When my friend went to Europe last summer, instead of snapping photographs of the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower or Stonehenge, she brought back 32 rolls of ... cathedral ceilings. Ceilings. For the 10 years I’ve known her I had never suspected that she was this passionate about stained glass.
Still one of the best things about such pictures — despite their obvious narrow appeal — is that they can’t help but tell us a great deal about the people who took them.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I got the roll of film back from my 5-year-old son’s first camping trip. I opened the envelope, naively expecting to see pictures of the nightly campfire, the sun setting over the forest, and possibly even a deer or two.
Instead, I saw an off-center picture of tennis shoes. Not even his tennis shoes, mind you, but a pair someone had lost and left in the cabin. Mystery shoes. And that’s not all.
As I went through the stack, I found that my son had also taken a picture of his sleeping bag, a penny he found in the gravel next to the car, a leaf, an orange sock, a close-up of his father’s ear, a burned hot dog, his thumb, a piece of gum, and many other similar things.
There was barely one sign of nature in the whole stack. I couldn’t help thinking that if he’d wanted pictures of assorted junk, it would’ve been cheaper had he spent the weekend in our back-yard.
AT LEAST that is what I thought until I showed the photographs to my ceiling-snapping friend, the mother of three teenagers, who said simply, “There’s nothing wrong with these.”
But of course, this is just the type of answer you’d expect from someone who photographs ceiling.
Then she told me about the time her daughter went to Yosemite Valley and returned with rolls of photographs of the hotel, restaurant, and gift shop. She also told me about the time her son took his camera to a Major League Baseball game and returned with 24 pictures of cloud formations.
I had a feeling she was just trying to make me feel better.
Then again, to a 5-year-old boy, finding a penny is more exciting than seeing a squirrel. And why would he waste good film on something like, say, some endangered water buffaloes, when he could take a picture of cool tennis shoes? Or his shiny new green sleeping bag?
Face it: Things like beautiful sunsets and campfires can’t compare to a bag of extra-large marshmallow.
So I did what any good mother would do: I marked the date on the back of the pictures and slid them into our family vacation photo album — right after the five pages of ice sculptures I took last year on our cruise to the Bahamas.
1.Which of the following proverbs best displays the author’s final thought?
A. Every dog will have its day.
B. Every man has his hobby-horse.
C. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
D. You can take a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink.
2.Who might have taken a picture of the back seat of the family car in his or her trip mentioned in this passage?
A. The author’s friend. B. The author’s son.
C. The author. D. The author’s friend’s daughter.
3.The author changed her mind on her son’s picture taking because______ .
A. her friend persuaded her to do so
B. her son’s pictures finally struck her
C. she realized the truth by herself inspired by the surrounding examples
D. it suddenly occurred to her that she herself had also taken unique pictures before
4.What can we infer from this passage?
A. Age and gender play an important role in one’s vision of the world.
B. The author’s friend is a better mum in terms of educating children.
C. The author will allow her son more freedom to choose in his future life.
D. The author will take vacation pictures of different kind from her past ones.
The latest beliefs are that the main purposes of sleep are to enable the body to rest, allowing time for repairs to take place and for tissue to be regenerated(再生). Lack of sleep, however, can compromise the immune system, cause depression and promote anxiety.
For many people, lack of sleep is rarely anything of choice. Some have problems getting to sleep, others with staying asleep until the morning. Despite popular belief that sleep is one long event, research shows that, in an average night, there are five stages of sleep. In the first light stage, the heart rate and blood pressure go down and the muscles relax. In the next two stages, sleep gets progressively deeper. In stage four, usually reached after an hour, the slumber is so deep that, if awoken, the sleeper would be confused and disorientated. It is in this state that sleep-walking can occur, lasting no more than 15 minutes. In the fifth stage, the rapid eye movement (REM) stage, the eyes move constantly beneath closed lids as if the sleeper is looking at something. During this stage, the body is almost paralysed(瘫痪的). This REM stage is also the time when we dream.
Sleeping patterns change with age. One theory for the age-related change is that it is due to hormonal changes. The temperature rise occurs at daybreak in the young, but at three or four in the morning in the elderly. Age aside, it is estimated that roughly one in three people suffer some kind of sleep disturbance. Causes can be anything from pregnancy, smoking, and stress to alcohol and heart disease.
Apart from self-help therapy such as regular exercise, there are psychological treatments, including relaxation training and therapy aimed at getting rid of pre-sleep worries and anxieties. Medication is regarded by many as a last option and often takes the form of sleeping pills.
1.What’s the best title of this passage?
