Americans get some of their news and entertainment from public television and radio. These public media receive money to operate from private citizens, organizations and government. Many of their programs are educational. But most of the American media are run by businesses for profit. These privately owned media have changed greatly in recent years. Newspapers, magazines and traditional broadcast television organizations have lost some of their popularity. At the same time, online, cable and satellite media have increased in numbers and strength. So have media that serve racial groups and those communicating in foreign languages.
In general, more media than ever now provide Americans with news and entertainment. At the same time, fewer owners control them. Huge companies have many holdings(股份). In some areas, one company controls much of the media. One dramatic change in American media is the increased success of cable television. It comes into most homes over wires. It does not use the public airwaves to present programs, as broadcast television does. Like broadcast television, most cable television programs perform advertisements. This is true although people must pay to see cable television in their homes. Thirty years ago, few people had cable. Today, about sixty-eight percent of American homes have cable television. Television by satellite also is gaining popularity.
Over the years, traditional broadcast organizations have tried to appeal to as many watchers as possible. Many cable companies, however, present programs for one special group of viewers. For example, there are cable stations for people who like books, cooking, travel, golf or comedy.
1.Which of the following is true about American public media?
A. They depend on the government.
B. They are controlled by the government
C. They are free
D. They can earn money.
2.Which of the following properly shows the change in these privately owned media?
A. Newspapers are getting more popular.
B. Satellite media is getting more popular.
C. Traditional media also serve racial groups.
D. Some media make their programs in foreign languages
3.From the second paragraph, we learn that .
A. broadcast TV and cable TV programs include sales messages
B. more media are out of control
C. American media is dramatic
D. cable TV is free
4.What would be the best title for the text?
A. American news and entertainment
B. Public television and radio media
C. media in the United States
D. Cable programs in the United States
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。
If you see a group of people dancing and singing on the street or in the railway station, you don't need to feel surprised. They are a flash mob(暴民). Who are they? Are they mobs? Don't be confused by their name. Actually, a flash mob is a group of people who gather suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disappear.
They are usually organized with the help of the Internet or other digital communications networks. The messages may be sent to friends, who send to more people. At a predetermined time, they gather and perform some activities such as exchanging books, coming together to look at the sky, waving their hands and yelling something at the top of their voice for 30 seconds. Then, they quickly disappear before the police can arrive. Using mobile phones, the flash mob can change its place if the first one has been cancelled for any reason.
Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine, organized the first flash mob in Manhattan in May 2003 and the first successful flash mob gathered on June 3, 2003. Wasik claimed that he created the flash mob as a social experiment designed to laugh at fashion seekers and stress the cultural atmosphere of wanting to be an insider or part of “the next big thing”.
Flash mob gatherings can sometimes shock people. Such an activity might seem amusing and magical, but it also might frighten people who are not aware of what is taking place. Undoubtedly, flash mob can serve as good political tools and have great potential, such as using flash mob to advertise a product.
The flash mob is now becoming more and more popular. People use it to do many things. For example, in 2009, Michael Jackson’s fans took part in a flash mob to remember him. Hundreds of his fans gathered singing and dancing Michael’s famous song “Beat It” together. Flash mobs give people from all walks of life an opportunity to come together to create a memory.
1.What is NOT the feature of the flash mob?
A. It can get together quickly.
B. It can change its place freely.
C. It can do activities suddenly.
D. It can injure people seriously.
2.How do flash mobs inform one another?
①By using the Internet.
②By writing letters.
③By yelling.
④By waving hands.
⑤By using mobile phones.
⑥By holding a meeting.
A. ③④ B. ①⑤ C. ②⑥ D. ⑤⑥
3.Why did Bill Wasik create the flash mob?
A. To advertise some products.
B. To help people make friends.
C. To laugh at fashion seekers.
D. To create some memories.
4.What can we learn about the flash mob from the passage?
A. Bill Wasik organized the first successful flash mob in May, 2003.
B. People are encouraged to take a more active part in an activity.
C. Flash mobs tend to do something illegal for a short time.
D. Flash mob gathering can frighten all the people present.
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。
If you have a little child, who hates sitting in a car seat, then the FreedomRide is the answer to your problem.
Would you want to be stuck in an unchangeable position every time you’re in the car? No. You wouldn’t.
When an adult sits in a car for any length of time, we stretch, we change the position, we move our legs again and again. We do this without thinking. But kids in a traditional car seat can’t do this. They are stuck in one position, and they can’t move. We move because the circulation of blood needs to be recovered in our legs as we sit in the same position for any longer.
In a traditional car seat, the child can’t move to reduce the pain, so it puts them in anger.
The FreedomRide lets them have a little freedom, and still be safe. The 5-Point Harness(背带)gives them additional safety over a traditional child car seat.
