Planning a visit to the UK? Here we help with ways to cut your costs.
AVOID BIG EVENTS Big sporting events, concerts and exhibitions can increase the cost of accommodation and make it harder to find a room. A standard double room at the Thistle Brighton on the final Friday of the Brighton Comedy Festival (19 Oct.) cost ￡169.15 at Booking.com. A week later, the same room cost ￡118.15.
If you can be flexible and want to know dates to avoid—or you're looking for a big event to pass your time—check out sites such as Whatsonwhen.com, which allow you to search for events in the UK by city, date and category.
STAY AWAY FROM THE STATION If traveling to your destination by train, you may want to find a good base close to the station, but you could end up paying more for the sake of convenience at the start of your holiday.
Don't be too choosy about the part of town you stay in. Booking two months in advance, the cheapest room at Travelodge's Central Euston hotel in London for Saturday 22 September was ￡95.95. A room just a tube journey away at its Covent Garden hotel was ￡75.75. And at Farringdon, a double room cost just ￡62.95.
LOOK AFTER YOURSELF Really central hotels in cities such as London, Edinburgh and Cardiff can cost a fortune, especially at weekends and during big events. As an alternative consider checking into a self－catering flat with its own kitchen. Often these flats are hidden away on the top floors of city centre buildings. A great example is the historic O'Neill Flat on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, available for ￡420 for five days in late September, with room for four adults.
GET ON A BIKE London's “Boris bikes” have attracted the most attention, but other cities also have similar programmes that let you rent a bicycle and explore at your own pace, saving you on public transport or car parking costs.
Among the smaller cities with their own programmes are Newcastle (casual members pay around ￡1.50 for two hours) and Cardiff (free for up to 30 minutes, or ￡5 per day)．
| A．help travelers pass time |
| B．attract lots of travelers to the UK |
| C．allow travelers to make flexible plans |
| D．cause travelers to pay more for accommodation |
| A．a hotel away from the train station |
| B．the tube line to Covent Garden |
| C．an ideal holiday destination |
| D．the name of a travel agency |
| A．lies on the ground floor |
| B．is located in central London |
| C．provides cooking facilities for tourists |
| D．costs over ￡100 on average per day in late September |
| A．half an hour | B．one hour |
| C．one hour and a half | D．two hours |
Time and how we experience it have always puzzled us. Physicists have created fascinating theories, but their time is measured by a pendulum（钟摆）and is not psychological time, which leaps with little regard to the clock or calendar. As someone who understood the difference remarked, “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours it seems like a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove, a minute seems like two hours.”
Psychologists have long noticed that larger units of time, such as months and years, fly on swifter wings as we age. They also note that the more time is structured with schedules and appointments, the more rapidly it seems to pass．For example, a day at the office flies compared with a day at the beach. Since most of us spend fewer days at the beach and more at the office as we age, an increase in structured tune could well be to blame for why time seems to speed up as we grow older．
Expectation and familiarity also make time seem to flow more rapidly. Almost all of us have had the experience of driving somewhere we’ve never been before. Surrounded by unfamiliar scenery, with no real idea of when we’ll arrive, we experience the trip as lasting a long time. But the return trip, although exactly as long, seems to take far less time. The unfamiliarity of the journey has become routine. Thus taking a different route on occasion can often help slow the clock.
When days become as identical as beads（小珠子）on a string, they mix together, and even months become a single day. To fight this, try to find ways to interrupt the structure of your day—to stop time. Learning something new is one of the ways to slow the passage of time. One of the reasons the days of our youth seems so full and long is that these are the days of learning and discovery. For many of us, learning ends when we leave school, but this doesn’t have to be.
| A．physical time is different from psychological time |
| B．time should not be measured by a pendulum |
| C．psychological time is quite puzzling |
| D．physical theory has nothing to do with the true sense of time |
| A．Our sense of time changes. |
| B．We spend less time at the beach. |
| C．More time is structured and scheduled. |
| D．Time is structured with too many appointments. |
| A．It gives various explanations about time. |
| B．It explains why time flies fast and how to slow it down psychologically. |
| C．It shows the different ideas of physicists and psychologists on time. |
| D．It describes how we experience time psychologically. |
During my high school years, the most important thing was what I was wearing to the Friday night dance and who I was taking. Although college was talked about, it was the least of my worries.
