Driving In America
Keep Right
The traffic follows the “keep right rule”. While driving, drive on the right side of the road. On one-way, multiple lanes(车道) road, the right-most lane would be slowest and left-most lane is fastest.
Hand Signals
Though indicators(车的指示灯) are used for the purpose of showing which direction you are going, knowing some hand signals is very important and are usually always asked in a driving test. When you want to turn right, you can put your left hand out of the window and point upward. When you want to make a left turn, you can reach your left arm out of the window and point to the left. If you want to slow down or stop, you can just point downward.
School Buses
Yellow school buses have flashing red lights and stop signs that reach out from the driver’s side. The drivers use these warning signals when letting pupils on and off. No matter which side of the road you are traveling on, if you come upon a school bus with its lights flashing and a stop sign used, you must stop. It’s the law. Remain stopped until the lights stop flashing or the stop sign is removed.
Using the Horn
Using horns is not common in America. Actually they are very rarely used. You may use your horn to warn walkers or other drivers of possible trouble or to avoid accidents. Do not use your horn to express anger or complain about other drivers’ mistakes or to try to get a slow driver to move faster. If Freddy is asked to go to Florida in the shortest time from Missouri, on which lane in the picture below should he drive his car according to Paragraph 1?
| A．Lane ①. | B．Lane ②. | C．Lane ③. | D．Lane ④. |
What could a driver do in America when turning left?
| A．Place left hand out of the window pointing upward. |
| B．Put left hand out of the window pointing downward. |
| C．Reach left arm out of the window pointing to the left. |
| D．Place left hand out of the window pointing backward. |
According to the passage, which of the following is possibly accepted in America?
| A．Use horns sometimes to warn passers-by of danger. |
| B．Drive on before the stop sign on a school bus is removed. |
| C．Use hand signals instead of indicators to show which direction you are going. |
| D．Do not use warning signals in the school bus until all the pupils get on the bus. |
Who is the passage most probably written for?
| A．Passers-by. | B．Pupils. |
| C．Policemen. | D．Drivers. |
When the swim season began, my 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and I cut a deal. She would go to practice three times a week, and I wouldn’t make her compete in swim meets.
Elizabeth does not like swim meets. She gets horribly nervous because she is afraid that she will do something wrong and let everyone down. She started to talk about quitting swimming, which broke my heart because she loves swimming. So I came up with the deal.
Recently, Elizabeth’s team announced a T-shirt relay, which works like this: One person from each relay team puts on a T-shirt and a pair of socks and swims 50 meters. She takes off the clothes and put them on the next person, who then swims 50 meters. This continues until everyone on the team has completed a lap.
It wasn’t exactly a meet, because it would involve only team members. But Elizabeth thought it was. I told Elizabeth I really wanted her to go. She fought back angrily but finally agreed.
When the day for the T-shirt relay arrived, Elizabeth was nervous. She was chosen to swim the anchor leg (最后一棒).By the last leg, Elizabeth’s team had built up a narrow lead. Then it was Elizabeth’s turn to swim.
Approaching the halfway mark, she was still in the lead. Then somebody noticed that one of Elizabeth’s socks had fallen off and was floating in the pool. “She has to get that sock on before the end of the race,” a swimming official told Elizabeth’s team, “or you will be disqualified.”
Everybody on her team started shouting, “Elizabeth! Get the sock!” But she couldn’t hear them. Meanwhile, a girl in lane two was gaining on Elizabeth. Just then, a girl on my daughter’s team jumped in the pool, grabbed the sock, swam after Elizabeth and put the sock on Elizabeth.
With the sock finally on, Elizabeth swam her heart out for the last 15 meters and won! There was much celebration. And, for a few minutes, Elizabeth was the hero.
