J. K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter
J. K. Rowling was born as Joanne Rowling on July 31, 1965 in England. At age four, Rowling and her family _____ to Winterbourne. It was here that she met a brother and sister who lived in her neighborhood with the last ______Potter. During her childhood, Rowling _____writing and story-telling.
Pressured by her parents to _______ a secretary, Rowling attended the university of Exeter beginning at age 18 and studied French. After college, Rowling stayed in London and worked at several jobs.
While on a train from Manchester to London in 1990, Rowling came up with the ________for Harry Potter. Pen-less at the time, Rowling spent the remainder of her train-ride ________about the story and began to write it down as soon as she arrived home.
Rowling ________ to write snippets about Harry and Hogwarts, but wasn’t done with the book when her mother died on December 30, 1990. Her mother’s death hit Rowling _______ . In a (an) _______ to escape the sorrow, Rowling accepted a job teaching English in Portugal.
In Portugal, Rowling met Jorge Arantes and the two married on October 16, 1992. _______the marriage proved a bad one, the couple had one child together, Jessica. After getting ________ in 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to Edinburgh to be near Rowling’s sister.
Before starting another full-time job, Rowling was determined to finish her Harry Potter manuscript. ______ she had completed it, she sent it to several literary ______ . After a year of searching and a number of publishers turning it _______ , the agent finally found a publisher _____ to print the book.
Rowling’s fist Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone became hugely popular, attracting ________ of young boys and girls as well as adults. With the public demanding ________ , Rowling quickly got to work on the _______ six books, with the last one published in July 2007.
In 1998, Warner Bros. bought the film ________ and since then ________ popular movies have been made of the books. From the book, the films, and the merchandise bearing Harry Potter images, Rowling has become one of the richest people in the world.
1.A. carried B. moved C. sent D. lived
2.A. family B. member C. name D. sign
3.A. loved B. preferred C. chose D. handed
4.A. change B. share C. assume D. become
5.A. method B. score C. concept D. possibility
6.A. declaring B. making C. dreaming D. managing
7.A. continued B. checked C. exchanged D. practiced
8.A. peacefully B. easily C. tensely D. hard
9.A. plan B. question C. ambition D. attempt
10.A. Instead B. Although C. Therefore D. However
11.A. divorced B. beaten C. ached D. thrown
12.A. While B. Once C. Before D. Since
13.A. agents B. subjects C. volunteers D. readers
14.A. off B. up C. down D. over
15.A. wondering B. aiming C. looking D. willing
16.A. reporter B. partner C. audience D. friend
17.A. more B. better C. longer D. thinner
18.A. last B. whole C. rest D. next
19.A. powers B. rights C. guidance D. leaders
20.A. directly B. extremely C. separately D. eventually
High school students and families are increasingly questioning whether investing in a college or university education is still worth it.
The short answer is “Yes.” 1. A wide range of statistics shows the economic advantage of a four-year college education. Over a lifetime, students who graduate from college can expect to make about 60% more than those who do not, well over a million dollars more than they would otherwise. 2. They vote more often, volunteer more often and are more likely to own a home. They are healthier and less likely to smoke. They and their children are less likely to be overweight, and their children are more likely to go to college.
But what about the benefits of college that are more difficult to measure? 3.
College takes students to places they’ve never been before. College is a passport to different places, different times, and different ways of thinking. It gives students a chance to understand themselves differently, seeing how their lives are both like and unlike those who inhabited other times and other lands. 4.
College introduces students to people they’ve never met before. One of the most important ways in which students learn, at colleges and universities everywhere, is by communicating with people who are different from themselves both inside and outside of the classroom.
5. No one doubts the value of speed, connectivity (网络连通性) and the virtual world in an economy that enjoys all three. But “thinking” is a word that is too often forgotten in our rush to communicate faster and left behind as our brains struggle to keep up with our devices (设备). College teaches students to change information to insight and knowing to understanding, preparing students for lifetime of considering information and growing in knowledge and in wisdom.
Higher education is valued by people who dream bigger and achieve more, who create their own futures, and shape their own destinies.
A. There is no doubt that college pays off financially.
B. College teaches students the virtue of slowing down.
C. College graduates also tend to lead more active lives.
D. Education encourages people to live healthier and longer lives.
E. College opens minds and worlds in ways that are beyond measurement.
F. For many of us, it is the best chance we will have to follow our curiosity.
G. They are equally significant and add up to a lot of value over the course of a lifetime.
The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more reasonable decisions when money-related choices were given in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue.
