China's box office numbers continue to grow rapidly. It is estimated that the revenues( 收入) may pass the U. S. market's as soon as this year. However, this cinematic party could be over just as it's getting started. Some companies are working to convince consumers that the ultimate viewing experience is not on the big screen.
Instead, it's on the small ones that are already in their pockets-thanks to the technology of virtual reality.
Already,VR experience centers are popping up in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. They give customers the opportunity to watch VR movies or play VR games for about the same price as a discount movie ticket. Online video sites, meanwhile, are also moving into the VR field. Some of them, like Youku, have launched(推出) their own VR apps and channels.
China has more than 700 million smartphone users. A large percentage of them are already more than willing to download and watch TV shows and even full-length movies on their handsets. This potentially makes them more likely to embrace VR content than Americans and Europeans.
But in fact, it's not just Chinese companies and video websites that believe VR will pull viewers away from movie theaters. International production companies that, for years, have made block busters (大片) for cinema audiences are also warning that disruptive change is around the corner.
Maureen Fan, chief executive of the Silicon Valley VR start-up Baobab Studios, after bringing her company's animated VR short Invasion to the Shanghai International Film Festival last year, concluded that the field had been evolving much more rapidly than she expected. "What I thought would take ten years has happened in one or two," she said. However, she also noted that the industry needs more people who can create great stories to move VR beyond a niche product(小众产品 ) and into the mass market. "The technology is already there. What continues to be lacking is good content," Fan said. "There's a certain amount, but we would love to see more."
1.What is the main idea of the article?
A. China's box office numbers might see a slight decline in the coming years.
B. People don't need to mind their manners when watching VR movies.
C. Movie theaters in China will be increasingly challenged by virtual reality.
D. More and more Chinese online video sites have had their own VR channels.
2.According to the article, Chinese people might be readier for VR movies than Westerners because .
A. China's box office numbers have been growing faster than those in the West
B. more Chinese people have experienced virtual reality than Westerners
C. China has been more supportive of the development of VR than Western countries
D. more Chinese people have been watching shows on handsets than Westerners
3.According to the article, it could be hard for VR movies to move into the mass market until
A. VR movies become available in theaters
B. online video sites launch more VR channels
C. VR experience centers appear in smaller cities
D. there is a larger amount of good content
4.Which of the following statements would Maureen Fan probably agree with?
A. VR movies will completely replace traditional movies sooner or later.
B. Virtual reality has been experiencing an enormous development.
C. Content matters more than technology when it comes to making movies.
D. The West will catch up with China in terms of the development of VR.
People traveling long distances frequently have to decide whether they would prefer to go by land, sea, or air. Hardly can anyone positively enjoy sitting in a train for more than a few hours. Train carriages soon get crowded. Reading is only a partial solution, for the monotonous(单调的) rhythm of the wheels clicking on the rails soon makes you sleep. During the day, sleep comes in snatches. While at night you rarely manage to sleep. Inevitably you arrive at your destination almost exhausted.
Long car journey are even less pleasant, for it is quite impossible even to read. On motorways you can, at least, travel fairly safely at high speed, but more often than not, the greater span of the journey is spent on narrow, uneven roads which are crowded with traffic.
By comparison, trips by sea offer a great variety of civilized comforts. You can stretch your legs on the broad decks, play games, swim, meet interesting people and enjoy good food-always assuming, of course, that the sea is calm. If it is not and you are likely to get seasick, no form of transport could be worse. Even if you travel in ideal weather, sea journeys take a long time. Relatively few people are prepared to sacrifice up to a third of their holidays for the pleasure of traveling on a ship.
Airplanes have the reputation of being dangerous and a little expensive. But nothing can match them for speed and comfort. Traveling at a height of 30,000 feet and at over 500 miles an hour is a pleasant experience. For a few hours, you settle back in a deep armchair to enjoy the flight. The real relaxation can be a free film show and some other services. An airplane also offers you an unusual and breathtaking view of the world. You really see the shape of the land. If the landscape is hidden from the view, you can enjoy the extraordinary sight of unbroken cloud plains that stretch on for miles before you, while the sun shines brilliantly in a clear sky. The journey is so smooth that there is nothing to prevent you from reading or sleeping. However you decide to spend your time, one thing is certain: you will arrive at your destination fresh and untired.
1.The author indicates that reading can help lessen .
A. the boredom of being in the train
B. the tiresome clicking of the wheels
C. the sleeplessness during the journey
D. the poor atmosphere of the carriages
2.What can we learn about the long distance journey by car?
