American parents generally can choose any name they want for their children. They may choose a name because it honors a family member. Or they may choose a name just because they like it.
A website called Baby Center lists some unusual names given to American babies born last year. Some were named for characters in old stories, such as Hero, Thor and Ulysses. Other people named their babies after kinds of food, like actress Gwyneth Paltrow. She named her daughter Apple. Other people named their babies Banana, Pumpkin and Cookie.
Still some babies were named for places. These included Brazil, India and Rome. Some parents used names of famous people from history such as Newton and Hannibal. Other parents named their babies after flowers or the weather. These babies were named Buttercup, Iris, Sunshine and Thunder.
Recording artists and movie actors influence some parents’ choices of names. Babies were named Beyonce, Charlize, Reda, Pierce, Shajira and Whitney. Movie actors themselves often give their babies unusual names. For example, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt named their baby daughter Shiloh. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes named their little girl Suri.
Some American parents do not want unusual names. They want their baby’s name to honor their religious faith. Such names include Abraham for boys or Sarah for girls. And many people give their babies the same name as a family member or good friend.
The United States Social Security Administration once published a list of the most popular names for American girls and boys born. Many of the top ten boys, names are from the Jewish and Christian Bibles.How did American parents usually name their children?
A.In a way they please. | B.In a scientific way. |
C.In a careless way. | D.In a common way |
From the second paragraph, we can infer that _______.
A.Ulysses is a main person in an old story book. |
B.the meaning of Gwyneth Paltrow is a kind of fruit |
C.American parents expect their children to be a hero. |
D.a girl was named Apple because she liked eating apples. |
What can we know from American children’s name?
A.American children’s names express American history. |
B.A foreign place may become a name of an American child. |
C.American parents’ favorite names are those of famous actors. |
D.American parents expect their children to be different from others. |
If a girl is named Sarah, the name reflects her parents’ _______.
A.love | B.career | C.expectation | D.religion |
C
Not even Dan Brown and his Da Vinci code—breakers(密码破译者)dared deal with the mystery of Mona Lisa,s smile.But Nicu Sebe,a computer expert the University of Amsterdam,the Netherlands,did.He used’emotion recognition’software to process the famous painting and found Mona Lisa happy(83 per cent)and slightly disgusted(厌烦的)(9 per cent).
Faces show emotions. Psychology,computer science,and engineering researchers are joining forces to teach machines to read expressions.If they succeed,your computer may one day“read”your mood.Machines equipped with emotional skills could also be used in teaching,gaming,mind-reading,etc.
“Mind Reader”,a system developed by Rosalind Picard at MIT(the Massachusetts Institute of Tech’nology)in the US, uses input from a video camera to do real—time analysis of facial expressions. It reports on whether you seem“interested”or“agreeable”or if you’re“confused”.The system can help people recognize others’emotions.Picard says this means we could teach a machine to be as sensitive as a human.In fact,a machine can be even smarter than people since it can tell if a person is lying or just“performing”by analyzing one’s facial movements.
Jeffrey Cohn,a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh,uses the Facial Action Coding System to recognize human emotions.The system sorts more than 40 action units(AUs)of the face to tell people’s real emotions.He studied a videotape of a criminal who said to be sad about the murder of several family members and tried to pin the blame on someone else.But Cohn saw no real sadness in the woman’s face.
Sadness is a group of AUs that is difficult to do at the same time.You have to pull down the woman’s of your lips while bringing your eyebrows together and raising them.What the woman did was raise her cheeks to make a lip cud(撇嘴)。Her brows stayed smooth.
64.The best title of this passage is“ ________ ”.
A.The emotion on your faceB.Look at your face
C.Your face tells a story D.Telling a lie
65.The missing sentence“This means,even though your mouth lice,your face doesn’t,and the machine will know it all. ”should be put at the end of ___________.
A.Paragraph 2 B.Paragraph 3C.Paragraph 4 D.Paragraph 5
66.How many facial emotion analyses are mentioned in this passage?
A.Four. B.Three. C.Two. D.One
67.The underlined word“it”refers to________.
A.MIT B.the video camera
C.one’s face emotion D.the real—time analysis
B
Lions are opportunists. They prefer to eat without having to do too much work. When resting in the shade, they are also watching the sky to see what is flying by, and even in the heat of the day they will suddenly start up and run a mile across the plains to find out what is going on. If another animal has made a kill, they will drive it off and take the dill for themselves. A grown lion can easily eat 60 pounds of meat at a single feeding. Often they eat until it seems painful for them to lie down.
The lioneases (母狮) , being thinner and faster, are better hunters (猎手) than the males (雄狮). But the males don’t mind. After the kill they move in and take the test share.
Most kills are made at night or just before daybreak. We have seen many, many daylight attempts but only ten kills. Roughly, It’s about twenty daytime attempts for one kill.
When lions are hiding for an attack by a water hole, they wait patiently and can charge at any second. The kill is the exciting moment in the day-to-day life of the lion, since these great animals spend most of their time, about 20 hours a day, sleeping and resting.
Lions are social cats, and when they are having a rest, they love to touch each other. After drinking at a water hole, a lioness rests her head on another’s back. When walking, young lions often touch faces with older ones, an act of close ties imong members of the group.