When I was graduating eighth grade and starting high school, my older brother was graduating twelfth grade and going onto college. For my graduation, he gave me a card in which he wrote, “Enjoy your four years…, they go by fast.” I remember not believing him then, but looking back…, he was right. Those four years shaped who I was as a person, pushed me to my limit and encouraged me to become an adult.
However, I was so completely absorbed in my junior and senior years of high school, that when someone spoke of college I brushed it off. I wasn't ready to leave my comfort zone of having all of my closest friends together and knowing what every single day was going to be like . Studying was something I did only AFTER I nailed my half-time dance performance. I knew my parents wanted me to go to college, so I told them I would go to community college and I didn’t worry about my SAT scores.
When my senior year passed and everyone graduated and went off to their own college ,I started to wish I had done the same. My friends were living away, meeting new people, discovering new places, and I was living at home and driving to and from class every day. It seemed exactly like high school. I hated it! I thought college was supposed to be different! Why didn’t I take more time to research colleges and do the same? I ended up loving college and wishing I had four years to enjoy the campus atmosphere instead of two.
My advice to anyone thinking about attending college is to think about it very seriously and look into all of your choices well ahead of time. Now I have graduated and I am working full time and I would do anything to go back to my high school days for a second chance!
| A．He had a gift for dance.. |
| B．He wanted to go to community college |
| C．He was well prepared for the exam. |
| D．He believed his brother would help him. |
| A．buried himself in his study all the time |
| B．lived in the school except on holidays |
| C．enjoyed talking about future college life |
| D．drove to and from class every day |
| A．He advised the author to value the years. |
| B．He encouraged the author to leave his comfort zone. |
| C．He wished the author to have more dance. |
| D．He suggested the author aim at a community college. |
| A．Lonely | B．regretful | C．angry | D．pleased |
Sorry to say, our brains naturally start slowing down at the cruelly young age of 30. It used to be thought that this couldn’t be helped, but new studies show that people of any age can train their brains to work faster. “Your brain is a learning machine ”, says University of California scientist Dr. Michael Merzenich. Given the right tools, we can train our brains to act like they did when were younger. All that’s required is the practice designed just for the purpose: a few exercises for the mind.
Merzenich has developed a computer---based training method to speed up the process in which the brain deals with information. Since much of the data we receive comes through speech, the Brain Fitness Program works with language and hearing to better speed and accuracy.
Over the course of training, the program starts asking you to distinguish sounds (between “dog” and “bog”, for example) at an increasingly faster speed. “It’s a bit like tennis instructor,” says Merzenich , “hitting balls at you faster and faster to keep you challenged. You may start out slow, but before long you’re pretty quick.”
The biggest finding in brain research in last ten years is that the brain at any age is highly plastic. If you ask your brain to learn, it will learn. And it may even speed up while in the process.
To keep your brain young and plastic you can do one of a million new activities that challenge and excite you: playing table tennis or bridge, doing crossword puzzles, learning a language...... “When it comes to preventing aging, you really do “do it or lose it”, says Barbara Sahakian, professor at Cambridge University.
| A．the information being dealt with |
| B．computer languages |
| C．the activities one joins in |
| D．speech training |
| A．developed | B．mastered |
| C．used | D．researched |
| A．Practice makes a quick mind |
| B．Brain research started ten years ago. |
| C．Dr. Merzenich is a scientist in computer |
| D．People used to believe nothing could stop the brain slowing down. |
| A．The training methods work better for the old |
| B．The training of the brain should start at an early age |
| C．People should use the brain to stop it from aging. |
| D．It’s necessary to take part in as many activities as possible. |
My husband Ollie had retired from teaching and we were making plans to travel together to Florida. Then he was terribly ill and became very weak, hardly able to speak. Weeks passed and it became clear that Ollie was near death, but I prayed day and night that he could get better.
