A widow’s wish to hear her late husband’s voice again has pushed London’s Subway system to restore a 40-year-old recording of the subway’s famous “ Mind the gap” announcement.
The underground, or the tube, first opened in 1863, tracked down the voice recording by Oswald Lawrence after his widow, Margaret McCollum, told them what it meant to her.
McCollum, 65, said she used to frequently visit Embankment tube station or plan her journeys around the stop to listen to Lawrence’s voice, even before his death. She was taken aback in November when she noticed it had been replaced by a different voice.
“Lawrence was a drama school graduate when he auditioned (试音) for a tour company. For six years after his death, I’d stay on the platform—just sit and listen to it again,” she added.
When Margaret approached the tube, she was told it had a new broadcast system and it couldn’t use the old recording anymore.
Nigel Holness, director of London Underground, said its staff has been so moved by McCollum’s story that they dug up the recording and gave the widow a copy of the announcement on a CD for her to keep. “Tube staff is also working to restore Lawrence’s announcement at the station,” he added. “It is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. The tube’s ‘Mind the gap’ messages, voiced by various actors, have accompanied countless London commuter journeys since the 1960s. Train drivers and staff made the warnings themselves before that.”
“I’m very pleased that people are interested in Oswald’s old recording,” Margaret said. “He was a great London transport user all his life .He would be amused, touched, and delighted to know he’s back where he belonged.”The best title for the passage is________.
| A．A Replaced Recording | B．Mind the Gap |
| C．A Widow’s Wish | D．The Tube’s Struggle |
The underlined phrase “ taken aback” means_________.
| A．disappointed | B．annoyed |
| C．excited | D．shocked |
What can we infer from the passage?
| A．The tube always uses recordings to remind passengers. |
| B．Oswald’s voice is great comfort to Margaret. |
| C．No recording can be equal to Oswald’s voice. |
| D．Oswald was an outstanding actor in London. |
Dou Kou, a Chinese boy, is called “the youngest writer in the world”. He has written three books till now. Dou Kou was born in Jiangsu in 1994. When he was 7 months old, his partents started working in over 30 different cities, such as Xi’an and Shenzhen. This kind of life gave him things to think and write about. When he was 9 months old, he could speak and at the age of one, he could say five to six hundred words. At three, he could look up words in the dictionary. At four, his father taught him how to learn by himself. His parents like reading very much. So does he. At the age of 5, he began writing fairy tales. At the age of 6, he wrote a novel about his life in different cities with his parents. His fairy tales are all from his life. One day, he found many mice in the house. They only ate their food but also hurt his mother’s hand. So he thought, “If we give mice the stomach of cows, they will eat grass and they will be helpful to people.” This was his first fairy tales Change Stomach for Mice. Now he studies well in a middle school. He has written his third book, the novel called Eyes of Children. He says, “I am not different from other children. I just wrote several books.How many books has Dou Kou written?
| A．Three. | B．Four. |
| C．Five | D．Six |
Thanks to his ________, Dou Kou could write his books.
| A．mother | B．father |
| C．school life | D．life in different cities |
Dou Kou began to use a dictionary __________.
| A．when he wrote fairy tales |
| B．before his father taught him how to learn something |
| C．after he went to school |
| D．after his mother taught him how to learn something |
The underlined(划线的) sentences show us that Dou Kou _________.
| A．is different from other children |
| B．doesn’t tell the truth. |
| C．is the same as other children |
| D．likes his books |
Which is the best title?
| A．Three Books by a child |
| B．How to Write a Fairy Tales |
| C．How Clever the Boy is |
| D．Dou Kou, the Youngest Writer |
If you have a watch, don’t go to a watchmaker’s unless something is wrong with the machinery. Once I had a beautiful watch. And it had kept perfect time. But one night it happened that I forgot to wind it up (上发条). Next morning I went to a watchmaker as I wanted my perfect watch to be set by the exact time. He examined it and said, “The regulator (快慢调整器) must be pushed up as your watch is four minutes slow.
I tried to stop him from doing so, but he didn’t listen and pushed the regulator.
My beautiful watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. By the end of the second month it had left all the clocks and watches of the town far behind.
I could do nothing but take it to another watchmaker to be regulated. I expected him to regulate the watch at once, but he asked me to come in a week’s time. When at last I got my watch back from him, it began to slow down. And I failed to be in time for trains, business affairs, and even missed my dinners.
Now I went to a third watchmaker. When I was waiting for him to repair my poor watch, he took it to pieces and said that he would try to finish this work in three or four days. What I could do was to nod my head. After that, my watch went for half a day, and then stopped. So I kept taking my watch from one watchmaker to another. But each watchmaker disappointed me.