On the ride home, she relived her moment of glory again and again. She told me that if the T-shirt relay was an Olympic event, her team would win the gold medal, I told her that in my professional opinion, she was absolutely right.What do we know about the T-shirt relay?
| A．Elizabeth was eager to attend it. |
| B．Elizabeth made full preparations for it. |
| C．Elizabeth thought she was sure to fail the relay. |
| D．Elizabeth agreed to attend it after a lot of persuasion. |
What happened to Elizabeth when she was swimming the anchor leg?
| A．The girl on the other team swam faster than her. |
| B．She was disqualified for breaking the rule. |
| C．She was too nervous to swim. |
| D．One of her socks fell off. |
We can infer from the last paragraph that Elizabeth_____.
| A．believed she was the best of her team. |
| B．hoped to take part in the Olympics. |
| C．overcame her fear of swim meets. |
| D．was grateful for the girl’s help. |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．Born to be a swimmer | B．Swimming in socks |
| C．The swim season | D．Never give up! |
Three Japanese tourists taking a holiday in Australia got stuck when their GPS told them they could drive from the mainland to an island, failing to mention the 15 kilometres of water and mud in between.
As they drove their hired car from Moreton Bay to nearby North Stradbroke Island, they started to notice the firm surface they were driving on giving way to the well-known bay mud. However, being confident that their GPS would direct them to a road soon, they decided to drive on, managing to travel around 500 metres before their car was up to its tires in mud. To make matters worse, the tide(潮汐) started to come in and soon forced them to seek help and abandon the vehicle. Just four hours later the car was trapped in two metres of water — to the great amusement of onlookers on the shore and passengers on passing boats and ferries.
Yuzu Noda, 21, said she was listening to the GPS and “it told us we could drive down there. It kept saying it would navigate(导航) us to a road. But we got stuck…there’s lots of mud.” She and her travel companions Tomonari Saeki, 22, and Keita Osada, 21, instead had to give up their plans for a day trip to the island and headed back to the Gold Coast of a lift from the RACQ tow truck(吊车) driver who was called to the trapped car. No such luck for the hired car though – after assessing the situation, no attempt was made to recover it. The students from Tokyo, who are due to return home tomorrow, said the experience would not put them off returning to Australia for another visit. Mr. Tomonari said, “It has rained every day on our six day holiday. Hopefully next time we come back, it will be sunny.”
The car was covered by insurance, but the tourists will have to pay up to about $1500 in extra charges.The three Japanese tourists got stuck because___________.
| A．there was no way to the island |
| B．their GPS was broken during their journey |
| C．their GPS had given the wrong information |
| D．their car was not made in Japan |
They didn’t abandon their car until _________.
| A．some onlookers went to save them |
| B．they got stuck in the mud |
| C．there came the tide |
| D．they managed to travel around 500 metres |
How did these Japanese students get back?
| A．They had to walk back to their living place. |
| B．They had to take a lift from the tow truck driver. |
| C．They had to repair their GPS and drove back. |
| D．They had to turn to passengers on boats and ferries. |
For some years the big drugmakers have been worrying about an approaching "patent cliff"—a fall in sales as the patents on their most popular pills expire or are struck down by legal challenges, with few new potential blockbusters to take their place. This week the patent on the best-selling drug in history expired—Lipitor, an anti-cholesterol pill which earned Pfizer nearly $11 billion in revenues last year.In all, pill like Lipitor with a combined $170 billion in annual sales will go off-patent by the end of 2015.
What is supposed to happen now is that lots of copycat firms rush in with "generic" (ie, chemically identical) versions of Lipitor at perhaps one-fifth of its price.Patients and health-care payers should reap the benefit.Pfizer's revenues should suffer. The same story will be repeated many times, as other best-selling drugs march over the patent cliff
But generics makers may face delays getting their cheaper versions to market.Ranbaxy, a Japanese-owned drugmaker, struggled to get regulators' approval for its generic version of Lipitor, and only won it on the day the patent expired.More importantly, research-based drug firms are using a variety of tactics to make the patent cliff slope more gently. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is concerned by drugmakers filing additional patents on their products to put off the day when their protection expires.
Another tactic(策略) is "pay-for-delay", in which a drugmaker facing a legal challenge to its patent pays its would-be competitor to put off introducing its cheaper copy. In the year to October the FTC identified what it believes to be 28 such settlements. American and European regulators are looking into these deals. However, legal challenges against them have been delayed, and a bill to ban them is stuck in Congress.
To encourage generics makers to challenge patents on drugs, and introduce cheaper copies,
an American law passed in 1984 says that the first one to do so will get a 180-day exclusivity period,in which no other generics maker can sell versions of the drug in question, as Ranbaxy supposedly won with Lipitor.
