An earthquake is a trembling or shaking of the ground caused by the sudden release(释放) of energy stored in the rocks below the surface. Generally, earthquakes last only seconds. Strong ground shaking during a medium（中等的） to large earthquake generally lasts about 10 to 30 seconds. Aftershocks（余震）can occur once in a while for weeks or even months.
Many people think that there is an “earthquake season” or a kind of “earthquake weather”. As a matter of fact, there isn’t. Earthquakes can occur at any time of the year and at time of day or night. Earthquakes occur under all weather conditions-sunny, wet. or cold without any special weather tendency(倾向).
Also, you don’t need to worry that the ground will open up and swallow people when earthquakes occur. Open ground cracks may form during an earthquake, for example, to land sliding or ground falling. However, such cracks tend to be open gaps (they don’t “ swallow”) that a person could stand in afterwards.
The safest place in an earthquake is an open field because buildings and falling objects can injure or kill you. If you are indoors, when you feel the ground start to shake, take cover immediately under a table or strong piece of furniture, placing something between falling objects and yourself. Don’t attempt to use the stairs or an elevator to get out of the building.
1.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A. Earthquakes usually last 10 to 30 seconds.
B. After a big earthquake, there are many more quakes.
C. Cracks in an earthquake are very dangerous.
D. What usually injures people during an earthquake are falling buildings.
2.The reason why there isn’t “earthquake weather” is that ____________.
A. an earthquake only lasts seconds and doesn’t happen frequently.
B. an earthquake can happen at any time and in any kind of weather.
C. when an earthquake happens is related to the weather
D. earthquakes don’t change with the seasons
3.The underlined word “swallow” in Paragraph3 probably means “___________”?
A. take sb. / sth. in B. make sb. frightened
C. make room for sb. to stand in D. make the ground slide
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 National Outline (纲要) for Educational Reform and Development is bringing change to China’s annual College Entrance Examination.
Currently, a student’s score on the College Entrance Examination is the only factor determining his or her future. Universities set minimum scores in screening (筛选) prospective students, and only those whose scores are higher than the minimum are admitted. The outline suggests that universities choose students based on not only the results of the entrance exam, but also other criteria. For example, if a student’s score is lower than his peers’, but he shows great potential in the subject he’s applying for, then the college might consider admitting him despite the lower general score.
The outline also proposes that some subjects, as a pilot project (试点项目), carry out multiple exams each year. This means that if a student fails an exam, he may have other chances at the exam in the coming semester. And to improve the system for higher education, China will gradually classify exams according to different kinds of education. The outline states that entrance exams for colleges and universities should be organized by the Ministry of Education, while exams for vocational schools (职业学校) should be organized by provincial educational departments.
（写作内容）
1. 请用约30个词概括阅读材料的主要内容；
2. 然后以约120个词就“高考模式改革”谈谈你的看法，包括以下要点:
(1) 你看到这篇新闻报道的感受；
(2) 你最认同文章中提到的哪一种措施；
(3) 你对现行高考模式的看法。
（写作要求）
1. 作文中可以使用自己亲身的经历或虚构的故事，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称。
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Just as team members today have assigned doing roles, there should also be thinking roles. By knowing how other members of your learn and organization think---and by others knowing how you think—everyone can be more productive. So how should you evaluate how you and your team think? After a lot of trial-and-error, we developed a three-step method that delivers practical and meaningful results.
Focus. Do you tend to pay the most attention to ideas, process, action, or relationships? For example, in the morning do you think about the problems you need to solve, the plans you need to make, the actions you need to take, or the people you need to see? This isn’t about picking one to the exclusion(排除)of the other. It’s about where your focus naturally lands.
Orientation(方向). A good way to identify your orientation is thinking about what tends to bother you in meetings. Are you more likely to complain about getting dragged into the weeds or about things being too general and not specific enough? These dimensions are complementary(补充的)to personality, skills, and traditional roles.
Combination. By combing these two dimensions you can know about the thinking style at work in whatever context or setting you chose. When you know your thinking style, you know what naturally energizes you, why certain type of problems are challenging or boring, and what you can do to improve in areas that are important to reaching your goals. Once you know your style, it helps to share it with others, and have others share theirs with you. In this way, your thinking style becomes a useful tool---a kind of social currency---for the team. Imaging you put together a team to work on a new initiative(行动). Wouldn’t you like to know who is energized by big-picture strategy discussions and who finds them frustrating? Who likes to work on the details of the execution? And who is energized by managing the team dynamics?
The landscape of business is changing rapidly, and we have to find new and better ways to connect and communicate. We all want to work better together, the challenge is actually making it happen. Understanding collaboration(合作)through the way of thinking rather than doing is a practical and powerful step forward.