A. Lack of Sleep B. Change of Sleep
C. Patterns of Sleep D. Benefits of Sleep
2.Which of the following can cause people’s lack of sleep according to this passage?
A. Their burden from illness and drinking.
B. Their incomplete sleep stages.
C. Their body temperature change with age.
D. Their damaged immune system.
3.Which of the following is true to the passage?
A. Nobody can escape lack of sleep.
B. A sleep-walker usually dreams before the sleepwalking.
C. In the REM stage sleepers can see things around but can’t move the body.
D. Regular exercise can better help improve sleep quality than sleeping pills do.
The 2014 Ranking of Top Universities in Greater China (RTUGC) is released today by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. RTUGC was the first attempt to compare top research universities in four regions of Great China, namely Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Tsinghua University in Beijing remains No. 1 in the ranking. National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan overtakes National Taiwan University as the second. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology climbs to 4th from 7th in 2013. Peking University remains in 5th place as it was in last year. Other Top 10 universities are: The University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology of China, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and Zhejiang University. The highest ranked university in Macau is University of Macau (54th).
RTUGC provides insight into the features and relative advantages of top universities in each region. Hong Kong and Macau universities show a higher degree of internationalization. The ranking highlights the fact that Mainland universities are stronger in gross(总的) performance while Hong Kong and Taiwan universities are in the lead in per capita(人均) performance. Tsinghua University in Beijing tops the list of annual research income, and The University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong take the first place on research income per academic staff.
1.We can tell from the RTUGC that________ .
A. Tsinghua University in Beijing ranked the second place in 2013
B. Taiwan has more universities listed in the top 10 than Hong Kong
C. four of the top ten universities in 2014 are from Mainland
D. University of Macau is of a higher rank than Zhejiang University
2.Which of the following is most possibly correct according to the last paragraph?
A.
B.
C.
D.
William Wordsworth wrote that “the human mind is capable of excitement without the application of violent stimulants(刺激)”. And it appears that simply reading those words proves his .
Researchers at the University of Liverpool found the works of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and had a beneficial effect on the mind. It can the reader’s attention and trigger moments of self-reflection.
Using scanners, they the brain activity of volunteers as they read pieces of classical English literature both in their form and in a modern translation.
And, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the experiment showed the more prose and poetry far more electrical activity in the brain than the easier versions.
The research also found poetry, , increased activity in the right part of the brain, an area with “autobiographical(自传式的) memory”, which helped the reader to 45 on their own experiences. The academics said this meant the were more useful than self-help books.
The brain of 30 volunteers were watched in the first part of the research as they read Shakespeare in different .
In one example, volunteers read a line from King Lear, “A father and a gracious aged man: him have you madded”, before reading the : “A father and a gracious aged man: him you have enraged”. Shakespeare’s use of “mad” as a(n) caused a higher level of brain activity than the straightforward prose.
The next stage of the research was looking at the to which poetry could affect and provide therapeutic(治疗的) benefit. Volunteers’ brains were scanned while reading four lines by Wordsworth, and four “translated” lines were also provided.
The first version caused more brain activity, not only the left part of the brain connected with language, but also the right part that relates to autobiographical memory and emotion.
“Poetry is not just a of style. It is also about deep versions of experience that the emotional to the cognitive(认知的),” said Prof Davis, who will present the findings at the North of England education conference in Sheffield this week.
1.A. attitude B. point C. mind D. advice
2.A. the like B. the way C. the likely D. the kind
3.A. break B. focus C. catch D. fix
4.A. examined B. monitored C. interrupted D. controlled
5.A. original B. traditional C. conventional D. ancient
6.A. attractive B. beneficial C. challenging D. emotional
7.A. set off B. put off C. take off D. call off
8.A. for example B. on occasion C. in particular D. in contrast
9.A. concerned B. mixed C. fixed D. conflicted
10.A. reflect B. agree C. depend D. take
11.A. average B. modem C. academic D. classic
12.A. records B. recalls C. responses D. receptions
13.A. moods B. manners C. forms D. types
14.A. shorter B. simpler C. better D. deeper
15.A. adjective B. noun C. adverb D. verb
16.A. amount B. degree C. extension D. scale
17.A. philosophy B. biology C. psychology D. sociology
18.A. waking up B. raising up C. taking up D. making up
19.A. matter B. mark C. manner D. mass
20.A. cater B. add C. prefer D. refer
____ you believe him when he said he made it to Eason’s concert! He doesn’t like pop music at all.
A. Do B. Did C. Don’t D. Didn’t
That’s all for today’s programme. Please stay ____ to CCTV International’s Chinese Channel this time next week.
A. turned B. tuned C. toned D. tended