However, Pfizer is exploiting a loophole(空子) in the 1984 law, which lets it appoint a second, authorised copycat—in this case, Watson, another American firm.According to BernsteinResearch, under the deal between the two drugmakers Pfizer will receive about 70% of Watson's revenues from its approved copy of Lipitor.More unusual, Pfizer has cut the price of its original version, and will keep marketing it vigorously. So Ranbaxy faces not one, but two competitors.
All this may raise Pfizer's sales by nearly $500m in the last half of 2015 compared with what they would otherwise have been, says Tim Anderson of BernsteinResearch, with revenues then falling after the 180 days are over. Others fear that Pfizer's tactics , if copied, will make the 180-day exclusivity period worth far less, and thus discourage generic firms from challenging patents in the first place.The underlined word “blockbusters” in Paragraph 1 refers to “_______’
| A．pills that sell very well |
| B．new patents to appear |
| C．drugmakers to compete with Pfizer |
| D．challenges which Pfizer has to face |
What is the tactic mentioned in Paragraph 4?
| A．Legal challenges against expired patents have been paid for putting off the cheaper copy. |
| B．Bills to prohibit generic makers have been stuck in Congress. |
| C．Drugmakers try to spend money delaying filing additional patents on popular pills |
| D．Patent-holders give possible competitors money to prevent more losses. |
Pfizer exploit a loophole in the 1984 law mainly by ________.
| A．marketing Lipitor more actively |
| B．making the price of Lipitor go up |
| C．cooperating with Watson to beat Ranbaxy |
| D．encouraging Watson to produce cheaper copies |
How many tactics are adopted by patent-holders in the passage?
| A．Two | B．Three | C．Four | D．Five |
Which of the following might be the best title for the passage?
| A．Drugmakers’ struggle |
| B．Generic makers’ dilemma |
| C．Laws concerning patent protection |
| D．Popular pills of Pfizer |
Concepts from science and nature are filled with our language’s common phrases , idioms and spoken expressions. The unbelieving expression “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” has its origin in bitter disbelief over Darwin’s writings on evolution. These colourful expressions bring spice(趣味) to our language.
Yet certain well-used phrases from science are just plain wrong! Some are obvious, yet we use them anyhow. For example, a person who acutely shakes her head and says “ A watched pot never boils” while you are waiting second after tiring second for test results to arrive or job offers to come in knows that if she sat down and watched a pot containing water on a stove over high heat for long enough, the water will eventually boil.
However, a few phrases have less obvious scientific inaccuracies. Here are a few for you to consider.
Once in a blue moon: This poetic phrase refers to something that occurs extremely rarely. A blue moon is the term commonly used for a second full moon that occasionally appears in a single month of our solar-based calendars. The problem with the phrase, however, is that blue moons are not so rare. They happen every few years at least, and can even happen within months of each other when the 29.5-day lunar cycle puts the full moon at the beginning of any month but February. The usage of “blue moon” as the second full moon in a month dates back to a 1937 Marine Farmer’s Almanac . But before that, blue moons meant something slightly different. Typically, 12 full moons occur from winter solstice to the next winter solstice, but occasionally a fourth full moon in a season could be observed . In such a case, one of the four full moons in that season was known as “blue”
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: The phrase means that if something looks wrong, it likely is wrong. But let’s step back. Do you always have to have fire if you see smoke? Answering that first requires defining ‘fire” , Merriam—Webster’s first definition of fire is “ the phenomenon of combustion manifested in light, flame and heat”. Combustion is the chemical reaction that occurs when fuel is burned in the presence of oxygen---denying a fire any of these three things will stop the fire; attempting to start a fire without any one of the three things will be impossible. In complete combustion---what occurs when you light a gas stove--- the fire produces no smoke. However, when most materials are burned, they have incomplete combustion, which means that the fire isn’t able to completely burn all of the fuel . Smoke, then, can be considered to be a product of pyrolysis (高温分解) rather than of fire itself. You’re probably thinking---so what? To get the smoke, a fire needed to be present at some point, right? Not always.
Diamonds are forever: Thanks to the DeBeers slogan , decorating your honey’s neck, wrists and fingers with diamonds means true and timeless love. Of course, no object that you can hold in your hand can last forever. But diamonds have a special reason for being incapable of timelessness. Without the extreme pressures of the deep Earth where they formed, a diamond will slowly turn back into graphite(石墨), which is why the older a diamond is, the more inclusions it’s likely to have.
