Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.
People use their mouths for many things. They eat, talk, shout and sing. They smile and they kiss. In the English language, there are many expressions using the word mouth. But some of them are not so nice.
For example, if you say bad things about a person, the person might protest and say “Do not bad mouth me.”
Sometimes, people say something to a friend or a family member that they later regret because it hurts that person’s feelings. Or they tell the person something they were not supposed to tell. The speaker might say: “I really put my foot in my mouth this time.” If this should happen, the speaker might feel down in the mouth. In other words, he might feel sad for saying the wrong thing.
Another situation is when someone falsely claims another person said something. The other person might protest: “I did not say that. Do not put words in my mouth.”
Information is often spread through word of mouth. This is general communication between people, like friends talking to each other. “How did you hear about that new movie?” someone might ask. “Oh, by word of mouth.” A more official way of getting information is through a company or government mouthpiece. This is an official spokesperson. Government-run media could also be called a mouthpiece.
Sometimes when one person is speaking, he says the same thing that his friend was going to say. When this happens, the friend might say: “You took the words right out of my mouth!” Sometimes a person has a bad or unpleasant experience with another person. He might say that experience “left a bad taste in my mouth.” Or the person might have had a very frightening experience, like being chased by an angry dog. He might say: “I had my heart in my mouth.”
Some people have lots of money because they were born into a very rich family. There is an expression for this, too. You might say such a person, “was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” This rich person is the opposite of a person who lives from hand to mouth. This person is very poor and only has enough money for the most important things in life, like food.
Parents might sometimes withhold sweet food from a child as a form of punishment for saying bad things. For example, if a child says things she should not say to her parents, she might be described as a mouthy child. The parents might even tell the child to stop mouthing off.
But enough of all this talk. I have been running my mouth long enough.Which of the following can best describe his or her feeling if a speaker feels down in the mouth?
| A．Delighted | B．Regretful |
| C．Disappointed | D．Respectful |
When your car was close to knocking into a truck, you might say “_______”
| A．I really put my foot in my mouth this time. |
| B．I had my heart in my mouth. |
| C．I live from hand to mouth. |
| D．I get to know it by word of mouth. |
According to the passage, which behavior is surely Not welcome?
a. bad mouthing somebody
b. mouthing off about something
c. putting words in somebody’s mouth
d. taking the words right out of somebody’s mouth
| A．abc | B．abd | C．bcd | D．acd |
What do “I” probably (in the last Para.) do?
| A．A host | B．A journalist |
| C．A director | D．A listener |
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will lose most of its coral cover by 2050 and, at worst, the world’s largest coral system could collapse by 2100 because of global warming, a study recently said.
The study by Queensland University’s Center for Marine Studies, commissioned (委托) by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, said that the destruction of coral on the Great Barrier Reef was unavoidable due to global warming, regar
dless of what actions were taken now. “Under the worst-case scenario, coral populations will collapse by 2100 and the reestablishment of coral reefs will be highly unlikely over the following 200-500 years,” said the report entitled “Implications (可能的影响) of Climate Change for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.”
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest living reef formation stretching 2,000 km north to south along Australia’s northeast coast. “Only if global average temperature change is kept to below two degrees Celsius can the Reef have any change of recovering from the predicted damage,” the report said. Coral has a narrow comfort zone and is highly stressed by a temperature rise of less than one degree Celsius. Water temperature rises of less than one degree coincided (同时发生) with the world’s worst recorded coral bleaching (颜色变淡) period in 1988. The warmer water forces out the algae (海藻) that give coral its color and, if all are lost, the coral dies and the reef will die out. In 1988, 16 percent of the world’s coral died, with 46 percent of the Indian Ocean coral destroyed.
Scientists express water temperatures to rise this century by between two and six degrees Celsius. “There is little to no evidence that corals can adapt fast enough to match even the lower temperature rise,” said the report. Over-fishing and pollution from coastal farms were also contributing to the destruction of coral on the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef supports huge fishing and tourism industries. Even under favorable conditions tourists would only be able to experience real corals in reef “theme parks”.The underlined word “scenario” in Paragraph 2 probably means .
| A．imagination | B．intention | C．expectation | D．prediction |
From the passage, we can infer that .
| A．corals have no difficulty in adapting the temperature change |
| B．if we take quick actions we can avoid the destruction of corals |
| C．we can find corals in many areas of the seas or oceans |
| D．the algae help corals to live |
Which of the following is NOT the cause of the destruction of coral on the Great Barrier Reef?
