prevent children from being tricked by TV programs |
Which of the following is true of Square Eyes shoes?
| A．They regulate a child’s evening TV viewing time. |
| B．They determine a child’s daily pocket money. |
| C．They have raised the hot issue of overweight. |
| D．They contain information of the receiver. |
What is stressed（强调）by health experts in their suggestion?
| A．The exact number of steps to be taken. |
| B．The precise number of hours spent on TV. |
| C．The proper amount of daily exercise and TV time. |
| D．The way of changing steps into TV watching time. |
Compared with other similar products, the new design ________.
| A．makes it difficult for lazy teenagers to cheat |
| B．counts the wearer’s steps through shaking |
| C．records the sudden movement of the wearer |
| D．sends teenagers’ health data to the receiver |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time |
| B．Smart Shoes Guarantee More Exercise |
| C．Smart Shoes Measure Time of Exercise |
| D．Smart Shoes Stop Childhood Overweight |
Nowadays people are troubled by the violence that spreads throughout the media. Movies, television and video games are full of gunplay and bloodshed, and one might reasonably ask what’s wrong with a society that presents videos of violence as entertainment.
Viewing large amounts of violent television and video games may well contribute to violent behavior in certain individuals. The trouble comes when researchers downplay uncertainties in their studies or overstate the case for causality（因果关系）. Skeptics were dismayed several years ago when a group of societies including the American Medical Association tried to end the debate by issuing a joint statement: “At this time, well over 1,000 studies… point to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.”
Freedom-of-speech advocates accused the societies of catering to politicians, and even disputed the number of studies (most were review articles and essays, they said). When Jonathan Freedman, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto, reviewed the literature, he found only 200 or so studies of television-watching and aggression. And when he weeded out “the most doubtful measures of aggression”, only 28% supported a connection.
The critical point here is causality. The alarmists say they have proved that violent media cause aggression. But the assumptions behind their observations need to be examined. When labeling games as violent or non-violent, should a hero eating a ghost really be counted as a violent event? And when experimenters record the time it takes game players to read “aggressive” or “non-aggressive” words from a list, can we be sure what they are actually measuring? The intention of the new Harvard Center on Media and Child Health to collect and standardize studies of media violence in order to compare their methodologies, assumptions and conclusions is an important step in the right direction.
Another appropriate step would be to tone down the criticism until we know more. Several researchers write, speak and testify quite a lot on the threat posed by violence in the media. That is, of course, their privilege. But when doing so, they often come out with statements that the matter has now been settled, drawing criticism from colleagues. In response, the alarmists accuse critics and news reporters of being deceived by the entertainment industry. Such clashes help neither science nor society.Why is there so much violence shown in movies, TV and video games?
| A．Showing violence is thought to be entertaining. |
| B．Something has gone wrong with today’s society |
| C．Many people are fond of gunplay and bloodshed. |
| D．There is a lot of violence in the real world today. |
What is the skeptics’ view of media violence?
| A．Violence on television is fairly accurate reflection of real-world life. |
| B．Most studies exaggerate (夸大) the effect of media violence on the viewers. |
| C．A causal relationship exists between media and real-world violence. |
| D．The influence of media violence on children has been underestimated. |
The author uses the term “alarmists” to refer to those who _________.
| A．use standardized measurements in the studies of media violence |
| B．initiated the debate over the influence of violent media on reality |
| C．insist on a direct link between violent media and aggressive behavior |
| D．use appropriate methodology in examining aggressive behavior |
The underlined phrase “weeded out” in Paragraph 3 most probably means _________.
| A．got rid of things that are not good | B．removed unwanted parts from something |
| C．picked out things that are useful | D．took away unnecessary details of a report |
What does the writer think of the debate concerning the relationship between the media and violence?
| A．He more than agrees with the views held by the alarmists. |
| B．It should come to an end since the matter has now been settled. |
| C．The past studies in this field have proved to be misleading. |
| D．More studies should be conducted before conclusions are drawn. |
Individuality is the particular character, or aggregate (total) of qualities that distinguishes one person or thing from others. Many artists late in the last century were in search of a means to express their individuality. Modern dance was one of the ways some of these people sought to free their creative spirit. At the beginning there was no exacting technique, no foundation from which to build. In later years, trial, error and genius founded the techniques and the principles of the movement. Eventually, innovators (改革者) even drew from what they considered the dread ballet, but first they had to get rid of all that was academic so that the new could be discovered. The beginnings of modern dance were happening before Isadora Duncan, but she was the first person to bring the
new dance to general audiences and see it accepted and acclaimed (称赞).
