Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
If you suffer from shyness, you are not alone, for shyness is a universal phenomenon. It is not surprising that social scientists are exploring its environmental causes
The first environmental cause of shyness may be a child’s home and family life. today's children are growing up in smaller and smaller families, with fewer and fewer relatives living nearby. Growing up in homes in which both parents work full time, children may not have the socializing experience of frequent visits by neighbours and friends. Because of their lack of social skills, they may begin to feel shy when they start school
A second environmental cause of shyness in an individual may be one's culture. In a large study conducted in Japanl, 57% participants rated themselves as shy. Researchers Lynne Henderson and Philip Zimbardo say, " One explanation is that in Japan, an individual's performance success is credited externally to parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and others, while failure is entire blamed on the person. "Therefore, Japanese learn not to take risks in public and rely instead on group-shared decisions.
Technology may also play a role. In the United State, the number of young people who report being shy has risen from 40% to 50% in recent years. Due to our huge advances in technology, watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Web have replaced recreational activities that involve social interaction for many young people. Adults, too, are becoming more isolated as a result of technology. face-to face interactions with bank clerks, gas station attendants, and shop assistants are no longer necessary because people can use machines to do their banking fill their gas tanks, and order goods. In short, they become shy.
It appears that most people have experienced shyness at some time in their lives. Therefore, if you are shy, you have lots of company.
Directions：Read the passage carefully. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The future of the press?
Interesting things are happening in press. Newspaper circulation in Europe is falling and Ireland and the UK have experienced the biggest drop. 1. Global newspaper sales are increasing and revenue from ads is still very strong. Nevertheless, it is clear that newspapers need to change to meet the demands of a rapidly changing readership in a digital world.
The industry in Europe has made a number of changes, such as introducing more colour and moving from the big broadsheets to the much more user-friendly tabloid（娱乐小报）size. The greatest innovation has been the introduction of online newspapers, which have boomed since their introduction a little over ten years ago. 2. On the one hand, it is clear from the massive increase in online readers that e-papers are popular. On the other hand, their financial future is not so certain. This is basically because most people are not prepared to pay for online news. In fact, if it wasn’t for advertising, online newspapers would have a very hard time indeed.
A growing number of people are reading electronic newspapers instead of the print press and with good reason. First of all, they can read the news whenever they want. Secondly, readers are free to explore a subject as much or as little as they want. Thirdly, it is the perfect medium for‘real-time’news. 3. Readers were able to get minute-by-minute coverage at any hour of the day. Only 24-hour news on TV could compete with that.
The general view is that the future‘paper’will be a multimedia mix. Advanced technology and programming software will allow the user to create their own‘news package’. And it will arrive instantaneously, fed by superfast internet connections. The reader will receive up-to-the-minute news about everything from their local traffic problems to updates on news of specific interest to them. Nobody knows for sure what will happen, but as one expert put it,‘we won’t be saying“Here is the news”, we will be saying,“4.”’
A. But are online papers here to stay?
B. The news is everywhere.
C. Take, for example, the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004.
D. But how different are online papers from printed ones?
E, Despite this, the news isnt all bad for the industry.
F. Here is your news.
To describe the sorrow of bookstores is to join the dirge-singing chorus. Everyone knows the tune: sales at bookstores have fallen because buyers are ordering books online or downloading them to e-readers. Bookstores may be great places to browse and linger, but online is where the deals are. In the latest chapter in the Borders legend, the bookstore chain has agreed to sell its assets（资产）for $215m to Direct Brands, a media-distribution company owned by Najafi, a private-equity firm, which would also assume an additional $220m in liabilities（债务）. This will serve as the opening bid for the company’s bankruptcy-court auction（拍卖），scheduled for July 19th.
Whatever happens at the auction will decide the fate of the bookseller, which has already closed more than a third of its stores. Because Direct Brands is an online and catalogue-based distributor of music. DVDs and books, some think that a deal with Najafi will do little to keep the remaining bookstores open. Rather, the company will probably see value in the Borders distribution network and liquidate（清算）almost everything else. Regardless, the story doesn’t look good for store employees and their shrinking customers.（The company, which employs more than 11,000 people, has racked up more than $191m in losses since seeking bankruptcy protection in February, according to the Wall Street Journal.）
Nashville, Tennessee, is still facing several bookstore closings, including a Borders and the more beloved Davis-Kidd. The result, as reported in the Nashville Scene, is an“object lesson in how truly awful it is to live in a town where used bookstores and the pitiful offerings of Books-a-Million are all we have.”The problem, however, is that no one seems willing to buy full-price books anymore. Campaigns to get people to buy books from their local bookstores—such as“Save Bookstores Day”on June 25th—miss the point. While there is a demand for real bcicks-and-mortar places to gather, drink coffee and read new books, such places can’t exist if the market can’t accommodate them.
