Many people believe that you lose the ability to learn new languages as you get older. Language experts, however, will tell you that you’re never too old to learn a new language. As you get older, it can be more difficult to learn a new language, though.
Children and adults learn new languages in different ways. For children, language is their life. They study for thousands of hours every year, because they need to learn languages to become part of their communities. Adults, on the other hand, are already part of a language community. Learning a new language means becoming part of another language community, and adults rarely get the chance to practice as much as young children do.
Moreover, children learning a new language are expected to make mistakes. This gives them freedom when learning to be daring and confident. Adults, however, often feel pressured to be perfect when learning a new language. This can discourage many people and make it even harder to learn a new language.
When young children learn a new language, they come to see all kinds of languages as a “normal” part of society. This mindset（思维模式）helps them embrace learning a new language without feeling like they’re doing something unusual or “too hard”.
So if you want to learn a new language, go for it! It’s never too late to learn a new language. If you’re older, it may take more work, but it can be done. If you’re a young child, though, now it is the time to step out and learn a new language!
1.By “language is their life” in Paragraph 2, the author means that children ____.
A.can’t live without language
B.lead a happy life every day
C.practice a new language a lot
D.are taken good care of by adults
2.What may make it hard for adults to learn a new language?
A.They often feel pressured.
B.They usually have too many interests.
C.They think making mistakes is natural.
D.They always make all kinds of mistakes.
3.Which of the following shows the difference between children and adults in learning a new language?
A.The behavior they have. B.The learning attitudes.
C.The future plans they have made. D.The materials they are using.
4.According to the author, a new language ______.
A.can never be learned by the old people
B.can be learned by the old people easily
C.can be understood only by the old people
D.can be learned by both the old and the young
Pearl S. Buck was a very popular American writer of her day. She was famous for her books about China. Pearl was born in 1892 in West Virginia, America, but she spent almost half of her 81-year-long life in China.
Pearl spent her youth in Jiangsu Province, China. She learned to speak Chinese before she could speak English. Her mother had travelled widely in her youth and liked literature very much. After being educated by her mother and by a Chinese teacher, Pearl S. Buck went to school in Shanghai at the age of fifteen. She continued her education in the United States at a Woman’s College to study psychology（心理学）. After graduation in 1914, she returned to China. In the 1920s, her family moved to Nanjing, where she taught English and American literature at a university.
As a writer, Pearl S. Buck’s book, The Good Earth, appeared in 1931 and sold quite well in its first year. It has been translated into over thirty languages. In 1938, she became the third American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. By the time of her death in March, 1973, Pearl had published more than seventy books.
1.Pearl S. Buck was born in West Virginia, America in ______.
A.1892 B.1901
C.1906 D.1913
2.Which of the following is NOT true about Pearl S. Buck?
A.She lived in Jiangsu Province in her youth.
B.She was able to speak English before she spoke Chinese.
C.Her mother and a Chinese teacher had educated her.
D.She studied at a Woman’s College in the United States.
3.Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature because of her ______.
A.education in China B.experience in America
C.The Good Earth D.psychology books
4.What can be the best title for the text?
A.Pearl S. Buck’s Family B.Pearl S. Buck’s Life Story
C.Pearl S. Buck’s Books D.Pearl S. Buck’s Job as a Teacher
When a disaster happens, you might find yourself without water, gas or electricity. You might also need to leave your home right away. So you are supposed to plan for such bad situations. Here are some suggestions.
●Have a family meeting. Plan a way to get your family members together after the disaster. Choose two places for everyone to go to if it isn’t safe to return home. The first meeting place should be near your house. You can go there in an emergency like a fire. The second should be outside your neighborhood.
●Choose a person outside your area to help. It is easier to communicate over a long-distance call than a local one. The person can help your family members get in touch with each other.
●Get a family disaster kit（应急包）ready. It should include the things your family needs. It can help you survive at least for three days with bread, water, medicine and things like that. Put them in a bag so that you can carry it if you leave in a hurry. Do remember that different people have different needs.
●Practise your emergency plan. Update it as often as possible. You may not be able to stop any disasters, but with a little planning you can help yourself and your family survive.