Her search for a natural movement form sent her to nature. She believed movement should be as natural as the swaying of the trees and the rolling waves of the sea, and should be in harmony with the movements of the Earth. Her great contributions are in three areas.
First, she began the expansion of the kinds of movement that could be used in dance. Before Duncan danced, ballet was the only type of dance performed in concert. In the ballet the feet and legs were emphasized, with virtuosity (高超技巧) shown by complex, codified positions and movements. Duncan performed dance by using her body in the freest possible way. Her dance stemmed from her soul and spirit. She was one of the pioneers who broke tradition so others might be able to develop the art.
Her second contribution lies in dance costume. She rejected ballet shoes and stiff costumes. These were replaced with flowing Grecian (希腊式的) tunes, bare feet, and unbound hair. She believed in the natural body being allowed to move freely, and her dress displayed this ideal.
Her third contribution was in the use of music. In her performances she used the symphonies of great masters including Beethoven and Wagner, which was not the usual custom.
She was as exciting and eccentric (怪异) in her personal life as in her dance.According to the passage, what did nature represent to Isadora Duncan?
| A．Something to conquer. | B．A model for movement. |
| C．A place to find peace. | D．A symbol of disorder. |
Compared to those of the ballet, Isadora Duncan’s costumes were less _________.
| A．costly | B．colorful | C．graceful | D．restrictive |
Which of the following is not mentioned as an area of dance that Duncan worked to change?
| A．The stage set. | B．The music. | C．Costumes. | D．Movements. |
We can infer from the passage that the author _________.
| A．appreciates modern dance very much | B．dislikes Isadora Duncan’s dance |
| C．thinks highly of individuality | D．knows a lot about modern arts |
Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Artists of the Last Century | B．Evolution of Dance in the 20th Century |
| C．Natural Movement in Dance | D．A Pioneer in Modern Dance |
My newly-rented small apartment was far away from the centre of London and it was becoming essential for me to find a job, so finally I spent a whole morning getting to town and putting my name down to be considered by London Transport for a job on the underground. They were looking for guards, not drivers. This suited me. I couldn’t drive a car but thought that I could probably guard a train, and perhaps continue to write my poems between stations. The writers Keats and Chekhov had been doctors. T.S. Eliot had worked in a bank and Wallace Stevens for an insurance company.
I’d be a subway guard. I could see myself being cheerful, useful, a good man in a crisis. Obviously I’d be overqualified but I was willing to forget about that in return for a steady income and travel privileges — those being particularly welcome to someone living a long way from the city centre.
The next day I sat down, with almost a hundred other candidates, for the intelligence test. I must have done all right because after about half an hour’s wait I was sent into another room for a psychological test. This time there were only about f
ifty candidates. The interviewer sat at a desk. Candidates were signaled forward to occupy the seat opposite him when the previous occupant had been dismissed, after a greater or shorter time. Obviously the long interviews were the more successful ones. Some of the interviews were as short as five minutes. Mine was the only one that lasted a minute and a half.
I can remember the questions now: “Why did you leave your last job?” “Why did you leave your job before that?” “And the one before that?” I can’t recall my answers, except that they were short at first and grew progressively shorter. His closing statement, I thought, revealed (揭示) a lack of sensitivity which helped to explain why as a psychologist, he had risen no higher than the underground railway. “You’ve failed the psychological test and we are unable to offer you a position.”
Failing to get that job was my low point. Or so I thought, believing that the work was easy. Actually, such jobs — being a postman is another one I still desire — demand exactly the sort of elementary yet responsible awareness that the habitual dreamer is least qualified to give. But I was still far short of full self-understanding. I was also short of cash.The writer applied for the job chiefly because _________.
| A．he wanted to work in the centre of London |
| B．he could no longer afford to live without one |
| C．he was not interested in any other available job |
| D．he had received some suitable training |
The writer thought he was overqualified for the job because _________.
| A．he often traveled underground | B．he had written many poems |
| C．he could deal with difficult situations | D．he had worked in a company |
The length of his interview meant that _________.
| A．he was not going to be offered the job |
| B．he had not done well in the intelligence test |
| C．he did not like the interviewer at all |
| D．he had little work experience to talk about |
What does the writer realize now that he did not realize then?
| A．How unpleasant ordinary jobs can be. | B．How difficult it is to be a poet. |
| C．How unsuitable he was for the job. | D．How badly he did in the interview. |
What’s the writer’s opinion of the psychologist?
| A．He was very aggressive. | B．He was unhappy with his job. |
| C．He was quite inefficient. | D．He was rather unsympathetic. |