| A．Direct sunshine. | B．Over-fishing. |
| C．Global warming. | D．Pollution. |
By saying “Coral has a narrow comfort zone” (Para. 3), the author means .
| A．coral can only live in a small area |
| B．coral prefers a crowded place |
| C．coral can hardly adapt to the temperature change |
| D．coral grows best in a small area |
Singles Day falls on every November 11th, and as the name indicates, this relatively new holiday is one specially for people who are still living the single life. I was a bit surprised when I googled “Singles Day” on the Internet, to find that China is the only country in the world that has set up a special day for singles to celebrate their lives.
An old story goes that once there were four single men, leading very boring lives. None of them were married, or had lovers, or did anything exciting. They just sat around all day and played Mahjong. One day they played Mahjong from 11 in the morning until 11 at night. During the game, no matter who won, the winning card was always the “four columns” card (the card shows four independent, parallel columns in two lines). Even more of a coincidence, it was Nov. 11. In order to remind them of the day, they nicknamed it Singles Day.
Singles Day was first celebrated at various universities in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu Province during the 1990s. These college students carried their university tradition into society after they graduated. Singles Day is now a special day for all.
The main way to celebrate Singles day is to have dinner with your single friends, but it’s important that each person pay their own way to show their independence. People also hold “blind date” parties in an attempt to say goodbye to their single lives.
For breakfast on Singles Day, singles often eat four youtiao
(deep-fried dough sitcks) representing the four “ones” in “11.11” and one baozi (steamed stuffed buns) representing the dot in between.
Many singles also choose to say goodbye to their single lives on the day. Many attend “blind date” parties and many people choose to marry on this day. In addition to meaning “single”, the four “ones” of the date can also mean “only one” as in “the only one for me”. Some p
eople will use this date an
d this meaning to tell their special someone that they are the only “one” in their heart.Which of the statement is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Singles Day has a long history. |
| B．Only men celebrate Singles Day. |
C．Singles  Day is only celebrated in China. |
| D．Students in Nanjing University started Singles Day. |
People celebrate the festival mainly by .
| A．playing Mahjong | B．having dinner |
| C．getting married | D．hanging out with friends |
What is the best title of the passage?
| A．Singles Day |
| B．Four Single Men’s Singles Day |
| C．University Culture on Singles Day |
| D．Symbolic Food on Singles Day |
Which of the following best shows the structure of the passage?
(a-para.1 b-para.2 c-para.3 d-para.4 e-para.5 f-para.6)
| A． a | B． a | C． a | D． a |
b c d b c d f b d b c d e
e e c ef
f f
Long bus rides are like television shows. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end — with commercials thrown in every three or four minutes. The commercials are unavoidable. They happen whether you want them or not. Every couple of minutes a billboard glides by (滑过) outside the bus window. Only if you sleep, which is equal to turning the television set off, are you spared the unending cry of “You Need It! Buy It Now!”?
The beginning of the ride is comfortable and somewhat exciting, even if you’ve traveled that way before. Usually some things have changed — new houses, new buildings, someti
mes even a new road. The bus driver has a style of driving and it’s fun to try to figure it out the first hour or so. If the driver is particularly careless or daring, the ride can be as thrilling as a horror story. Will the driver pass the truck in time? Will the driver move into the right or the left-hand lane? After a while, of course, the excitement dies down. Sleeping for a while helps pass the middle hours of the ride. Food always makes bus rides more interesting, but you’ve got to be careful of what kind of food you eat. Too much salty food can make you very thirsty between stops.
The end of the ride is somewhat like the beginning. You know it will soon be over and there’s a kind of expectation and excitement in that. The seat, of course, has become harder as the hours have passed. By now you’ve sat with your legs crossed, with your hands in your lap, with your hands on the arm rests — even with your hands crossed behind your head. The end comes just at the right time. There just no more ways to sit.The long bus rides and TV shows are alike, because .
| A．they both can offer people with thrilling stories |
| B．they both are boring |
| C．they both have a beginning, a middle, and an end, with commercials in between |
| D．they both force people to sit for a long time |
During the whole bus ride, what come to the passengers’ eyes most frequently?
| A．Some salty food on the bus. | B．The programs on TV. |
| C．Advertisements on the road. | D．Trucks on the road. |
In order to pass the middle hours of the ride, you can .