1.How many suggestions are given in the passage?
A.Three. B.Four.
C.Five. D.Six.
2.The purpose of choosing a person outside our area is to _____.
A.send food to our family
B.find us a safe place
C.choose two places for us to go to
D.help our family get in touch
3.A family disaster kit can help us to _______.
A.survive B.communicate
C.stop disasters D.return home
4.What does the passage mainly talk about?
A.Leaving home safely. B.Taking an adventure trip.
C.Planning for disasters. D.Having a family meeting.
阅读下面材料，然后按要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
A set of textbooks designed to help high school students learn about traditional Chinese culture is to be published soon Beijing Times reported on Monday.
The books are the first national-level works of their kind and have been developed by a working group that promotes traditional culture. They will be used by students from autumn this year the report said.
The set contains four classics from ancient times. Two of the works Confucian Analects and Mencius are for 10 th -grade students while the other two Great Learning and Dao De Jing will be used by 11 th graders.
The initiative follows a series of steps the authorities have taken in recent years to spread and promote traditional Chinese culture on campus.
Last April the Ministry of Education released a series of guidelines requiring the inclusion of more information about traditional culture in primary and middle school textbooks especially those used for subjects such as Chinese language history art and physical education.
The guidelines said students’ knowledge of traditional culture will be tested in the senior high school entrance examination and the gaokao --- the college entrance exam.
（写作内容）
1. 用约 30 个单词写出上文概要；
2. 用约 120 个单词就”高中生学国学”这一主题发表你的观点，内容包括:
⑴ 国学入高中的缘由；
⑵ 你对这一举动的看法。
（写作要求）
1. 阐述观点或提供论据时，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。
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Marketers have more options in today’s increasingly multilingual society — a variety of electronic and print media can address groups of consumers in different languages. Various factors influence the choice of media and language. In some cases, it’s simply practical to advertise in the consumer’s native language, particularly if many of the consumers in this group are primarily monolingual. In other cases, by advertising on, say, a Spanish television channel in the US, an advertiser may earn the respect of the consumer by addressing him in his native language, as well as develop positive associations with the medium and its unique content. Now, marketers have another factor to consider when deciding where to advertise and in what language. A paper. Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching published by researchers at the University of Texas, shows that bilingual individuals exhibit different personality characteristics when speaking different languages.
Lead researcher Nairan Ramirez-Esparza, tested individuals who were bilingual in English and Spanish for various personality traits, and found that the subjects answered the questions differently when asked in English and Spanish. The new work built on past research showed the values of subjects changed when they were surrounded by stimuli from different cultures.
How can marketers take advantage of “cultural frame switching”? It may sound challenging without specific research, but at least for Spanish, English bilinguals in the US, there is now some hard data on the language-related personality shift. Extrapolating to other language combinations may be possible, too. Since the Spanish/English bilingual results seem to be in agreement with testing of monolingual Spanish and English speakers, language-specific testing of bilingual subjects may not be essential to get an idea of what kind of cultural frame switching might occur in other bilingual combinations. Rather, comparing known personality differences for each language/ culture would give an indication of the differences bilingual individuals would exhibit.
I think it would be a mistake to over-emphasize this phenomenon over other criteria affecting the selection of appropriate media and language to reach a target market. Clearly, the major considerations of demographics (人口统计资料), perception of the medium, language fluency, etc. should remain major factors. Besides, the language-driven cultural frame switching may not make much difference to many products or services. If the product does attract one cultural personality more, though, it may make sense to exploit that difference of the other decision criteria are more or less equivalent.
The researchers point out that the differences aren’t great. Even if slight, though, the differences are noticeable.