My watch had cost me two hundred dollars, but I paid for repairs more than two hundred. At last I decided to buy another watch, which I did.The writer was sure that ___________.
| A．you’d better not have your watch repaired if nothing has gone wrong with it |
| B．you’d better never have your watch repaired |
| C．you’d better not have your watch regulated |
| D．you’d better repair your watch yourself |
The writer took his watch to the first watchmaker in order to ___________.
| A．check (检查) it whether it kept good time |
| B．change some parts |
| C．have it set by the exact time |
| D．push up the regulator |
The watch went faster than it used to be ___________.
| A．after it was repaired |
| B．before it was repaired |
| C．during the time when it was being repaired |
| D．if it was repaired |
Not long after his watch was regulated, he ___________ for the second time.
| A．regulated it | B．set it |
| C．repaired it | D．had it repaired |
The writer decided to buy another watch because ___________.
| A．he would not spend more money on repairs |
| B．he didn’t like the old one |
| C．a new watch could keep good time |
| D．he had spent two hundred dollars on repairs |
The best way of learning a language is using it. The best way of learning English is talking in English as much as possible. Sometimes you'll get your words mixed up (混合) and people will not understand you. Sometimes people will say things too quickly and you can't understand them. But if you keep your sense of humor , you can always have a good laugh at the mistakes you make. Don't be unhappy if people seem to be laughing at your mistakes. It's better for people to laugh at your mistakes than to be angry with you, because they don't understand what you are saying. The most important thing for learning English is: "Don't be afraid of making mistakes because everyone makes mistakes."The writer thinks that the most important thing for you to learn a language is___________.
| A．reading | B．practicing |
| C．talking about it | D．listening |
What should you do in learning English?
| A．Try to make some mistakes. |
| B．Avoid making any mistakes. |
| C．Remember as many new words as you can. |
| D．Use it as often as you cam |
If people laugh at the mistakes you make, you should ___________.
| A．be angry with them | B．be angry with yourself |
| C．not care | D．believe you are right |
When you make a mistake, you should___________.
| A．never make any mistakes again |
| B．tell others not to make the same mistake |
| C．punish yourself for making it |
| D．keep your sense of humor |
The story tell us:" ___________."
| A．It is normal (正常的) that we make some mistakes in learning English |
| B．Everyone must make mistakes |
| C．We can avoid making mistakes in learning a language |
| D．Laughing can help one learn English well |
Not many years ago, a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was seventy-five, he gave￡12,000 to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children’s playground.
As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson remarked that he was seventy-five and expected to live to be a hundred. The newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at seventy-five. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky (威士忌酒) and drank some each day. “I have an injection (注射) in my neck each evening,” he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of whisky.
The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was seventy-five and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injection.Johnson became a rich man through ___________.
| A．doing business | B．making whisky |
| C．cheating | D．buying and selling land |
The gift of money to the school suggests (暗示) that Johnson ___________.
| A．had no children |
| B．was a strange man |
| C．was very fond of children |
| D．wanted people to know how rich he was |
Many people wrote to Johnson to find out ___________.
| A．what kind of whisky he had |
| B．how to live longer |
| C．how to become wealthy |
| D．in which part of the neck to have an injection |
The newspaperman ___________.
| A．should have reported what Johnson had told him |
| B．shouldn’t have asked Johnson what injection he had |
| C．was eager to live a long life |
| D．should have found out what Johnson really meant |
When Johnson said he had an injection in his neck each evening, he really meant that ___________.
| A．he liked drinking a glass of whisky in the evening |
| B．he needn’t an injection in the neck |
| C．a daily injection in the evening would make him sleep well |
| D．there was something wrong with his neck |
The hand, the eyes, and the brain work together to make human beings different from other animals. No other animals have all three parts to work together. No animals can do what human beings can do. Humans can do many things and feel many things with the hand. The hand can hold onto things and make things because the thumb(大拇指) works with the fingers. This fifth finger is strong. Most animals don’t have thumbs. The thumb can press against the other fingers. Without a thumb to press against the fingers, it is difficult to hold onto anything. The thumb and fingers can also fit the flat surface of a box and the curved (不平的) surface of a pencil. We can feel that something is hot or cold, soft or hard, smooth or rough. The hand, with thumb and fingers, is one of the best tools we have. Most animals see a flat picture. Their eyes can only see how high and how wide something is. Some animals see a different picture with each eye. Some don’t see in colour. Humans see one picture with both eyes working together. We can see how high and how wide something is. We can also see how far in front of or in back of something a thing is. The brain tells other parts of the body how to work. Some of the things the body does are automatic; that is, we don’t have to think about them. For example, we don’t have to think to make our heart beat or our stomach work. The brain tells the eyes and hands how to make useful and beautiful things. That is how human beings become tool makers and artists. That is how human can have richer and better lives than other animals.Human beings are different from other animals because ___________.
| A．human beings have the hands, the eyes, and the brain working all the time |
| B．other animals also have hands, the eyes, and the brain |
| C．human beings work together with other animals |
| D．the hands, the eyes, and the brain of the human can work together |
According to the passage, when you say you hold onto something, you mean______
| A．you have it in your hand and keep it there by putting your fingers firmly roundit |
| B．you have it in your arms and keep it there by putting your fingers firmly roundit |
| C．you feel it with your hands |
| D．you press the fingers of your right hand against those of your left hand |
The author tells us that no animals can do what humans can do. He gives quite a few facts to support the idea. One of them is that ___________.
| A．most animals don’t see in colour |
| B．the humans see a thing with both eyes working together |
| C．only humans can see and how high and how wide a thing is |
| D．some animals can see only one picture |
___________ is automatic.
| A．Breathing | B．Driving a car |
| C．Making a chair | D．Playing football |
People who make beautiful things are usually called ___________.
| A．toolmakers | B．artists |
| C．scientists | D．drivers |