In my high school English class in a small Mississippi town, Miss Denman tried to insert our sleepy heads that every novel had to do one of the three things: tell something; show something; prove something. She then read us one she considered a piece of perfect writing because it achieved all the three things: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, whose remaining stories and essays have now been published.
As Miss Denman began reading — “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming(开花)freely and the grass was richly green” — we were calmed into “the square between the post office and the bank” of a small American town, where all 300 citizens are met. They’ve come to draw lots(抽签)for the lottery of each year that ends before noon. The person holding the paper with a black mark is then led to a clearing and stoned to death by all the town’s citizens.
When The Lottery first appeared in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine was flooded with letters from angry readers demanding to know what it was about. Unlike those confused The New Yorker readers, Miss Denman’s students weren’t confused by a story in which foolish violence was passed down through the generations. Ours was a Gothic world and Shirley Jackson seemed to our ears like Flannery O’Connor without the Georgia accent.
Forty years passed before I read anything else by Shirley Jackson. Then I happened upon her final novel — We Have Always Lived in the Castle, published in 1962, three years before her death in 1965 — a true excellent work whose young main female character, Merricat Blackwood, is as precocious(早熟的)and worth remembering as any young people in the 20th-century American novels. She describes: “I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and my uncle Julian, and the poisonous mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.” Six years ago Blackwood’s parents, an aunt, and a younger brother were murdered — poisoned with arsenic(砒霜).
Fifty years after her untimely death, Let Me Tell You, a new reminder of how excellent a writer Shirley Jackson came out. The stories, essays, and lectures in this brilliant new collection include some published before and some able to the public for the first time. The title comes from the book’s only unfinished story, about two 14-year-old friends, the spoiled daughters of rich fathers. Their snobbery(势利)performances counteract beliefs of classlessness in American: “My father is a lawyer. It’s important what your father is. Also it’s important to have a swimming pool, only not the biggest swimming pool of all and of course no one would dream of going near it.” The reader is eager to know what happens but even Jackson’s finished stories are rarely tied up with appropriate endings. She counted on the reader to make an effort.
Let Me Tell You feels like a direct communication from beyond the tomb with the writer. This is especially true of her essays on the skill of writing. With the publication of Let Me Tell You, Shirley Jackson can now enjoy a peace with a new world of readers. The woman of Gothic psychological novel can truly rest in peace.
1.Miss Denman chose to read her students The Lottery mainly because ______.
A.it’s one of her favorite novels
B.it’s a good example to explain the features of novels
C.it has skillfully-arranged plots and beautiful statements
D.it’s a masterpiece of an American literary writer, Shirley Jackson
2.What can we learn about The Lottery?
A.It has a beautiful beginning but a sad ending.
B.Whoever got the lottery in the story was a lucky dog.
C.Living in the Gothic world, its writer was good Gothic novels.
D.It confused The New Yorker readers as well as Denman’s students.
3.According to Shirley Jackson’s final novel, ______.
A.Merricat was a quiet girl full of love for everything
B.only Merricat and her two sisters survived the murder
C.Merricat became as mature as her peers after the murder
D.altogether four people in the family died from being poisoned
4.What does the underlined word “counteract” in Paragraph 5 most probably mean?
A.Act against. B.Make stronger.
C.Make clear. D.Throw doubt on
Google “information overload” and you are immediately overloaded with information: more than 7m hits in 0.05 seconds. Some of this information is interesting: for example, the phrase “information overload” was popularised by Alvin Toffler in 1970. Some of it is mere noise: obscure companies promoting their services and even more obscure bloggers sounding off. The overall impression is at once overwhelming and confusing.
“Information overload” is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend and papers to shuffle(翻动). A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge(泛滥) had made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third thought that it had damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.
Some researchers raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can discourage creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer of the University of Michigan has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.
What can be done about information overload? One answer is technological: rely on the people who created the fog to invent filters(过滤器) that will clean it up. Xerox promises to restore “information purity” by developing better filtering and managing devices. A second answer involves willpower. Turn off your mobile phone and WiFi from time to time.
Most companies are better at giving employees access to the information superhighway than at teaching them how to drive. This is starting to change. Management consultants have spotted an opportunity. Derek Dean and Caroline Webb of McKinsey urge businesses to apply three principles to deal with data overload: find time to focus, filter out noise and forget about work when you can. Business leaders are chipping in. David Novak of Yum! Brands urges people to ask themselves whether what they are doing is constructive or a mere “activity”. Cristobal Conde of SunGard, an IT firm, preserves “thinking time” in his schedule when he cannot be disturbed. This might sound like common sense. But common sense is rare amid the cacophony(不和谐的声音) of corporate life.
1.According to the survey conducted by Reuters, most managers believe ______.
A.the data deluge does harm to their health.
B.most information they receive is of great use.
C.information overload destroys their personal relationship.
D.their jobs are satisfying thanks to the rich information on the Internet.
2.Which of the following is NOT a damaging effect of information overload?
A.Making people unproductive. B.Causing people to lack creativity.
C.Arousing people’s negative feelings. D.Leaving people bad at multitasking.
3.The technological way to deal with information overload is to ______.
