When you were young, ginger ale(姜味汽水)may have been a popular choice for reducing the unpleasant feelings caused by your upset stomach on the road to get to school. For years, ginger has been used to reduce the effects of nausea(作呕). But do you know it’s now also being looked at to fight cancer?
Scientists have discovered that ginger can kill cancerous cells in two different ways. On the one hand, ginger causes the cancer cells to “commit suicide” by destroying themselves while leaving the surrounding healthy cells untouched. Ginger can prevent the growth of diseased cells by destroying the environment they grow in. On the other hand, ginger tricks the diseased cells and causes them to fight among themselves. Researchers are now looking into one of the toughest cancers to fight. However, scientists find repeated treatment of disease by drugs can actually lose its effectiveness over time as the cancer builds up resistance(抵抗力)to the same treatment. This raises researchers’ confidence that ginger would help stop resistance from the cancer.
In a study, the cancer clearly stopped growing in the body of the mice that had been given ginger. The bad news is that such encouraging research has only been conducted on mice. The good news, however, is that it seems humans might be able to get the same benefit just by eating products with ginger and ginger root in them.
Cancer prevention and fighting abilities aren’t the only potential benefits you may get from adding a bit more ginger to your diet.
Drinking ginger ale when your stomach was upset as a child wasn’t just a placebo(安慰剂).Numerous studies and research, including the Mayo Clinic’s strict grading system, agree that ginger has some sort of anti-nausea characteristics.
Some believe that ginger works well against nausea after operations, while others use it to reduce motion sickness such as seasickness and car sickness. The Mayo Clinic, however, advises the use of ginger only to reduce nausea during pregnancy. While more research needs to be done, early studies are very promising, especially in that small amounts of ginger don’t seem to do any harm to the mother or baby.
Other health benefits from ginger exist as well. Since ginger is often considered to be useful in warming bodies, it can improve the condition of people’s joints including knees and ankle joints. Some suggest that ginger can help cure a cough associated with the common cold. Another benefit of ginger is that it seems to have no real side effects, which is one of the main reasons it appears to be safe during pregnancy.
But for safety, you should always consult a doctor for instructions on daily use before starting, even with something like ginger that seems to have little to no side effects.Why do scientists think ginger can be used to fight against cancer?
A.Ginger can destroy diseased cells in two different ways. |
B.Ginger is commonly considered as a kind of pain killer. |
C.Ginger warms people’s bodies and helps them recover from operations. |
D.Ginger has no harmful side effects according to a large amount of medical research. |
We can learn from the third paragraph that___________.
A.ginger works well only for warm-blooded animals |
B.ginger and its root have the same effect on humans as mice |
C.people are likely to gain great benefit by having ginger |
D.the research on ginger is promised to be carried out only on mice |
What is the text mainly about?
A.Ginger’s medicinal effects. |
B.The benefits of ginger ale. |
C.A new discovery about ginger. |
D.Detailed research on ginger. |
What will most probably be talked about following the text?
A.How to use ginger in daily life. |
B.Products made from ginger. |
C.Ginger’s growing environment. |
D.Why ginger can warm bodies. |
One day, when I was working as a psychologist in England,an adolescent boy showed up in my office. It was David. He kept walking up and down restlessly, his face pale, and his hands shaking slightly. His head teacher had referred him to me. “This boy has lost his family,” he wrote. “He is understandably very sad and refuses to talk to others, and I'm very worried about him. Can you help?”
I looked at David and showed him to a chair. How could I help him? There are problems psychology doesn't have the answer to, and which no words can describe. Sometimes the best thing one can do is to listen openly and sympathetically.
The first two times we met, David didn't say a word. He sat there, only looking up to look at the children's drawings on the wall behind me. I suggested we play a game of chess. He nodded. After that he played chess with me every Wednesday afternoon—in complete silence and without looking at me. It's not easy to cheat in chess, but I admit I made sure David won once or twice.
Usually, he arrived earlier than agreed, took the chess board and pieces from the shelf and began setting them up before I even got a chance to sit down. It seemed as if he enjoyed my company. But why did he never look at me?
“Perhaps he simply needs someone to share his pain with,” I thought. “Perhaps he senses that I respect his suffering.” Some months later, when we were playing chess, he looked up at me suddenly.
“It's your turn,” he said.
After that day, David started talking. He got friends in school and joined a bicycle club. He wrote to me a few times, about his biking with some friends, and about his plan to get into university. Now he had really started to live his own life.
Maybe I gave David something. But I also learned that one—without any words—can reach out to another person. All it takes is a hug, a shoulder to cry on, a friendly touch, and an ear that listens.When he first met the author, David ________.