| A．read the billboards | B．have something to eat |
| C．watch TV shows | D．sleep |
The purpose of the passage is to .
| A．show how much bus rides differ from TV shows |
| B．teach us how to deal with each period of a long bus ride |
| C．persuade readers to take a long bus ride |
| D．give the author’s opinion on long bus rides |
Fatimah Bamun dropped out of Balizenda Primary School in the first grade, when her father refused to buy her pencils and paper. Only after her teachers said to him that his daughter showed unusual promise(有希望) did he change his mind. Today, Fatimah, 14, tall and slender, studies math in a dirt-floored fourth-grade classroom.
Whether she will reach the fifth grade is another matter. Fatimah is facing the realities of a school with no toilet, no water, no hope of privacy (隐私) other than the shadow of a bush, and no girlfriends with whom to share feelings. Fatimah is the only girl of the 23 students in her class. In fact, in a school of 178 students, she is one of the only three girls who have made it past the third grade.
“I have no friend in the class,” she said. “Most of my friends have dropped out to get married. So during the break, I just sit in the classroom and read.”
Her father, however, now says he is fully behind her. “The people from the government are all the time telling us to send our daughters to school, and I am listening to these people,” he said.
But in many cases, parents don’t listen. Parents think that if the girls stay home, they can help with the harvesting, fetch the water and collect the firewood. So they take them out of school.
In a region where poverty, tradition and ignorance make about 24 million girls not even have an elementary school education. There are many other barriers (障碍) that prevent girls going to school, such as the lack of school toilets and water.
The issue is not only equality. The World Bank thinks that if women in sub-Saharan Africa had equal education, land and other wealth, the region’s economy could improve greatly. There is a connection between growth in Africa and sex equality. It is of great importance but still ignored by so many people. The author’s purpose in writing the passage is to _______.
| A．find the cause of Africa’s poverty |
| B．describe the poor education conditions of African girls |
| C．prove the inequality in African society |
| D．reform the present schooling systems in Africa |
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Fatimah is a girl who shows signs of success for the future. |
| B．Fatimah’s father is now giving a lot of support to her. |
| C．Fatimah is the only girl who has made it past the fifth grade in her school. |
| D．Fatimah has no friends at school because they most of them have dropped out to get married. |
It can be inferred from the passage that _______.
| A．most African girls are treated equally in society |
| B．African governments don’t care whether girls go to school or not |
| C．most African girls would rather get married than go to school |
| D．African girls can’t enjoy equal chances for education |
A clique(小圈子,派系) is a group of friends who hang out together and act in similar ways. Cliques are common feature of the teen years. Members of a clique usually have certain things in common. For example, they might all be good students. Membership in a clique is limited. Not everyone who wants to belong can join.
Cliques can have a positive or negative influence. Because most teens have a strong need to belong, they want to feel that they fit into a group. Cliques can help them meet this need. Sometimes teens feel unsure of themselves, and they use a clique to gain approval of what they wear or how they act.
Cliques can become harmful, however, if they pressure members to behave the same way as the group that may damage their health. Cliques may discourage members from making their own decisions, giving their own opinions, or having other friends who aren’t accepted by the clique. Cliques may even pressure members to act in ways that go against their own values and beliefs, such as lying to parents or teachers. Cliques can also hurt people outside the group. For example, members might make fun of a teen who isn’t in the clique.
If you find yourself under this type of pressure from a clique, here are some actions you can take to improve your situation.
● Suggest other activities. Offer ideas that don’t involve hurting others or putting anyone at risk.
● Find new friends. If staying in the clique is becoming a negative experience, you will be better off with new friends.Why do teens want to be a member of a clique?
| A．Because it is popular with teens. |
| B．Because it meets teens’ need of belonging. |
| C．Because it is where teens can be themselves. |
| D．Because it provides an opportunity for them to be away from their parents. |
Why can cliques be harmful?
| A．Because kids in there don’t have independent thinking. |
| B．Because kids in there are not allowed to have their own opinions. |
| C．Because kids in there sometimes are pressured. |
| D．Because kids in there are forced to lie to their parents. |
What is the writer’s attitude toward the clique?
| A．He is very supportive to it. | B．He is strongly against it. |
| C．He is not against it, though he doesn’t like it. | |
| D．He is not against it. However, he has some worry about it. |