I am the Webmaster for islandbreeze.com, and when JoeySafe asked us to redo their website, I was attracted by this system. That is because I have two small children, both girls, aged 3 and 4 and we obviously use car seats. I lived in Southern California, and every couple of months, my wife, the girls and I, go to see grandma who lives in Nevada. It’s a 5-hour drive, so the FreedomRide works well. Our trips are so much better now, especially since there is more room in the car without the car seats.
The FreedomRide really did make it easier to go on trips. The only thing you need when you use the JoeySafe instead of your old child car seat is a pillow. Besides, my kids want to take a pillow anyway! As a dad, I feel safe driving with the kids in the FreedomRide. I am a very safety-oriented person.
1.From the text we can infer the FreedomRide is a _______.
A. car seat B. car for children
C. safety belt D. game on islandbreeze.com
2.The FreedomRide is likely to be designed for________.
A. a person hating sitting in the car for long
B. an adult often driving a traditional car
C. a child requiring some freedom in the car
D. a driver needing comfortable seats
3.The purpose of the last two paragraphs may be to ________.
A. support the topic of the child car safety
B. describe the advantage of the FreedomRide
C. introduce the detail of the author’s work and web.
D. describe what the author does with his child car seat
4.The next part following the last paragraph may mention________.
A. the way of ordering
B. the way of communicating
C. the inventor of this product
D. the advantage of the product
书面表达,请阅读下面短文，并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
The rise of selfie(自拍)photography in some of the world’s most beautiful and dangerous places is causing a range of interventions(干预措施)aimed at fighting risk-taking that has resulted in a string of shocking deaths worldwide.
The act of taking a picture of oneself with a mobile phone, placing the subject centre-stage, has exploded in popularity in recent years, with everyone from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to U.S. President Barack Obama joining in.
But the selfie has also inspired a lot of risk-taking and offensive public behavior, pushing the boundaries of safety and behavior, whether by hanging from a skyscraper or posing with live explosives.
Several governments and regulatory bodies have now begun treating the selfie as a serious threat to public safety, leading them to launch public education campaigns reminding people of those against smoking and excessive drinking.
【写作内容】
1.用约30个单词写出上文概要；
2.你对此现象所持的观点；
3.用2—3个理由或论据支撑你的观点。
【写作要求】
1.写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
2.作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3.不必写标题。
【评分标准】
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
任务型阅读
请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。
注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。
Have you ever been so absorbed in a conversation at a party that you failed to notice that someone new is standing only six inches away from you, trying to get your attention? It’s possible that you were so distracted that you didn’t notice someone approaching you. But it’s also entirely likely that you were experiencing change blindness.
Change blindness is a phenomenon that occurs when a person is unable to notice visual changes in their environment, despite the fact that they are often rather obvious. In cases of change blindness, the person isn’t failing to notice small or insignificant changes, but will probably miss big changes, like someone standing next to them waving their hand.
Early experiments with change blindness focused largely on memory and perception when viewing pictures. For example, a person might be shown a photograph of a street scene in Egypt and told to memorize the image. Following that, they would be shown the same picture with certain elements added or taken away and asked to identify what’s different. Very often the individual could recall the larger aspects of the picture but couldn’t recognize the smaller changes.
In the 1990s, researcher Daniel Simons conducted a fascinating study into change blindness that many people find unbelievable. In Simons’ study, he asked participants to watch a video of a basketball being passed around between several people, with a particular focus on the basketball itself. When the experiment was over, Simons found that a large number of participants were so focused on watching the basketball being passed around that they failed to notice a man in a gorilla suit jumping around in front of the camera.
It’s important to note that the change in Simons’ video wasn’t subtle; the gorilla is very obviously taking up much of the frame. Simons concluded that participants were experiencing inattentional blindness, which is when a person fails to notice a major change because they are so focused on another task. In this case, because participants were asked to focus on the movement of the basketball, their brains prioritized that task in order to do it properly, thereby missing the other things happening in the video.
In the case of Simons’ study, participants engaged what’s referred to as attentional selection, which is when a person selects certain things to focus on in order to achieve a task and filters out anything that is unrelated to the objective.
There are a number of theories about what causes a person’s inability to recognize obvious changes in their environment, but most agree that the phenomenon is related to sensory processing. Broadly speaking, our brains have a limited capacity to detect and process everything in our environment. Instead, what the brain does is to choose certain things to process, evaluate, and store, which allows other things to be missed or filtered out.
In simple terms, change blindness has a great deal to do with where a person directs their attention. In the case of the gorilla and the basketball, people focused their attention almost exclusively on one thing, which caused them to miss other elements or changes. Given that attention is often at the root of change blindness, a person’s age or mental and physical health can influence how well they will notice changes in stimuli.