Besides coffee, access to Wi-Fi and yoga mat, what will people pay for to enable a bricks-and-mortar bookstore? Could independent stores charge membership fees, which grant access to books at slightly lower prices? Would a corporate-sponsorship model work? Perhaps bookstores could become tax-subsidized（补贴税收的）places where people can browse and linger, but only borrow the books for limited periods of time—what the hell, let’s call them libraries.
At any rate, the market is squeezing out a meaningful public space. It will be interesting to see what fills the void（真空）these bookstores leave behind.
1.According to Paragraph 1, Borders went bankruptcy because ______.
A.its bookstores are not cozy enough to stay
B.a media-distribution company has purchased it
C.customers tend to buy books online or read e-books
D.online bookstores have totally replaced it
2.It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that ______.
A.people in Nashville have protested against bookstore closings
B.the campaign to save bookstores did have some effect
C.people’s reluctance to buy full-price books is a reason for bookstore closings
D.people in Nashville feel indifferent to the bookstore closings
3.Which of the following is true about saving bookstores?
A.Local business and government should help out.
B.There is no proper and feasible method by now.
C.Bookstores should learn management from libraries.
D.Bookstores should enlarge entertainment places.
4.Which of the following is the best title for the text?
A.Goodbye to Bookstores
B.Online Reading or Buying Books from Bookstores?
C.The Bankruptcy of Borders
D.How to Save Bookstores from Closing?
As the summer travel season rolls in, prices at the gas pump are usually going in the wrong direction for our wallets. That’s when drivers become more concerned about how to squeeze the most miles from their fuel dollars and keep their cars running their best. To help you stay in the know, here are some common questions that our auto-experts often get asked about gas mileage and related topics:
What if I need to carry stuff on my car’s roof?
Carrying things on the roof hurts fuel economy. When tested a 2013 Honda Accord at a steady 65 mph①, it got 42 mpg② with nothing on the roof. Adding even an empty bike rack（架子）dropped the mileage by 5 mpg. And with two bikes on the roof, gas mileage dropped to 27mpg.
Does running the A/C① hurt fuel economy compared with opening the windows?
It depends on-how hard the air-conditioning system has to work. When we measured the fuel-economy difference, we found that fuel use with the A/C running went up with higher outside temperatures. At 55℃ F, there were unnoticeable differences. But when we measured again on days when the temperature was in the low 70s and high 80s, we got fewer miles per gallon with the A/C on.
How far can I go when my low-fuel warning light comes on?
There is no set rule, but most cars have a reserve of between 1 and 2 gallons of gas when the light goes on, or enough to travel about 40 miles or so at a moderate speed. To maximize those last couple of gallons, we suggest slowing down and maintaining a steady pace.
Can I improve gas mileage by installing a special air filter（过滤器）?
With modern cars, changing your air filter probably won’t improve your fuel economy. When we tested a car to see whether a dirty air filter hurt its gas mileage because of reduced air intake, we found that the car’s fuel economy wasn’t hurt. The engine’s computer automatically made up for the restricted airflow by reducing fuel use to maintain the right air/fuel proportion. We expect similar results from any air-filter change.
①mph: mile per hour
②mpg: mile per gallon
③A/C: air-conditioning
1.The passage is intended to give answers to questions related to _____.
A.how to save fuel
B.what fuel drivers can use
C.how to keep cars working well
D.what mileage is most suitable for a car
2.It is suggested in the passage that ______.
A.a special air filter be installed to improve air intake
B.the engine’s computer be updated as often as possible
C.drivers carry an empty bike rack on the roof just in case
D.cars move at a fixed low speed with a warning of low fuel
3.At which temperature is there a most noticeable difference in fuel economy between running A/C and opening the window?
A.40° F B.51° F
C.55° F D.73° F
Standing in line is a pain. At the post office. At the box office. At a restaurant. But on Black Friday, it’s an experience.
The first spot outside some Best Buy stores is usually claimed weeks before Black Friday, often by a person in a tent. Shoppers at Walmart will print out maps of the store, with circles around their primary targets. Someone, somewhere, will try to cut in line at a Target, arousing the anger of the people who played it fair.
At risk are both bargains and bragging rights, turning what would otherwise be a miserable experience into an adventure.
“These queues are quite different than the usual annoying ones we encounter day to day at the A.T.M. or in the subway,”said Richard Larson, a professor at M.I.T. who has spent years studying line behavior.
Professor Larson, whose nickname in academic circles is Dr. Queue, said he would never wait in a line on Black Friday himself. The lines, he said, are“once a year, they’re exciting. They’re the kind you might tell your grandchildren about.”