What kind of Thinker Are You? | |
Introduction | ●Both assigned doing roles and thinking roles are 1.important among team members. ●Team members knowing how each other think can 2.productivity. |
Three steps in 3.thinking styles | ●The fist step is to identify the focus of your 4.in a particular context. ●It is not about making an either-or5., but about finding where your focus naturally lands. |
*The next stop is to identify6.your orientation swings toward the big picture or the details. *It can help others form a full understanding of you. | |
*The third step is to 7.these two dimensions and see your thinking style at work. *It 8.to the understanding of other team members’ thinking styles. | |
9. | In this rapidly changing world, understanding10.others think instead of what they do can help you work better together. |
Everyone looks forward to progress, whether in one’s personal life or in the general society. Progress indicates a person’s ability to change the way he is living at the moment. Progress must lead a better way of doing things. All these, however, remain true only in so far as people want to accept technology and move forward by finding new and more efficient ways of doing things.
However, at the back of the minds of many people, especially those who missed the “good old days”, efficiency comes with a price. When communication becomes efficient, people are able to contact one another no matter where they are and at whatever time they wish to. The click of a button allows people miles apart to talk or to see each other without even leaving their homes. With the communication gadgets, such as mobile phones and ipads, people often do not take the effect to visit one another personally. A personal visit carries with it the additional feature of having to be in the person’s presence for as long as the visit lasts. We cannot unnecessarily excuse ourselves or turn the other person off.
With efficiency also comes mass production. Such is the nature of factories and the success of industrialization today. Factories have improved efficiency. Unskillful tasks are left to machines and products are better made and produced with greater accuracy than any human hand could ever have done. However, with the improvements in efficiency also comes the loss of the personal touch when making these products. For example, many handcrafts are now produced in a factory. Although this means that supply is better able to increase demand, now that the supply is quick and efficient, the demand might fall because mass production lowers the quality of the handicraft and it is difficult to find unique designs on each item.
Nevertheless, we must not commit the mistake of analyzing progress only from one point of view. In fact, progress has allowed tradition to keep up. It is only with progress and the invention of new technology that many old products can be brought back to their old state. New technology is required for old products to stay old.
It is people’s attitude towards progress that causes the type of influence that technology has on society. Technology is flexible. There is no fixed way of making use of it. Everything depends on people’s attitude. The worst effects of progress will fall on those who are unable to think again about their attitudes and views of society. When we accept progress and adapt it to suit our needs, a new “past” is created.
1.According to Paragraph 1, progress can benefit people when they are willing to _______.
A. live a better life B. look for better methods
C. accept technology and advance steadily D. change ways of living
2.The underlined word “gadgets” is closest in meaning to _______.
A. tools B. messages C. barriers D. skills
3.The author explains “efficiency comes with a price” by _______.
A. describing a process B. making classification
C. following time order D. using examples
4.Compared with home-made handicrafts, machine made products _______.
A. lack great accuracy B. lack the personal touch
C. are of high value D. are quite welcome
5.What can be concluded from the last paragraph?
A. Progress can suit the needs of daily life.
B. People review the past with great regret.
C. People’s attitude decides the use of technology.
D. Technology should be introduced in a fixed way.
Cultural rules determine every aspect of food consumption. Who eats together defines social units. For example, in some societies, the nuclear family is the unit that regularly eats together. The anthropologist Mary Douglas has pointed out that, for the English, the kind of meal and the kind of food that is served relate to the kinds of social links between people who are eating together. She distinguishes between regular meals, Sunday meals when relatives may come, and cocktail parties for relatives and friends. The food served symbolizes the occasion and reflects who is present. For example, only snacks are served at a cocktail party. It would be inappropriate to serve a steak or hamburgers. The distinctions among cocktails, regular meals, and special dinners mark the social boundaries between those guests who are invited for drinks, those who are invited to dinner, and those who come to a family meal. In this example, the type of food symbolizes the category of guest and with whom it is eaten.
In some New Guinea societies, the nuclear family is not the unit that eats together. The men take their meals in a men’s house, separately from their wives and children. Women prepare and eat their food in their own houses and take the husband’s portion to the men’s house. The women eat with their children in their own houses. This pattern is also widespread among Near Eastern societies.
Eating is a metaphor that is sometimes used to signify marriage. In many New Guinea societies, like that of the Lesu on the island of New Ireland in the Pacific and that of the Trobriand Islanders, marriage is symbolized by the couple’s eating together for the first time. Eating symbolizes their new status as a married couple. In U.S. society, it is just the reverse. A couple may go out to dinner on a first date.
Other cultural rules have to do with taboos against eating certain things. In some societies, members of a family group, are not allowed to eat the animal or bird that is their totemic ancestor. Since they believe themselves to be descended from that ancestor, it would be like eating that ancestor or eating themselves.