Change Blindness | |
1. of change blindness | Change blindness is a surprising perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a person recognizes minor changes in scenes while large changes go 2. . |
Experiments with change blindness | ●The main 3. of early experiments was memory and perception. ●Individuals were found to be4. at recalling the smaller details in the same picture previously shown to them. |
Research in the 1990s | ●In Simons’ study, participants were asked to pay special attention to the 5. basketball, during which time a man wearing a gorilla suit unexpectedly walked through the scene. ●Contrary to popular belief, with their attention fixed on the basketball, many participants reported that the “gorilla” 6. their notice. ●It is concluded that participants fail to recognize something big but unrelated to the objective when their brains are programmed to consider some task as a top 7. . |
8. of change blindness | ●The brain makes 9. about what to be dealt with because of its limited capacity. ●Although attention is closely10. to change blindness, age and health are other factors that play a role. |
请认真阅读下列短文，从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, and when he arrived in this hard world, it was very doubtful whether he would live beyond the first three minutes. He lay on a hard little bed and struggled to start breathing.
Oliver fought his first battle without much assistance from the two people present at his birth. One was an old woman, who was nearly always drunk, and the other was a busy local doctor, who was not paid enough to be very interested in Oliver’s survival. _______________
However, Oliver managed to draw his first breath, and then announced his arrival to the rest of the workhouse by crying loudly. His mother raised her pale young face from the pillow and whispered, “Let me see the child, and die.”
The doctor turned away from the fire, where he had been warming his hands. “You must not talk about dying yet,” he said to her kindly. He gave her the child to hold. Lovingly, she kissed the baby on its forehead with her cold white lips, then stared wildly around the room, fell back—and died. “Poor dear!” said the nurse, hurriedly putting a green glass bottle back in the pocket of her long skirt.
The doctor began to put on his coat. “The baby is weak and will probably have difficulties,” he said. “If so, give it a little milk to keep it quiet.” Then he looked at the dead woman. “The mother was a good-looking girl. Where did she come from?”
“She was brought here last night,” replied the old woman. “She was found lying in the street. She’d walked some distance, judging by her shoes, which were worn to pieces. Where she came from, where she was going to, or what her name was, nobody knows.”
The doctor lifted the girl’s left hand. “The old story,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “No wedding ring, I see. Ah! Good night.”
And so Oliver was left with only the drunken nurse. Without clothes, under his first blanket, he could have been the child of a king or a beggar. But when the woman dressed him later in rough cotton clothes, yellow with age, he looked exactly what he was—an orphan in a workhouse, ready for a life of misery, hunger, and neglect.
Oliver cried loudly. If he could have known that he was a workhouse orphan, perhaps he would have cried even more loudly.
There was no one to look after the baby in the workhouse, so Oliver was sent to a special “baby farm” nearby. There, he and thirty other children rolled around the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing. Mrs Mann, the old woman who “looked after” them, was very experienced. She knew what was good for children, and a full stomach was very dangerous to their health. She also knew what was good for herself, so she kept for her own use the money that she was given for the children’s food. The board responsible for the orphans sometimes checked on the health of the children, but they always sent the beadle, a kind of local policeman, to announce their visit the day before. So whenever the board arrived, of course, the children were always neat and clean.
This was the way Oliver was brought up. Consequently, at the age of nine he was a pale, thin child and short for his age. But despite frequent beatings by Mrs Mann, his spirit was strong, which was probably the reason why he managed to reach the age of nine at all.
On Oliver’s ninth birthday, Mr Bumble, the beadle, came to the house to see Mrs Mann. Through the front window Mrs Mann saw him at the gate, and turned quickly to the girl who worked with her.
“Quick! Take Oliver and those others upstairs to be washed!” she said. Then she ran out to unlock the gate which was always kept locked.
1.According to the passage, a workhouse was where ________.
A. many women died unexpectedly
B. workers helped each other
C. the poor and homeless lived
D. people were only interested in money
2.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A. Oliver was born into the world on a cold day.
B. Many people, especially women, drank heavily at that time.
C. The children in the baby farm were taken good care of.
D. Doctors were usually paid too little for the work they did.
3.Which sentence is most suitable for the blank in Paragraph 2?
A. Therefore, he felt very lonely in the world.
B. Frightened at the sight of the two, he started to cry.
C. After all, death was a common event in the workhouse.
D. In fact, the world was privileged to have him in it.
4.It can be inferred that the gate of the baby farm was always kept locked in order to ________.
A. protect the children inside from dangers outside
B. prevent official visitors walking in unexpectedly
C. keep the children inside working all the time
D. ensure the children were always neat and clean
5.According to the passage, Mrs. Mann ________.
A. was mad keen on looking after children
B. provided children with little food and few comforts
C. beat children frequently to make them mentally strong
D. cared little about Mr Bumble’s abrupt appearance
6.What is the passage mainly about?
A. Oliver’s early life. B. Oliver’s personality.
C. Mother’s death. D. People’s selfishness.