One of us was always in Ollie's hospital room--either me, or our grown children, Bruce and Karen. One day, in his broken and weak speech, Ollie told Bruce, “Go home. You should be with Gwen.” Gwen was Bruce's wife. They had been married for six years and lived hundreds of miles away. Gwen was about to have a baby. We felt an extra sadness, knowing Ollie would never see his first grandchild.
“I don't want to leave you, dad, ” Bruce said. Ollie repeated, “You should be with Gwen. ” Reluctantly, Bruce left. “When the baby comes, ”he promised Ollie, “you will be the first to know. ” A few days later, around 2 p. m., Ollie awoke from a sleep. He turned and looked at me. I sat close to hear his weak words. “The baby is coming now. It's a boy, ” he said. For a moment his eyes were filled with tears. Then he went back to sleep again. Not long after that, Karen ran into the room. “Bruce called, ” she said, a smile lighting her face. “Gwen gave birth to a healthy baby boy around two o' clock. ”
Ollie smiled; he had been the first to know. That night, Ollie died in his sleep.
| A．he could hardly be able to speak |
| B．he was too weak to travel |
| C．he could not afford the trip |
| D．he was waiting for his grandchild to be born |
| A．Ollie didn't want his son to be absent when his baby was born. |
| B．Ollie wanted Bruce to bring the baby along as soon as it was born. |
| C．Ollie thought it was too much trouble for Bruce to stay at hospital. |
| D．Ollie couldn't bear his son seeing him dying with a broken heart. |
| A．Disappointedly | B．Immediately |
| C．Excitedly | D．Unwillingly |
| A．Ollie and his wife had planned to settle in Florida. |
| B．Ollie cared for his son more than his daughter. |
| C．Ollie died happy and in peace. |
| D．Ollie was sad about not being able to see his first grandchild. |
Most respected scientists agree that we need to find another source of energy- and quickly. If we continue to burn oil and pump carbon into the atmosphere, then the effects on global climate will lead to global disasters even before the oil disappear.
The British government has set a target of a 20 percent reduction in carbon emission by 2010. Central to this policy is the search for alternative, renewable forms of energy production---and this is where the serious disagreement among scientists begins.
Here, two people active in the debate about wind farms give their points of view.
Simon Shearman
“First, a few facts about wind power. Wind is one of the cheapest of the new, renewable forms of energy. It is extremely safe---no member of the public has ever been injured at a wind farm. The shallow waters around Britain are the windiest in Europe---ideal locations for wind farms and, by 2010, up to ten percent of the electricity used in the UK could be produced by wind power. I find it annoying and frustrating that the biggest objection that opponents of wind farms can come up with is that the crisis of global warming is real and something must be done urgently.”
Alice Evans
“The simple, obvious fact is that wind turbines（涡轮机） cannot generate electricity if the wind is too light or too strong and it often is. Many scientists estimate that wind turbines generally produce only 30 percent of their capacity（容量）. This is not a reliable enough supply to enable us to close down conventional power stations. In fact, wind power can’t keep up with the growth of the demand for electricity, let alone replace other sources of power.”
It’s a topic that is causing heated debate around the country---but one we must address before it’s too late---before the oil runs out.Many scientists have different opinions on the search for a renewable energy because ______.
| A．they think fossil fuels are everlasting. |
| B．British government’s target is not realistic. |
| C．they are not sure in finding the clean and renewable energy. |
| D．the technology is not advanced enough. |
We can learn from the passage that ______.
| A．there won’t be a global disaster before the world runs out of oil. |
| B．the British government wants people to use 20 percent less oil by 2010. |
| C．Alice Evans supports the idea of wind power. |
| D．Simon Shearman thinks Britain a particularly suitable place for wind farms. |
If we generate electricity with wind turbines, _______.
| A．a light wind will do. |
| B．we cannot make full use of the capacity. |
| C．a strong wind will do |
| D．we’ll have enough electricity. |
What can we learn from the last paragraph?
| A．Wind power is a good solution to energy crisis. |
| B．We’re experiencing the oil crisis now. |
| C．We should find alternative energy for oil as soon as possible. |
| D．There is no need for us to worry about energy problem. |