To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-taking when a decision irrelevant to their own feelings (such as which medicine to give to a sick elephant) is presented in terms of a potential gain than when it is framed as a potential loss even when the outcomes are the same. In the study, native English speakers who had learned Japanese, native Korean speakers who had learned English and native English speakers studying French in Paris all showed the expected tendency when they were asked the question in their native tongue. In their foreign language, however, the tendency disappeared.
A second set of experiments tested another cognitive (认知的) prejudice –we expect a personal loss will be more painful than the same amount of gain will be pleasant, so the benefit of winning must be disproportionately large for us to take a bet(打赌) (such as gambling with our own money). Again, the foreign-language effect was obvious in two different experiments, one with native Korean speakers and one with native English speakers. The Koreans took more theoretical bets in English than Korean, and the native English speakers took more real bets in Spanish than they did in English.
“When people use a foreign language, their decisions tend to be less prejudiced, more analytic, more systematic, because the foreign language provides psychological distance,” lead author Boaz Keysar suggests. Cognitive prejudices are rooted in emotional reactions, and thinking in a foreign language helps us disconnect from these emotions and make decisions in a more economically reasonable way. This study did not consider, however, the cases in which emotional engagement improves, rather than prevents, our choices: “We have an emotional system for a good reason,” Keysar says.
1.What is the foreign language effect discussed in this passage?
A. People make more reasonable decisions in a foreign language than in their native tongues.
B. Foreign languages play more important roles in making decisions than native languages do.
C. Emotional engagement can prevent reasonable decision makings but improve them as well.
D. Cognitive prejudices are more likely to appear in a foreign language than in a native tongue.
2.What does the underlined sentence mean?
A. People need to win a large sum of money before they decide to take a bet.
B. People are advised not to take a bet if they are not ready for the pain of losing.
C. People don’t take a bet unless they would win much more than they would lose.
D. People will feel more pleasant winning a bet than winning a large sum of money.
3.According to Keysar, what is the reason of the foreign language effect in this research?
A. Foreign languages have great effect on decision makings.
B. People are less prejudiced when thinking in a foreign language.
C. People are more risk-taking in a foreign language environment.
D. Personal feelings have little influence in foreign language thinking.
As an elementary school student in New York City, Robert Lee would stare in disbelief at his classmates throwing away half-eaten sandwiches after lunch. His Korean immigrant parents had taught him and his older brother not to waste food.
While studying finance and accounting at New York University, Robert remembered this lesson and joined Two Birds One Stone, a food-rescue club on campus that delivered, five days a week, uneaten pasta, vegetables, and other leftovers from the dining hall to nearby homeless shelters.
When Robert and fellow club member Louisa Chen entered a college entrepreneurship（创业） contest, they proposed a slightly different idea for a food-rescue nonprofit group: Their program wouldn’t have a donation minimum (meaning they would gladly pick up one bag of leftover bagels or a single pot of soup), would operate seven days a week, and would be run entirely by volunteers.
Their idea won the competition. With the $1,000 prize, they founded Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) in July 2013. In just the first few weeks, Robert’s team delivered a donation of enough spaghetti and meatballs to feed 20 people in line at a New York City homeless shelter that had run out of food.
Robert, who had taken a job at J.P. Morgan, devoted his spare time to creating a network of New York City restaurants that agreed to donate food, and he found volunteers to make food deliveries to homeless shelters. After RLC received national press attention, homeless shelters and soup kitchens in Portland, Oregon, Washington, DC and other cities reached out to Robert for partnership advice. To date, RLC has distributed more than 250,000 pounds of food in 12 cities around the country.
Only a year into his finance job, Robert gave up his six-figure salary to focus on RLC. “I compared one hour of impact at J.P. Morgan to one hour at RLC, and the difference was just huge,” he says. He’s now the group’s only full-time employee.
“One shelter recently told us that our donations allow them to provide entire dinners for more than 300 people, three nights a week,” Robert says. “Things like that make me glad I quit my job.”
1.Which of the following statements about RLC is NOT true?
A. It became successful immediately.
B. It has attracted nationwide attention.
C. It was started from a food-rescue club.
D. It delivers food to shelters by volunteers.
2.Where did Robert get the money to found RLC?
A. He saved money in college.
B. He won the prize at a competition.
C. He borrowed money from his friend
D. He received donations from restaurants.
3.Why did Robert quit his job at J.P. Morgan?
A. He couldn’t make as much money as he hoped.
B. The job at J.P. Morgan takes too much of his time.
C. RLC needs a full-time employee to develop its business.
D. Working for RLC is more meaningful than for J.P. Morgan
4.According to Robert, which of the following words best describes the job at RLC?
