Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words, Use your own words as far as possible.
If someone you know asks you nosy (爱管闲事的) questions, then you are not obliged to answer if you don’t want to. Here it is more important that you have some polite brush-off (拒绝), but it is still not rude for you to refuse.
If you think they shouldn’t have asked the question like ‘How much money do you earn?’, then I strongly recommend looking very shocked and saying ‘I can’t believe you just asked me that!’ and either leaving them to get out of it or moving on yourself to another subject. If they try to press you by saying ‘I was just interested…’. Then you can keep the shocked look and say ‘I’ m not telling you that with as much emphasis as you like on the ‘you’.
But what if the question isn’t quite so unforgivable? Then you need a more smiling response: ‘I can’t possibly tell you that’ or ‘I’m not telling anyone that’ or ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ But you must stand firm, because otherwise they’ll never learn and will keep expecting you to tell them your innermost secrets. There is certainly never any need to tell your secrets just because someone else told theirs.
There are questions that seem perfectly reasonable- ‘Are you planning to move?’, ‘Are you going to go back to work?’, ‘Are you going on holiday this year?’-but if answered truthfully might lead to unexpected revelations of something bad. Here you are free to tell white lies and say ‘We don’t know/ haven’t decided yet/ haven’t really thought about it’. Looking vague and changing the subject is the key here. If the question was reasonable, then it’s polite to embarrass the asker as little as possible-they were probably only making conversation in the first place.
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
The Polities of Social Media
In recent years, social media has become the fastest way to reach the greatest number of people. 1. Because of this, politicians have started using it extensively to further their campaigns.
Initially, this sounds like a good idea. Politicians need to use methods that are familiar and relevant to voters, and social media is much more interactive than traditional campaign advertising. 2. By inter-acting on social media, politicians can find out what is truly important to constituents (选民). In a way, this makes the process even more democratic.
3.. In a US Senate election, a conservative organization conducted a campaign against the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. It opened several fake accounts and sent out Twitter messages accusing her of accepting bribes, Twitter found out about it and shut the accounts down, but the messages had already reached over 60,000 people, and the result stayed in search engines even longer. She lost the election to the Republican candidate, and while there are other reasons that are likely to have influenced her loss, this shows how easily false information can spread.
Of course, the false information online doesn’t only come from politicians. There are a host of other ways news sources and advertisers try to influence our views. Even respected news sites such as CNN have used staged reports related to war news, just to create a greater sense of drama. 4.. If you follow the news closely, it’s usually easy to see whether the news is more conservative or liberal leaning.
Does social media make politics more transparent or does it distort them even more? That may depend on what sites you read and how well you check your facts.
A. Perhaps the speed and extent is all that has really changed.
B. However, it can also be misused in a way that is far more effective than negative advertising.
C. Most news outlets, while supposedly unbiased(无偏见的), do have certain political preference.
D. If a politician does something ridiculous online, people notice and call them out on it.
E. A tweet or video can reach hundreds of thousands in just a few hours.
F. Users can comment on statements and make suggestions for new discussions.
What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem totally impossible. How could such extremely complex influences pass from the mother to the child? There is no connection between their nervous systems. Even the blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly. An emotional shock to the mother will affect her child, because it changes the activity of her glands and so the chemistry of her blood. Any chemical change in the mother’s blood will affect the child for better or worse. But we can not see how a looking for mathematics or poetic genius can be dissolved in blood and produce a similar liking or genius in the child.
In our discussion of instincts we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior. It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics. It may be, however, that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence. If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics, they will probably make a success of that study.
As for musical ability, it may be that what is inherited is an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or the vocal organs connections between nerves and muscles that make it comparatively easy to learn the movements a musician must execute, and particularly vigorous emotions. If these factors are all organized around music, the child may become a musician. The same factors, in other circumstance might be organized about some other center of interest. The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry. The capable fingers might develop skill in surgery. It is not the knowledge of music that is inherited, then nor even the love of it, but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill. Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other undertaking may be decided entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.
1.Which of the following statements is not true?
A.Some mothers try to influence their unborn children by studying art and other subjects during their pregnancy.
B.It is utterly impossible for us to learn anything about prenatal development.
C.The blood vessels of mother and child do not join directly.
D.There are no connection between mother’s nervous systems and her unborn child’s.
2.A mother will affect her unborn baby on the condition that ______.
A.she is emotionally shocked
B.she has a good knowledge of inheritance
C.she takes part in all kind of activities
D.she sticks to studying
3.According to the passage, a child may inherit ______.
A.everything from his mother
B.a knowledge of mathematics
C.a rather general ability that we call intelligence
D.her mother’s musical ability
4.If a child inherits something from his mother, such as an especially sensitive ear, a peculiar structure of the hands or of the vocal organs, he will _____.
A.surely become musician
B.mostly become a poet
C.possibly become a teacher
D.become a musician on the condition that all these factors are organized around music
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1.Dr. Cherukuri invented his MD Hearing Aid AIR in order to ______.
A.provide patients with low-priced hearing aid of high quality.
B.make high-priced hearing aid easily accessible on the market.
C.prevent untreated diseases such as depression and social isolation
D.have the expense of the hearing aid covered in health insurance policies
2.According to the passage, which of the following about MD Hearing Aid AIR is TRUE?
A.Its price is no more than 43, 500 including delivery fee.
B.It’s not easy for others to notice a patient wearing the hearing aid.
C.Patients wearing the hearing aid will not hear any background sound.