Cultural Frame Switching: Different Language, Different Personality | |
Concept of cultural frame switching | Cultural frame switching refers to the phenomenon of shifting from one cultural mindset to another when people are 1. to their new cultural environment. |
Applications of cultural frame switching | Cultural frame switching is a factor marketers now take into 2. to reach target customers. |
Personality shift proves to be 3. for Spanish/ English bilinguals, which makes it not 4. to do language-specific testing of bilingual subjects. | |
Looking for the known personality differences between each language/culture would give marketers a better 5. of how bilingual individuals would 6. in two different cultures. | |
Facts about cultural frame switching | It’s wrong to put too much 7. on the functions of cultural frame switching. |
Compared with other criteria, the language-driven cultural frame switching simply plays a (n) 8. role in marketing success. | |
Providing that a product 9. to a certain cultural personality more, the difference is worth employing. | |
Conclusion | The effect different languages have on personality is 10. but noticeable. |
To learn to think is to learn to question. Those who don't question never truly think for themselves. These are simple rules that have governed the advancement of science and human thought since the beginning of time. Advancements are made when thinkers question theories and introduce new ones. Unfortunately, it is often the great and respected thinkers who end up slowing the progress of human thought. Aristotle was a brilliant philosopher whose theories explained much of the natural world, often incorrectly. He was so esteemed by the scientific community that even 1，200 years after his death, scientists were still trying to build upon his mistakes rather than correct them!
Brilliant minds can intimidate upandcoming thinkers who are not confident of their abilities. They often believe they are inferior to the minds of giants such as Aristotle, leading many to accept current paradigms instead of questioning them.
I, like many thinkers of the past, once believed in my mental inferiority. I was certain that my parents, my teachers-adults in general-were always right. They were like a textbook to me; I didn't question what was written on those pages. I respected them, and accepted whatever they told me. But that attitude soon changed. My mind's independence was first stimulated in the classroom.
A stern, 65yearold elementaryschool science teacher once told me that light is a type of wave. I confidently went through years of school believing that light is a wave. One day，however I heard the German exchange student mention that light could be made up of particles. As the others laughed at his statement, I started to question my beliefs.
Maybe the teachers and textbooks hadn't given me the whole story. I went to the library, did some research and learned of the lightasawave versus lightasaparticle debate. I read about Einstein's discovery of the dual nature of light and learned the facts of a paradox(悖论) that puzzles the world's greatest thinkers to this day. Light behaves as both a particle and a wave, it is both at once. I realized I had gone through life accepting only half of the story as the whole truth.
Each new year brought more new facts, and I formulated even more questions. I found myself in the library after school, trying to find my own answers to gain a more complete understanding of what I thought I already knew. I discovered that my parents and teachers are incredible tools in my quest for knowledge, but they are never the final word. Even textbooks can be challenged. I learned to question my sources, I learned to be a thinker. I once believed that everything I learned at home and at school was certain, but I have now discovered to reexamine when necessary.
Questions are said to be the path to knowledge and truth, and I plan to continue questioning. How many things do we know for sure today that we will question in the future? At this moment, I know that our sun will burn for another five billion years, and I know nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole. This knowledge, however, may change in the next 20 years-maybe even in the next two. The one thing we can control now is our openness to discovery. Questions are the tools of open minds, and open minds are the key to intellectual advancement.
1.In the first paragraph, Aristotle is taken as an example to show that ______.
A.he is the greatest and respected philosopher of all time
B.huge influence of great thinkers may block human thought
C.advancements are made when thinkers question theories
D.great thinkers often make mistakes and then correct them
2.What does the underlined word “intimidate” in Paragraph 2 mean?
A.Frighten. B.Encourage. C.Strength. D.Persuade.
3.The author began to question his previous beliefs because ______.
A.what he learned from textbooks before turned out to be wrong
B.he was inspired by the different ideas from an exchange student
C.he was laughed at by other students for his unacceptable statement
D.he was not satisfied with his life and desperate to achieve success
4.According to the passage, the author ______.
A.looks down upon great thinkers all the time
B.never doubts what he has learned in the textbook
C.always throws himself into the laboratory
D.determines to be a thinker and questioner
5.We can conclude from the last paragraph that ______.
A.the author is not quite sure about his future
B.we human beings don't dare to predict future
C.theory of black holes will change in two years
D.questioning is necessary to promote advancement
6.What does the passage mainly talk about?
A.Following rules. B.Challenging yourself.
C.Questioning giants. D.Predicting future.