There is also an association between food prohibitions and rank, which is found in its most extreme form in the caste system of India. A caste system consists of ranked groups, each with a different economic specialization. In India, there is an association between caste and the idea of pollution. Members of highly ranked groups can be polluted by coming into contact with the bodily secretions, particularly saliva(唾液),of individuals of lower-ranked castes. Because of the fear of pollution, Brahmans and other high-ranked individuals will not share food with, not eat from the same plate as, not even accept food from an individual or from a low-ranking class.
1.According to the passage, who will NOT eat together?
A. Men and women in Near Eastern societies.
B. The English during regular meals.
C. Americans on their first date.
D. Newly-married people on the island of New Ireland.
2.In Paragraph 4, the underlined word "taboos" means _____________.
A. favors B. gossips C. hatred D. prohibitions
3.According to the passage, eating together indicates all the following EXCEPT _______ .
A. social relations B. marital status C. the type of food D. family ties.
4.What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Different kinds of food in western countries.
B. Relations between food and social units.
C. Symbolic meanings of different kinds of food.
D. Food consumption in different cultures.
I've written this article and you're reading it. So we are members of the same club. We're both literate一we can read and write. And we both probably feel that literacy is essential to our lives. But millions of people all over the world are illiterate. Even in industrialized Western countries, such as the UK and the USA, approximately 20% of the population have "low literacy levels". But what exactly does that mean?
My parents both left school at 14. They could read and write, but except for a quick look at the daily newspaper, reading and writing didn’t play a big part in their lives. There were very few books in the house. My mother was amazed because the woman who lived next door always wrote a list of what she needed before she went to the supermarket. Why couldn’t she remember? We laughed about that for weeks. Our family didn’t write lists! And when I was only 14 years old my father gave me an important letter that he'd written to the bank and asked me to check it for grammar and spelling mistakes. And there were quite a lot. He never usually wrote letters or postcards or even Christmas cards. So when he had to write he wasn't comfortable or confident. Does that mean that my father had a "low level of literacy"? I don't think so.
There are lots of different definitions of literacy. Some experts define it as having the reading and writing skills that you need to be independent in your everyday life. So, for example, if you can read instructions, write a cheque, fill in a form, 一anything that you need to do in everyday life一then you are "functionally literate".
Other people say that you are illiterate if you think that you are illiterate. In other words, if you feel that you can’t read or write as well as you would like to.
If you live in a society where most people are literate then you will feel ashamed or embarrassed and avoid situations in which you have to read or write. The father of a friend of mine finally admitted to his family that he couldn't read when he was 45 years old. He bought the newspaper every day and pretended to read it一and believe it or not, his family had no idea.
We often forget that writing is a recent invention. Many years ago, the word "literate" meant being able to communicate well in speaking, in other words what we now call "articulate". Story telling was an important activity in the past and still is today in some societies. Reading was often a cooperative activity一someone would read aloud to a group, often from a religious text such as the Koran or the Bible.
Only a hundred years ago, in the United States, you were considered to be literate if you could sign your name to a piece of paper. It was an important skill. You were not allowed to vote if you couldn’t sign the voting register, so literacy was connected with political rights, and many people were excluded from the democratic process.
Nowadays we see reading and writing as being connected, but that wasn’t so in the past. Many people could read, but not write. Writing was a skilled profession. If you needed something written then you paid an expert to write it for you.
And of course, rich and important people have always employed people to write things for them. Important company bosses dictated letters to their secretaries or personal assistants. And now with new computer software you can dictate directly to your computer.
Being illiterate can have a big effect on people’s lives. For example, a study in the UK showed that people who write and spell badly are seen as careless, immature and unreliable, and often unintelligent. So it is more difficult for them to find jobs, even when reading and writing are not necessary for the work.
World-wide statistics show that literacy problems are associated with poverty and a lack of political power. More women than men are illiterate. Illiterate people have worse health, bigger families and are more likely to go to prison. So literacy campaigns must be a good thing. But don’t forget that an illiterate person, or someone with a low level of literacy, isn't necessarily stupid or ignorant — and may not be unhappy at all. Knowledge and wisdom isn't only found in writing.
1.Why does the author give two examples in Para 2?
A. To show that Father was more literate than Mother.
B. To show that literacy is interpreted in different ways.
C. To indicate how important reading and writing are.
D. To compare the level of literacy between neighbours.
2.According to the author, the following are some of the defining features of literacy EXCETT_____.
A. independent B. psychological C. functional D. social
3.Which of the following statements about reading and writing is CORRECT?
A. Reading and writing have always been regarded as equally difficult.
B. People had to read and write well in order to be allowed to vote.
C. Reading and writing have always been viewed as being connected.
D. Reading often requires more immediate interaction than writing.
4.What do the last two paragraphs mainly focus on?
A. Effects of illiteracy and employment problems.
B. Effects of illiteracy on one’s personality development.
C. Effects of illiteracy and associated problems.
D. Effects of illiteracy on women’s career development.