A. It is safe because the car usually goes at high speed.
B. It is unpleasant because reading is quite impossible.
C. It is exhausting because you seldom manage to sleep.
D. It is dangerous because the traffic is always too busy.
3.Traveling by air is quite different from traveling by other means in that .
A. traveling by air is not so tiring as the others
B. traveling by air brings more fun than the others
C. traveling by air is much more expensive than the others
D. traveling by air offers more time for sleep than the others
4.What's the purpose of writing this passage?
A. To introduce diverse ways of traveling.
B. To point out the best means of traveling.
C. To emphasize the advantages of traveling.
D. To introduce how to relax when traveling
I was now in my twenty-third year of residence in this island and was so naturalized to the place and to the manner of living that I finally enjoyed the certainty that no savagesc(野人) would come to the place to disturb me, and that I could have been content to spend the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave.
I had also arrived to some little recreations and amusements, which made the time pass more pleasantly with me a great deal than it did before.
At first, I had taught my Poll to speak. And he did it so familiarly and talked so clearly and plainly that it was very pleasant to me. And he lived with me no less than six years. How long he might live afterwards, I don't know; though 1 know people have an idea in Brazil that they live a hundred years. Perhaps poor Poll may be alive there still, calling Poor Robin Crusoe to this day. I wish no other English man the ill luck to come there and hear him. But if he did, he would certainly believe it was the devil.
My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to me, for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age.
As for my cats, they multiplied to that degree that I had to shoot several of them at first to keep them from eating up all I had.
Besides these, I had two more parrots which talked pretty well and would all call Robin Crusoe, but neither like my first. Nor indeed did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose names I don't know, who I caught upon the shore and cut their wings and the little stakes which 1 had planted before my castle wall being now grown up to a good thick bush; these fowls all lived among these low trees and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that as 1 said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if it might have been secured from the threat of the savages.
1.How many kinds of animals except humans are mentioned in this passage?
A. 3. B. 5.
C. 7. D. 9.
2.What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A. Savages. B. Brazilians.
C. Islanders. D. Parrots.
3.This passage is selected from a novel. The hero of this novel probably comes from
A. Brazil B. Australia
C. Britain D. the U.S.
4.Which of the following can best summarize the passage?
A. Robin Crusoe loved animals and savages very much.
B. Robin Crusoe trained his animals in pleasant ways.
C. The animals raised by Robin Crusoe brought him much pleasure.
D. The savages always spoiled Robin Crusoe's happy life.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028
211-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org
Entrances
Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
Hours
Open 7 days a week.
Sunday-Thursday 10:00-17:30
Friday and Saturday 10:00-21:00
Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, January 1，and the first Monday in May. Admission
$ 25. 00 recommended for adults, $ 12. 00 recommended for students, includes the Main Building and the Cloisters（回廊）on the same day; free for children under 12 with an adult.
Free with Admission
All special exhibitions, as well as films, lectures, guided tours, concerts, gallery talks, and family/children's programs are free with admission.
Ask about today's activities at the Great Hall Information Desk.
The Cloisters Museum and Gardens
The Cloisters Museum and Gardens is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of Europe in the Middle Ages. The extensive collection consists of masterworks in sculpture, colored glass, and precious objects from Europe dating from about the 9th to the 15th century.
Hours
Open 7 days a week.
March-October 10:00-17:15
November-February 10:00-16:45
Closed Thanksgiving Day, December 25, and January 1.
1.When can people visit the Cloisters Museum and Gardens?
A. At 11:00, on December 25th.
B. At 9:30, on March 3rd.
C. At 17:00, on February 16th.
D. At 15:00, on October 20th.
2.How much may they pay if an adult with her 10-year-old son visits the museum?
A. $12. B. $37.
C. $ 25. D. $ 62.
3.The attraction of the Cloisters Museum and Gardens lies in the fact that .
A. it opens all the year round
B. its collections date from the Middle Ages
C. it has a modern European-style garden
D. it sells excellent European glass collections
Last summer, two nineteenth-century cottages were rescued from remote farm fields in Montana, to be moved to an Art Deco building in San Francisco. The houses were made of wood. These cottages once housed early settlers as they worked the dry Montana soil; now they hold Twitter engineers.
The cottages could be an example of the industry’ s odd love affair with “low technology,” a concept associated with the natural world, and with old-school craftsmanship (手艺) that exists long before the Internet era. Low technology is not virtual (虚拟的) —so, to take advantage of it, Internet companies have had to get creative. The rescued wood cottages, fitted by hand in the late eighteen-hundreds, are an obvious example, but Twitter’s designs lie on the extreme end. Other companies are using a broader interpretation (阐释) of low technology that focuses on nature.