What common phrases push your buttons when viewed under the microscope of science? Are you curious about the hidden knowledge of some “ big” phrases ? Or perhaps you have the ability to uncover the secret of some unscientific phrases? Let us know!According to the passage, the blue moon _________.
| A．appears at the beginning of a month |
| B．gains its modern meaning before 1937 |
| C．presents itself quite frequently sometimes |
| D．can never be seen by people in February |
What can be concluded from the passage?
| A．the older a diamond is, the more valuable it’s likely to be. |
| B．Fire is not necessarily causing smoke |
| C．Smoke is a product of complete combustion |
| D．the less obvious scientific inaccuracies of some phrases make them more useful |
The underlined phrase “push your buttons” in the last paragraph means “_______”.
| A．impress you a lot | B．frighten you much. |
| C．surprise you greatly | D．make you lose your interest |
The author’s attitude towards the scientific inaccuracies of the phrases is ________.
| A．indifferent | B．objective |
| C．critical | D．favourable |
Money matters, no matter who or where you are. So when China’s currency the yuan was devalued (贬值) against the US dollar for three straight days in mid-August, the world felt the effects. As CNN put it: “If China sneezes, the world catches a cold.”
Why does it matter so much?
The exchange rate is the term for the comparison of two currencies. It says how much one currency is worth in terms of (换算) the other.
“Exchange rates play an important role in a country’s level of trade. It is one of the most important determinants (决定因素) of a country’s relative level of economic health,” wrote Jason Van Bergen of Forbes.com. A higher currency makes a country’s exports more expensive and imports cheaper, and vice versa (反之亦然).
Devaluation means the same amount of RMB can be exchanged for fewer USD. For example, on Aug 11, the exchange rate of RMB to USD was 6.23, which meant $1 was worth the same as 6.23 yuan. Two days later, the rate changed to 6.4, meaning the value of RMB had dropped by 2.7 percent.
So what does a weaker currency mean for our lives?
It first affects those who want to travel to, or study in, the US. If your former classmate is leaving for a preparatory (预科) school in the US at the end of August, it now costs about 1,800 yuan more to exchange currency for 10,000 US dollars than it did earlier this month. However, since many currencies have decreased in value, the value of yuan is still relatively high despite the recent devaluation. This means it costs 1,200 yuan less to get 10,000 Canadian dollars now than it did in March.
Even if we don’t have plans to travel abroad, though, we could still be affected. For example, your mother will have to pay more if she buys directly from overseas websites with US dollars. And chances are that imported chocolate and potato chips will soon be a bit more expensive in your local supermarket.
However, the weaker yuan is good news for Chinese exporters. It makes Chinese exports less expensive and it could boost the overseas sales that have been among the main reasons for China’s economic growth during its rise over the past 30 years.
Just as Erik Britton of Fathom, a London-based economic consulting firm, told The Guardian: “We’re all going to feel it: we’ll feel it through commodities (商品), not just from China but from everywhere that has to compete with it; and we’ll feel it through wages.”
“The devalued yuan will force China’s Asian rivals (竞争对手), such as Indonesia and South Korea, to compete even harder,” wrote Heather Stewart, economics editor of The Guardian. “The result may be cheaper Christmas presents.”According to the passage, it can be learned from the passage EXCEPT___________
| A．The higher China’s currency is , the less expensive potato chips from America become. |
| B．In March people spent 1,200 yuan more to get 10,000 Canadian dollars than they do today because Canadian dollars increased in value. |
| C．China’s currency’s devaluation against the US dollar in mid-August makes students studying in America pay more school fees. |
| D．People who work in Fathom will be greatly affected on account of the weaker yuan. |
The passage implies that ___________.
| A．The yuan’s devaluation contributes a lot to China’s economic growth . |
| B．Exchange rates are the most important factor determining a country’s relative level of economic health |
| C．The yuan’s devaluation has a great impact on all the countries in the world. |
| D．Chinese exports sell well overseas because of their high quality |
If the exchange rate of RMB to USD increased from 6.5 to 6.7, how much more percent would you pay when you bought a bag worth $100?
| A．2.7 | B．5.4 | C．20.0 | D．3.1 |