D.Patients are guaranteed to get the money any background sound.
3.The passage is primarily written to ______.
A.encourage people to try the new product.
B.instruct people how to us a new electronic device.
C.provide the latest information about hearing health.
D.illustrate the importance of affordable hearing aid.
If you were like most children, you probably got upset when your mother called you by a sibling’s (兄弟姐妹的) name. How could she not know you? Did it mean she loved you less?
Probably not. According to the first research to tackle this topic head-on, misnaming the most familiar people in our life is a common cognitive (认知的) error that has to do with how our memories classify and store familiar names.
The study, published online in April in the journal Memory and Cognition, found that the “wrong” name is not random but is invariably fished out from the same relationship pond: children, siblings, friends. The study did not examine the possibility of deep psychological significance to the mistake, says psychologist David Rubin, “ but it does tell us who’s in and who’s out of the group.”
The study also found that within that group, misnaming occurred where the names shared initial or internal sounds, like Jimmy and Joanie or John and Bob. Physical resemblance between people was not a factor. Nor was gender.
The researchers conducted five separate surveys of more than 1, 700 people. Some of the surveys included only college students; others were done with a mixed-age population. Some asked subjects about incidents where someone close to them — family or friend — had called them by another person’s name. The other surveys asked about times when subjects had themselves called someone close to them by the wrong name. All the surveys found that people mixed up names within relationship groups such as grandchildren, friends and siblings but hardly ever crossed these boundaries.
In general, the study found that undergraduates were almost as likely as old people to make this mistake and men as likely as women. Older people and this mistake and men as likely as women. Older people and women made the mistake slightly more often, but that may be because grandparents have more grandchildren to mix up than parents have children. Also, mothers may call on their children more often than fathers, given traditional gender norms. There was no evidence that errors occurred more when the misname was frustrated, tired or angry.
1.What did David Rubin’s research find about misnaming?
A.It is related to the way our memories work.
B.It is a possible indicator of a faulty memory.
C.It occurs mostly between kids and their friends.
D.It often causes misunderstandings among people.
2.What is most likely the cause of misnaming?
A.Similar personality traits. B.Similar spellings of names.
C.Similar physical appearance. D.Similar pronunciation of names.
3.What did the surveys of more than 1,700 subjects find about misnaming?
A.It more often than not hurts relationships.
B.It hardly occurs across gender boundaries.
C.It is most frequently found in extended families.
D.It most often occurs within a relationship groups.
4.The passage is mainly about ______.
A.scientific research on misnaming and their findings.
B.why mother misname their kids more often than fathers.
C.a brain test to explain why misnaming functions in its way.
D.the advantages and disadvantages of misnaming children.
We’re told that writing is dying. Typing on keyboards and screens _______ written communication today. Learning cursive (草书的), joined-up handwriting was once _______ in schools. But now, not so much. Countries such as Finland have dropped joined-up handwriting lessons in school _______ typing courses. And in the US, the requirement to learn cursive has been left out of core standards since 2013. A few US states still place value on formative cursive education, such as Arizona, but they’re not the _______.
Some experts point out that writing lessons can have indirect benefits. Anne Trubek author of The history and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, argues that such lessons can _______ a skill called auto-maticity. That’s when you’ve perfected a task, and can do it almost without thinking, granting you _______ mental bandwidth to think about or do other things while you’re doing the task. In this sense, Trubek compares handwriting to driving.
“Once you have driven for a while, you don’t _______ think ‘Step on gas now’ or ‘Turn the steering wheel a bit,’” he explains. “You just do it. That’s what we want children to _______ when learning to write. You and I don’t think ‘now make a loop going up for the ‘I”-or “now look for the letter ‘r’ on the keyboard’. Trubek has written many essays and books on handwriting, and she doesn’t believe it will die out for a very long time. _______, she believes students are learning auto-maticity faster with keyboards than with handwriting: students are learning how to type without looking at the keys at earlier ages, and to type faster than they could write, granting them extra time to think about word choice or sentence __________. In an essay for the New York Times last year, Trubek argued that due to the __________ automaticity of keyboards, today’s children may well become better communicators in text as handwriting takes up less of their education. This is a view that has attracted both criticism and support.
She explains that two of the most common arguments she hears from __________ regarding the decline of handwriting is that not protecting it will result in a “loss of history” and a “loss of __________ touch.”
On the former she __________ that 95% of handwritten manuscripts can’t be read by the average person anyway-“that’s why we have paleographers (古文字学家),” she explains, paleography being the study of ancient styles of writing-while the __________ refers to the warm associations we give to handwritten personal notes, such as thank-you cards. Some educators seem to agree, at least to an extent.
1.A.defines B.dominates C.initiate D.benefits
2.A.compulsory B.satisfactory C.optional D.selective
3.A.in honor of B.for sake of C.in favor of D.on behalf of
4.A.majority B.necessity C.standard D.advocate
5.A.generate B.reveal C.measure D.strengthen
6.A.extra B.max C.important D.frequent
7.A.seriously B.occasionally C.formatively D.consciously
8.A.consider B.acquire C.forget D.associate
9.A.Therefore B.Otherwise C.Fortunately D.However
10.A.structure B.interpretation C.order D.selection
11.A.renewed B.accepted C.invented D.improved
12.A.students B.schools C.critics D.experts
13.A.intensive B.personal C.close D.constant
14.A.agrees B.persuade C.counter D.confirms
15.A.writing B.latter C.manuscript D.criticism
