When most people think about the "American culture", images of Coca-Cola, hot dogs, baseball games, big cars come to mind. Actually, American culture is more than that, and its history features the variety of American culture. Especially southern culture, plays a part in American culture. And the southerners are known for their hospitality, language and food.
Southerners' hospitality is very famous in the world. People who live in the South are very nice and are always willing to help another person in any way they can. If someone is from out of town and needs directions to a certain place, Southerners will make sure he or she knows how to get there. Southerners are very polite. Everytime they pass someone on the road, they are going to wave at him or her. Towns in the South have fewer people and everyone knows everyone. The people in the South are nicer than anywhere else in the United States.
Language in the South varies according to which area someone is in and what the person's background is. Most white people have a country draw in the accent. Most black people talk using Ebonies(黑人英语)，but some do have a draw in their accent. The other groups talk in their native languages or in English with an obvious accent. The languages in the South are alike in most places except in Southern Louisiana
The South's food is like no other places. It is colourful, has a wonderful smell that fills the whole house and tastes good. All the things that the Southerners use will wake up one's taste and are really delicious.
Southern culture is well-known in the world. The South is very different from other areas in the United States. The people are nice, the language is very different and the food is great.
1.What does the underlined word "hospitality" in Paragraph 1 probably mean?
A.Being honest. B.Being friendly.
C.Being generous. D.Being beautiful
2.What can you infer about the southerners from the passage?
A.They enjoy waving at others. B.They prefer to talk on the road.
C.They arc glad to help strangers. D.They don't get along well with others.
3.Which of the following statements about the South is NOT true?
A.People in the South speak the same language.
B.People in the South are the nicest in America.
C.The culture in the South is unique in the world.
D.The food in the South are different from other places.
4.Which of the following can be the best title?
A.The Origin of Southern Culture. B.American Culture.
C.Southerners' Hospitality. D.Southern Culture.
It was about five in the morning in Ontario, Canada, when Donna Strickland's phone rang. The Nobel Prize committee was on the line in Stockholm, calling to tell her she had won the prize in physics.
"I wondered if it was a joke," Strickland said in an interview with a Nobel official after the call. She had been asleep when the call arrived. "Something was wrong because it came so early in the morning. But then I knew it was the right day, and it would have been a cruel joke."
Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, shares the honor with two other scientists for their work in the 1980s in transforming lasers(激光)into tiny tools that today have countless application. The prize money $1.4 million will he shared among the three. Half the prize went to Strickland and her cooperator Gerard Mourou, a professor at the Ecole Poly technique in France. The other half was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, a retired physicist who worked at the famous Bell Labs in the United States.
Strickland's win is historic in more than one way. It's been over 55 years since a woman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1903, Marie Curie became the first-ever woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. For the next 60 years, no women physicists were awarded. Maria Goeppert Mayer became the second woman physicist to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.
Strickland herself was surprised to learn she was the third woman to receive the honor in physics. "Is that all, really? I thought there might have been more." she said at a press conference Tuesday. "We need to celebrate women physicists, because we're out there. Hopefully, in time, it will start to move forward at a faster rate."
1.What was Donna's first reaction after she received the call?
A.She felt all efforts paid off. B.She was too excited to say a word
C.She was doubtful about it. D.She was annoyed at being waken up.
2.How much was Donna rewarded for winning the Nobel Prize?
A.About $350,000. B.About $2.8million.
C.About $700,000. D.About $1.4 million.
3.What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?
A.Strickland's achievements in physics.
B.The history of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
C.Strickland's struggle to win the Nobel Prize.
D.Three women winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in history.
4.What does the underlined "it" in the last paragraph refer to?
A.The Nobel Prize in Physics.
B.The achievement of men physicists.
C.The celebration of the Nobel Prize winners.
D.Awarding women physicists the Nobel Prize in Physics.
If you and your partner love to travel, a destination wedding is a perfect idea! It's important that you plan out what the best location is for you and your future partner, considering your costs and what it will cost your loved ones. Here is a list of the best when it comes to inexpensive destination weddings.
1. St. Petersburg, FL
With pleasant weather nearly year-round and beautiful oceanfront views, St. Pete is a perfect place for a destination wedding. Your loved ones can easily drive or get relatively inexpensive plane tickets and you can get married on the water. The average wedding in St. Pete costs around S5000.
2. Negril, Jamaica
Covered in beautiful resorts, Negril offers not only natural beauty on its beaches, but also excellent elegance if you'd like to stay indoors. The best way to do it is to buy a package through a resort which will cost you between $2500-$10000 depending on the options you choose.
3. Playa del Carmen, Mexico
This is a top destination wedding location because it's inexpensive for both you and your guests. With 30 guests it will cost about $45000 and includes so many amenities(令人愉快的事): decorations, set-up and even a couple's massage(按摩)!Plus, most hotel rooms cost around only $ 100 a night.
4. Newport, RI
Newport is a sleepy, romantic town that has the New England feel without the cost. You can have your weddings on the beach if that suits you, but if you can wait until the off-season, you can buy a package at a satisfying mansion(公馆)for less than $5000.
1.Which destination can you choose to stay indoors?
A.St. Petersburg, FL. B.Negril, Jamaica.
C.Playa del Carmen, Mexico. D.Newport, RI.
2.What can you do in Newport, RI?
A.Have the feel of England. B.Experience a couple's massage.
C.Have a wedding on the water. D.Enjoy a package at a satisfying mansion.
3.Where does the passage most probably come from?
A.A travel journal. B.A news report
C.A science textbook. D.A library guide.