Lines test patience, personal space and principles of fairness and rationality, especially on Black Friday, when the crowds can be overwhelming. Still, the promise of a once-a-year score draws shoppers to queues that start before sunrise—or in some cases, the night before.
J. Jeffrey Inman, a veteran of Black Friday lines and president of the Society for Consumer Psychology, said that many families treat the hours long experience as a bonding ritual and a cherished tradition.
“It’s not something unimportant,”said Mr. Inman, who is also a professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh.“And there’s this layer of competition to it, with people edging forward, because there are only so many of those big screen TVs inside the door.”
People may actually gravitate toward longer lines, so they can feel a greater sense of accomplishment once they finally make a purchase. Professor Larson said,“Even if they don’t know what the line is for, they reason that whatever’s at the end of it must be fantastically valuable.”
1.From the second paragraph, we can learn that _______.
A.people in Target are most likely to cut in line
B.shops will hand out store maps to shoppers
C.shoppers dislike queuing well in advance
D.queuing for Black Friday is common
2.Which of the following statements is J. Jeffrey Inman most likely to agree with?
A.Shoppers stand in line to enjoy the pleasure of bargaining with salespeople.
B.People feel like winning if they get something after queuing for some time.
C.Standing in line on Black Friday is not an exciting experience for some people.
D.Grandchildren like hearing grandparents talking about their experience of queuing.
3.The phrase“gravitate toward”is closest in meaning to ______.
A.turn a blind eye to B.be attracted by
C.pick up bargains in D.be cheated by
4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A.Why Stand in Line on Black Friday?
B.Fairness: Key to Consumer Psychology
C.Standing in Line Is a Pain, Says Professors
D.Black Friday is Getting Increasingly Valuable
Instead of cruising in on a hoverboard, I rode my bike to the office today. The bicycle was invented in the 19th century. Instead of taking a pill for breakfast, I had a bacon roll, cooked using gas. Science fiction has ________ to us.
Making predictions is tricky, especially about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr joked. In science fiction, you can’t escape that ________ though. Since its birth in the 19th century, writers have ________ imagined the things to come: devices that humankind will invent to make life easier. But in so many instances, those promises have not come to pass. The biggest ________ are in travel—jet packs, hoverboards and flying cars are yet to fill the skies. Air travel has become significantly cheaper and wide-reaching, but only using distinctly 20th-century technology: commercial aeroplanes are much the same as they were 50 years ago.
________ is what science fiction frequently delivers, but its arrival in the real world has been unpredicrable. Domestic robots with a degree of intelligence are yet to ________, though robotic vacuum cleaners are commercially available—even if they are fairly hopeless. Video calls have now arrived—sort of—but conferencing on Skype is still dissatisfying. In mobiles, video call technology is now available, so when your dad rings to update you on his vegetable patch, he’ll be able to ________ your look of boredom.
The truth is that we quickly ________ the astonishment of invention: our wonderment is soon replaced with the feeling of nothing new. We should try to stay in that period of ________. It is astonishing that the contents of every book ever written can be stored in a small box. Or that you can carry 10,000 albums on an object kept in your pocket. Or that almost all the information in the world can be accessed almost anywhere at any time. All these ________ are dependent on the emergence of the microchip and its place in computers. Yet sci-fi didn’t ________ the dominance of the computer in running our lives.
But the real area where ________ far outstrips（超越）predictions is medicine. Sure, fiction would describe humans as“disease-free”but without going into detail.“Disease-free”humans are still absent, but the progress made in ________ life is breathtaking. With relative ease, we can sequence anyone’s genome（基因组），giving a read-out of our entire genetic code. This means we can find out the underlying genetic cause of thousands of diseases in minutes.
Photosensitive implants now exist that can replace damaged cells in the retina（视网膜）and can, thus ________ sight to the blind. While the inventions of science fiction can show great ideas we’d like to happen, nothing ________ the inventiveness of people in the real world.
1.A.turned B.lied C.objected D.talked
2.A.opportunity B.challenge C.imagination D.conflict
3.A.hesitantly B.critically C.temporarily D.tirelessly
4.A.disappointments B.advancements C.enjoyments D.experiments
5.A.Modernization B.Exploration C.Automation D.Transportation
6.A.materialise B.identify C.honour D.liberate
7.A.imagine B.feel C.see D.ignore
8.A.arouse B.discover C.forget D.evaluate
9.A.frustration B.amazement C.boredom D.limitation
10.A.modes B.worries C.potentials D.actions
11.A.predict B.overlook C.motivate D.prevent
12.A.quality B.obstacle C.passion D.reality
13.A.maintaining B.creating C.researching D.encountering
14.A.show B.lend C.restore D.label
15.A.guarantees B.overestimates C.releases D.outperforms