A. rewarding B. surprising
C. tiring D. exciting
Every human being, no matter what he is doing, gives off body heat. The usual problem is how to get rid of it. But the designers of the Johnstown campus (校园) of the University of Pittsburgh set themselves the opposite problem — how to collect body heat. They have designed a collection system which uses not only body heat, but the heat given off by such objects as light bulbs and refrigerators as well. The system works so well that no fuel is needed to make the campus’s six buildings comfortable.
Some parts of most modern buildings — theaters and offices as well as classrooms, are more sufficiently heated by people and lights and sometimes must be air-conditioned (使用空调的) even in winter. The technique of saving heat and redistributing (再分配) it is called “heat recovery”. A few modern buildings recover heat, but the University’s system is the first to recover heat from buildings and reuse it in others.
Along the way, Pittsburgh has learned a great deal about some of its producers. The harder a student studies, the more heat his body gives off. Male students send out more heat than female students, and the larger a student is, the more heat he produces. We may conclude that the hottest prospect for the Johnstown campus would be a hard working overweight male genius.
1.What is the characteristic of the buildings on Johnstown campus of the University of
Pittsburgh?
A. They collect body heat to control the temperature inside.
B. They are more comfortable to live in than other buildings.
C. They use the light bulbs to heat the classroom.
D. They consume less fuel to keep the classrooms cool.
2.According to the passage, the technique of heat recovery is used ______.
A. to find the producers of heat
B. to provide heat for the hot water system
C. to make the campus more beautiful
D. to collect heat and reuse it
3.The underlined phrase “the hottest prospect” in this passage refers to ______.
A. the person who suffers most from heat
B. the person who needs more heat than others
C. the person who gives off most heat
D. the person who makes better use of heat
4.Which of the following may be the best title for this passage?
A. Recovery of Body Heat
B. Modern Building’s Heat System
C. Body Heat and Its Producers
D. Ways of Heating Building
The British Museum
Admission and opening hours: Free, open daily 10.00–17.30
The Museum is open every day except for 24, 25 and 26 December and 1 January
Museum galleries are open daily 10.00–17.30, and most are open until 20.30 on Fridays. Closing starts from 17.20. The Great Court, including the Information Desk, is open daily 09.00–18.00 and until 20.30 on Fridays. The Museum is open until 20.30 on Fridays, except Good Friday. Certain galleries are closed for maintenance or long-term refurbishment.
Tours and talks:
Daily eye-opener tours: Free
30-40 minute tours throughout the day, meet at the relevant gallery
11.00 Japan, Room 92; 11.15 Roman Britain, Room 49; 11.30 Ancient Greece, Room 17;
11.45 Ancient Iraq, Room 56
12.00 Africa, Room 24; 12.15 China, Room 33; 12.30 Enlightenment Gallery, Room 1;
12.45 South Asia, Room 33
13.00 Mexico, Room 27
14.00 Art of the Middle East, Room 34: 14.15 World of Money, Room 68
14.30 Ancient Egypt, Room 64; 14.45 Medieval Europe, Room 40
15.15 Ancient Rome, Room 70; 15.45 Assyrian Reliefs, Room 6
Lunchtime gallery talks: Free
45 minute talks with guest speaker or curator
13.15 Tuesdays–Fridays
Spotlight tours: Free
20 minute tours focusing on highlights
Every Friday evening
17.00 & 17.30 The Parthenon 18.30 & 19.00 The Enlightenment
17.00 & 17.30 Rosetta Stone 18.30 & 19.00 Death in ancient Egypt
Around the world in 90 minutes: £12 per person
11.30 and 14.00 every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Meet the Rosetta Stone, the Lewis Chessmen and the Parthenon Frieze, as well as some lesser-known but equally fascinating objects, with expert guidance that goes to the heart of the Museum’s collection.
This tour is designed for adults, but children under 12 with an accompanying adult enjoy free entry. Please note that the tour will visit a number of galleries on different floors of the Museum and involves a considerable amount of walking.
Book online or at the Information Desk in the Great Court.
1.To take as many tours and talks as possible, which of the following day is the best to visit the British Museum?
A. Saturday B. Friday
C. Tuesday D. Monday
2.Which of the four tours requires booking in advance?
A. Eye-opener tours B. Lunchtime gallery talks
C. Spotlight tours D. Around the world in 90 minutes
3.If you are interested in ancient Rome, which room should you go?
A. Room 70 B. Room 49
C. Room 40 D. Room 33
4.Which of the following statement about the British Museum is true?
A. The museum is closed on Monday.
B. All galleries in the museum open until 20:30 on Friday.
C. Entrance to galleries stops 10 minutes before they close.
D. Children cannot join the “Around the world in 90 minutes” tour.