假设你是晨光中学的学生李津，最近你将有机会和当地的一家英文报社记者一起，参加采访报道活动，请根据以下提示给报社组织这项活动的编辑写一封电子邮件：
（1） 你打算参加的栏目组（从社会、文化、体育和人物专栏中任选其一）；
（2） 选择该栏目组的原因及关于该栏目你想采访报道的内容；
（3） 希望从中有何收获。
注意：（1） 词数不少于 100；
（2） 可适当加入细节，使内容充实、行文连贯；
（3） 开头和结尾已给出、不计入总词数。
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阅读短文，并按照题目要求用英语回答问题
Eleven-year-old Ruby Kate has long been close to older folks. Her mother, Amanda Chitsey, works at nursing homes in northwest Arkansas, and Ruby Kate often goes with her in the summer. “I’ve never found them scary at all, so I’m able to just go up to them and ask if they need anything,” she says.
Last May, Ruby Kate noticed a resident named Pearl staring out a window. She seemed sad. “What are you looking at?” Ruby Kate asked. Pearl said she was watching her dog being led away by his new owner after a visit. Pearl didn’t know when she would see her dog again.
Ruby Kate and Amanda asked around and discovered that the nursing home didn’t allow residents to have dogs and Pearl couldn’t afford to pay anyone to look after hers. The Chitseys also learned that many nursing home residents are unable to afford even the smallest luxuries. So Ruby Kate decided to do something about it.
She started by asking residents what three things they wanted most in the world. “That’s a lot simpler than going, ‘Hey, what do you want?’” she explains. “They can understand you better.” Amanda worried that people would ask for cars and other things an 11-year-old wouldn’t be able to provide. Instead, they asked for chocolate bars, McDonald’s fries, pants that fit properly, and even just a prayer.
“It broke me as a human,” Amanda says. “We left the nursing home that day and went straight to a store and bought as many items as we could.” Using their own money, the Chitseys granted the wishes of about 100 people in three months.
Then they started asking for donations, set up a GoFundMe page, Three Wishes for Ruby’s Residents, and raised more than $250,000 in five months. One of their new goals is to set up a communal laptop in one nursing home in each state.Ruby Kate doesn’t plan to stop there. “I consider kindness to be my hobby,” she says, “and I’m very good at it.”
1.What makes Ruby Kate have a close relationship with older people? (No more than 10 words)
2.Why was Pearl’s dog taken away from her? (No more than 15 words)
3.What are paragraphs 4 and 5 mainly about? (No more than 10 words)
4.How do you understand the underlined sentence in the last paragraph? (No more than 10 words)
5.What do you think of Ruby Kate? Give your reasons. (No more than 20 words)
Prosocial behaviors are those intended to help other people. Behaviors that can be described as prosocial include feeling empathy(同感) and concern for others and behaving in ways to help or benefit other people.
Prosocial behavior has long posed a challenge to social scientists seeking to understand why people engage in helping behaviors that are beneficial to others, but costly to the individual performing the action. Why would people do something that benefits someone else but offers no immediate benefit to the doer?
Psychologists suggest that there are a number of reasons why people engage in prosocial behavior. In many cases, such behaviors are fostered during childhood and adolescence as adults encourage children to share, act kindly, and help others. Prosocial behaviors are often seen as being compelled by a number of factors including egoistic reasons (doing things to improve one's self-image), reciprocal benefits (doing something nice for someone so that they may one day return the favor), and more altruistic reasons (performing actions purely out of empathy for another individual).
Characteristics of the situation can also have a powerful impact on whether or not people engage in prosocial actions. For example, if you drop your purse and several items fall out on the ground, the likelihood that someone will stop and help you decreases if there are many other people present. This same sort of thing can happen in cases where someone is in serious danger, such as when someone is involved in a car accident. In some cases, witnesses might assume that since there are so many other present, someone else will have surely already called for help. All the examples are what we call the bystander effect, the tendency for people to become less likely to assist a person in distress when there are a number of other people also present.
Why do people help in some situations but not in others? Experts have discovered a number of different situational variables that contribute to (and sometimes interfere with) prosocial behaviors. First, the more people that are present decreases the amount of personal responsibility people feel in a situation. People also tend to look to others for how to respond in such situations, particularly if the event contains some level of ambiguity. Fear of being judged by other members of the group also plays a role. People sometimes fear leaping to assistance, only to discover that their help was unwanted or unwarranted. In order to avoid being judged by other bystanders, people simply take no action.
Experts have suggested that some key things must happen in order for a person to take action.
1.What can we learn from paragraph 2?
A.Social scientists feel it hard to understand why helping behaviors exist.
B.Helping behaviors are costly to people who receive the action.
C.Social scientists have been researching on prosocial behavior for quite long.
D.It is quite challenging for people to perform helping behaviors.
2.Prosocial behaviors are motivated for all the following reasons EXCEPT ______.
A.empathy for another individual B.instant benefits of helping others
C.parental influences in the early life D.the desire to better one's self-image
3.Why does the author use the examples in paragraph 4?
A.To show that some people are in need of immediate help.
B.To indicate that some people think their help is not needed.
C.To suggest that some people perform helping behaviors quickly.
D.To demonstrate how the situation can impact helping behaviors.
4.Which situation can be described as the bystander effect?
A.When hearing an injured lady crying for help, the neighbors didn't take action.
B.Seeing an old man slipping on the icy road, many people volunteered to help.
C.A woman had a heart attack on the train and you were the only doctor there.
D.On the scene of your colleague's traffic accident, you called the police for help.
5.After the last paragraph, the most possible topic could be ______.
A.possible benefits of prosocial behavior
B.various reasons for prosocial behavior
C.situational influences on prosocial behavior
D.skills and knowledge to provide assistance