A.felt a little excited | B.walked energetically |
C.looked a little nervous | D.showed up with his teacher |
As a psychologist, the author ________.
A.was ready to listen to David |
B.was skeptical about psychology |
C.was able to describe David's problem |
D.was sure of handling David's problem |
David enjoyed being with the author because he________.
A.wanted to ask the author for advice |
B.needed to share sorrow with the author |
C.liked the children's drawings in the office |
D.beat the author many times in the chess game |
What can be inferred about David_______?
A.He recovered after months of treatment. |
B.He liked biking before he lost his family. |
C.He went into university soon after starting to talk. |
D.He got friends in school before he met the author. |
Teaching is more than leadership. Some of the teacher’s time and effort is directed toward instruction, some toward evaluation. But it is the teacher as a group leader who creates an effective organizational structure (结构) and good working environment so that instruction and evaluation activities can take place. A group that is totally disorganized, unclear about its goals, or constantly fighting among its members will not be a good learning group. The leadership pattern includes helping to form and maintain a positive learning environment so that instruction and evaluation activities can take place.
On the first day of class, the teacher faces a room filled with individuals (个体). Perhaps a few closely united groups and friendships already exist. But there is no sense of group unity, no set of rules for conduct in the group, no feeling of belonging. If teachers are successful leaders, they will help students develop a system of relationships that encourages working together.
Standards and rules must be set to keep order, make sure of justice and protect individual rights, but do not contradict school policy. What happens when one student hurts another’s individual rights? Without clear regulations agreeable to the students and teachers, the classroom can become chaotic. Students may break rules they did not know existed. If standards are set without participation from the class, students may spend a great deal of creative energy in destroying the class environment or finding ways to break rules.
No matter how skillful the teacher is in uniting students and creating a positive atmosphere, the task is never complete. Regular maintenance is necessary. Conflicts arise. The needs of individual members change. A new kind of learning task requires a new organizational structure. Sometimes outside pressures such as holidays, upcoming tests or sport competitions, or family troubles cause stress in the classroom. One task for the teacher is to recreate a positive environment by helping students deal with conflict, change, and stress. The underlined word “maintain” in Para.1 probably means_______.
A.conserve | B.build | C.recreate | D.evaluate |
According to the author, the teacher should _______.
A.free students from outside pressures |
B.set the standards and rules on his own |
C.be responsible for a well-organized class |
D.focus more on instruction and evaluation |
From the passage we can learn that ______.
A.rules cannot be changed once they’re formed |
B.outside pressures may not cause tension among students |
C.if the teacher well unites his students, he then will finish his task |
D.if rules are not acceptable both to students and teachers, the classroom can be a mess |
What is the author’s main purpose of writing the passage?
A.To provide information for teaching. |
B.To show the importance of teaching a class. |
C.To study the teacher’s behavior in the classroom. |
D.To compare the teacher’s behavior with the students’ in class. |
Once I invited a group of friends round to my house, telling them that I was going to record their speech. I said I was interested in their regional accents, and that it would take only a few minutes. Thus, on one evening, three people turned up at my house and were shown into my front room. When they saw the room they were a bit alarmed, for it was laid out as a studio. In front of each easy chair there was a microphone at head height, with wires leading to a tape-recorder in the middle of the floor. I explained that all I wanted was for them to count from one to twenty. Then we could relax and have a drink.
I turned on the tape-recorder and each in turn seriously counted from one to twenty in their best accent. When it was over, I turned the tape-recorder off and brought round the drinks, and for the rest of the evening there was general cheerful conversation—interrupted only by the fact that I had to take a telephone call in another room, which unfortunately lasted some time.
Or at least that was how it would appear. For, of course, the microphones were not connected to the tape-recorder in the middle of the room at all but to another one, which was turning happily away in the kitchen. The participants, having seen the visible tape-recorder turned off, paid no more attention to the microphones which stayed in front of their chairs, only a few inches from their mouths, thus giving excellent sound quality. And my lengthy absence meant that I was able to obtain as natural a piece of conversation as it would be possible to find.
I should add, perhaps, that I did tell my friends what had happened to them, after the event was over, and gave them the choice of destroying the tape. None of them wanted to—though for some years afterwards it always seemed to be my round when it came to the buying of drinks. Linguistic research can be a very expensive business.The writer asked his friends to count from one to twenty because _______.
A.he wanted to record the numbers for his research |
B.he wanted to find out whether the tape recorder was working |
C.he wanted to make his friends relax before real recording started |
D.he wanted his friends to think that was all he wanted to record |
The writer went into another room to ________.