A.improve the technique for filtering data B.limit the uploading of information
C.provide limited access to the Internet D.develop better search engines
4.Which of the following action may Derek Dean and Caroline Webb approve of?
A.Listening to music while working. B.Finishing several tasks at the same time.
C.Taking your mind off work occasionally. D.Avoiding using your common sense in your work.
California’s attack on second-hand smoke reached its historic high this New Year, when even indoor areas in bars and casinos became smoke-free by force of law. The rules on smoke exposure have taken a 180-degree turn in less than a generation. In the United States of my youth, every citizen was hostage(人质)to other people’s cigarettes in airplanes, in offices and in almost every other public place. Now the indoor areas of public life are all nonsmoking zones — an inconvenience for the 25% of adults who smoke, but a benefit of large proportions to the breathing system of the 75% who do not.
In the cold and flu, the greatest risk of appearing in public is not tobacco smoke, but rather contagious(接触传染的)disease. And strangers who would not dream of blowing smoke in your face seem happy enough about coughing and sneezing whenever they see you coming.
Isn’t there a double standard here, when the same folks prohibited from smoking in my office building can sneeze me home for a week of hell with the ruling bacterium of the season? Why don’t the contagious among us stay home or wear those cut little paper nose and mouth covers or at least feel bad about putting the rest of us at risk of sharing their misery?
Could it be that the similarity passing a law that requires germ-free public spaces. But two smaller lessons do come from the contrasting treatment of germs and cigarettes. The first lesson is that what we accept in public is much more a matter of particular social expectation than scientific studies. The French read scientific journals just as diligently as do Americans, yet the average French cafe contains more smoke than a forest fire. You are more likely to encounter a face full of tobacco smoke if you go to Japan this year than you would in Los Aneles. But you will also notice hundreds of people on the subway in Japan who wear paper mask to avoid spreading contagious disease that they carry. Which culture is more considerate depends on the particular subject of the inquiry. The standard for what is polite in public varies tremendously from one social setting to another.
1.The first paragraph tells us ________.
A.the rules on smoke exposure have become less strict
B.in the past people exposed to other people’s cigarettes complained a lot
C.in California, smoke-free zones in public places have existed for a long time
D.most people can benefit from banning indoor smoking in public places
2.What can be inferred from the passage?
A.People think coughing and sneezing are less harmful than smoking in public.
B.Sick people should live alone and stay home wearing paper masks all winter.
C.Strangers will feel bad when they cough and sneeze in front of other people.
D.Those with contagious diseases feel bad sharing their misery with others.
3.The tone of the passage is best described as ______.
A.encouraging B.worrying
C.carefree D.suspicious
4.What does the author want to express in this passage?
A.Learn from Japan. B.Don’t smoke indoors.
C.Pay attention to environmental germs. D.Stay home all winter.
The Docklands Light Railway(DLR) took just three years to build at a cost of ￡77 million. It is London’s first Light Rail System, but its route follows that of a number of older lines, which carried the nineteenth century railways through the crowded districts of the East End.
The section of the line from the Tower Gateway Station to Poplar follows the line of one of London’s earliest railways, the London & Blackwell(1840), a cable-drawn railway(later converted to steam) which carried passengers to steam ships at Blackwell Pier, and provided transport for the messengers and clerks who went backwards and forwards between the docks and the city every day.
From Poplar to Island Gardens, a new line crosses high above the dock waters, and then joins the old track of the Millwall Extension Railway, built to service the Millwall Docks(1868) and to provide transport for workers in the local factories. This line was horse-drawn for part of its route, until the 1880s.
The Poplar to Stratford section of the DLR route was first developed by the North London Railway, built in the 1850s to link the West and East India Docks with the manufacturing districts of the Midlands and North of England. There were major railway works and sidings(岔线) at Bow until recently.
The trains are automatically controlled from a central computer, which deals with all signaling and other safety factors, as well as adjusting speeds to keep within the timetable; on board each vehicle, Train Captains, who are also fully qualified drivers, are equipped with two-way radios to maintain contact with central control. There are passenger lifts, and self-service ticket machines, at every station.
1.The history of the railway tells us that the DLR ______.
A.was begun in the nineteen century
B.follows some of the original line
C.will be finished in three years’ time
D.took three years longer than expected to complete
2.It appears that the Poplar to Stratford section of the DLR route was originally developed to ____.
A.make the transport of goods easier B.encourage trade abroad
C.promote the transport in England D.create employment at home
3.The trains on the DLR are controlled by ______.
A.drivers on the trains themselves B.two-way radios operated by the drivers
C.a computer on board the train D.a computer based elsewhere
假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。请根据以下四幅图的先后顺序,为校刊“英语园地” 写一篇短文,讲述上周你校高三年级举行趣味运动会的过程。
注意：词数不少于60。
提示词:趣味运动会fun sports meeting 二人三足 three-legged race
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假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。你的英国好友Jim在你的视频博客（Vlog）上看到你做中餐的视频，很感兴趣并表示也想学做中国美食，发来邮件询问。请你给他回复邮件，内容包括：
1. 推荐一道中国菜或饭；
2. 推荐理由。
注意：1 .词数不少于50；
2.开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