60. By describing lions as “opportunists” in the first paragraph, the author means to say that lions_____.
A. are cruel animals B. are clever animals
C. like to take advantage of other animals D. like to take every chance to eat
61. According to the text, which of the following is true?
A. Lions make most kills in the daytime.
B. Males care more about eating than active killing.
C. Lions are curious about things happening around them.
D. It doesn’t take lions too much time to make a kill.
62. How can we know that lions are social animals?
A. They depend on each other. B. They look after each other well.
C. They readily share what they have. D. They enjoy each other’s company.
63. What would be the best tiltle for the text?
A. Powerful Lions B. Lions at Work and Play
C. Lions, Social Cats D. Lions, Skilled Hunters
第三部分:阅读理解(共20小题,每题2分,满分40分)
阅读下列短文,从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中,选出最佳选项。
A
Reading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people. In fact, many people never read a poem once they get out of high school.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America. In the nineteenth century, a usual American activity was to sit around the fireside in the evening and read poems aloud. It is true that there was no television at the time, nor movie theaters, nor World Wide Web, to provide diversion. However, poems were a source of pleasure, of self-education, of connection to other people or to the world beyond one’s own community. Reading them was a social act as well as an individual one, and perhaps even more social than individual. Writing poems to share with friends and relations was, like reading poems by the fireside, another way in which poetry has a place in everyday life.
How did things change? Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry, and why do most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and that they can do well without poems?
There are, I believe, three culprits(肇事者):poets, teachers, and we ourselves. Of these, the least important is the third: the world surrounding the poem has betrayed us more than we have betrayed the poem. Early in the twentieth century, poetry in English headed into directions unfavorable to the reading of poetry. Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or the easy chair at night, that they belonged where other difficult-to-read things belonged.
Poets failed the readers, so did teachers. They want their students to know something about the skills of a poem, they want their students to see that poems mean something. Yet what usually occurs when teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young people decide poems are unpleasant crossword puzzles.
56.Reading poems is thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century because___________.
A.it built a link among people B.it helped unite a community
C.it was a source of self-educationD.it was a source of pleasure
57. The underlined word “diversion”(in Paragraph 2) most probably means “________”.
A.concentration B.change C.amusements D.stories
58.According to the passage, what is the main cause of the great gap between readers and poetry?
A.Students are becoming less interested in poetry.
B.Students are poorly educated in high school.
C.TV and the Internet are more attractive than poetry.
D.Poems have become difficult to understand.
59.In the last paragraph, the writer questions_______.
A.the difficulty in studying poems B.the way poems are taught in school
C.students’ wrong ideas about poetry D.the techniques used in writing poems
(D)
Between ten and midnight the United States is politically leaderless——there is no center of information anywhere in the nation except in the New York headquarters of the great broadcasting companies and the two great wire services.No candidate and no party can afford the investment on election night to match the news-gathering resources of the mass media; and so, as every citizen sits in his home watching his TV set or listening to his radio, he is the equal of any other in knowledge.There is nothing that can be done in these hours, for on one can any longer direct the great strike for America’s power; the polls have closed.Good or bad, whatever the decision.America will accept the decision——and cut down any man who goes against it, even though for millions the decision runs contrary to their own votes.The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood.Its decision is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.
There is nothing like this American expression of will in England or France, India or Russia or China.Only one other major nation in modern history has ever tried to elect its leader directly by mass, free, popular vote.This was the Weimar Republic of Germany, which modeled its unitary vote for national leaders on the American practice.Out of its experiment with the system it got Hitler.Americans have had Lincoln, Wilson and two Roosevelts.Nothing can be done when the voting returns are flooding in; the White House and its power will move to one or another of the two candidates, and all will know about it in the morning.But for these hours history stops.
76.Between ten p.m.and midnight, the United States has no leader because________.
A.the President has resigned
B.the strike for power has ended
C.the polls have closed and the results are not in
D.there has been a revolution
77.“The great strike for America’s power” in paragraph 1 refers to_________.
A.the strike of the mass media B.the great coal strike
C.striking while the iron is hot D.the election campaign
78.According to the author only one other major modern nation ever tried to elect its leader by mass, free, popular vote.That nation was___________.
A.India B.Germany C.Russia D.England
79.The author believes the decision at the polls will.
A.lead to anarchy B.result in men being cut down
C.cause violence and blood D.be defended by all Americans
(C)
Texas——US President George W.Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to bridge their differences over a key arms control treaty last week, but that didn’t stop them from backslapping(喧闹的狂欢) as they ended a summit.
The two leaders also offered differing interpretations of the fate of nuclear warheads to be removed from missiles under arms reductions they each announced last week.Bush said he intended to destroy the warheads, but Putin said their fate should be negotiated.
The two men untied on the need for Northern Alliance forces——to allow for a broad based government that respects all parties there.
Bush and Putin had spent the night at Bush’s ranch.Despite the rain, the rural environment and friendly company appeared to have worked its magic.They slapped on the back and joked, at one point teasing each other about whether it is better to visit Texas in the heat of August or Siberia in winter.
Analysts say the dramatic warming in US-Russian relation could herald(预示) an era of pragmatism(务实的想法或做法) in global affairs as the two old rivals finally end decades of hostility and become friends.
“Washington and Moscow are no longer playing the ‘big game’ against each other, but with each other,” said Karl Heniz Kamp, an analyst at the Konrad Adenanaer Foundation,a German think tank.
72.It can be concluded that President Bush and President Putin__________.
A.didn’t agree on key arms control treaty
B.offered different explanations of the future of nuclear warheads under arms reductions
C.neither A or B
D.both A and B
73.The reason why the two men joined together is that.
A.they were needed by the Northern Alliance forces
B.they had taken the advice given by Karl Heniz Kamp, an analyst of German think tank.
C.they had already been partners
D.they had no different opinions on everything
74 The warming of US-Russian relations indicates that_______.
A.the two persons end hostility and become friends
B.US can benefit a lot from global affairs
C.there will be an end to all the armies of the world
D.it is a turning point to words being practical in global affairs
75.What the two men teased about shows that___________.
A.they appeared friendly but in fact they didn’t
B.they just made fun of each other
C.they are friendly and humorous
D.they invited each other to their countries in the bad weather