A.get a natural recording of his friends’ conversation |
B.stay away from too much drinking with his friends |
C.bring a telephone into the front room |
D.answer a long distance phone call |
The writer turned off the tape-recorder because _______.
A.he had to answer a phone call |
B.he wanted his friends to enjoy some drinks |
C.he thought the tape-recorder might bother his friends |
D.he wanted to make his friends believe he had finished the recording |
Which one is true according to the passage?
A.The writer destroyed the tape. |
B.The writer’s friends destroyed the tape. |
C.The writer did tell his friends what had happened. |
D.The writer’s friends like to drink. |
Oprah Winfrey, born in 1954, is all American talk show host, best known for her multi-award-winning talk show. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world. It's no surprise that her endorsement(认可)can bring overnight sales fortune that defeats most, if not all, marketing campaigns. The star features about 20 products each year On her “Favorite Things” show. There’s even a term for it: the Oprah Effect.
Her television career began unexpectedly. When she was 16 year old, she had the idea of being a journalist to tell other people’s stories in a way that made a difference in their lives and the world. She was on television by the time she was 19 years old. And in 1986 she started her own television show with a continuous determination to succeed at first.
TIME magazine wrote, “People would have doubted Oprah Winfrey’s swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of big size. As interviewers go, she is no match for Phil Donahue. What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, rich humor and, above all understanding. Guests with sad[stories to tell tend to bring out a tear in Oprah’s eye. They, in turn, often find themselves exposing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience.”
“I was nervous about the competition and then I became my own competition raising the bar every year, pushing, pushing, pushing myself as hard as I knew. It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to fall if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages, you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction” as Oprah addressed graduates at Harvard on May 30, 2013.The Oprah Effect refers to _______
A.the effect on a business | B.the power of Oprah’s opinions |
C.the impact on talkshows | D.the assessment of Oprah’s talk show |
What can be inferred about Oprah’s television career?
A.She once gave up on her choice |
B.Her swift success has been expected. |
C.It lives up to her parents’ expectation. |
D.She must have been challenged by white males. |
The message from Oprah to graduates at Harvard is that _______.
A.success comes after failure |
B.failure is nothing to fear |
C.there is no need to set goals too high |
D.pushing physical limits makes no sense |
Which of the following best describes Oprah Winfrey?
A.Dull and pushy. | B.Honest but tough. |
C.Caring and determined. | D.Curious but weak. |
When it comes to hard, noisy traveling, we’ve found that sometimes we’d rather read about it than actually go. Here are some bestsellers for armchair travelers.
The Station by Robert Byron. In 1928, the 22-year-old man made a journey to Mount Athos, resulting in one of the best travel books ever written, matched only by Byron’s own, much more famous The Road to Osciana.
In Darkest Africa by Henry Monton Stanley. It’s about his great efforts to save an unlucky German doctor Eduard Schnitzer, who had no desire to be rescued at all.
A Traveler’s Alphabet: Partial Memoirs by Sir Steven Runciman. A to Z and around the world. He provides priceless information of long-gone princesses, priests, and places.
South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage by Sir Ernest Shackleton. As the planet started the global war, Shackleton and his brave group of explorers made an unsuccessful but heroic journey to cross Antarctica from 1914 to 1917.
The Michelin Red Guide: France 2005 Reading through this final listing of all the nice hotels and wonderful restaurants in France is better than going there, listening to Chirac talk about the poisonous American culture, and spending the price of this book for a tiny cup of tea and a cookie the size of your thumb.
The Past Is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal. This great book of an armchair exploration tells us what has happened in the past and shows the relationship between us and the past travelers.The underlined phrase “armchair travelers” in the first paragraph refers to those who___________.
A.can only travel with special equipment for the disabled |
B.find fun teaching others how to travel to other places |
C.like to write about their strange traveling experiences |
D.like to read about travels instead of traveling themselves |
Which of the books has a very low price according to the passage?
A.The Past Is a Foreign Country. |
B.South: A Memoir to the Endurance Voyage. |
C.The Michelin Red Guide: France 2005. |
D.A Traveler’s Alphabet: Partial Memoirs. |
What can we learn from the passage?
A.The Station is more famous than The Road to Osciana |
B.Henry Monton Stanley, was saved by a German doctor in Africa. |
C.It took Shackleton and his men 3 years to cross Antarctica. |
D.In his book, Lowenthal focuses more on history than the present. |
This passage is written____________ .
A.to warn readers against traveling |
B.to sell more books about travels |
C.as an introduction to famous travelers |
D.to tell people where to travel |