Amazon is building three glass spheres filled with trees, so that employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.” At Google’s office, an entire floor is carpeted in glass. Facebook’s second Menlo Park campus will have a rooftop park with a walking trail.
Olle Lundberg, the founder of Lundberg Design, has worked with many tech companies over the years. “We have lost the connection to the maker in our lives, and our tech engineers are the ones who feel impoverished (贫乏的) , because they’re surrounded by the digital world,” he says. “They’re looking for a way to regain their individual identity, and we’ve found that introducing real crafts is one way to do that.”
This craft based theory is rooted in history, William Morris, the English artist and writer, turned back to pre-industrial arts in the eighteen-sixties, just after the Industrial Revolution. The Arts and Crafts movement defined itself against machines. “Without creative human occupation, people became disconnected from life,” Morris said.
Research has shown that natural environments can restore(恢复) our mental capacities. In Japan, patients are encouraged to “forest-bathe,” taking walks through woods to lower their blood pressure.
These health benefits apply to the workplace as well. Rachel Kaplvin, a professor of environmental psychology, has spent years researching the restorative effects of natural environment. Her research found that workers with access to nature at the office—even simple views of trees and flowers—felt their jobs were less stressful and more satisfying. If low-tech offices can potentially nourish the brains and improve the mental health of employees then, fine, bring on the cottages.
1.The writer mentions the two nineteenth-century cottages to show that ________.
A. Twitter is having a hard time
B. old cottages are in need of protection
C. early settlers once suffered from a dry climate in Montana
D. Internet companies have rediscovered the benefits of low technology
2.Low technology is regarded as something that _______.
A. is related to nature B. is out of date today
C. consumes too much energy D. exists in the virtual world
3.The main idea of Paragraph 5 is that human beings ________.
A. have destroyed many pre-industrial arts
B. have a tradition of valuing arts and crafts
C. can become intelligent by learning history
D. can regain their individual identity by using machines
4.The writer’s attitude to “low technology” can best be described as ________.
A. positive B. defensive C. cautious D. doubtful
5.What might be the best title for the passage?
A. Past Glories, Future Dreams
B. The Virtual World, the Real Challenge
C. High-tech Companies, Low-tech Offices
D. The More Craftsmanship, the Less Creativity
When I was a kid, I kept using a bike with training wheels. And I didn't______much, so, of course, I didn't learn how to______. One day I observed that my younger sister was getting closer to______ how to get rid of the assistance than I was. I couldn't let her______ me! Like an outofcontrol mad man, I grabbed(抓住) my bike, ______the training wheels, pushed it out, and pedaled(踩踏板) all over the neighborhood. I tried to stay near the______ as close as I could, so when I fell, I'd______ crash onto the lawn(草坪) instead of the street. After many shortlived______， I finally learned how to balance!
The process seemed______， since I was afraid of falling. I______ the fear which held me back and gathered the______ instead. I tried my best to fall as much as I might have to, to______ getting hurt, and to quickly get back on the bike and try again. There might be some pain and______， and if so, I'd get hurt and bleed and keep going. It took me probably less than an hour to master the basic skill.
What______ pushed me to set aside the fear and take action? Nothing but the feeling that I was______．My sister could ride without the training wheels while I couldn't. This feeling of ______ gave me a much needed kick. Using such pressure to motivate(激励) progress is ______. Go take action. Make the attempt. Fall. Get hurt. Get up and try again______ the very moment you create the______ results. Everything can be as ______ as riding a bike.
1.A. watch B. practice C. transport D. fall
2.A. park B. speed C. drive D. balance
3.A. figuring out B. deciding on C. looking into D. giving up
4.A. alarm B. assist C. beat D. judge
5.A. examined B. removed C. fixed D. adjusted
6.A. crossing B. handle C. street D. grass
7.A. unbelievably B. hopefully C. awkwardly D. slowly
8.A. attempts B. competitions C. discussions D. lessons
9.A. frightening B. amazing C. embarrassing D. satisfying
10.A. experienced B. canceled C. overcame D. collected
11.A. courage B. patience C. interest D. expectation
12.A. avoid B. regret C. prevent D. risk
13.A. pauses B. blood C. joy D. shock
14.A. easily B. gradually C. luckily D. exactly
15.A. giving in B. catching up C. falling behind D. standing out
16.A. disappointment B. confusion C. respect D. excitement
17.A. confident B. powerful C. negative D. harmful
18.A. while B. though C. since D. until
19.A. unexpected B. direct C. desired D. various
20.A. necessary B. useful C. easy D. complex
